Episode 358: Gerard John Schaefer "The Hangman" | Morbid

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Hey, you weirdos. I'm Alayna. And I'm Ash.

And this is Morbid. Oh my god, it is. I'm back.

Do you have a brand new rap? No, I just have scars that will forever be with me from Storyland in New Hampshire.

Yeah, I actually do not blame you whatsoever.

Yeah, it was a real experience. The kids loved it.

Well, part of the kids loved it. So that's really all that matters.

And we got through it. And we did it. We did it.

So now we did it. I think I went to Storyland once when I was little, if I remember correctly, and then I just blocked it all out of my brain because I don't remember anything about it.

That's the thing. Kids love it. So, yeah.

Yeah. It's one of those, and you know what we had, we got to like, you know, hang out with Deb Deb.

Deb Deb. Deb Deb and Pat, her husband and their kids.

Deb Deb and Pat Pat. So that was nice, but it was, it was a real, it was a real experience at Storyland.

Anybody in the New England area can probably relate to this, like, just feeling of like, wow, okay, that's what that is.

That one of your kids before you were going they like wanted me to come they were like tt why aren't you going and i go i told them that you can't go to storyland unless you have children which is i mean probably true i mean basically i was like sorry i can't go i don't have kids i don't think you lied too much on that one like what i was like yeah it's just the way it is yeah whatever i can't uh so we're we're not gonna do a whole bunch of chit chatting before we get into the case today because this is going to be a very long episode Woohoo.

She's back. Yeah, I'm back. And I was going to split it into two, but there's really no good way to split this into two.

And I didn't want to just split it into two because it was long for the sake of doing it.

Buckle up. It's just going to be a long one because I think continuity makes more sense here.

This is a wild case from the 70s. Ooh. So I brought it a little more.

I love how the 70s, I'm like, they're modern, you know?

I mean, they're not like that long ago. It's quite a long time ago at this point, but it always feels like it was only like 20 years ago.

Yeah. But it wasn't. What is it, 40 now?

No. That's quick math. Who maths here? No, it's like a lot.

How many? No, it is 40. Is it 40? Yeah, it's 40.

It's going on 43. There you go. So 43 years.

That's a lot. That's a whole person. Yeah, that's a person who's lived.

It's not me yet. Soon. Almost John. Almost John.

But yeah, so this is from the 70s. What's crazy about this case, we're going to be talking about Gerard Johns Schaefer, who is known as the killer cop or the hangman.

I had maybe heard his name or come across it maybe in like the annals of some true crime book that I had read like a million years ago.

Yeah. But I did not know anything about this.

I saw like a blurb about a tree and I was like, oh, that's interesting.

I'm just going to look at it. Holy shit.

He is worse than most we have talked about.

Oh, good. It's wild to me. And I don't know how we don't know his name, which I guess is probably good that like... Yeah, that he didn't become infamous.

That's the thing. We don't want them like becoming these famous things, but like...

The fact that I didn't know about this is like wild because it's a really, really scary story.

Well, and what's sad is that we should know about it because if he was so horrible, then we should know what happened to the people he killed and who they were.

That's the thing. These victims really, a lot of them and their families didn't even get the closure that they really, not that you really get closure, but they didn't get a lot of the information they needed.

Yeah, justice, right? Yeah. And there's a lot of missing girls and women attributed to him and...

It was never really solidly closed. Like a few of them definitely got like he was convicted of a couple, but like a lot of them just hung out there.

And it's kind of sad because at the time the police were just kind of like, well, we got him for these ones.

So and it's like, yeah, but like he needs to pay for the other ones, too.

Yeah. We can't just be like, well, yeah, like, you know, we got him for those, so it's fine.

And it should be on record so that the families can say, like, yeah, this is what happened.

Exactly. And he's in prison and we know who did it.

He should be punished for all of them. This is a really, really gnarly one.

I just want to say it right out front. There's going to be some really rough stuff we're going to talk about.

He is a... full-on monster so i buckle up because this is really really really bad i'm gonna move my therapy appointment up this week yeah you probably should now he was only convicted of two murders in the end but he has definitely committed several more like they know he has you said two he was only convicted of two all right so yeah but he committed several more uh all of them are more horrific than any fiction could ever conjure Like it is horrific stuff.

And I say that we definitely know he committed several others because there is literally physical evidence that was found in his home, in his mother's home.

Like he had physical evidence connected to these victims and his own thinly veiled confessions that he actually said were just fiction stories.

But somehow they line up almost perfectly with crime scenes.

He uses actual victim names in some of them.

And he just said, no, it's just fictions.

I just write. I'm just a brilliant writer.

And it just so happens that as I'm writing, these terrible things happen.

Yeah, it's just crazy. It's just a weird coincidence.

And somehow I'm being convicted because I'm an amazing writer.

What a dope. Yeah, he's a real dope. Isn't that a fun one?

I haven't used that in a while. It is a fun one.

And it's perfectly perfect to describe him as a dope.

Another crazy thing about him is at one point he was a police officer.

Yeah. And this takes place in Florida. And he was a police officer, not for too long there, but he definitely used his position for some really heinous things.

Now, we're just going to talk about him briefly as a younger person because it's kind of interesting to see where he came from.

He was born March 25th, 1946 in Wisconsin.

He was born to Doris and Gerard John Schaefer Sr.

Now, he was the oldest of three children.

He was the only boy. His father was a traveling salesman.

