Wrath Of The Butt-Faced Boy

Iowa: Jason Mueller lacks the countenance of a mass murderer. He has the classic innocent look of a towheaded Iowa farmboy. He is slight of build, almost wispish, has a high forehead, is well groomed, and exhibits no symptom of any mental disorder. Yet, this 24 year old recent graduate of the University of Emmetsburg faces the ordeal of convincing a jury that though his finger prints were found on the bodies of all 22 victims, his story is not the just the deluded ramblings of a profoundly disordered youth.

     "I just don't have the strength to do some of the things the prosecution says I did," Mueller says. "I mean, the one guy weighed over 300 pounds. How could I break his neck and dump it in the Iowa River? God, I can hardly lift 150 pounds let alone someone like that. I majored in accounting not body building!"

     "There's 21 other individuals he can't account for, though," says Iowa County Prosecutor Derrick Snyder. "And who's going to believe his cockamayme story?"

     Mueller's amazing story begins on May 10 around 8 PM when he was on his way home from his last exam at the University of Emmetsburg. He was walking past Kerensky Hall when he came upon an elderly disheveled man sobbing against a lamppost. Being of a gentle nature, Mueller asked the old man if he was alright.

     "This old guy looked like hell," explains Mueller. "He had really huge bulging eyes and this heavy protruding brow. But there was all this blood trickling from the top of his head all over his face. When I saw that, I stepped back from him, but he grabbed my shoulder. As soon as he touched me, I suddenly felt really weak, you know, but then I realized that it wasn't me---it was him! It was so horribly strange; I mean I felt fine, but there was this flooding sensation of exhaustion and bitterness coming from this old guy. All his physical sensations were being dumped into me. Every incident of digestion, breathing, heart beat---God, it was like I was being raped! His mind was vast and powerful; I felt like an insect or a rag doll---wholly insignificant. Flashes of his thoughts leaked into my mind. I was a thing to him, not a person and I got this bitter image of a walker and cane. That's what he was using me for, I guess; his psychic walker. It was so wretchedly dirty; every one of his little twinges and---and that searing pain in his head; like it was going to burst! How could anyone live with such agony? "

     Mueller is uncertain about the exact time but it would appear that the two men took Mueller's car and left Emmetsburg around 11 PM, with Mueller driving. According to Mueller, he knew their destination was to be Ambrose in Iowa County despite the fact that the old man never said a word to him. They arrived at Betsy's Country Diner in Ambrose a little past 6 AM and entered the restaurant.

     Buz Wilson witnessed what happened next. "Well the old guy, he looked to be in an awful state. He didn't say nothing, jes sorta sat there asleepin' over his coffee with his eyes shut. But that skinny kid up and ordered a mountain of food, you know. He got this double order of flapjacks and syrup, swallers that in a few bites, then he orders another and another. Then he gets a plate of eggs and another and another. Damnest thing I ever saw, I tell you. So me and the boys are watchin' this skinny kid eat and I tell Elly the waitress to phone up Mrs. Long the owner for her to come over and watch this. She came right over just as this guy finished. I figure he had two dozen pancakes and about a dozen eggs, each with a glass of OJ to wash down with and a cup of coffee. It was all gone in about an hour. They get up and they start to leave without payin'. So, Elly kinda brought 'em short on that point; she's got a temper. So this kid looks straight at Mrs. Long and says 'Ollie Svenson is alive, Betsy.' Well that about dropped poor Mrs. Long to the floor. I got 'round the counter and helped her to a chair. She said to let the old man and the kid go, just let 'em go. Wouldn't hear anything against it. So they left. But her son, Big Earl, didn't like nobody spookin' his ma like that. He followed them two into town. That's the last time anyone saw him alive."

     Big Earl's 300 pound body was discovered in the Iowa River 2 miles above the Amana Colonies. Forensic evidence showed that Earl Long's cervical vertebrae had essentially exploded inside his neck. Mueller's fingerprints were discovered on Long's neck and he has been charged with Long's murder.

     Over the next five days, four strange deaths occurred every day; all with in a 10 mile radius of Ambrose, all with Mueller's fingerprints present on the neck and head of each victim. But the single most shocking detail was that all died because every ounce of cerebrospinal fluid had be drained from their bodies.

     Derrick Snyder thinks he knows how the crimes were committed. "The old man and Mueller were into some kooky kind of vampire thing---only they were after brain fluid. Mueller held the victims down while the old man ran some sort of micro-fine catheter into the back of their neck---so fine that it couldn't leave any marks. Then he pumped out the fluid. Then he and Mueller drank the stuff and after 4 days swilling of this stuff, Mueller goes nuts and clobbers the old guy in the head with a rock."

     Iowa County Medical Examiner, Dr. Roger Cooper, is thoroughly mystified.

