Gerard John Schaefer

Gerard Schaefer was the first of three children born to Catholic parents of German descent, Gerard and Doris Marie (née Runcie) Schaefer. He was born in Wisconsin and was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, where he attended Marist Academy until 1960 when his family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Schaefer did not get along well with his father, who he believed favored his sister.[5]

In his teens, Schaefer began an obsession with women's underwear and became a peeping tom, spying on a neighbor girl named Leigh Hainline, of whose subsequent murder he is suspected. Schaefer would later admit to killing animals in his youth and cross dressing, although at other times he claimed the latter was solely part of his successful attempt to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War.[6]

After graduating from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in 1964,[7] Schaefer went to college at Florida Atlantic University and got married during that time.

In 1969, he became a teacher at Plantation High School, but was soon fired for "totally inappropriate behavior", according to the principal.[8] After being turned down from the priesthood, Schaefer turned to law enforcement as a career, graduating as a patrolman at the end of 1971 at age 25.[9]

On the afternoon of July 21, 1972, Schaefer encountered two teenage hitchhikers named Nancy Ellen Trotter (17) and Paula Sue Wells (18) while on official police duty; he drove the pair to their intended destination of Stuart, although he cautioned the girls against the perils of hitchhiking. Upon learning neither girl was native to Florida[10] and that the two intended to travel to Jensen Beach the following day, Schaefer proposed to drive them to the location. The girls accepted his offer, and agreed to meet him at a bandstand on East Ocean Boulevard at 9:15 a.m.[11]

The following morning, Schaefer arrived at the bandstand at the prearranged time. On this occasion, he was not wearing his uniform and driving his own vehicle, although he convinced Trotter and Wells he was still on duty, having been switched to plain clothed, undercover duties and thus driving an unmarked vehicle.[12]

Shortly after the girls entered the vehicle, Shaefer deviated from their intended route on the pretext of showing the girls an "old Spanish fort" near Hutchinson Island. He again briefly lectured the girls against accepting lifts from random strangers and the dangers of being "sold into white slavery" before stopping the vehicle at a remote forest where he handcuffed and gagged them. He then took one girl from the vehicle to a large cypress tree close to the Indian River where he tied her legs to the trunk just below her knees before binding a noose around her neck, which he affixed to a branch in such a manner as to force her to stand upon the exposed roots to counter the pressure from the noose. Schaefer then took the other girl to another tree a short distance away where she too was bound in a similar manner in which she was forced to stand upon a narrow exposed tree root as a makeshift plinth to counter the pressure from the noose around her neck.[13]

Nancy Trotter reenacts her binding and restraint by Schaefer for a Martin County police photographer

Schaefer then received an urgent police radio dispatch, informing him to immediately report to the station. He left both girls bound and standing upon their plinths, vowing that he would soon return and exclaiming to one of his captives, "I gotta go!"[14]

After posting bail, Schaefer was released. Two months later, on September 27, 1972, Schaefer abducted, tortured, and murdered Susan Place, aged 17, and Georgia Jessup, 16, and buried them in Oak Hammock Park in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. In December 1972, Schaefer appeared in court in relation to the July abductions. Due to a plea bargain, he was able to plead guilty to just one charge of aggravated assault, for which he received a sentence of one year.[17]

In April 1973, over six months after they vanished, the decomposing, mutilated remains of Place and Jessup were found. The girls had been tied to a tree at some point and had vanished while hitchhiking. These similarities to Schaefer's treatment of the girls who had escaped led the police to obtain a search warrant for the house he and his wife shared with Schaefer's mother.[18]

In Schaefer's bedroom, the police found lurid stories he had written that were full of descriptions of the torture, rape, and murder of women, whom he routinely referred to as "whores" and "sluts". More damningly, the authorities found personal possessions such as jewelry, diaries, and in one case, teeth from at least eight young women and girls who had gone missing in recent years. Some of the jewelry was from Leigh Hainline Bonadies, Schaefer's neighbor from when they were teenagers.[19]

Bonadies had vanished in 1969 in Fort Lauderdale, after leaving a note for her husband saying she was making a short trip to Miami. Schaefer was never charged in connection with her case. Her skull, which was found to have multiple bullet holes, was discovered at a construction site in Palm Beach County in April 1978 and identified one month later.[20]

Also among the items was a purse identified as belonging to Place. Place's mother later identified Schaefer as being the man she last saw with her daughter and Jessup. Schaefer was charged with the murders of Place and Jessup. In October 1973, he was found guilty and given two life sentences.[lower-alpha 2] Authorities soon stated that he was linked to around 30 missing women and girls.

