The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (35 page)

Gohl was rescued from the gallows by Washington’s repeal of the death penalty in 1912. Convicted and sentenced to life for two slayings, he rebuffed all efforts to compile a comprehensive list of victims. Even so, publicity surrounding Billy’s case was adequate to prompt restoration of CAPITAL PUNISHMENT in 1914. Safe in his prison cell, with no evidence to support further trials Billy Gohl (with saw), the “Ghoul of Gray’s Harbor” (Author’s and possible execution, Gohl counted the years until his collection)

death of natural causes in 1928.

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GOODE, Arthur Frederick, III

GOODE, Arthur Frederick, III

While awaiting execution, Goode harassed the parA native of Hyattsville, Maryland, Arthur Goode was a ents of his victims with cruel, taunting letters. He, in victim of borderline retardation who still wore his hair turn, was frequently abused by other inmates, reviled as in Little Lord Fauntleroy bangs at age 22. In his teens,

“the most hated man on death row.” Some convicts Goode began making sexual advances to younger boys, threw things at him when he passed their cells; quickly becoming notorious in his own neighborhood.

THEODORE BUNDY, more cunning than the rest, con-Arrested three times for indecent assaults upon minors, trived to steal cookies from Goode’s dinner tray. The he was freed each time when his parents posted bail.

sport ended for all concerned when Goode was executed In March 1975, Goode was arrested on five counts on April 5, 1984. The state denied his last request to be of sexual assault, stemming from his abuse of a nine-allowed sexual intercourse with “a sexy little boy.”

year-old boy. His parents raised $25,000 to release him from jail, but Arthur wasn’t finished yet. While out on bail, he molested an 11-year-old, escaping with five
GORE, David Alan, and WATERFIELD, Fred

years’ probation on the condition that he undergo vol-A Florida native born in 1951, David Gore resembled untary psychiatric treatment at Spring Grove State Hos-the stereotypical Southern “redneck,” tipping the scales pital. The key word was voluntary, and no one could at 275 pounds and was so enamored of firearms that he stop him when Goode checked out of the hospital 15

studied gunsmithing in his free time. He studied weeks later, catching a bus for his parents’ new home in women, too, but in a different fashion, losing one job as St. James City, Florida. Despite warnings and the a gas station attendant after the owner found a peep-issuance of a bench warrant for his arrest, no one both-hole Gore had drilled between the men’s and women’s ered to go after Goode and bring him back.

restrooms. A year younger, cousin Fred Waterfield was On March 5, 1976, Goode lured nine-year-old Jason another product of Florida’s Indian River County, a VerDow away from a school bus stop in Fort Myers, high-school football star whose ugly temper and taste asking the child to help him “find something” in the for violent sex perfectly meshed with Gore’s. In 1976, woods nearby. “I told him he was going to die,” Goode they put their heads together and decided to combine later confessed, “and I described how I would kill him. I their favorite sports by stalking human game.

asked him if he had any last words, and he said, ‘I love Their early efforts were embarrassing. Trailing a you,’ and then I strangled him.”

female motorist outside Yeehaw Junction, Waterfield Police soon recovered the body, nude but for stock-flattened her tires with rifle fire, but the intended victim ings, and Goode was twice questioned as a suspect in escaped on foot. Later, they followed another woman the case. Growing nervous, he bused back to Spring from Vero Beach to Miami, giving up the pursuit when Grove and dropped in at the state hospital, spending she parked on a busy street. Their first successful rape five minutes there before fleeing, convinced that a recep-took place near Vero Beach, and while the victim noti-tionist was calling the police. (In fact, the staff profied police, she later dropped the charges to avoid fessed to have no knowledge of the outstanding arrest embarrassment in court.

warrants.)

By early 1981, Gore was working days with his

Later that day, Goode picked up 10-year-old Billy father as caretaker of a citrus grove and patrolling the Arthe, persuading the boy to join him in Washington, streets after dark as an auxiliary sheriff’s deputy. Water-D.C., where they spent the next 10 days touring the field had moved north to Orlando, managing an auto-capital and sleeping in motels. Arthe was still with motive shop, but he made frequent visits home to Vero Goode, unharmed, when they met Kenny Dawson, age Beach. Together, they recognized the potential of Gore’s 11, and Goode talked the boy into joining them for a situation—packing a badge by night, killing time in the bus ride to Tysons Corner, Virginia. There, while hiking orchards by day—and Fred offered to pay cousin Dave in the woods near town, Goode forced Dawson to $1,000 for each pretty girl he could find. It was a undress, afterward strangling him with a belt while proposition Gore could not refuse.

Billy Arthe looked on, horrified.

On February 19, 1981, Gore spotted 17-year-old Days later, a Falls Church housewife recognized Billy Ying Hua Ling disembarking from a school bus and Arthe from newspaper photographs and summoned

tricked her into his car with a flash of his badge. Driving police. As he was handcuffed, Goode complained, “You her home, Gore “arrested” her mother and handcuffed can’t do nothing to me. I’m sick.” A Maryland jury dis-his captives together, phoning Waterfield in Orlando agreed, finding him sane and guilty of murder, whereupon before he drove out to the orchard. Killing time while the court imposed a life sentence. Packed off to Florida waiting for his cousin, Gore raped both victims, but for a second trial, Goode was there convicted of first-Waterfield was more selective. Rejecting Mrs. Ling as degree murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair.

too old, Fred tied the woman up in such a fashion that
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GRAHAM, Gwendolyn Gail, and WOOD, Catherine May she choked to death while struggling against her bonds.

suit, but she had not been fast enough. Gore’s compan-He then raped and murdered the teenager, slipping Gore ion had left in the meantime, and detectives turned to $400 and leaving him to dispose of the corpses alone in their suspect in quest of his identity.

an orchard a mile from the Ling residence.

