Rosemarie “Penny” Bjorkland belongs to a very select group of killers. In terms of “cold-bloodedness” she’s at the top of my personal scale, but others with more scientific training who have looked at the concepts of evil and depravity probably place her a bit lower in their hierarchies.
Dr. Stone’s “Most Evil” scale subtracts points from Penny’s crime because she didn’t inflict needless suffering on her victim, and from the Depravity Scale project, it doesn’t rise to the death penalty-enabling “heinous, atrocious, and cruel” standard ( “the term ‘heinous’ means extremely wicked or shockingly evil; the term ‘atrocious’ means outrageously wicked and vile; and the term ‘cruel’ means pitiless, designed to inflict a high degree of pain, or utter indifference to or enjoyment of the suffering of others. DeRosa v. State, 2004 OK CR 19, ¶ 96, 89 P.2d 1156.)
So what murder did 18-year-old Penny Bjorkland commit on February 1, 1959 that makes her so special? She shot a man in Daly City, California just to watch him die (Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues came out in four years earlier, which proves that rock music drives people to kill).
The Penny Bjorkland case is interesting for any number of reasons. First, the fact that she shot 28-year-old golf course greenskeeper August Norry without any motive other than she wanted to kill a human being is odd enough, but that the police were able to track her down because of the homemade bullets she used to commit the crime is equally interesting. Finally, that once she was arrested Penny never denied the crime, expressed little remorse for the slaying, and pleaded guilty without even trying a half-hearted insanity defense is the icing on the case.
“Mr. Norry on that day was my target,” was how she described the killing in court. “Suddenly I had the overpowering urge to shoot him. I kept shooting, emptying my gun and reloading.”
Penny’s claim in court that she “suddenly” had the urge to kill Norry conflicts with a statement she made in April 1959, shortly after she was arrested.
“I’ve had a terrible urge to kill someone for the past two years,” she told a San Mateo jail matron. “After the shooting I felt better mentally, like it was a burden lifted off me.”
The girl killer’s only regret regarding the entire incident, she said later, was that she made that statement to matron Esther Brown. Penny was very likely a psychopath unable to feel emotions or empathy for anyone else. Another statement she made to her jailer indicates that she was at least trying to feel something:
“I wanted to see if I could do something like this and not have any bad feeling,” she said. “I have no bad memories about it.”
Around the time that she started feeling the urge to kill Penny stole a .38 revolver from the home of a friend. The need to kill grew stronger after that, she said.
It was on February 2, 1959 that the body of August Norry was found in the hills above Daly City. His pregnant wife had reported her husband of 18 months missing the day before. Shortly after she filed the missing persons report a routine patrol located Norry’s car not far from where his body would be found the next day.
It was clear when the car was found that the gardener had met with some kind of violence. A window, windshield and the steering wheel were severely damaged by bullets fired from the passenger side. Blood was found on the front seat and on the floor of the rear seat. Police said “bits of skin” were also found in the car and one of the unfired bullets at the scene was bloody.
To say that the murderer had engaged in overkill is an understatement. Norry had been shot 18 times in the head and torso. There were two or three holes in Norry’s abdomen, at least five in the upper chest, and several in the head. Norry’s face was badly bruised from the shots to his head.
From the beginning of the investigation police assumed that the killer was somehow connected with target shooting because the location of the murder was frequented by recreational shooters and, most importantly, because the bullets used in the killing were homemade wadcutters, a type of ammunition specifically designed for use with paper targets.
Investigators followed the wadcutter clue to a specific cartridge mold manufacturer, and from there to its distributors in the bay area. Unfortunately, the trail grew murky when the distributors reported selling dozens of the molds.
Fortunately, the bullets that killed Norry were “hot loaded.” In other words, the person who made the cartridges used more powder than normal (somewhere between 10 and 12 grains) when packing them. Hot loading allows the bullet to travel faster thus increasing its force on impact. However hot loading is frowned upon because of the extra wear it places on the weapon and the danger of misfire.
Police canvassed the gun shops in the area to see if anyone could point them in the direction of a target shooter who made his own hot loaded bullets. They were lucky and eventually caught up with a local troublemaker named Lawrence Schultze (he was suspected of being part of a stolen car ring). After refusing to cooperate at first, Schultze told them that he had made the bullets for a casual friend interested in target shooting.
Her name was Penny Bjorkland and she fit the description of a blonde woman seen near the murder site by a hiker on the day of the murder.
Police were waiting for Penny at the home she shared with her mother, father, and brothers when she came home from her clerk’s job in San Francisco. She admitted buying the bullets from Schultze and stealing the .38 Colt from her friend. However, in front of her family, Penny said nothing about Norry’s murder.
Police took her to the San Mateo County lockup and listened surreptitiously as she spoke with the jail matron. After she incriminated herself she was arrested.
There was little in her background that indicated Penny could be a killer. Penny was a quiet mail clerk at a San Francisco business. Except for the fact that she was a loner who preferred to eat lunch alone, her coworkers generally liked her and were as surprised as everyone else when the slightly overweight freckle-faced blonde was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
Her family was equally shocked, although Penny’s relationship with her parents was not good. She liked to antagonize her mother, and this dislike of the woman was what the Freudian psychiatrists considered her motivation for the killing.
She did prove to be a difficult prisoner and client for her lawyer. She refused to speak about the murder and would not cooperate with the analysts who tried to delve into her psyche.
In August 1959 Penny decided to plead guilty to first-degree murder and in her allocution described how she came to kill August Norry.
The two had met previously and shared a cup of coffee together, and Penny said that Norry was a perfect gentleman. The day of the murder Penny was headed up to the foothills with the pistol with the intent of shooting it while pretending to kill people. On the way she bumped into Norry, who was dumping yard waste in the area. She invited him to accompany her to the target area and he agreed.
As Norry drove his car, Penny shot the pistol a single time out the window. She said it was the first time she had ever fired it. The pair arrived at the empty shooting range and Penny decided to kill Norry. She began shooting him as she sat in the car, and when he slumped forward, she got out and walked around to the driver side — reloading as she went.
She emptied the gun again, and reloaded. For a third time she emptied the revolver. Then she pushed Norry aside and drove on a bit. She dumped his body and fled the scene in his car, abandoning it near her own parked vehicle.
Then she went home.
After Penny pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, Judge Charles Becker sentenced her to life in prison and she vanished into the California penal system.