The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (67 page)

victim’s head.” No source is offered for said

“Dunes case”: Reported from Provincetown, Massa-

“reports,” but they are clearly erroneous, since chusetts, in the 198Os, where we are told that only one of the stalker’s known victims—the

“police are investigating the serial killer who left last—was named Pepitone. Researcher William

the bodies of twelve young women in sand

Kingman conclusively demonstrates that Mum-

dunes.” In fact, authorities confirm the occurrence fre’s reported murder by one Ax Man victim’s

of only one such murder, involving a woman

widow, cited as proof of his guilt, never occurred.

found with her hands and feet severed.

Today, no record of Joseph Mumfre’s life or death SOURCE: Joel Norris, Serial Killers (1988).

exists.

189

MYTHICAL Murders Reported in “Nonfiction” Sources SOURCE: Jay Robert Nash, Bloodletters and

“Sunday Morning Slasher”: A series of attacks on Badmen (1973).

young women in Ann Arbor, Michigan, between

Edward Paisnal: A sadistic British pedophile who April and July 1980, solved with the 1982 confes-abused numerous children but never killed any-

sion of CORAL WATTS. Years later, one account

one, described erroneously in one text as a serial described the “unsolved” crimes occurring in

killer who buried victims at his home.

Houston, Texas, during 1981.

SOURCE: Norris, Serial Killers.

SOURCE: Norris, Serial Killers.

“Miguel Rivera”: A pseudonym applied to New York

“Suspect unknown”: A series of unsolved murders City serial murder suspect ERNO SOTO in author from 1983, allegedly involving four women in

Barbara Gelb’s On the Track of Murder (1975).

White Plains, New York. Queries to police and

While Gelb informs her readers that an alias has journalists in White Plains have failed to discover been employed, “Rivera” still crops up as a flesh-any such crimes in 1983 or any other year.

and-blood killer in other nonfiction works.

SOURCE: Norris, Serial Killers.

SOURCE: Brian Lane and Wilfred Gregg, The

“Suspect unknown”: A report of alleged serial Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (1992).

murders at a convalescent home in Galveston,

“Ralph Searl” and “Tommy Searl”: Pseudonyms Texas, with police “investigating the deaths of applied to real-life serial-killing brothers DANNY

twenty-eight geriatric patients” in 1983. This and LARRY RANES by author Conrad Hilberry in

case, apparently, does have some basis in reality, his book Luke Karamazov (1987). Once again, but it was not an example of serial murder.

the original book acknowledges use of pseudo-

Rather, journalists in Galveston report that

nyms, but careless derivative works refer to the authorities investigated the “home” in question

“Searl” brothers and list their several victims by for chronic neglect of its inmates, resulting in fictional names.

several deaths.

SOURCE: Lane and Gregg, The Encyclopedia SOURCE: Norris, Serial Killers.

of Serial Killers.

“Texas Strangler”: Reported as a series of 12

“Skid Row Slasher”: Described as an unsolved case, unsolved murders committed in the late 1960s

sometimes with incorrect dates and a mistaken

and early 197Os, although several of the murders tally of victims, in works published long after the listed were solved in 1972, with the conviction of arrest and conviction of perpetrator VAUGHN

defendant Johnny Meadows.

GREENWOOD.

SOURCES: Nash, Open Files; Hickey, Serial SOURCES: Jay Robert Nash, Open Files Murderers and Their Victims.

(1984); Norris, Serial Killers.

“3X”: The unidentified New York gunman who

“Mary Eleanor Smith” and “Earl Smith”: An appar-killed two men and raped one woman in June

ent effort to report the case of mother-son killing 1930 unaccountably appears in some recent

team Anne French and William Mayer, so garbled accounts as a “mad bomber” who “terrorized the in transition that it becomes recognizable only city in the early 1930s.”

through mention of French’s nickname (“Shoebox SOURCES: Nash, Open Files and Bloodletters Annie”).

and Badmen (1996).

SOURCES: Eric Hickey, Serial Murderers and

“Trailside Killer”: The case of eight hikers murdered Their Victims (1991); Ronald Holmes and around Point Reyes, California, between August Stephen Holmes, Serial Murder (1998).

1979 and March 1981, solved with the 1984 con-

“Soda Pop Slasher”: The alleged mutilation-slayer of viction of David Carpenter, erroneously described 13 victims around New York City, still at large years later as involving “a cult killer of seven but “controlled” by the vigilance of his psychia-hitchhikers” in 1980, with the killer “still at trist, who tells the tale. Admitted use of pseudo-large.”

nyms and altered dates makes the “notorious”

SOURCE: Norris, Serial Killers.

case difficult to track. Suffice it to say that no case

“Tulsa bludgeonings”: The murders of four red-even vaguely similar has ever been reported in the haired women between 1942 and 1948, solved

New York Times, while various incidents and with the arrest of Charles Floyd in 1949, is still characters from the book mirror elements from

presented as unsolved in some accounts.

such cinematic thrillers as Final Analysis and SOURCE: Jay Robert Nash, Encyclopedia of Color of Night.

World Crime (1992).

SOURCE: Martin Obler and Thomas Clavin,

“ZODIAC”: California’s legendary one-that-got-Fatal Analysis
(1997).

away, cited in print as a killer who “murdered and
190

MYTHICAL Murders Reported in “Nonfiction” Sources sexually assaulted several children in San Fran-fact, “Zodiac” was active from 1966 to 1969,

cisco” during 1974, and who was “[g]iven his

killed only adults, and coined his own nickname name by the police because he carved the sign of in letters to the press.

the zodiac [
sic
] into the bodies of his victims.” In
SOURCE:
Norris,
Serial Killers.

