Mystical Murders - John Dunning

Where evil is stronger...

A spine-chilling catalogue of macabre murders reconstructed in horrifying detail by a leading crime historian.

A mixture of sorcery, satanism and black magic rituals, MYSTICAL MURDERS chronicles some of the more unorthodox killings of recent times.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, his father disappeared and his mother Chrystal was left to bring him up alone. Needing to work, she gave him to the couple who had brought her up as an orphan. They were "dirt farmers" in Michigan and were in their 60s when they took her son.

Dunning joined the U.S. Navy in San Diego at the age of 16, his foster parents having died. He served in the Asian and Pacific fleets and spent time in the merchant navy before settling in Shanghai, where he married a Chinese woman. There he became a lieutenant of police in the British sector of the city (at that time divided between the United States, France, Britain and Japan). When the Japanese invaded China and Shanghai, he remained in his post as a non-combatant until 1941, when the United States entered the war. He was then interned in the Lunghua prison camp where he became the representative of the prison population. He spent four years as a prisoner of war.

After the Japanese surrender, he received the sword of the camp commandant. He worked for the U.S. intelligence agency OSS. He met his second wife, Elizaveta Maximovna Smoleff, in another prison camp. They were married in the Russian Orthodox church in Shanghai in 1946.