He was gone a lot. And it was really just like him and his mom and his sisters.

His dad was also a big drinker. Mm-hmm. Wasn't a super happy family, but he also is a compulsive liar.

And he's also just like an asshole of the highest order.

So it's hard to tell. So it's hard to tell.

He tries to make his life look a lot different than it is.

He will all at once confess to what he's done and then go, what are you talking about?

I've never killed anybody. He's just like, he's a dick.

He's just a dick. Um, and he likes to say that he was like an illegitimate child, quote unquote, like he'll say, my mom got pregnant with me and they had, they were forced to get married.

So that's why they were a horribly horrible relationship because it was started that way.

Okay. But that's one, not even corroborated.

And two, let's shut the fuck up. Yeah, like that doesn't make you, that doesn't turn you into like a bad person.

No, he liked to spout a lot about how his family, and his family was very religious.

They were a very Catholic family. But he spouted a lot about how they really hammered into him that Madonna whore dichotomy thing with women, which is a very unhealthy thing, no matter what.

That is not a good thing to teach your children that like women are either Madonna or whore.

Like those are not, that's not good. Madonna is like Mary Magdalene.

It's like the you're asking the wrong. All I know is Madonna is a good thing.

Whores is taught to be like you are either this or you are this.

And that is it. When you said Madonna at first, I was like, was this in the 70s?

You were thinking Madonna. I really was.

Like, you know, material girl. And then I was like, oh, yeah, no, I honestly can't tell you exactly like the Madonna.

I think that's like I think she's Mary. I don't know.

I think that's Mary. Yeah, because if Madonna is good— Mary Magdalene and Mary— Mary, I think, are two different—guys, I'm not religious.

I don't know, and I apologize. It's Mary and it's Mary.

And I'm not saying, like, I just don't know, so I don't want to say it.

But I know that the Madonna is, like, the good thing and, you know, the other is the bad thing.

Got it. And when that's taught, it's a very unhealthy way to teach your child to look at women, basically.

Yeah. Now, that was happening in that house.

That obviously doesn't create a serial killer, but he likes to point to it and he likes to be like, well, you know, that's wise.

And then he's like, but I didn't kill anybody.

So it's whatever. That's why I killed people, but I didn't kill anyone.

But I didn't kill anybody. Stop telling me I did.

Very healthy. So the family moved a lot because of his dad's work.

And they moved to Nashville, Tennessee for a while.

And then they ended up living in Atlanta for a few years.

So they were like rolling around the country.

Now, by 1960, his family had settled down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Now, his father may not have been home often.

And, you know, he has a lot of shitty things to say about his dad.

But when he was home, he said that he would take him fishing and hunting.

They liked to be outside together a lot.

So there was, like, good times here. Now, I want to point out that a book that I found on this case that I— devoured and it but it's a it's it's got a lot of stuff in it just so you know so it's harrowing it's a very harrowing journey but it is worth it in my opinion if you were looking to just understand know this case it's called American Ripper by Patrick Kendrick which I thought was interesting because I just went off with Jack the Ripper and I didn't even mean to do this you're in a place I'm in a place apparently so Patrick Kendrick did a phenomenal job researching this case he did it for decades i mean he like spoke to people and like that book has interviews on interviews on interviews it has his writings and it has everything and so much that i'm not even going to touch upon and i telling you, go get that book, go get that book.

It's outrageous. And I think Patrick Kendrick has been on a few different like podcasts and stuff, too.

So if you type his name in, go listen to some of those.

I think one of them is called like Notorious, the podcast.

Oh, I've heard of that. And they did a really great job like talking to him.

And it's just really interesting. So go check those out after this, because I'm telling you, his book is outrageously horrifying, but outrageously fascinating.

I'm right. So American Ripper by Patrick Kendrick.

I will link it in the show notes. Now, according to that book, kids who knew Gerard in middle school and high school said he was pretty unremarkable.

Like he just they weren't like, oh, that guy, you know, but they were just kind of like, oh, that guy.

Okay. Yeah. Not a complete loner, although some people would describe him as a loner, but he wasn't a popular kid.

He wasn't a jock. He wasn't like the theater kid.

Somewhere in the gray area. He was just there.

And it was noted also, though, that he liked to date a lot of different girls, though people then said he only dated two girls through high school.

So I don't know if he was just showing a different side to different people or if people are just like, I don't remember him, so I'm just going to make something up about him.

Yeah. But one thing that many of them said was that he definitely was creepy and he liked to look under girls' skirts.

All right. So there you have it. Yep. One classmate is quoted as saying in an article that I read, quote, the only thing I really remember is that I always had to tuck my skirt under my legs because John, they called him John.

John would practically stand on his head to look up a girl's skirt.

Jesus Christ. He's a pig, everybody. And you probably could like only wear skirts back then too at school, I'm sure.

Everyone was wearing skirts back then and he was just a disgusting hog about it.

Now, in an article from the Palm Beach Post in 1973, a lot of his classmates were interviewed from high school.

One of them named Eloise said, quote, he was kind of weird.

That's all I can say about him. He was kind of out of it, never part of a group.

He was the last boy I would have dated. I didn't like him.

I don't know why. He was just weird. That's all.

No, you probably heard some rumors, Eloise.

And then Donna, another classmate, said, quote, he was a loner, not part of any clique.