191

N

NASH, “Trigger”

NEELLEY, Alvin Howard and Judith Ann

An officer with the Atlanta, Georgia, Police Department Born June 7, 1964, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Judith in the 1940s, first name unknown, “Trigger” Nash (aka Adams was the third of five children. She was nine years

“Itchy Trigger Finger”) earned his nickname by fatally old when her father died in a motorcycle crash, barely shooting more than a dozen black men. Nash was also 15 when she met the man who would irrevocably

a member in good standing of the night-riding Ku Klux change her life. Alvin Neelley was a Georgia native, Klan, his cover blown in 1948 when infiltrator Stetson known to friends and family as a childhood prankster, Kennedy began furnishing newspaper columnist Drew

“always smiling.” Rejected by the navy for a minor Pearson with minutes of meetings at Nathan Bedford heart condition, Alvin tried his hand at marriage, but it Forest Klavern No. 1. Several Atlanta policemen didn’t take. He left three children when he hit the road addressed a Klan gathering on November 1, 1948, and and drifted through a string of odd jobs, winding up in Nash got a round of applause “for killing his thirteenth Tennessee. Eleven years Judith’s senior, Neelley dazzled nigger in the line of duty.” According to the minutes of her with his “sophistication,” and they eloped to Georgia in the fall of 1979.

that gathering,

They settled briefly in Kennesaw, but Alvin’s job at a roadside market offered no hope for advancement.

Trigger Nash, also a policeman, got up and made a talk Soon the lovers began to drift again, pulling small rob-and said he hoped he wouldn’t have all the honor of
beries and passing bad checks to support themselves on
killing the niggers in the South, and he hoped the peo-the road. Judith was five months pregnant when they ple would do something about it themselves.

finally married in Ringgold, Georgia, on July 14, 1980.

Their honeymoon was an aimless trek through

Today, in most jurisdictions, such a public statement Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, always wind-would doubtless result in the patrolman being fired and ing back to Georgia when they tired of traveling.

most likely prosecuted under state or federal law. In On October 31, 1980, Judith robbed a woman at

1948, however, ranking officers of the Klan-ridden gunpoint in the parking lot of Riverbend Mall in Rome, Atlanta PD saw nothing unique or disturbing in Nash’s Georgia. Arrested 10 days later as she tried to cash a behavior. (Kennedy also revealed that Atlanta’s Klan rubber check, she steered police to the motel where Al

“kops” had destroyed vital evidence in the case of a sat waiting. Together, they faced one count of robbery black taxi driver murdered by Klansmen.) Nash’s ulti-and 15 counts of forgery. Judith delivered twins on mate fate is unknown, impossible to trace in the November 12, and five days later she was transferred to absence of cooperation from local authorities, but there a juvenile facility, the Rome Youth Development Cenis no record of prosecution for any of his multiple racist ter. For his role in the crime spree, Alvin drew a five-homicides.

year prison term.

192

NEELLEY, Alvin Howard and Judith Ann

And when the thrill of stealing paled, they turned to random violence for the hell of it.

On September 10, 1982, four shots were fired into the home of Ken Dooley, a teacher at the Rome YDC.

The following night, a Molotov cocktail damaged the house occupied by another YDC staffer, Linda Adair. At 1:41 A.M. on September 12, a female caller told police in Rome that the attacks were linked to “sex abuse that I went through in the YDC.” She did not leave her name, but operators taped the call as a matter of routine.

Two weeks later, on September 25, 13-year-old Lisa Millican was abducted from the same Riverbend Mall where Judith had robbed her last victim in October 1980. A resident of Cedartown’s home for neglected children, Lisa was enjoying a day’s outing when she met Judith Neelley and was lured into Alvin’s clutches. The couple held her prisoner for three days, repeatedly molesting her in seedy motel rooms while their own children watched. Finally tiring of the game, Judith tried injecting their victim with liquid drain cleaner, but she kept hitting muscle instead of a vein, reducing Lisa’s flesh to what a coroner would call “the consistency of anchovy paste.” Still Lisa lived, in agony, and she was driven to Alabama’s Little River Canyon, where she was finished off with bullets after more injections failed to do the job. Back in Rome, Judith made several anonymous calls to police, directing them to the body, apparently unaware that her voice was being recorded for posterity.

Three days after Lisa’s body was found, on October 3, 26-year-old John Hancock and his fiancée, 23-year-old Janice Chatman, were walking down Rome’s

Judith Neelley (Author’s collection)

Shorter Street when a flashy car pulled to the curb.

Incredibly, when total stranger Judith Neelley asked them to a party, both agreed, climbing into her car for a The outlaw lovers kept in touch while they were drive to some nearby woods. En route, they played with locked away, some of the letters warm and loving, oth-Judith’s children and eavesdropped on her CB conversa-ers jealous and accusatory. Alvin thought Judith was tion with “The Nightrider.” Alvin was waiting when bedding black guards at the YDC; she threatened death they reached their destination, but Hancock later fin-to his imaginary girlfriends on the street. Released from gered Judith as the one who drew a gun and marched custody in November 1981, Judith had to wait another them through the trees, shooting him once in the back five months for Alvin’s parole. In the meantime, she and leaving him for dead. Janice Chatman, like the played mother to her two children.