The Serial Killer Tapes

Phillips, Wisconsin, sits in the North Woods of Price County, about three hours from Green Bay and three hours and twenty minutes from Minneapolis. It is a small town of roughly 1,570 people, named after Elijah B. Phillips, the general manager of the Wisconsin Central Railway, and in 1894 it burned to the ground after a fire started in piles of hemlock bark ten miles west and was driven into town through a dry summer.

this part of the story is covered for now The family was well known locally: they owned an 80-acre lot about ten miles north of town and had run Weber's Grocery, the only food market in Phillips. details of the account remain covered until revealed He wet the bed into adolescence, set his first fire at about four, and stole money from his parents' store. In 1976, when he was thirteen, Kathy found a stack of bondage magazines while cleaning his room. He was writing out elaborate torture fantasies in spiral notebooks, had an imaginary friend he called Frank, and Kathy heard him holding arguments with himself in two distinct voices, one of which called itself Natas, Satan spelled backwards. Twice he put a .22 rifle to her head and threatened to pull the trigger; on another night he hit her over the head with a beer bottle after loading the family Ford Bronco with clothes line, chains, tape, scissors, a shovel, an axe and the rifle. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He was treated again in the summer before his senior year, spent five weeks in inpatient care and was moved to a group home in La Crosse, where he finished high school and graduated in 1981.

He enlisted in the US Army that year, served three years as a helicopter mechanic at Fort Carson in Colorado and then in Germany, and returned to Phillips in 1984. He moved back into his parents' house at South Avon Avenue and took a job at the Kayoga Reeve wreath factory in Fifield, where he worked alongside Caroline Lenz and her son Jean. Through them he met Jean's twin sister Emily, eighteen, blond and outgoing. They married on 6 August 1986. Emily's younger sister Carla, then seventeen, was a bridesmaid.

Weber had already attracted attention. this part of the story is covered for now Two days after the sale Kenny was found dead on the railway tracks, having apparently lain down in front of a freight train; he was drunk and the death was ruled an accident. Weber told Emily that Kenny got what he deserved. The marriage lasted two months before Emily moved back to her parents. Weber began drinking heavily, could not perform sexually with his wife, and went to Carla for advice.

On 12 November 1986, at about eleven at night, Carla was at home babysitting her nine-year-old brother while her mother and brother worked the night shift at Phillips Plastic Corporation and her father, a long-haul trucker, was away. The telephone rang, she put on her jacket and told her brother she would be back in a few minutes. She never returned. The next morning her mother raised the alarm; she had left her clothes, her money and her driving licence behind. Weber helped hand out fliers and suggested other men to investigate. A couple of weeks later he told the family there was no sense worrying: she was probably dead. details of the account remain covered until revealed

Exactly one year later, on 12 November 1987, another young woman vanished. Shelly Hansen, twenty-three and pregnant, worked at the IGA store and at Markwip. She had been excited about the baby, showed the sonogram at work, and had refused to name the father, who had promised support if she kept him out of it. Her car was found with no blood and no sign of a struggle, and a $10,000 reward produced nothing. Two days after her brother Ron collected her belongings from her apartment, his house burned down with all of them inside. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now In September 1988 they were talking about building a house on his parents' land. On Saturday 3 September he telephoned, said he had a surprise, and picked her up in a yellow 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass. He stopped at a store for a spiral notebook and drove her out to the property off Rock Creek Road. details of the account remain covered until revealed He made her copy two letters, one to her parents apologising for leaving and one to him accepting blame for the marriage, sign birthday cards and a blank cheque for $250, then told her he had killed Carla and would get rid of her the same way. He forced her to strip, she ran and he caught her, taped her eyes, mouth and wrists, cut off her underwear, slashed her under the breasts and across her body with the knife, pushed a safety pin through her breast, sexually assaulted her with a wheelbarrow handle, kicked her with steel-toed boots and hit her over the head with a shovel at least twenty times. She passed out and came round with his jacket over her while he argued with a second, lower voice that kept saying, don't let her live. At dawn he drove her home, bathed her, put her to bed and coached her story: she had been kidnapped by two men while walking past the Normal Building.

On 4 September he telephoned the police and came to the station that evening. Chief Moore did not believe him. Emily was in intensive care at a hospital thirty miles away with her eyes swollen shut, broken ribs and internal injuries; she first repeated the abduction story, then, after the chief prayed with her for the strength to tell the truth, she told him everything over three hours. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it A search of his parents' property found fresh tyre tracks, a shovel beside a freshly dug hole 28 inches deep, a partly used roll of silver duct tape, Salem Light cigarette ends, a hacksaw and a bloodstained wheelbarrow handle. In the Cutlass they found a hunting knife, duct tape, Emily's sliced clothing, the clipboard with the original letters and a 50-minute tape on which Weber described, in detail, how he had abducted, tortured, killed and dismembered Carla. He described cutting off her breast, injecting lighter fluid into her nipple, cutting flesh from her leg and eating it, and keeping her body in the boot of the Sunbird for days while search parties combed the area. He drew a map to the grave, a hundred yards from Rock Creek Road near the barn; her remains were found under about eighteen inches of soil with part of her left leg missing.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Emily divorced him. He passed through the Dodge Reception Center and Columbia Correctional Institution, where Jeffrey Dahmer later joined him, and in 2001 was transferred to Green Bay Correctional Facility, where he remains.