The Daly City Thrill Killer, ‘Penny’

Rosemarie Diane Bjorkland has been called many things: Thrill-Killer; Psycho Chick; and Penny.

“I just woke up one morning and decided,” Penny said. “Today would be the day. Today would be the day I would finally kill someone.” Nobody would have ever suspected this ordinary teenage girl, who in fact, wasn’t quite so ordinary after all.

On February 2, 1959, the body of August Norry was found in the Daly City hills. Norry was a 28-year-old landscaper, married, and about to become a father for the first time. He had been shot 18 times. A crime of anger, and overkill. It would be several months before the police could track down the freckle-faced blonde, by analyzing the unique .38 caliber bullets, made by only one man in the bay area. He remembered selling them to her.

On the morning of February 1, 1959, Penny left her home armed with the handgun, tucked into the waistband of her pedal pushers and heading to a target practice range. It was here where she first encountered Norry, who offered her a ride. She cheerfully accepted. Forensic evidence showed that Norry was shot while sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, followed by more shots from the passenger side window. The car was then driven fifty yards off the road, where Norry was dumped, face up on the ground, and shot again multiple times.

Police patiently waited outside of the Bjorkland home for Penny to return from work. When she arrived, she was not surprised by their presence, and calmly gave them permission to search her room. Newspaper clippings of Norry’s murder were strung about and collected, and Penny was taken into custody for questioning at the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department. These are pre-Miranda Rights days, so it’s unclear what sort of interrogation tactics they used, but eventually she confessed to everything, and was driven to the crime scene.

Penny at her arraignment was seen laughing.

According to newspaper reports, Penny giggled while acting out her crime for the police and various journalists. The fashionably dressed, gun-chewing teenager was a goldmine and the media ran with it. The story had everything. A sexually charged, gum-chewing, knife-carrying, pony-tailed, freckle-faced, blonde-haired teen, who could have been your daughter, sister, niece, or classmate, who shoots almost twenty bullets into a random person without remorse, as if she were an Albert Camus character.

Penny made an emotionless and detailed confession. In it, she stated that she had had the overwhelming, almost sexual urge to kill someone for several years.

“I felt better mentally”, said Penny. “Like it was a great burden lifted off of me. I have no bad memories of it. I always wanted to see if I could do something like this and not have it bother me.”  The police had never experienced such an existentialist attitude and were completely dumbfounded by it. “I had the overpowering urge to shoot him. I kept shooting, emptying my gun, and reloading. That was the only reason. There was no other.”

On July 20, 1959, Penny pled guilty to Second Degree Murder and threw herself at the mercy of the court. She was sentenced to life in prison and made eligible for parole in seven years. It is likely that she received parole sometime in the mid-1960s, but Penny disappears from newspaper stories and the public eye right after 1959.  It is likely she changed her name or even left the bay area for good.

Penny being escorted to her jail cell, 1959.

With most crimes, especially those that are exceptionally brutal, the public is left wondering about the reasons behind the brutality. What caused this person to act in such a manner? Why them, and not me? We aren’t typically provided a nicely bowed answer. As a student of forensic behavioral science, I’ve learned that often times it is a culmination of several factors in the person’s life. For Penny, it is clear to me that she had much disdain for her family. In several of her interviews, she alludes to something that happened with her mother several years before the murder, that she has intense animosity. What that incident involved never becomes clear, leaving more mystery around her circumstances at home. One psychiatrist that testified at her trial stated that Penny expressed happiness in jail because it kept her away from her family.

There could be an argument for whether or not she was experiencing insanity at the time of the murder. A claim of insanity in court does not mean that the person (the offender) is mentally ill, to be clear. It only means that the person who committed the crime was insane at the time of the crime only. Several psychologists interviewed Penny and declared she was a perfectly sane and normal teenager, though she did exhibit anti-social behavior. That term itself was not fully introduced to the psychiatric realm until the publication of the DSM-III in 1980. The limitations in knowledge of personality development and violent criminal behavior were just beginning, so it makes sense that the individuals involved in the investigation were baffled by her behavior.

Penny’s last employer was Harold McConvey at the Periodical Publishers Service Bureau at 821 Market Street. He is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle saying “She was a good little work. Very quiet and kept to herself. A loner, I’d say. She did a terrific job.”

Penny re-enacting the crime with investigators and police.