He would do strange things like he would be sitting in class and like all of a sudden he would start talking to himself. hmm so it's a very interesting like hearing the cross-section of people talking about him because a lot of people had a lot of different views yeah very very things here yeah like no one said he was this popular kid or this outgoing kid but there's all these varying degrees of like he was strange as fuck he was a creep he was a loner he wasn't really a loner i didn't really know who he was it seems like it just depended like what face he wanted to show exactly which I think was a nice theme he took through life.

Now, during this time in Fort Lauderdale, he was neighbors to a girl named Lee Hainline.

He had said that they were, like, friendly.

They used to, like, play sports together a little bit.

But he also would tell people that he was pissed because she would tease him by undressing in front of her windows.

Like, it was for him. Like, her undressing in her room was, like, taunting him.

No, I think she's just on her own property doing her own thing.

Pretty sure. Now, this name, Lee Hainline, is going to come back later.

No. So I want you to remember it. I don't want it to.

According to that Patrick Kendrick book, her mother later said of Gerard or John, I never cared for the boy.

He did foolish things. One time he and Gary, which was Lee's brother, went fishing out on the ocean and Schaefer threw away the oars.

The boys finally drifted in with the tide.

You never knew where he was. He was sneaky.

He sort of dropped by all the time. Yeah.

He would also kill animals that you can't eat.

Like, he would just do it for fun. And it was noted by a classmate that he would kill things like a songbird.

Just for the hell of it. No, I love... I'm in a place now where I fucking love birds.

Birds are pretty rad. I've probably said on this podcast before that I don't like birds.

All of a sudden, I do like birds. She's gross.

And yeah. She's evolution. She is. There you go.

She loves birds. She loves a songbird. I do.

Now, quick, large trigger warning for what I'm about to say, because it involves animal cruelty.

Eek. He was also known to many to kill cows, oftentimes decapitating them.

And then he would derive pleasure from their corpses.

I don't think I want to be here anymore.

Yep. I think that I have a place to go. You don't want to be here.

It's not great. Bye. Now, around this time, he told his, I'm sorry, I'm using like now to start all my sentences.

That's one of those crutch things that happens.

But you know what? When you catch it, you catch it.

You do. I was doing that the other week.

I wonder if I gave it to you. You know what, though?

It's better than so. It is. You know, watch, I'll start saying so now.

Well, around this time, he told his high school girlfriend, Sondra London, who some of you might know that name.

She's like a true crime kind of like people know that name.

She got involved with a lot of serial killers.

This was his high school girlfriend, though, Sondra London.

Maybe that's what inspired it all. He told her that he out of the blue, he was like, you know what?

Sometimes I just like really want to hurt people.

And she was like, wow, OK. And he was like, I want to hurt women.

And she was like, okay, as a woman, that's a little frightening.

I think we should break up. Yeah. So he also later told his college teacher, who was a woman, this as well, like confided that in her.

Now to me, and they both were like, it's weird that he just like told us this.

Yeah. But to me, that's purely to scare them and exert power.

Like that's him exerting power. Him being, you know, he liked that he basically put women in line by revealing this secret to them.

Because that way... They knew that he was capable of hurting them and he was willing to hurt them.

Right. If they should fall out of his favor or graces.

Yeah. So that was him being like, wow, I really want to hurt women.

Just so you know. So don't fuck with me.

Yeah, I could see that. And his whole life is just this struggle for power, this struggle to be legitimate as a human being.

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America's number one meal kit. So Schaefer graduated high school in 1964, and he apparently used his entire summer acting as a, quote, nature guide in the Everglades.

I would not want him to be my nature guide.

Yeah, I guess, like, he wasn't an actual certified nature guide.

He was just doing it. He also started classes at Broward Junior College.

He was a social studies major, but he eventually changed majors, like, several times, and he landed on education because he decided he wanted to be a teacher.

Yeah. No, you should not be a teacher. He had a weird college career.

Like he took a ton of classes every semester.

And Patrick Kendrick gets into this in the book a lot, that he did this like very distinct pattern where he would overload his course list, like way overload it.

And then he would just start struggling and drop a shit ton of them.

But he did it like over and over and over.

Like he never learned why that that wasn't going to work.

He was like competitive with himself. Yeah.

It was more, yeah, it was competitive, which he becomes competitive against other serial killers later in his life, by the way.

Because he's an Aries. Oh, no, let's not do that.

John's an Aries. John's competitive. He is competitive.

But in like a, not in a killing spree kind of way.

Not in a serial killer way, though, thankfully.

But yeah, he would do this and he is competitive and he likes to feel powerful.

So I think, and like, like he has something over everybody.

So I think he's like, yeah, I can take all these classes.

Like, fuck you. I can do this. And then he's like, I can't.

Right. Fuck you. I'll do it again. Like...

He's just an idiot. He's just confusing.

He's dumb. He's a lot. And he wanted to come off intelligence so badly.

I feel like that's the case with a lot of serial killers.

He wanted to be that Hannibal Lecter kind of thing, and he was not.

He wanted to have some kind of validation.

He wanted something, and he didn't have anything.

Now, then in 1968, he managed to transfer to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

But we're going to get back to his Broward Junior College days at one point.

In 1968, the same year, he married Martha Fogg.

But it was a very short relationship, to say the least.

