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Many decades before Ted Bundy roamed the country there was serial killer Earle Nelson. During the 1920s, this geographically mobile killer went from city to city. His modus operandi involved getting into a house by pretending to be a person looking for a room to rent or inspecting a house that was for sale, and then strangling the landlady, often followed by having sex with the dead body. Robbery was frequently a secondary motive.
After Nelson was captured in Canada in 1927, it was commonly reported that he had killed 21 women and a baby during the 1926-27 period. But were these the only cases linked to him? The author examines an additional nine unsolved murders of landladies, two of which have never been dealt with in previous literature. Based on decades of archival research, the author examines all 31 murders, relying on primary sources when available and a wide variety of secondary sources. For each murder, the book provides biographical sketches of the victim, outlines the police investigation and the various suspects, and covers any subsequent attempts to link Nelson to the crime by identification evidence of witnesses or by fingerprints.
List of contents
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part I-Background
¿1.¿Two Manitoba Murders and the Capture, Trial and Execution of Earle Nelson
¿2.¿Biographical Sketch of Earle Nelson and Possible First Murders
Part II-Five Landladies Murdered in 1925
¿3.¿Elizabeth Jones and Daisy Anderson in San Francisco
¿4.¿Olla McCoy, Mary Murray and Lena Weiner in Philadelphia
Part III-1926: The Dark Strangler
¿5.¿Clara Newman in San Francisco
¿6.¿Laura Beal in San Jose
¿7.¿Lillian St. Mary in San Francisco
¿8.¿Ollie Russell in Santa Barbara
¿9.¿Mary Nisbet in Oakland
10.¿Isabelle Gallegos in Stockton
11.¿Elma Wells in San Francisco
12.¿Beata Withers in Portland
13.¿Mabel Fluke in Portland
14.¿Virginia Grant in Portland
15.¿Marion Corcoran in Los Angeles
16.¿Attempted Murders of Landladies?
17.¿Anna Edmonds in San Francisco
18.¿Florence Monks in Seattle
19.¿Blanche Myers in Portland
20.¿The Link Between the Murders of Monks and Myers, and "Adrian Harris" as the Dark Strangler
21.¿Almira Berard in Council Bluffs
22.¿Bonnie Pace and Germaine Harpin (and Infant Harpin) in Kansas City
Part IV-1927: The Gorilla Man Strangler
23.¿The Gorilla Sleeps?
24.¿Mary McConnell in Philadelphia
25.¿Jennie Randolph in Buffalo
26.¿Fannie May and Maureen Oswald Atorthy in Detroit
27.¿Mary Sietsema in Chicago
28.¿Lena Johannes in Kansas City
Concluding Reflections
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Alvin A.J. Esau is a retired law professor living in British Columbia. He is a graduate of the University of Alberta and Harvard Law School.