Gore swiftly cracked in custody, enumerating crimes Five months later, on July 15, Gore made a tour of committed with his cousin. On March 16, 1984, he was Round Island Park, seeking a blond to fill his cousin’s sentenced to die for the murder of Lynn Elliott, Fred latest order. Spotting a likely candidate in 35-year-old Waterfield was convicted in the Byer-Lavallee murders Judith Daley, Gore disabled her car, then played good on January 21, 1985, receiving two consecutive life Samaritan, offering a lift to the nearest telephone. Once terms with a specified minimum stint of 50 years before inside his pickup, Gore produced a pistol, cuffed his parole. Two weeks later, on February 4, cousin Dave victim, and called cousin Fred on his way to the received an identical sentence upon his conviction of the orchard. Waterfield was happier with this delivery, writ-Ling, Daley, Byer, and Lavallee homicides.

ing out a check for $1,500 after both men finished with their victim. Two years later, Gore would spell out Judith Daley’s fate, describing how he “fed her to the
GRAHAM, Gwendolyn Gail, and WOOD,

alligators” in a swamp 10 miles west of Interstate High-Catherine May

way 95.

The deaths at Alpine Manor started as a game. At first, A week later, Gore fell under suspicion when a local the killers planned to choose their victims alphabeti-man reported that a deputy had stopped his teenage cally, with their initials spelling MURDER as a private daughter on a rural highway, attempting to hold her joke on the police. As luck would have it, though, the

“for questioning.” Stripped of his badge, Gore was aging women first selected still had too much fight left arrested days later when officers found him crouched in in them, and the plotters had to shift their strategy.

the back seat of a woman’s car outside a Vero Beach No matter. In the end, they still found easy prey to clinic, armed with a pistol, handcuffs, and a police satisfy their taste for death.

radio scanner. A jury deliberated for 30 minutes before Born in 1963, Gwen Graham was a California native convicting him of armed trespass, and he was sentenced who grew up in Tyler, Texas. She was “quiet and to five years in prison. Rejecting psychiatric treatment respectful” to her teachers, but she “always had a sad recommended by the court, he was paroled in March of look on her face.” In later years she claimed the sadness 1983.

was occasioned by her father’s sexual advances, but the A short time after Gore’s release, his cousin moved charge—which he denies—was never proved in court.

back home to Vero Beach and they resumed the hunt.

Moving to Michigan in 1986, Graham found work as a On May 20, they tried to abduct an Orlando prostitute nurse’s aide at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home in at gunpoint, but she slipped away and left them empty-Walker, a Grand Rapids suburb.

handed. The next day, they picked up two 14-year-old Graham’s immediate superior at Alpine Manor was hitchhikers—Angelica Lavallee and Barbara Byer—rap-24-year-old Cathy Wood. Wed as a teenager, Wood had ing both before Gore shot the girls to death. Byer’s body ballooned to 450 pounds when her seven-year marriage was dismembered and buried in a shallow grave, while broke up, leaving her alone and friendless in Grand Lavallee’s was dumped in a nearby canal.

Rapids. Hired at Alpine Manor in July 1985, she was On July 26, 1983, Vero Beach authorities received an soon promoted to supervisor of nurse’s aides, but her emergency report of a nude man firing shots at a naked social life remained a vacuum until she met Gwen Gra-girl on a residential street. Converging on the suspect ham on the job. Their friendship swiftly crossed the line house, owned by relatives of Gore, offenders found a into a lesbian affair, Wood dieting the pounds away and car in the driveway with fresh blood dripping from its relishing the social whirl of gay bars, parties, and casual trunk. Inside, the body of 17-year-old Lynn Elliott lay sex. Her chief devotion was to Graham, though, and by curled in death, a bullet in her skull. Outgunned by the late 1986 the two women had pledged undying love to raiding party, Gore meekly surrendered, directing offi-one another, come what may.

cers to the attic where a naked 14-year-old girl was Gwen broached the subject of premeditated murder tethered to the rafters.

that October, but her lover “thought we were just play-As the surviving victim told police, she had been ing.” During sex, Gwen got a kick from tying Cathy thumbing rides with Lynn Elliott when Gore and down and choking her until she trembled on the verge another man picked them up, flashing a pistol and dri-of blacking out. If Cathy had complaints about the ving them to the house, where they were stripped and game, she kept them to herself. By slow degrees, she raped repeatedly in separate rooms. Elliott had man-learned that pain and pleasure may be flip sides of the aged to free herself, escaping on foot with Gore in pur-same exciting coin.

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GRAHAM, Gwendolyn Gail, and WOOD, Catherine May

“sick jokes.” At least three nurse’s aides saw the shelf of souvenirs in the house Wood shared with Graham, but none took the gloating tales of murder seriously . . . yet.

By April 1987, the honeymoon was over for Wood and Graham. Cathy balked at personally killing anyone to “prove her love,” and she was shortly rescued by her transfer to a different shift. By that time, Gwen was spending time with Heather Barager, another lesbian who ultimately joined her on a trip back home to Texas, leaving Cathy in the lurch. Come August, Cathy spilled the story to her former husband, but Ken Wood stalled another 14 months before he called police.