In the beginning, it was fine. Like, whatever, very sweet relationship where they bonded over... creative writing because he also took a lot of creative writing classes he enjoyed writing unfortunately what he writes is horrific and something nobody ever wants to read um they you know they would he would drive her to school they were just like they was like one of those little cute college relationships they're like oh adorable we like to write things together and Then Gerard kind of showed who he really was to her.

And he kind of started telling her about his weird fantasies that he had because he enjoyed like putting himself into bondage.

It was very BTK. He would take pictures, that kind of thing.

And she was like, I'm good. And he later said that they were very incompatible sexually.

And basically he suggested to her, he said that he told her, quote, put out or get out.

I would say get fucked and leave. I'm gonna get out.

See you later. During this time, he had also he became kind of like, he was struggling.

He was struggling in his classes. He was struggling, you know, his home life wasn't that great.

He was just having a lot going on. And he was starting to get like a little depressed a little.

I think he was struggling with who he was as a person because he I think he could probably tell that he was a fucked up human and that he was into some stuff that people probably weren't going to be into and that he was kind of scaring people around him.

And I'm not saying that he was like very self-reflective in the way of like, maybe I should change things.

But instead he started trying to get like attention because like psychologists look back at it and he, you know, left a suicide note at one place, but they were like, he never intended to kill himself.

Yeah. He was doing it because he thought it would bring a different kind of attention.

Like his personality type was not one to, this wasn't what he was doing.

His personality type is so confusing. Outrageous.

Now, during this time, there was a suicide note that was found written by him.

And he was going to therapy at the time.

And his therapist referred him to see a psychiatrist.

And the psychiatrist was Dr. R.R. McCormick.

This is the report that he wrote about him when he saw him.

And again, this was after the marriage had crumbled, like it was bad news.

It says, quote, this examiner was able to hold John's attention and cooperation through approximately two and one half hours of testing.

Rapport was excellent and the testing results are prolific in psychodynamic information.

These results are consistent and indicate that John is immature, has poor ego control, is aggressive and a rebellious and primarily has an intense father conflict.

In addition, his personality dynamics incline him to blame others for his own difficulties, which is exactly what this was.

He thinks the whole world is against him, but it's really him fucking with the world.

He's extremely confused in terms of self-image and is alienated from himself and others.

However, he does have a capacity to relate to others and is approachable in a therapeutic relationship.

At this point, John's own resources are not sufficient for a solution to his problems, and he is in need of supportive therapy, which will ameliorate... I can never say that word.

Basically get rid of the severity of his symptoms.

Got it. This examiner does not find any indication of excessive depression, which might indicate suicidal tendencies.

It is felt that a character or logical neurosis with a paranoid trait overlay are more descriptive of his personality structure.

In addition, Bender Gestalt revealed preservation of the fundamental outstanding Gestalt principle by the use of the primitive loop as a unit symbol.

This is indicative of decreased ego control and of impairment in reality testing, which is often found among psychotics or individuals with intracranial pathology.

You know what? That is exactly what I would have said, too.

That's exactly what you would have said.

That's what I was thinking this whole time.

So they're basically saying, you know, he's confused about himself.

He doesn't understand who he is. He doesn't understand the things he likes.

He doesn't understand his own... Strange pathologies.

He is aggressive. He has poor ego control.

He thinks he's great. But then in the next second, he thinks he's terrible.

He's rebellious. He has this weird father thing that's got like a father complex.

He alienates some others, but at times he can be very charming and like bring others into him.

Basically, they're saying he's not actually depressed.

He just kind of is mimicking this depression.

And he doesn't actually have suicidal tendencies.

He's just looking for the attention here.

Okay. So he went to see a Dr. Charles W. Long for some more treatment around this time.

And things started going better. Like he was starting to feel a little more like together.

So he applied for a teaching fellowship because he was like, you know what, I'm going to get with my professional shit.

I want to be a teacher. Oh, yeah. At the end of 1969, he started work at Plantation High School in Florida, and he started teaching social studies.

And this was a fellowship. This was not him being like an actual like full blown teacher.

Yeah, I'm just no. Now, just as he started working, his parents divorced after 22 years.

Oh, shit. Yeah. And, you know, he didn't take I mean, who would take that?

No, but, you know, Gerard is not taking it well.

Now, on the divorce papers for his parents, his mom cited for the reason extreme cruelty, chronic drunkenness and adultery.

Oh, shit. So shit was going down in that house.

And he had, I mean, extreme cruelty. That means he had seen some shit growing outside.

Yeah, that means he had seen some stuff.

At this time, his father also entered rehab for alcoholism.

Okay. So there was a lot going on. This is, so we're going to go back to, he was still taking classes at Broward Junior College, which is what I talked about before.

Right. He was also taking a little bit of part-time like teaching assistant hours there.

So he was like kind of a TA to some of the teachers.

In December of that year, a woman connected to him went missing under suspicious circumstances.

Yeah, because he did it, right? Yeah. He definitely did it.

Her name was Carmen Halleck. She was 22 years old.

She worked as a waitress and was said to have been stunningly beautiful.

She had auburn hair, which is important later.

And she was single and living in an apartment with a new puppy at the time.

She told friends in the days leading up to her disappearance that she had been offered a really well-paying government job.

And it was going to be working with undercover narcotics agents.

So she was going to be coming like an undercover agent. kind of informant okay uh this was she said this was going to allow her to travel to all these amazing places like these island places and everywhere and you know it's going to be great and everyone she told everyone she was telling this to was like that sounds a little shady yeah and she was like and i guess she told a bunch of people like what do i have to lose like i'm 22 i don't care Well, I get that.

