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immoral, illegal and fattening	Quick Killer A Trail of Sin by George H. Lafferty SkyBeast4@aol.com

 I know what people think of me, they think I have to be either insane or a depraved animal and probably both. I like to think I was born to be wild and free. I think ‘The Man Upstairs’ left some things out of me when I was born. You see, I feel I was born totally without things like a conscious, remorse and guilt. As far as I am concerned, there is no such thing as right or wrong, only getting caught doing what comes natural and which it seems other people think are wrong.

My problem is, everything I like is either immoral, illegal or fattening. Does that mean I can’t enjoy life. Not to me it doesn’t, it just means I have to be careful not to get caught.

Now supposing, hypothetically, that I am guilty of all these crimes you have accused me of. Are you really stupid enough to think I am going to admit it? Do you really think my conscious is going to make me unable to live with what I have done, and make me break down and confess to you, if you do, then you are even stupider than I thought.

This is what Marvin Quincy Hamet told me on the occasion of the one brief interview I had with him before his escape from custody and the chase that followed.

Marvin forcibly terminated that specific interview, by claming up and refusing to say another word, until represented by an attorney. Before another interview could be scheduled, he escaped.

I figured Marvin was full of a lot of hot air. The only charges filed against him were rape and burglary. Neither had anything to do with me. I am Sgt. Terrance Vance, Kansas City Police Homicide Unit and I, along with my partner Jim Salzer, were there simply to question Marvin about a homicide victim who had a "QK" carved in his chest. I had no proof Marvin had anything to do with or even any contact with the victim.

Marvin is not your typical killer, much less a serial killer, he is not a typical burglar and he is not a typical mugger or rapist. Marvin is a ‘jack of all trades’ criminal. He does whatever strikes his fancy depending on what kind of mood he is in. It wasn’t until later, while questioning people on the streets near where Marvin lived, on his own turf, that I discovered his street name to be "Quick Killer."

Usually, we get a modus operandi on a perpetrator and place him in a category. A burglar will generally work his trade, breaking into places and stealing. If caught in the act, he will surrender or try to run. He is usually non-violent. Oh, there are exceptions, of course, but this is the routine. The same goes for a mugger or a rapist, even a serial rapist, except they might be more prone to violence.

Most murders, again there are a few exceptions, are committed in the heat of passion, the killer commonly being known to or even family of the victim, few are truly premeditated, though that does happen all too frequently these days. Serial murders are usually the work of one sick individual, whom you must just track down and stop.

Quick Killer, as he likes to call himself, doesn’t specialize and it took the wheels of justice awhile to grind out the facts that linked him to many and varied crimes.

He grew up in a predominately black neighborhood and I imagine had his share of problems on being one of a very few white kids on that turf. Still, his juvenile record is for the most part typical. Fighting, both in school and in street gangs, vandalism, destruction of property, public intoxication, burglary, theft, strong arm robbery, progressing in violence as he grew older. The one thing Marvin has never been arrested for is narcotics violations. Everyone who knows him says he is straight, using only alcohol to get high on. Unusual for a street punk, but then Marvin is turning out to be a very unusual individual in a lot of ways.

Marvin was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, moving to Kansas City, Missouri at the age of eighteen, for reasons known only to Marvin. One reason possibly being that he had no probation officer in KC and no one to report to. Of course, He had to try to keep out of minor scrapes with the law, because a records check would soon have revealed he was in violation of his probation in Detroit.

A check of Marvin’s school records revealed he was a poor student, very frequently truant and set back twice, in the fourth and eighth grades. I was lucky enough to talk to one of Marvin’s high school teachers, a Mr. Larry Bibbens. Mr. Bibbens told me Marvin’s scholastic record was of his own choice, as Marvin was highly intelligent, quick to learn, when he chose to and very organized in most everything he set out to accomplish.

An attempt to salvage Marvin was made when hr flunked the eighth grade. Upon appeal to the juvenile judge, Marvin, then in trouble for a minor burglary, was sentenced to Boys Town, Nebraska. Very few of Boy’s Towns charges are sentenced there by a court. Most are orphans and there was a waiting list to get into Boy’s Town of over a thousand boys. Marvin was accepted only because he was sentenced there by the court.

Boys Town, not being a reform school, nor indeed, any kind of penal institution, had no fences, walls nor guard towers surrounding it’s environment. However, in the event of a boy or boys running away, Boys Town quickly put out a four state wide alert and their runaways were usually quickly returned to them.

Marvin’s records indicate he made seven attempts to runaway, before being threatened with being placed in Algoa Reform school, where they did have walls and towers.

Marvin apparently settled in the building he was assigned to live in, with the only complaint recorded against him being making a nuisance of himself in trying to get a transfer to a cottage, where smoking was allowed.

