LORENA BOBBIT HAD NOTHING ON CHARLIE CHOP OFF!

While not much is known about Erno Soto's childhood, what we do know is that Charlie Chop Off, a psycho who was given the moniker because of the way he killed five young boys of color during the years 1972 and 1973. What is also known is that he was a mental case who had a lot of anger issues for reasons that were not known at the time.

Here are the details of those murders:

The first victim was eight year old Douglas Owens who was killed in March of '72. A boy of color, he was stabbed 38 times in the neck, chest, and back regions, and his penis which was badly mutilated was hanging on by a bloody flap.

When police found the boy and saw what he'd done to mutilate the boy's body, they suspected this was something very personal to the killer. A little more than one month later, victim number two was found. Because the boy lived, the police never revealed his name to the public. He too was of color, stabbed in the neck and back, his penis was severed and taken. I can't even imagine what this man has gone through in his lifetime. His penis was no where to be found so unless the medical field found a way to provide this young boy with another organ, he's lived a life of celibacy. Although there are other ways of having a normal sex life, how could he reciprocate?

His third victim, Wendell Hubbard of the same color and age, was killed four months later. His death resulted in being stabbed in the neck, chest and abdomen seventeen times. His penis was missing.

The police had little to go on because there were no fingerprints or bloody footprints. It was like a waiting game for them. They questioned residents in the black neighborhoods, but everyone claimed they knew nothing. Whether that was true or not remains a secret, but they might have been too scared to talk for fear of retribution.

Victim number four was Luis Ortiz, a nine year old boy of Puerto Rican descent. He was stabbed in the neck, chest and back thirty-eight times, his penis was missing. This confused the police because he wasn't a boy of color, although his complexion was darker than Caucasian.

Five months later, the body of eight year old Steven Cropper was found. He died of razor slashes, but his penis was still intact. Now that there was a different MO, police considered that it might be a different killer on the loose, but given the fact that it was too coincidental due to the neighborhood and because he was a young boy of color, they continued trying to find the man they called Charlie Chop Off.

  

On May of 1974, Erno Soto was arrested after trying to abduct a nine year old Puerto Rican boy who got away and ran to police.

 

 Soto was apprehended and brought in for questioning, during which he would reveal that that he and his wife had been separated for a while, but reconciled until she showed signs of being pregnant. When the child was born and turned out to be a boy of color, he went berserk. Although he tried to pretend it didn't bother him, time and seeing the boy had him losing his mind. He was admitted to a state mental institution where he was in and out for several years only to have his mental state deteriorate even more as the child aged. It was after the boy turned eight that he began to kill any child reminding him of his wife's betrayal.

Although he revealed the above information, the only witness was victim number two who'd gotten away. When asked to pick his attacker out of a line up,  he could only say that Soto looked like him which was not enough to hold him. Couple that with Soto pleading  
 innocent to several of the murders because he was in the Institution at the time, but the staff confirmed that it was possible for him to sneak out of the building only to return afterward.  I don't think I'd want to live near this hospital!

 While in custody during one of his lucid moments, Erno did confess to Cropper's murder and told police "God had instructed him to turn the boys into girls."

 

Even though the evidence began to pile up, Erno was declared unfit to stand trial and committed to a mental institution where he still resides.

Sadly, this case is marked UNSOLVED.

Can you just imagine how you'd feel if it was your son who'd been murdered, knowing the killer resides in a mental institution, eating three squares a day, roaming about the halls without an ounce of remorse or being confined to a locked room?

As I've mentioned before, I'm currently on grand jury duty and some of the things I've heard just makes me shake my head. It's hard to believe what goes on in this world of ours. Lock your doors, hug your kids and stay safe.