And she's like, sounds cool. If it works, it works.

If it doesn't, it doesn't. Like she never expected this to happen.

Exactly. And people were like, who brought this up to you?

And she claimed it was a teacher at Broward Junior College.

I bet it was. And Gerard Schaefer happened to be a teaching assistant there.

They also were proven, the two of them, to have taken at least one class together at the time.

OK. So they definitely knew who each other was.

Right. And there's more connections to her later.

And this is a junior college, too, so it's probably a lot smaller.

Exactly. She was said to have had dinner out with a mystery man in the days leading up to her disappearance as well, and was last seen on December 18th, 1969, by her friend Nancy Bauer.

Nancy had invited Carmen to spend Christmas with her, or like some of the Christmas time, and she had accepted, but she never showed.

And that's sad. And Nancy got really worried, so she went to her apartment and found the door was wide open.

A bath was full, like it had been drawn and ready to use.

Her purse was still there. Her car was found at a nearby park.

And her puppy was still in the apartment.

Thank you. And appeared to be starving and dirty, like it had been alone for days.

Yeah. At least days. Like she was like, I went in there and it was just so happy to see me.

Oh. Don't worry, she took the puppy and took care of it.

Also, what a good puppy staying in the apartment with the door wide open the whole time.

Now, a missing persons report was filed immediately.

Remember, and this kind of just like went about the wayside, remember her name, Carmen Halleck.

This same time period, another girl went missing.

You may remember this name, Lee Hainline.

I do, the neighbor. At the time, now again, like Ash said, she was the neighbor.

She was the neighbor that he said used to taunt him by getting undressed in her own bedroom.

By living her life in her own home. Now, at this time, she was married and her name was Leigh Bonadies.

Yes, again, it is that Leigh. Now, Carmen's friend Lucille Cardone told, Carmen Halleck, told investigators later that she had seen Carmen with Leigh.

So Carmen and Leigh knew each other. Oh, weird connection.

And she had seen them together out at like a diner or something like that.

And it was shortly before their disappearances.

And this was in like September. I think Leigh went missing in September before Carmen.

So they were friends and Lee was blonde and 25 years old.

What we're going to see later is that he had a pattern of going after pairs of women.

And usually they were dark hair, light hair.

Oh, yeah. Weird. I know. It's horrific. Do you think it's like a yin yang thing?

I don't know. I think he just does it. Did he ever talk about why?

No, because he didn't kill anybody. Oh, right.

Remember, he didn't kill anybody. Yeah. Yeah, he's a lot.

So she was married at the time only less than a month when she went missing.

And when she went missing, she was married to a man named Charles Bonadice.

Interestingly, evidence was found that showed that Gerard John Schaefer and Lee had spoken the day of her disappearance.

Ooh. Because they remained like they knew who each other was.

They were friendly when they were younger.

This all stayed the same. They were in the same area for Lauderdale.

They had spoken the day of her disappearance.

And he later admitted this, said that they spoke, said that she had asked him to drive her to the airport for something, but then sent a telegram later that canceled that.

But they never found the telegram. It was all very ridiculous.

Yeah. She had left a note for her husband that day saying she was going to Miami, which wasn't that far away, and would be back later, but she never returned.

There is a lot of weirdness surrounding her case that doesn't really, like, have a place right here.

But in the book, like Patrick Kendrick's book, he goes really far into it.

I'm telling you, go read it, because it's just like a wild goose chase in there.

Like, it kind of goes off to the side in this weird... strange area okay involving like the fbi and like fake fbi agents and stuff it's crazy but definitely go read that book because it's crazy but again remember lee still continue to remember her we have now carmen who has gone missing we have lee who is already connected to him that has gone missing and now we know that carmen was at least in a class with him right and said she had this weird government job that she was going to get that offered to her by a teacher at the yeah yeah We're like, yeah, you got it.

So around this time, too, Gerard was let go from his first teaching job at that high school.

And it was after he got some subpar evaluations about his teaching skills.

All right. One of the things they wrote was that He put on the bulletin, it said, veto the Non-Intercourse Act, which is apparently something that was going through like, you know, Congress or whatever.

But he wrote it there for high school students.

And then the second one was he explains to class how he evaded the draft.

Yeah. Like, OK. I mean, helpful. I mean, sure.

He also it says lack of cooperation and not accepting advice from his superiors.

There was also phone calls from parents that he did not have a proper influence on students and they were getting worried.

And he said so they brought all this to him and were like, you're not doing great.

And like parents are not happy with it and we are not happy.

He was like, well, I have a right to express my opinions.

It's like to an extent, my dude. Yeah, sort of, but like also not at the same time.

But he also then said he does not intend to teach.

He's just there to share his opinions with them.

And they were like, well, then you can't work here.

Like you can't do that. Like you have to teach them.

You can't just hang out and tell people things.

And then the last thing they wrote on the evaluation was that he told kids that George Washington smoked pot.

I mean, that's kind of funny, but if he wasn't such a piece of shit.

Exactly. So at this time, Martha officially filed for divorce.

They had separated a while ago. Martha said George Washington did not.

Martha was like, my man, George, I am Martha Washington, did not.

She filed for divorce in May 1970. She also cited extreme cruelty.

Oh. Yep. She refused after this to speak about the marriage or what led to the divorce.

Oh, that's scary. She would not speak about it.

