Difference between revisions of "Victor Licata"

Latest revision as of 13:22, 22 March 2015

Victor Licata (c. 1912 – December 4, 1950) was an axe murderer who killed his father, mother, two brothers, a sister and their dog in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Florida on October 16, 1933. Declared unfit to stand trial for reasons of insanity, subsequent psychiatric examination at the Florida State Hospital for the Insane determined that the 21-year-old Licata suffered from "dementia praecox with homicidal tendencies". While the press depicted the murders as a result of Licata being a cannabis user, but marijuana was not mentioned in psychiatric reports as having any bearing on his actions. Licata had already been identified as mentally ill and there had been steps to incarcerate him before his crime.

On December 4, 1950, while still living at the Florida State Hospital for the Insane where he had been since 1933, Licata committed suicide by hanging himself. His family were all buried at the Italian Club of Tampa Cemetery.

Depiction in media

The Licata case became a cause célèbre in the press, cited by proponents of laws cracking down on marijuana. It became central to the trope of "marijuana-crime-insanity". An October 20, 1933 editorial on page six of the Tampa Morning Tribune was entitled "Stop This Murderous Smoke". The editorial writer called for the prohibition of marijuana:

"...[I]t may or may not be wholly true that the pernicious marijuana cigarette is responsible for the murderous mania of a Tampa young man in exterminating all the members of his family within his reach — but whether or not the poisonous mind-wrecking weed is mainly accountable for the tragedy its sale should not be and should never have been permitted here or elsewhere.

The case served to inspire media depictions of normal people driven to criminal insanity by the "evil weed" such as the notorious 1936 exploitation film Tell Your Children (a.k.a. Reefer Madness).

In 1941, Cornell Woolrich under his pen name William Irish published the dime novel Marihuana: A Drug-Crazed Killer at Large, a story exploiting the marijuana-crime-insanity trope popularized by drug prohibitionists who used the Licata case as an example. In the book, a man goes on a murder spree after being exposed to marijuana for the first time.

Licata's marijuana habit

According to an October 17, 1933 Tampa Times story written contemporaneous with the crime, Licata was a marijuana "addict":

W.D. Bush, city chief detective, said he had made an investigation prior to the crime and learned the slayer had been addicted to smoking marihuana cigarettes for more than six months.

Marijuana's role in the crime is in dispute, even by the police. The Tampa Chief of Police, at the time of the Licata murders, had downplayed the role marijuana had in the murders in a statement on October 18. He did, however, pledge himself to the cause of marijuana prohibition:

"Maybe the weed only had a small indirect part in the alleged insanity of the youth, but I am declaring now and for all time that the increasing use of this narcotic must stop and will be stopped."

Use of case in anti-drug propaganda

Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger, dubbed "The Father of Reefer Madness" for insisting that marijuana usage caused insanity and criminality, continually referenced the Licata case in his efforts to proscribe marijuana. In his highly influential 1937 article "Marijuana, Assassin of Youth," which was propaganda for passage of the Marijuana Tax Act that effectively circumscribed legal marijuana sales, Anslinger wrote about Licata and his crimes.

It was an unprovoked crime some years ago which brought the first realization that the age-old drug had gained a foothold in America. An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home they found the youth staggering about in a human, slaughterhouse. With an ax he had killed his father, his mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze....

He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana....

As this is written, a bill to give the federal government control over marijuana has been introduced in Congress... It has the backing of...the United States Treasury Department, including the Bureau of Narcotics, through which Uncle Sam fights the dope evil. It is a revenue bill, modeled after other narcotic laws which make use of the taxing power to bring about regulation and control.

Anslinger referenced the Licata case while testifying to Congress in favor of the Marijuana Tax Act.

The depiction of police knowing Licata as "a sane, rather quiet young man" by Anslinger contradicts facts. Rather than the police knowing Licata "ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man", evidence indicates that Licata had long suffered from psychosis. A year before the murders, the police had filed a petition to have Licata institutionalized for mental illness, which was withdrawn when the family vowed to increase their oversight of his behavior. Mental illness ran in the Licata family, and prison psychiatrists speculated that he had inherited his insanity as his parents were first cousins. One of the brothers he slew was a diagnosed schizophrenic and his paternal granduncle and two paternal cousins had been institutionalized for mental illness.

When Licata was examined by psychiatrists eleven days after his arrest, it was determined that he was criminally insane and that his condition was "acute and chronic". It was determined that he was "subject to hallucinations accompanied by homicidal impulses and periods of excitement." He was committed to the Florida Hospital for the Insane on November 3, the official diagnosis being "Dementia Praecox with homicidal tendencies"; his behavior was characterized as "overtly psychotic". His medical file did not reference his marijuana usage.

Anslinger characterized what likely were hallucinations as a marijuana-induced dream in notes he took of the case:

A twenty-one-year-old boy in FLORIDA killed his parents, two brothers and a sister while under the influence of a Marihuana "dream" which he later described to law enforcement officials. He told rambling stories of being attacked in his bedroom by "his uncle, a strange old woman and two men and two women," whom he said hacked off his arms and otherwise mutilated him; later in the dream, he saw "real blood" dripping from an axe.

Anslinger was the Commissioner of the Narcotics Bureau from 1930 until 1962. He then served as the U.S. Representative to the United Nations Narcotics Commission from 1962 to 1964. In 1966, the United Nations publication Bulletin of Narcotics referenced the Licata case in an article entitled "Marihuana and Crime". The article was written by James C. Munch, Ph.D., who was a member of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics's Advisory Committee. In a chart appended to the article, "TABLE 3: Cases of crimes in the United States after use, and under influence, of marihuana," Munch anonymously referenced the Licata killings, writing, "Murdered his father, mother, sister and two brothers with an ax, while under influence of marihuana. Didn't know of all this until next morning."

Munch, a pharmacologist who had been employed by Food and Drug Administration, had testified on the pernicious effects of marijuana in the 1937 congressional Marijuana Tax Act hearings. His testimony came directly after Anslinger's appearance.