     "Right now, I have 20 guests in storage, all of whom died from sudden metabolic failure brought on by a catastrophic loss of CSF. That's the only thing tying these cases together; massive CSF loss and Mueller's fingerprints on the bodies. Quite frankly, I don't see how Snyder expects to make the murder charge against him stick. His catheter idea is crap. There's no sign of violence on any of 'em; absolutely no marks on them at all. Zero. But one victim, we're calling him #22 until his next of kin has been reached, he's the most bizarre case I've ever had. The internal walls of his skull show that his brain had been pushing out against them for years, so hard in fact that the cerebral fissures embossed their patterns in the bone. My guess is that is was chronic condition as deformative as noncommunicating hydrocephaly in a very young child when the bones of the skull are still pliable---but much, much worse. For example, when we reach a certain age, the sagittal suture closes; his widened. The pressure must have been enormous and should have killed him only a few hours after it started. But his condition persisted for so long that his cranial bone structure was beginning to fail. He has stress fractures all over his skull. His head was slowly bursting apart from the pressure of his brain!"

     Then Dr. Cooper grows more confidential. "What I don't understand is this: the brain in that man's skull is not the one that belongs there. The body belongs to an old man; the brain to a young adult. None of the fissure patterns we found on the cranial walls match. The blood and tissue types don't match the rest of the body either. But it looks like it grew in situ all perfectly natural---except the medical evidence shows that the wrong brain is in the wrong body. In 14 years, I've never seen anything like this."

     Body #22 has been identified by a confidential source as Professor Tom D. Hutchins, aged approximately 90 years and reportedly a resident of the Gulf Breeze Retirement Community in New Port Richey, Florida. His reason for being at the University of Emmetsburg in such a frail state is unknown and he was not a patient at U of E Hospitals. Hutchins was born in 1905 in Huntington, West Virginia, his early adult years are a mystery. However, he became a research scientist with the U.S. Navy Ordnance Labs in 1938 and was invited by Dr. Enrico Fermi in 1942 to join his team at the Manhattan District in Chicago. Following the successful production of Plutonium, Hutchins was invited by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer to devise the capacitance circuitry for the trigger of the first nuclear bomb. After the war, Hutchins entered CalTech as an undergraduate and worked through to his doctorate in Nuclear Physics in just 3 years. For the next 20 years, he worked as a Nuclear Ordnance Design Consultant to the US Navy Ordnance Labs and is perhaps the father of the Polaris and Trident missiles.

     Truly an illustrious and distinguished career. However, there remains a singular mysterious coincidence. In April of 1935, a young Mississippi riverboat pilot named Tom D. Hutchins was admitted into the Muscatine County General Hospital after complaining of severe headaches. He soon fell into a coma after it was determined a tumor was engulfing his brain. On May 12 of that year, Ollie Svenson who was suffering from acute coronary artery disease was placed in the same room with Hutchins. The next day, Svenson was dead and Hutchinson had miraculously recovered (see: The Butt-Faced Boy, May, 1996, vol. 3, Issue #5).

     Given what is already known about his astounding recuperation in 1935 from the brink of death and the appearance of Hutchins a scant five years later as a Naval Research Scientist, one may conclude that not only are the two Tom D. Hutchins the same man, but that truly something marvelous and amazing happened to him while he was in the hospital tottering on the brink of death---something that enabled a man without a college degree to become a Research Scientist and later call Fermi and Oppenheimer colleagues.

     Perhaps that truly marvelous and amazing thing was the angry and afflicted Ollie Svenson, the Butt-Faced Boy himself, whose phenomenal skill with mathematics and spatial relationships and rumored psychokinetic skills may have allowed him to displace Hutchins' tumor-ridden brain with his own massive one. Proof to this exits: a normal-sized brain with a tumor was discovered last year in Svenson's preserved skull by a University of Emmetsburg Medical Researcher. If Mueller's story is briefly considered along with the statements of eyewitnesses, then the bizarre statement Mueller made to Betsy Long that Ollie Svenson was alive makes all too alarming sense. Perhaps after 62 years, time caught up with Svenson and he found himself in need of a new body. Unfortunately, the reason why 20 people had all their cerebrospinal fluid fatally drained from their bodies is yet a mystery.

     Jason Mueller, meanwhile, was discovered wandering through the streets of Ambrose in a profound state of agitation and unable to speak to authorities. He was detained for two days and then arrested when forensic evidence showed his finger prints matched those on the bodies. He now awaits jury selection and trial on the charge of 22 counts of first degree murder. It is widely speculated that while the prosecution will be unable to prove its case, Mueller's attorneys plan to use a temporary insanity defense.

     "I can't remember any of it; not the restaurant, not eating all that food and certainly not killing anybody. After getting in my car, all I remember is waking up in this jail cell. And I sure don't know anything about a guy named 'Svenson'!" asserts Mueller.

     An unrelated case, meanwhile, has provided another curious coincidence. On May 15, Lyle Festberger, age 18, of Ambrose supposedly went to a store to buy beer. His girlfriend, Laura Penroy, age 17, called police six hours later to say she had not heard from him. He has not been heard of since.