Because I feel like that just means she couldn't go through talking about it.

Yeah, it seemed like it was not great. Yeah, no.

The same year, he got another teaching fellowship.

I always love how these kind of people just keep on getting jobs.

Yeah, because it's like nobody checks up on their references.

But then people who are like really strong candidates for jobs and really would be good at those jobs get passed over for these kind of dicks.

It makes no sense. So he got another teaching fellowship at Stranahan High School in Fort Lauderdale.

He was terrible at it as well. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but teaching is not his forte.

He's just there to share opinions, guys.

He's not there to teach. He's there to share his opinions.

He would leave class and just like not show back up.

And he would not come to any of the teacher meetings.

My ideal teacher. Didn't think he was just shitty at his job.

And he got really bad evaluations there, too.

One of them said he was too defensive to evaluate.

Oh, wow. One said student seems to have a severe inferiority or inferiority complex.

There we go. Demonstrating the classic defense mechanism of superiority evidenced by authoritative dictatorial approach.

Awesome. Yeah. So basically he's a dick.

He has an authority complex. Like he thinks he's like above everybody.

That's who he is for his whole life. Love.

The second time super that he got fired from this job, his supervisor was Richard Goodhart.

And he said, quote, I told him when he left that he'd better never let me hear of his trying to get a job with any authority over other people or I do anything I could to prevent it.

Holy shit. So his supervisor, Richard Goodheart, knew exactly who he was.

And he knew exactly why John or Gerard, whatever you want to call him.

I hate calling him John because of John.

Understandable. It's exactly what Gerard was after.

He went after every job that let him have power over people.

He didn't want to become a teacher. He wanted to become a teacher because he wanted to hold power over a bunch of students.

And... We see that he ends up wanting to become, which I'm going to talk about in a second.

He wants to become like a priest at one point.

Oh. Because people have to listen to that's power.

He becomes a police officer. That's power.

He always wanted to hold that kind of power.

He became very obsessed over this time with capital punishment.

Oh. which i get it it's a fascinating yeah thing but when you put it into like this person and when you find out how he was obsessed with it it's worse like i understand being fascinated with the idea that we like legally kill people like that is a very interesting thing to research and just be like wow just like the arguments on both sides and exactly like that's what's interesting there's a lot of interest to be had with like how people think about it and all that that would be normal yeah but But he was really into hanging.

And he wanted to know everything about what happened when a body was hanged.

Okay. Yep. Now remember, one of his nicknames is the Hangman.

I want everybody to remember that. I forgot that.

Yep. Obviously, when you put this next to that, it gets worse.

It's just, it's not okay. It's not an okay interest.

Well, going through this beginning phase of... like being obsessed with hanging and starting to get into what that's all about.

He wrote to several publishing companies claiming to be a research assistant for various colleges.

He was lying. In order to gain access to details about what happened when people died.

What the fuck? He was particularly interested in, and this is really gross, guys.

He was particularly interested in what happened when people would urinate or defecate when they hung.

He seemed very fascinated by that. And that remains something that he derives a lot of pleasure in knowing about.

Oh, okay. And witnessing himself. Oh. Mm-hmm.

He is... What? So bad, Guy. Like, he's so bad.

I have no idea how more people don't know about him.

Now, this is when he decided he wanted to become a priest.

So he tried to become a priest at St. John's Seminary, but he was turned away because they said he did not have enough faith.

I think they had a feeling. I like that they used the you do not have enough faith line because I was like, good for you.

Instead of just being like, you're a fucking creep.

And no, you can't. They can't be saying that.

No, you cannot. In interviews, he later said he was not, you know what, he wasn't into the Catholic Church after that.

Because he said he dug deeper into it after that.

And he said, they didn't allow you to question the dogma of it all.

And he was a seeker, guys. Gerard's a seeker of knowledge.

That's who he is. He's so intelligent. He's just always trying to learn, this guy.

He's a seeker on the Quidditch team. And he said, according to him, he's very sensitive.

And when he would learn things about the Catholic faith, he was like, I just had to ask.

So I would go up to a priest and I'd be like...

What's this all about? And in one of his interviews, that's literally how he talks sometimes.

Like, just what? What? I don't like it at all.

And in one of his interviews, he says that he's like, I would walk up to a priest and I'd be like, it's Virgin Mary stuff.

How's that possible? And then the priest would be like, get the fuck out.

And he was like, I don't think that's what it was.

I don't think that you came up to a priest and was like...

What's with this Virgin Mary stuff? And he was like, get out, son.

I think he was probably like, you're weird.

Get, please. And he was probably like, you're being disrespectful.

Like, do you want to be here or you don't want to be here?

They probably sensed who you were. I feel like a lot of people around you sensed who you were, but then the wrong people didn't sense who you were.

And they hired you to become a police officer.

I think that's what happened. Yeah. So he worked for a while as a security guard because, again, power, authority.

Yeah. He worked for the Wackenhut Corporation, which I think you've probably seen, like, that's still a thing.

And while he was doing this, he met a young woman named Teresa Dean, who worked at the Econoway grocery store.

She was a cashier. They flirted often. And it was like this thing where he would, like, go through a line and be like, hey there.

And she was like, hey there. And then they started dating.

Oh. Because she didn't know. I want to love that.

I can't. And again, he's a security guard.

Right. A lot of people, that gives you an immediate sense of security.

Yeah, you're disarmed. He's a security guard.