At Boys Town there are huge dormitory buildings for the younger boys and cottages for the high school age boys. The problem lay in the fact that once the seniors, juniors and sophomores were housed in the cottages there weren’t enough left for all the freshmen. Therefore only those freshmen who were a part of the Boys Town Choir were allowed to live in the cottages. The rest of the freshmen, including Marvin, were assigned to the dormitories.

Marvin was lucky to be a freshman at all, as Boys Town had given him an academic examination, due to his failing the eighth grade at his public school. Marvin had passed it with very high grades and so was allowed to enter as a freshman.

Marvin made no further attempts for over a year before succeeding in his last attempt and winding up on probation in Detroit. Why it was not discovered then that he was a runaway from Boys Town and sent to a reform school, is unknown at this late date.

Marvin stayed pretty straight, or was at least not caught or connected to any crimes in KC, until he was twenty-four years old. Even then, his crimes were relatively minor, as far as is known, and he fell through the judicial system with probation and short sentences, followed by paroles. Knowing what we do now, there are several unsolved murders, muggings, rapes and burglaries that may or may not have been his handiwork. It was for a local rape and possibly three burglaries that Marvin was arrested and which led to my one brief interview with him at the county jail.

It was right after his escape and, also right after his twenty-fifth birthday, that Marvin turned his wolf loose. Marvin caught a young and pretty nurse in the parking lot of the hospital where she worked, dragged her into a car and abducted her. He kept her for three days, committing multiple rapes upon her, then killed her while she was tied both hand and foot to the bed. He appears to have relished killing her and tortured her for hours before letting her die. He left the initials "QK" carved into her chest.

The only fingerprints found at the scene were those of the nurse and one Marvin Quincy "Quick Killer" Hamet. A match of Marvin’s prints was followed by a match of Marvin’s genetic material from his jail medical records with evidence from the scene. Marvin was quick to disappear into the rat holes and warrens of the city and no longer reported to his parole officer. A search was started for him, on suspicion of rape and murder, with enough evidence to believe a conviction was inevitable.

That this was to turn into a trail of crimes across several states came as a true
surprise as Marvin seemed more the stay in one place, local criminal. As it turned out, he was to lead us on what was to become a true trail of sin. About two weeks had gone by with no apprehension of Marvin, when a Monday morning began with a report of a car jacking murder in Kansas City, Kansas which gave a description that fit Marvin, white male, approximately sixty-eight to sixty-nine inches in height, approximately a hundred fifty-five to a hundred sixty pounds, brown hair and eyes and especially because of a large tattoo on his right biceps. From his description in his arrest report, Marvin had a tattoo of a sub-machine gun with the logo "Quick Killer" above it, which matched the one given in the report from Kansas. Information was sent to KCK, PD, which included Marvin’s mug shots and fingerprints, as well as his records to date.

A four state wide local alert was posted and information on Marvin’s flight was entered NCIC (National Crime Information Center). He was also listed as armed and dangerous.

Late Tuesday night, a convenience store/gas station was robbed in the suburbs of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and the night clerk was shot to death. A passing motorist gave a description of a car leaving the scene which closely matched the vehicle stolen in KCK on Monday.

Though many prints were found in the store, only five partials were taken from the register and one of these was the right forefinger of our boy Marvin. The manager of the store, after a check, advised some two hundred dollars and a Sturm and Ruger .357 magnum revolver were taken.

The magnum was apparently the weapon used to shoot the night clerk, leading to the belief that either physical force or another weapon, we know he used a large hunting knife in both the murder of the nurse and the car jacking, was used to overpower the night clerk and the gun found behind the counter was then used to kill the clerk.

Another entry was made in NCIC, with urgent warnings for Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. After that it was sit and wait for Marvin to turn up again, or until some alert officer spotted him on the road.

Once more warnings were broadcast via NCIC, concerning any local vehicle thefts within a hundred mile radius of Oklahoma City. While a long shot, we hoped any theft would be quickly reported and we would have at least some kind of list of vehicles Marvin might be looked for in. Also, we advised the responding officers within this radius to be on the lookout, near the scene of any car thefts, for the light gray Toyota four door sedan, with Kansas license plates W over Y (for Wyandotte County) XLR 323, that Marvin was believed to still be driving.

Then Marvin threw us a curve ball. He headed east from Oklahoma city, apparently stealing a car from a ‘Park & Ride’ lot, after leaving his stolen vehicle several miles away on a residential side street. Marvin apparently crossed into Arkansas through Fort Smith and then headed towards Little Rock.

A report of a mugging in Fort Smith, by an assailant with a "Quick Killer" tattoo matching Marvin’s and yet another car jacking in Little Rock, once again by a man with a

"Quick Killer" tattoo, put us back on his trail. His latest stolen vehicle, a 1986 four door Cadillac Sedan Deville, brown in color, with AR tags 286 EEH was taken without loss of life but at gunpoint with a revolver type gun, rather than an automatic.

