MAX HAINES MURDER MYSTERY

One fine day in July of 1979, Joe Fischer walked into New York’s 24th precinct and confessed to 20 murders, including that of his wife.
In the weeks and months that followed, the amazing story of Fischer’s life was revealed.
Joe was born in Belleville, N.J., into a rough, tough family, where his mother ruled the roost. Mrs. Fischer was a big woman, who was perpetually intoxicated.
But it wasn’t her alcoholism that disgusted Joe, it was her habit of selling her body the moment her husband left for work.
Little Joe was often made to watch his mother perform.
She also beat him at the slightest provocation.
Joe said his mother had swung him around the room, so that when his head hit a wall his teeth were loosened and his eyes blackened.
He always claimed his murderous ways came about because he was killing his mother over and over.
As a teenager, Joe was constantly in trouble with police and school authorities.
He fought with fellow students and shoplifted from neighbourhood stores.
When he was discovered stealing from the collection plate at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, he was expelled from school, prosecuted and sent to reform school.
By the time Joe was released, the U.S. had entered the Second World War.
He enlisted in the Marines.
Once in the service, Joe realized his anger and hatred could be directed toward the enemy. What had been criminal activity in civilian life was commendable during wartime.
Joe saw action in the Pacific, engaging Japanese forces at Guam, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. He was awarded the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. For the first time in his life, Joe had taken human life. He later related he had enjoyed the experience.
While in the Marines, Joe began drinking so heavily that he often had no recollection of entire weeks.
By war’s end, the Marines classified him as an extremely dangerous paranoid schizophrenic.
He was shipped from Guam to a naval hospital in California, where he was housed in the psychiatric wing.
Joe went AWOL from the hospital and made his way back to New Jersey, where his father turned him in to military authorities.
Classified as homicidally violent, Joe was shunted from hospital to hospital.
It was as if no one wanted to cope with the former hero who stated he hated his mother and longed to kill anyone. When Joe became so violent no one could handle him, he was honorably discharged and sent to a sanitarium in Texas for treatment.
While home on a visit to New Jersey, Joe attacked and robbed a soldier. He was arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
During the trial, a psychiatrist stated Joe should be incarcerated for life.
In light of future events, this statement was a warning which should have been heeded.
Once in the New Jersey correctional system, Joe fight with inmates and guards. He was constantly being transferred from Bordentown to Trenton State to Rahway State Penitentiary, one of the toughest institutions in the U.S.
In 1953, after serving five years, Joe was released.
On the day of his release, he went on a drunken bender, making his way to his parents’ home, where he fought with his mother and stormed out of the house.
Later that evening, a family friend named Powell was attempting to talk Joe out of drinking so much when Joe turned on him and beat him to death.
Detectives had no trouble tracing Joe, who had been so drunk he had no memory of the murder. Joe was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to life imprisonment.
For 10 years, Joe languished in Trenton State Prison, serving most of the time in a psychiatric unit.
That’s where he met Dr. William King, a psychiatrist who took special interest in Joe because he had an ulterior motive.
The doctor had learned Joe knew unsavoury characters on the outside who would kill for a price. Joe recognized opportunity when it came knocking on his cell door.
King wanted to have Joe set up the murder of his former wife, her husband and her sister. Joe agreed, but double-crossed the doctor.
He contacted the New Jersey state police and participated in a sting operation whereby King paid hit money to an undercover police officer.
Joe was rewarded by being transferred to a minimum-security institution. Two months later he walked away from the facility, but was soon captured. He escaped for a second time, after which he was returned to a maximum-security prison.
Back at Trenton State, Joe settled into prison routine, held responsible jobs and stayed out of trouble.
He even had a pen pal, Claudine Eggars. Claudine, who was 28 years older than Joe, corresponded regularly and sometimes visited, travelling from Cooperstown in upstate New York.
In time, Claudine and Joe expressed undying love for each other.
On June 27, 1978, after serving 25 years in prison for the Powell murder, Joe Fischer was paroled.
Within a year he married 70-year-old Claudine.
Theirs was not an ideal marriage. Joe would leave Claudine in their trailer home in Cooperstown for weeks at a time.
Claudine had no idea that Joe had made contact with mobsters through his prison connections. He had become a contract hit man, sometimes earning $10,000 for a murder.
It was convenient for him to return to Cooperstown to hide out with Claudine.
Once Joe got into killing for profit, the hatred he harboured for his mother resurfaced. In Connecticut, he picked up two teenage prostitutes, Ronni Tassiello and Alaine Hapeman.
He stabbed them to death. When their bodies were recovered, it was learned each had been stabbed more than 100 times. During a 13-month period, Joe roamed the country in a drunken stupor, killing as he went, sometimes for profit, more often prostitutes whom he hated with a rage nurtured since childhood.
After beating Claudine to death in their trailer park home, Joe’s murderous odyssey came to an end of his own volition when he walked into that New York police station.
He was arrested and tried for Claudine’s murder.
The trial was a lengthy one, in which attorneys presented a psychological defence.
He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in Sing Sing Prison.
In September 1991, Fischer died of a heart attack in prison.