In 2010, the accused killer changed his plea and confessed to the brutal slayings of two Wisconsin teens in 1980. He surprised law enforcement by also confessing to the 1977 unsolved murders of two teens on a lover’s lane in Ohio. He concluded by providing details of the 1996 execution and beheading of his adopted son, collecting a quarter million in life insurance. “That’s it! That’s all I ever killed!” he proclaimed.
The story might have ended there, but that’s when fate intervened. A text message describing the killer’s M.O. ended up a thousand miles away in Montana. Retired cold-case Detective John Cameron was intrigued by the way the M.O. matched the unsolved double homicide of two teens on a lover’s lane in Great Falls that had taken place over 50 years before, in 1956. He pulled the killer’s lengthy rap sheet and discovered an arrest and prison time for robbery in Billings, Montana. The date was March 8, 1956.
Convinced this was no coincidence, he spent the next three years following the criminal’s past, researching records and conducting countless interviews. He exchanged letters and phone calls with the killer and met with his family. The murders were endless. But it was not the total that proved remarkable. It was the names on the list. He did them all.