Place and Jessup may not have been Schaefer's final victims; two 14-year-old girls named Mary Briscolina and Elsie Farmer vanished while hitchhiking on October 23, 1972, just a few weeks after Place and Jessup were killed.[22] Their bodies were later recovered, and jewelry belonging to one of the girls was later found in Schaefer's home. Two 19-year-old hitchhikers, Collete Goodenough and Barbara Ann Wilcox, disappeared in January 1973. Personal property belonging to both women was later recovered from Schaefer's home, although their bodies were not discovered until 1977.

Schaefer appealed his conviction, claiming at one point that he had been framed. All his appeals were rejected. Schaefer later began filing frivolous lawsuits; he sued true crime writer, Patrick Kendrick, for describing him as "an overweight, doughy, middle aged man who preyed on victims who were psychologically and physiologically weaker than him". Schaefer also sued authors Sondra London, Colin Wilson and Michael Newton and former FBI agent Robert Ressler for describing him as a serial killer.

In support of her defense against the lawsuit, London compiled an exhibit of photocopies of five hundred incriminating pages of his handwritten correspondence. The judge dismissed Schaefer's lawsuit without further ado. After London provided copies of the five hundred page exhibit to Newton and Wilson, Schaefer's lawsuits against them were also dismissed. Kendrick's suit was still ongoing until Schaefer's own murder in prison.[23]

Until his death, Schaefer continued to threaten Sondra London. He also wrote threatening letters to Patrick Kendrick suggesting he had willing agents who would do his bidding and that he "would hate to see something happen to your [Kendrick's] family". Kendrick went on to write fiction novels often describing brutal murders, which he relates to his experience with Schaefer.

On December 3, 1995, Schaefer was found stabbed to death in his cell. According to prison officials and prosecutors, fellow inmate Vincent Rivera killed Schaefer in an argument over a cup of coffee. In 1999, Rivera was convicted of killing Schaefer and had 53 years and ten months added to the life-plus-twenty years sentence he was already serving for double murder.[24]

After attending Rivera's murder trial and speaking to Rivera, Sondra London declared this version of events implausible noting several little-known facts: a full-palm print in blood was found on the wall of Schaefer's cell. When lab results failed to match it to either Schaefer or Rivera, the evidence was thrown out instead of being presented to the jury. Schaefer's body was found covered with boot prints, and expert testimony at Rivera's trial established that the patterns of the prints matched those of boots issued to correctional officers. It was further established that no inmates were allowed to wear those particular boots.

Rivera never confessed to the crime nor gave a motive although he did reveal highly relevant circumstances in correspondence he sent to Sondra London; to wit, Rivera had been an ear-witness to the prison murder of Frank Valdes by corrections officers. Rivera had written a complaint about the first assault on Valdes and was still held in the cell next to Valdes when the second beating killed him. Rivera was actively resisting the cover-up claiming Valdes had killed himself, filing multiple grievances and appeals, when he was accused of killing Schaefer.

Sondra London later stated that she believed Schaefer was likely killed for informing on other inmates. Schaefer made multiple statements to London to the effect that he used his status as a "death row law clerk" to get confidential information from inmates. In an effort to curry favor with authorities, Schaefer then gave the information to the prosecutor's office. The information was then used against the inmates at their trials. In the year before Schaefer's death, other inmates repeatedly threw human waste at him and his cell was set on fire twice. Schaefer's classification officer told London Schaefer was killed after he leaked information to authorities about an inmate who was well respected behind bars.

Schaefer's sister Sara told reporters that she believed Schaefer's murder was a cover-up related to his attempts to verify the confession and subsequent retraction of Ottis Toole to the killing of Adam Walsh.

At the time of Schaefer's death, Broward County homicide detective John King and homicide chief Tim Bronson were preparing to bring charges against Schaefer for three more unsolved murders to ensure he would never get out of prison.

