The Soft Serial Killer

St. Augustine sits in St. Johns County in north-eastern Florida, about fifty minutes from Jacksonville and more than four hours from Miami. It calls itself the nation's oldest city. Spanish explorers founded it on 8 September 1565, and James names the admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles as its founder and Florida's first governor. It was the capital of Spanish Florida for more than two hundred years, became the capital of British East Florida in 1763, and after Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1819 served as the capital of the Florida territory until the seat moved to Tallahassee. At the time of the episode it had 16,518 residents, was 81 per cent white and 9.5 per cent black, and 38 per cent of its people were religious, mostly Catholic. Property crime and violent crime were each about double the national average.

details of the account remain covered until revealed He was born in March 1935, and in August that year his parents were killed when their car left the road near Palatka, Florida. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

His childhood was brutal. details of the account remain covered until revealed At school he was quiet, slow, held back and bullied, and around 1946 he tortured and killed a cat in front of other children and burned a fort built by local boys. He did not finish high school.

At twenty-one he received an inheritance from his birth parents and learned for the first time that he was adopted. His adoptive mother demanded most of the money as back rent. He worked briefly for a typewriter company, then at the Hudson Pulp and Paper Corporation. In 1958 he married Willa Jean, a waitress in Jacksonville, joined the National Guard, began drinking heavily and beating her. Their daughter Beverly was born in 1959, and a second daughter, Robin, followed. He used heroin intermittently. In 1970 the family moved to Tennessee for work in a steel mill. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it That year he took five of his children for a promised weekend and wrecked the car, putting three of them in hospital with two concussions and a broken leg. Willa Jean believed he had been trying to kill himself and the children. In 1975 they divorced; he convinced the court that she was mentally ill and was given custody of all five, and he married Annie Lorry Langley almost at once, adopting her two sons. Annie was diagnosed with aggressive colon cancer in 1992 and died before the end of the year.

this part of the story is covered for now Lisa Foley, twenty-four, was a regular at the Trade Winds Lounge in St. Augustine. They argued over her price, he said, and he strangled her and dumped her in a borrow pit off Puccetti Road. Her body was found five days after she disappeared, in a marshy area off the west end of Pope Road at St. Augustine Beach. In the years that followed he picked up women along the strip the episode calls Crackhead Corner, at Valencia and West King Streets, and killed them.

On 29 November 1988 he killed Anita Louise Stevens McQuade, twenty-seven, a mother who had been addicted to crack since working in a restaurant. Her body was found on Fish Island by a mosquito control worker, Eugene Wells, floating in a borrow pit. She had been beaten so badly that her eye socket was crushed and her jaw broken in two places, and she had cigarette burns, bite marks and a tree branch pushed into her body. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

On 10 June 1989 he picked up Connie Marie Terrell, twenty-six, a friend of Anita Stevens. He strangled her with a yellow nylon rope and shot her in the head with a .22, then threw the cartridge out of the car and her clothes, he thought, into San Sebastian Creek. Two men launching a boat found her half submerged in a borrow pond off Holmes Boulevard the next morning, wearing only a pinkish-red T-shirt.

On 1 March 1992 he pulled into Crackhead Corner at about a quarter past four in the afternoon and picked up Lashauna Streeter, twenty-seven. He told her he had been looking for a white woman, she answered that she could help him for the right price, and they agreed on thirty dollars. this part of the story is covered for now A handyman, David McLawr, found her body ten days later off Old Moultrie Road near Flagler Hospital.

details of the account remain covered until revealed Ames eventually told the police, but they could find no proof and did nothing.

In 1993 Danitha Laverne Sneed Hale, thirty-two, borrowed her mother's car and three dollars and disappeared. Her body was never found. In June 1995 he picked up Cheryl Lucas, thirty-one, at Palmer and King Streets at two in the morning. She grabbed money from the dashboard and ran, and he chased her down the railroad tracks and crushed her skull with a pry bar, then loaded her into his pickup under a tarp and dumped her at a boat ramp, where boaters found her several days later. In October 1995 he picked up Diana Richardson, forty-eight, for fifty dollars; she bit him, he said, and he beat her to death and threw her into the borrow pits off Holmes Boulevard. Her seventeen-year-old son reported her missing on 12 October 1995. Her body was never found.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it She paid the driver, John Pearson, fifteen dollars and kissed him on the cheek. Her body was found the next day, face down in a stream off Chuns Cove Road, with a massive skull fracture and an uncashed Wendy's pay cheque in her pocket. Pearson recognised her photograph in the newspaper and told the police where he had left her. this part of the story is covered for now A search of his trailer produced a hand-drawn map of where he had left her.

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

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 details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Investigators believed he had killed many more women in Florida, Tennessee and Virginia, and that 1983 was not where he began.