The Serial Killing Nerd

Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, is a borough of about 4,961 people in Montgomery County, about half an hour from central Philadelphia and six miles east of Valley Forge. It covers only about 0.71 square miles. George Washington and the Continental Army passed through in 1777 on their way to the winter encampment at Valley Forge, and the town later grew on flour, paper, cotton and wool mills, steelworks and brickyards. Its largest industrial park, the Continental Business Center, held 48 businesses until a wind-aided fire in 2001 destroyed the complex, burned stored chemicals, set off explosions and forced the evacuation of about 100 nearby homes. At the time of the murders it was a quiet, heavily Catholic suburb with a population that skewed young and male, a violent crime rate below half the national average and a median household income of $72,977, slightly above the national figure.

Jennifer Still was born in England on 4 July 1979 and came to the United States in 1981 with her mother, Wendy, when she was two. They settled in Bridgeport around 1987. Jennifer was born with a cleft lip and palate and curvature of the spine and had operations from the age of three months into her late teens. She was shy, was bullied at Upper Marion High School, and found her people among the Dungeons & Dragons players and, for a while, in Wicca. She graduated in 1997, worked at a cinema and at a Wawa, took computer classes and in 1999, aged 20, moved into a basement flat at Belmont Village Apartments, Ross Road, a 126-unit complex within a mile of her mother. She was engaged to a young man named Kevin.

On the afternoon of 6 July 1999, two days after her twentieth birthday, Jennifer emailed her mother to say something was wrong and that she was having problems with a couple of people she was hanging around with, but she would not elaborate. At seven that evening Kevin came from his job at a car wash and found her on the bedroom floor. She had been stabbed 15 times in the torso with a large hunting knife and her throat had been cut savagely. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

A single drop of blood in the bathroom sink was neither hers nor Kevin's, and Kevin, who had been at work with plenty of witnesses, was excluded. With no other leads, police fastened on the discovery that Jennifer and Kevin played Dungeons & Dragons. Detectives announced they were examining whether she had occult ties and might have been a sacrifice. Her mother told the papers that her daughter was a twenty-year-old girl who played a board game with her friends, that the witchcraft had been no more than a teenage phase, and that she had stopped it. She wore her daughter's bloodstained ring on a chain around her neck. this part of the story is covered for now They also interviewed Danny and a woman named Destiny, who said she was a witch, that she had been in love with Jennifer and that the two had been wed in a Wiccan ceremony. Destiny said Jennifer was possessed by demons and that she had planned an exorcism, and she mentioned a dream in which she stabbed Jennifer. Both she and Danny gave DNA samples; neither matched the blood, and the case went cold for six years.

By 2005 Heather Graves was 28 and living with her father, George, a furniture salesman, in King of Prussia. She had two daughters, a five-year-old and a three-year-old named Avery, by different fathers, and worked at the Acme grocery store. She was seeing a man named Chris. details of the account remain covered until revealed He had moved back to his parents' home in Somers Point, New Jersey, where he worked at the Acme, and he was trolling Match.com under the name covered nameE219. The night before the murders he sent a wink to a 24-year-old woman on the site.

25 March 2005 was Heather's twenty-eighth birthday and Good Friday. this part of the story is covered for now He arrived carrying a large knife and a pair of rubber gloves hidden under his sweat jacket. He told police afterwards that he meant to tell her once and for all to break up with Chris and go out with him, and that everything would have been fine if she had agreed. She refused, saying they had been over it for years and she was not interested. He pulled out the knife and stabbed her repeatedly in the stomach, later explaining that he had read in films and books that organs are easier to puncture there than through the chest, where a knife might hit bone. Avery was in the room and watched. 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 He then went back to Avery and stabbed her in the back so hard that the knife pinned her to the floor, saying he could not let a three-year-old who knew his name identify him. He returned to the kitchen, stabbed Heather in the diaphragm and slit her throat. At the sink he cut his own hand, covered it with one of the rubber gloves and, before leaving, cut Lisa's shirt open and stabbed her more so that she would look like the intended target and confuse the police.

He went to work at the Acme with blood on his hands and told colleagues he had cut himself. George Graves came home at 4.30 p.m., found the bodies and called 911, saying there was blood all over the place and it was like a slaughter. Heather was in the kitchen, Lisa in the bathroom and Avery just outside it. Heather and Lisa had more than twenty stab wounds each and their throats had been cut; Lisa had 35 wounds. details of the account remain covered until revealed Officers found him at the Somers Point Acme at about 8.30 p.m. and questioned him in the upstairs office until 1.30 a.m. He claimed he had been on the Ocean City boardwalk, then said his hand had been bitten by his dog. A detective stepped into the corridor for a few seconds and came back saying DNA would link him to the driveway. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

He then asked whether the detectives remembered Jennifer Still. He said he had killed her too, with the same knife, because she had rejected him and wanted to stay with her fiance. He had gone to her flat, she had put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, and he had turned and stabbed her in the stomach, then cut her throat as she slid down the wall. He had kept the knife, the rubber gloves and the clothes, storing the knife in a cooler in his parents' basement; every Halloween he had worn the mask, gloves and knife to hand out sweets at the door. His DNA matched the drop of blood in Jennifer's bathroom sink. details of the account remain covered until revealed The motion failed.

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 Wendy, Jennifer's mother, said she had agonised for six years and hoped to live long enough to see a needle in his arm. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

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