Sicker Than The Average Strangler

Gaffney, in Cherokee County in the north central part of South Carolina, was a textile town whose mills thrived until the 1980s. In the spring of 1967 it became the place where a violent marriage and a series of murders became tangled together.

details of the account remain covered until revealed His father was a barber. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He joined the army in 1963 and was sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for basic training. There he became engaged to Annie Lucille, a woman of thirty with three children from an earlier marriage, and in 1964, while on thirty days' leave, he married her. He was discharged on 26 April 1965, and the marriage immediately began to fail. Lucille liked to go out; he did not, especially when he had to work the next day. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

On the night of 20 May 1967 the couple went out drinking and spent the evening moving from bar to bar, arguing in each one. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed When he came out the car was still there but Lucille was gone. He assumed she had gone home with friends, and he drove the forty-five minutes back to Spindale, drunk, and went to sleep.

The following morning the police knocked on his door. Lucille had been found naked on the centre line of Jerusalem Road in Union County, raped and strangled. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Lawyers in the small town would not take the case until Jonathan McCown and James Arthur agreed to defend him. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

On 29 January 1968 a fourteen-year-old girl named Nancy Christine Reinhart, known as Tina, left her home on East Montgomery Street in Gaffney to walk to the Top Dollar store where her mother worked, wearing a new outfit she wanted to show her. She stopped at her grandmother's house at about half past two and never arrived at the store. Very soon afterwards Nancy Carol Paris, who was twenty, left the home she shared with her husband's parents on Chatham Avenue at half past three on a Wednesday afternoon to walk the white poodle her husband had given her for Christmas, was seen at a cafe three blocks away at a quarter to four, and disappeared. The two women did not know each other, and the town panicked. Children were kept out of school, doors were locked, and search parties went through the woods.

On 8 February 1968 an anonymous caller telephoned Bill Gibbons, managing editor of the Gaffney Ledger, and dictated three sheets of directions, telling him to take the sheriff with him and promising two bodies. The first set of directions led to a bridge on the old Ford Road, where they found Nancy Paris's body, naked, in the water, strangled with a belt, with cigarette burns on her back and her dog strangled nearby. The second led three quarters of a mile into the woods off Chain Gang Road, where Deputy Cull found Tina Reinhart's body under a pile of brush, also naked, raped and strangled. The caller, who had also telephoned the sheriff's office to ask whether Gibbons had passed on the message, rang again on 12 February and said that he had killed Lucille Deadman as well as the two girls. He gave details of Lucille's clothing and belongings, and said he had taken her body to Union County to throw suspicion off Cherokee County.

On the morning of 13 February 1968, at a quarter past seven, fifteen-year-old Opal Diane Buxton was walking to her school bus stop with her sister Gracey fifty yards behind when Gracey heard a scream. She saw a white man of about twenty-five to thirty forcing Opal into the boot of a blue or black car, and ran home. The next day a local golf professional, Henry Coston Tranzau, and his friend Lester Skinner joined the search and found a young man blocking a back road with logs beside a black 1957 Chevrolet. He drove off and they took his plate. The following morning the police returned and found Opal's body about a hundred yards into the woods, in a creek bed, raped, strangled and stabbed. details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now A search of his property found items he had described in his calls, and on 27 February 1968 he told police about a well near where Opal was found, from which they recovered Opal's coat marked with her initials, a billfold, blankets, underwear, stockings, shoes, shirts and Lucille Deadman's Harris Teeter stamps. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

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this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Rumsey was found hanging from a cell bar by his trousers on 11 April 1977. this part of the story is covered for now The black Chevrolet was sold at auction for $150, became a gruesome tourist attraction with women asking for rides in the strangler's car, and killed the restorer who bought it in a one-car crash less than a mile from his home. Lucille Deadman is buried at Spindale Cemetery in Union County, Tina Reinhart and Nancy Paris at Frederick Memorial Gardens in Gaffney, and Opal Buxton at Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Cherokee County. details of the account remain covered until revealed