• Nancy Leichner (21) and Pamela Ann Nater (20). Both young women disappeared October 2, 1966.[25][26]
• Leigh Hainline Bonadies (25). Disappeared September 8, 1969.[27]
• Carmen Marie Hallock (22). Disappeared December 18, 1969.
• Peggy Rahn (9) and Wendy Stevenson (8). Both children disappeared on December 29, 1969. Schaefer sent a letter to his girlfriend in which he confessed to killing them. Their bodies have never been found.
• Belinda Hutchens (22). A cocktail waitress with a 2-year-old daughter. She had a history of arrests for prostitution. Last seen entering a blue Datsun on January 4, 1972. Hutchens was known to have dated Schaefer while he was attending the police academy. During the 1973 search of Schaefer's home, police recovered an address-book later identified as belonging to Belinda by her husband.[28]
• Debora Sue Lowe (13). Disappeared February 29, 1972. Lowe's family believe Schaefer was involved in her disappearance, and Lowe was known to Schaefer.[29]
• Mary Briscolina (14) and Elsie Farmer (14). Both vanished while hitchhiking on October 23, 1972
• Collette Goodenough (19) and Barbara Wilcox (19). Both disappeared January 8, 1973.[30]

Sondra London, a true crime writer who had been Schaefer's girlfriend in high school, interviewed him at length following his conviction, and published a compilation of his short stories and drawings entitled Killer Fiction in 1990. A second book, Beyond Killer Fiction, followed two years later. Schaefer's stories typically involved savage, graphic torture and murder of women, usually from the perspective of the killer, who was often a rogue police officer.[31] A revised edition of Killer Fiction, released after Schaefer's death, included stories and rambling articles from the first two books and a collection of letters to London, in which Schaefer confessed to killing 34 women and girls, and bragged that he had impressed fellow inmate Ted Bundy.[32]

London noted that at the time Schaefer was corresponding with her, he was publicly proclaiming his innocence and threatening to sue anyone who labeled him a serial killer. In one letter, Schaefer wrote that he began murdering women in 1965, when he was 19. In another, he boasted of killing and cannibalizing two schoolgirls, nine-year-old Peggy Rahn and eight-year-old Wendy Stevenson, who vanished in December 1969.[33][34] Publicly, Schaefer had denied any involvement.[35]^: 82–90

London ended her collaboration with Schaefer in 1991, after repudiating his story that he was merely a "framed ex-cop" who wrote lurid fiction. When she stated that he was indeed every bit the serial killer he simultaneously boasted of being, Schaefer allegedly repeatedly threatened her life and filed suit against her for calling him a serial killer in print.[35]^: 142

• Cawthorne, Nigel; Tibballs, Geoff (1993). Killers: Contract Killers, Spree Killers, Sex Killers. The Ruthless Exponents of Murder, the Most Evil Crime of All. London: Boxtree. ISBN 0-752-20850-0.
• Cole, Catherine; Young, Cynthia (2011). True Crime: Florida: The State's Most Notorious Criminal Cases. Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0-811-74439-3.
• Douglas, John E.; Burgess, Ann W.; Burgess, Allen G.; Ressler, Robert K. (2006). Crime Classification Manual: A Standard System for Investigating and Classifying Violent Crimes. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons Inc. ISBN 978-0-787-98501-1.
• East, Bernard (2021). A Dramaturgical Approach to Understanding the Serial Homicides of Ted Bundy. Washington DC: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-1-793-62505-2.
• Goldman, Pearl (2016). Florida Criminal Law. Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-611-63816-5.
• James, Earl (1991). Catching Serial Killers: Learning from Past Serial Murder Investigations. County Durham, England: International Forensic Services. ISBN 978-0-962-97140-2.
• Kendrick, Patrick (2020). American Ripper: The Enigma Of America's Serial Killer Cop. Florida: BluewaterPress LLC. ISBN 978-1-604-52163-4.
• Lane, Brian (1992). "Real-Life Crimes" (7). London: Eaglemoss Publications Ltd. ISBN 978-1-856-29736-3. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Newton, Michael (2006). The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers: A Study of the Chilling Criminal Phenomenon from the Angels of Death to the Zodiac Killer. New York: Checkmark Books. ISBN 978-0-816-06196-9.
• Newton, Michael (2016). Hangman: The Life and Crimes of Gerard John Schaefer. Toronto: Rj Parker Publishing. ISBN 978-1-987-90216-7.
• Ressler, Robert K.; Schachtman, Tom (1992). Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Hunting Serial Killers for the FBI. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-30468-3.
• Wilson, Colin; Seaman, Donald (1988). Encyclopedia of Modern Murder: 1962-1982. Prineville, Oregon: Bonanza Books. ISBN 978-0-517-66559-6.
• Wilson, Colin; Wilson, Damon (2015). An End to Murder: A Criminologist's View of Violence Throughout History. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1-632-20238-3.

• Gerard Schaefer at CrimeLibrary.com
• Beauty and the Sex Beast: Transcript of a post-conviction interview with Gerard Schaefer
• Contemporary news article detailing Schaefer's 1973 murder convictions
• Contemporary news article pertaining to Schaefer's death