This Happy Little Boy’s Face Hid A Darkness That Would Shock The World
He began drinking excessively at the age of 14, concealing alcohol in his jacket and referring to it as “my medicine.” A bitter divorce resulted from the breakdown of his parents’ marriage. His mother and younger brother had left the family home by the time he graduated in May 1978, leaving the 18-year-old alone.
By age 15, he had decapitated a dog, fastened its body to a tree, and impaled its skull on a pole. He gained notoriety in high school for pulling odd practical jokes, bleating, and pretending to have seizures in order to attract attention.
He started imitating the halting speech and ungainly gestures of a man with cerebral palsy, for instance, who he said his mother had previously employed as an interior decorator. Some thought it was strange conduct, even cruelty, but others thought he was really humorous, especially his adolescent peers who didn’t notice the tastelessness. Their laughing seemed to fuel him.
He would make odd bleating noises just out of the teacher’s earshot, stare through windows from outside the building, or stutter past open classroom doors during class.
“He would bleat like a sheep,” recalled former friend and classmate John Backderf.
“Sometimes he did it loud. He knew it cracked us up.”
First victim
However, beneath the humor, more sinister urges were developing.
On June 18, 1978, three weeks later, the young guy picked up a hitchhiker and killed his first person.
He murdered 16 more young men over the course of the following 13 years, mutilating others and, in some horrible instances, eating parts of their bodies. Most of his victims were strangled to death after first being given sedatives.
Necrophilia, cannibalism, and attempts to produce obedient “zombies” by drilling holes in victims’ skulls and putting acid in their brains were among his other atrocities.
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