Many days went by without any word or reports of Marvin’s activities and we decided he had apparently found a hole to crawl into.

Marvin was on the loose, had been so for at least two and possibly three days before report of a triple homicide at a home in Lehi, AR was reported by family members trying to contact their relatives. After repeated attempts to contact their family by phone, they asked the local police to meet them there in person to investigate their
failure to answer the phone.

A crime scene search led to the discovery of Marvin’s fingerprints and bodily fluids once again. A man, his wife, who had been raped, and a fourteen year old boy were found murdered in the upstairs bedrooms of the home. The stolen brown Cadillac was found two streets over in the same neighborhood.

Their 1998 Chevrolet Blazer two door, red in color with AR tags 241 XAT was discovered missing from the basement garage.

The county coroner placed the approximate time of the deaths at intervals over a two day period, with the last of them, the woman, dying approximately forty-eight to seventy-two hours prior to the discovery of the bodies. The air conditioning unit of the home was set to run full blast, keeping the bodies cool and making a closer estimate risky. When I arrived on the scene from KC, I had to view the bodies at the morgue, but made the interesting discovery, I had been told by the local investigators but wanted to see for myself, that all three had the initials "QK" carved into their chests.

The 1998 Chevrolet Blazer was discovered near the Greyhound Bus station in Memphis, Tennessee, three days later. No one remembered selling a ticket to anyone with a machinegun or "Quick Killer" tattoo, nor matching his description and our hot lead on Marvin had gone distinctly cold.

The interesting thing about criminals like Marvin is that they are stupid enough to commit the crimes and smart enough to know that they will be caught. They know that sooner or later, whether it is a routine traffic stop, their Social Security number, their fingerprints or just being recognized, they will be caught. Yet they go right out and do the crimes anyway.

In most of these cases, they can’t seem to stop. They have awakened their bloodlust and they can’t keep it under control. Hold themselves in check as long as they can, sooner or later they will kill again. Then the hunt starts in all over again.

Many times it is the killer himself who coughs it up. He just has to tell someone how bad he is. Has to brag to friends or in a bar that he is a real killer, and not to give him any static. Then his ‘friends’ tell us, the police, about how he claims to have killed that family or that guy or that gal and we start to investigate quietly. If it appears he does know something about a killing, we pick him up and paperwork, records, fingerprints and or, wants and warrants tell us the rest.

Armed with enough information it is usually not that hard to get a nice legal confession, that will stand up in court, or enough evidence to prove his guilt in a court of law.

While they are still on the loose they make their brags about how they ain’t going down while they’re still breathing but don’t you believe it. If they think they are about to get killed they give up quick enough. They don’t want to die anymore than you or I, or their victims. They plead with the police not to kill them, they beg for the mercy they refuse to show their victims, and once safely in jail are very quick to demand their rights. Those very same rights they deprived their victims of.

Meanwhile, we continued to be on the lookout for any information as to Marvin’s whereabouts. While we played the interview anyone anywhere near his latest known location, interviewed the people at the bus station who were on days off, or had called in sick, during the original interviews. Passed out wanted flyers during the rush hours at the bus station, hoping to stumble across someone who had been there when he bought a ticket. Checked all other transportation routes out of the city, fervently checked any and all car thefts or car jacking incidents anywhere in the area, we were coming up blank and had to play the waiting game. Waiting for "Quick Killers" next move.

It came nearly four months later, another nurse, once again taken from a hospital parking lot, this time in her own car. This time it was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We found she was living in an apartment complex on Highway One, near the city limits of Pompano Beach.

We had the manager of the complex meet us there with the keys and when no one answered the door, we had him let us in. This time I was there and was allowed to enter with the Fort Lauderdale Police. Marvin was long gone but he had obviously been there.

The once pretty young nurse’s body had been beaten unmercifully and had "QK" carved in her right breast. She appeared to have been repeatedly raped. Blood was splashed around the tiny one bedroom apartment as if he had used an egg beater to spray it around. She was missing one ear and three of her fingers, we found the fingers on the floor in the bathroom and her ear in the sink, along with one of those electric carving knives.

Once again Marvin left not only his fingerprints but voluminous hair, saliva and semen samples, semen samples in all three of her orifices and saliva samples over most of her body. From the amount of saliva, he appeared to have drooled like an animal in heat, attacking her the last time after the poor woman was already dead.

The nurse, Becky Almstead’s, car was a red 1963 Chevrolet Corvette, with Florida registration, which should have been reasonably easy to spot. It wasn’t until four days later, however, that it turned up in the rear parking lot of a small locally owned Dollar Store in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

A routine check of Becky Almstead’s bank account, disclosed a withdrawal from savings of thirty-six hundred dollars at the drive-up window of the main bank, on the day of her disappearance. None of Becky’s family, friends or co-workers know of any reason she would have drawn out such a large sum. We can only assume Marvin was in the car with her, forcing her to make the withdrawal as none of the tellers specifically remember the car or who was in it. Neither did they notice any undue nervousness, unusual or suspicious activity during the transaction.