That's what he does. Now, he was already at this point saying, the next thing I want to do is I want to be a police officer.

I'm already a security guard. I got this little taste of it.

And I want the full shit. So... i do wonder if just because of who gerard is i wonder if that whole thing when his supervisor richard goodhart was like you better not get any kind of job with authority that he was like you i'm gonna do it i feel like he is that kind of person that if you do that he's just gonna push spiteful yeah he's a spiteful piece of so he applied to several departments and was rejected by the broward county sheriff's office after failing the psychological test Do you remember the show on TLC?

I do. Broward County. Was it like Broward County Women?

I think it was. The Women Police Officer?

Such a good show. Well, he could not get in there.

No, he's charred. He failed the psychological test.

But he did finally, and he failed a bunch.

He wasn't getting a job anywhere. So there was some good thoughts going around that people were like, I don't think you should have a gun.

Right. And you would think that they would like look at the other departments that he'd applied to.

You would think. But then he got a job with a very small department.

And that might be why, because they were probably just like looking for people and they probably didn't talk to the other ones as much.

And it was the Wilton Manors Police Department.

He went through the Broward County Police Academy to get here.

And in September of 1971, he was on his way to becoming a full fledged police officer.

Oh, shit. Yeah. Same year, he proposed to Teresa Dean, and they were married by September of 1971.

No Teresa. Teresa's story, there's not a lot about her, but what happens after his trial is really wild.

So hang tight. All right. Now, the police chief of that department, Bernard Scott, later said about his time at the department, quote, he used poor judgment, did dumb things.

If he was sent to control traffic at an accident, John would wander into a store and buy a bag of potato chips.

Are you kidding? Dumb things like that. And then he said, I'd put my uniform back on and walk the streets myself before hiring Schaefer back.

I love that he was like wanted these positions of power, but then I mean, like really did nothing with them.

Yeah, like literally. But I think that's what it was.

He got the position of power and then he utilized it in a way that he was like, well, I'm God now.

I can do whatever the fuck I want. I can go buy a bag of potato chips because who gives a fuck?

I'm a police officer. Like, that's how he felt.

Like, he felt like he could just do whatever he wanted now.

He was a teacher. I can do whatever the fuck I want.

I'm in charge now. Yeah. That's what he felt.

And it's like, no, dude, you still have to, like... do the job, first of all.

And second of all, you still have superiors.

You're not the head honcho in any of these jobs.

Well, do you think that there was also just like an element of just being a lazy fuck?

And just, yeah, being a lazy fuck and being an idiot.

I think there was just a lot of things working against here.

Ex-FBI agent Robert Ressler, which people might recognize that name, he says that Schaefer was disciplined for running female traffic violators through the department's computer. where he would get their information, like their addresses, phone numbers, where they worked, and he would call them up and ask them out if he thought they were cute.

What the actual fuck? And he got in trouble for it.

Disciplined. I would be like, you gotta go, sir.

Like, just got disciplined. Didn't get fired, which should have been an immediate get the fuck out of here.

You don't belong with a badge. Nope. And this power of being able to find all this information.

Yeah. He was disciplined for it. No comment.

Yeah. That sounds about right for the kind of person he is, especially.

But then. His superiors did this strange thing.

In March 1972, he got a commendation for his role in a drug bust.

What? So it's like he would do these things and he's talked about later, like he would just go and get a bag of potato chips and like not do what he was supposed to do at a traffic stop, you know, like a construction site.

He was an idiot. I would literally put the uniform on myself and come out of retirement and go on the streets over hiring him again.

And then it's like... But then he gets a commendation for a drug bust.

Right. So what is, and that's, it goes right back to who he was in high school.

No one can pinpoint who he was. Yeah, that's the thing.

He's a dichotomy of a human being at all times.

That's, yeah. And I wonder too, if it was one of those things, like he got that, is it a commendation?

A commendation, yeah. I think, I wonder if he got that just because like he happened to be there with some other officers and like they got it.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's a very strange thing with him and like a very strange pattern with him, though, that like people have these thoughts about him that are very conflicting at times.

And it's like, I think he just was able to show who like what he wanted at any given time.

But I think he might have had some Gemini.

He feels very Gemini. And when you see how he was able to convince his victims to trust him, one, he was able to do it with a badge.

I mean, he had the uniform on. That was his easiest way of doing it.

But two, he could act like a charming person.

And I say he couldn't be a charming person.

He could act like one. Well, Aries are very charismatic people.

There you go. And he could come off as a very charismatic person sometimes.

And then other times you're like, wow, you're a fucking weirdo.

You look at his interviews and you're like, okay, like, I understand why some of these women were like, oh, he's harmless.

Right. Like, let's hang out. He's chit-chatting.

It's fine. Like, we can just sit here and shoot the shit.

But then you see him turn and you're like, oh, like, there it is.

That's the scary part. Now, after this drug bust...

Like one month later in April, he was fired.

That's what makes me feel like he was just there.

That's the thing. And I'm like, what the fuck?

I think it was a right place, right time kind of moment.

And they were like, bye. Yeah, they were like, okay, see you later.

You got your commendation. Now, he then in June 1972, so only what, like a year later?

Not even a year, a couple months. He got another job with another sheriff's department, the Martin County Sheriff's Department.

Now, again, this was June 1972. This is when he did something terrible.