Becky had indeed withdrawn twelve thousand dollars, several months earlier, to purchase the "cherry" Corvette, so this withdrawal raised no eyebrows.

It wasn’t until several weeks later that Marvin acted again. Another car jacking, and once again he killed to get the car. Mr. Anthony Jenkins refused to give the keys to Marvin, once he had been pulled out of the car in the parking lot of mall movie theatre. Anthony Jenkins attempted to get close enough to Marvin to try and wrestle the gun away from him. Anthony Jenkins, a former marine, apparently thought Marvin, who is not a large man, was all mouth. Marvin simply backed quickly away for Anthony Jenkins, then fired three rounds into Jenkin’s chest, killing him instantly.

This occurred in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Marvin was on the run in a known stolen car, a white Nissan Sentra four door, bearing North Carolina license 64J 23R. Once again the NCIC was updated with the current information and the armed and dangerous warning stressed.

How Marvin managed to elude detection for the next two days is a mystery but he was finally spotted in West Memphis, Arkansas by an alert patrolman and back-up was called for immediately. With the officer behind him soon being replaced with two unmarked cars and a road block being set up ahead of him and marked cars paralleling his route on adjacent streets, it seemed certain Marvin was about to come to the end of his crime spree.

Whether it was pure instinct, or Marvin recognized even the unmarked cars as police or caught a glimpse of a marked vehicle a block away by glancing down a side street is irrelevant. Somehow, he caught on to the trap he was in and boy, did he react.

Picking his spot, just short of the next intersection, he swerved sharply to the right, between two parked cars, clipping the front of one and the rear of the other but

managing to jump the curb and race down the sidewalk to the corner. Here he again swerved right, narrowly missing the front corner of the building and knocking aside and severely injuring two pedestrians. Then, caroming off the side of a utility pole, he ran off the curb and back into the next street.

Of the two unmarked cars behind him, the first slid helplessly into the side of one of the two parked vehicles, while the second, clipping the rear of the unmarked car and the front of the other parked car, also jumped the curb and hurtled down the sidewalk toward the corner. To avoid the two pedestrians, laying on the sidewalk, the officer was unable to veer to the right and hit the utility pole Marvin had only sideswiped, head-on.

Marvin sped down the street towards the three police cars which had been running parallel to his previous route. In an effort to cut Marvin off, the three cars pulled into the intersection on their end of the block, diagonally and side by side. They quickly jumped out of their vehicles, drawing their weapons as they took cover behind the front wheels of their vehicles.

The heavy pedestrian traffic once again saved Marvin, as the officers could not fire without endangering the public. Swerving as before, Marvin again jumped the curb on the right side and cut across the intersection on the sidewalk then back down and out onto the street. Speeding down the block, Marvin screamed through a wide left at the next corner and then followed a succession of frequent turns, which eventually got Marvin to the western city limits and out into the countryside on the main highway.

A high speed pursuit ensued, by the quickly recovering police, with speeds in excess of ninety miles per hour, weaving through traffic as if it were standing still.

Finally, no doubt recognizing the small town of Lehi, he was approaching, Marvin left the main road on a narrower county road and then down a side street to an old abandoned building. Sliding to a stop, he jumped out of the car and promptly shot the lock off a door into the old building. Running across the floor he quickly climbed to the second floor at the first staircase. Marvin made it to the window overlooking the driveway into the old parking lot in front of the old building, where he had left his car, just as the first police car roared into the lot.

Taking careful aim, Marvin shot the officer driving the car before the officer even had a chance to come to a complete stop. The bullet took the officer right in front of his left ear and spattered his brains all over his partner on the passenger side of the vehicle. That officer rolled out the door of the still moving vehicle and tried to get up and run for cover. He was in a state of shock, and puking his guts out and did not act quickly enough.

Marvin, once again taking careful aim, shot this officer as well, striking him high in the center of his back.

All other responding units were warned off and a Memphis Swat team was called in to quarter and search the building.

Marvin could only cover so much of the building and was eventually cornered and surrendered.

Marvin had his day in court, was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection. I have visited him twice on death row but the only thing Marvin has to say is, "I lived my life as I wanted to, wild and free and with no regrets. I offended the sheep and the goats finally captured me. If I have to die for the way I have lived, then so be it. I am the Quick Killer."

Copy right 2000, George H. Lafferty

George H. Lafferty Quick Killer, A Trail Of Sin
6702 Green Manor Drive Approx. 4,350 Words
Little Rock, AR 72206
PH: (501) 261-7620
FAX: (501) 261-7464
SkyBeast4@aol.com