This is when he got caught. Okay. On this day, July 21st, 1972, so right after he got the job with this new department, on this day, he picked up 17-year-old Pamela Wells and 18-year-old Nancy Trotter.

They were hitchhiking on the highway. It was the 70s.

Yeah. Literally everybody was doing it. Pamela was known to her friends and those close to her as Sue.

So Sue Wells is who she was known. And she was from Texas.

Her friend Nancy there was from Michigan and they were visiting Florida together.

They actually didn't know each other before they set out.

They met each other while hitchhiking. They just met up with each other.

They were hitchhiking to Chicago and that's when they met and just really liked each other.

And we're like, do you want to stick together?

Yeah. Which was like really cool. And smart.

Exactly. And they quickly decided, you know what, let's spend our travel time together.

Florida seems like a great place to go. Let's go together.

We're just going to like welcome to being best friends.

Like it's just it's like a cool little story.

They just were like, yeah, we're going to be friends now.

Now, on this day, they were trying to get a ride along Highway A1A.

They had spent the day at Jensen Beach and had to get back to where they were staying.

A sheriff's deputy pulled up beside them.

And at first, he told them, do you know it's illegal to hitchhike in this area?

It was not. They were like, no, we had no idea it was illegal.

We wouldn't be doing it if we knew that.

So he said, you know what? Why don't I drive you home myself?

Like, I'll drive you guys home because you can't be hitchhiking out here.

You're going to get in trouble. Right. Now, this was Gerard Schaefer, who was 26 years old at the time.

He and he even at this point, this is what's so wild about him.

He called the department, which is this was something that they would do.

Police officers. I don't know if they do it now.

I'm sure they do. They would call the department and say, hey, is it OK if I drive these two women home?

Oh, yeah. This is where I am. So it's on record.

So you're not just driving. It's smart. But he did it like he did that protocol.

OK. And he took his time with Nancy and Sue, really got to know them, was chatting with them in the car, just being a real charismatic guy.

Again, he's only 26 at this point, so he's not that much older than them.

So he's telling them. That, you know, his old stories of hitchhiking.

He's like, I used to do it too. You know, like he's appealing to their youth, their sense of adventure.

He's like, I get it. You just want to like, you know, ride with someone you don't even know and just go off into the wild blue yonder.

I get it. Girls just want to have fun. And they're like, absolutely.

This guy's cool. They're like, he's bro-ing out.

They're bro-ing out. And he's like, they're like, great.

He's a sheriff's deputy. We have somebody like we can trust around here who can protect us.

So he drops them off where they were staying.

He brings them to where they were staying.

And then he says, they were like, yeah, you know, like, he was like, what are you guys going to be doing tomorrow?

Like, don't hitchhike again. And they were like, well, we want to go back to the beach, back to Jensen Beach.

And they were like, but, you know, we have no way to get there.

Right. So he said, all right, if you guys want to go to the beach, I'll meet you and I'll give you a ride to the beach tomorrow so that you don't have to hitchhike.

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Now, he told them, meet me at the band shell, which was around the corner from where they were, at 930 a.m.

And I'll bring you to the beach. And why would you think that a cop is going to hurt you?

It's a sheriff's deputy. He's got a real fucking car.

He's got a real badge. He radioed into the station to tell them he was bringing you home.

Right. If anything, if I was them, I'd be like, well, he's already got it on record that he brought us home.

Exactly. Why would he ever do something now?

Yeah. Like, it's already on record. I would never even think of it, like, from a cop.

Never would have thought of it. He showed up somewhere between 9.15 and 9.30.

They said when he showed up, he was wearing shorts and a plain shirt.

He was not wearing his uniform because he was like, oh, it's my morning off, so I'm just wearing my normal clothes.

And he told them, you know, I'm going to take you to the beach.

He was driving his light blue slash green Datsun that often was associated with him.

Yep. He drove towards Jensen Beach. He was chatting with them.

And then he says, oh, guys, you know what?

Can I take you to see this really cool thing?

No. And he said it's this like old Spanish fort near the river.

It's not. And he said they're like, OK, sure.

Like they're like, he's doing something nice for us.

We'll just let him. And he's talking about like how he loves history.

Well, and they hit it off, too. So they're just like, oh, cool.

Yeah, show us, you know? And to him, this was like a performance.

He's like, I used to be a teacher. I love teaching.

History is my thing. Social studies. I love it.

Let me teach you about this. It's just something fun.

I want to show people. So they're like, all right.

But instead, he drives them down a dirt road toward Hutchinson Island into a forest.

No. And Sue's like... um like is this in here and she was quoted as saying i got worried because he had told us the day before when he picked us up not to tell anyone oh you know he emphasized it several times not to tell anyone a policeman was taking us out there i got worried when he turned down that road because it seemed awfully suspicious now you may note there she was able to talk about it later Yeah, I was going to say, but then you were cruising with your story and I was like, go off.

So I'm going to give you this right now.

They survived. Okay. So that is that both of them survived.

So you can at least go in there knowing that.

But my God, at what cost? He pulled into thick brush and there was this old rundown shed in the middle of like a swamp.

Creepy. And they were like... is what is that it then he was like yeah that's it and they were like i don't think that's an old spanish ford i think that's just like an old rundown shed like what the fuck is going on like we can go to the beach now right and they're like sitting there and they're like this is gross and i don't know why we're here and we just want to go to the beach can you just bring us to the beach now like this is fun and they their fighter flight at this point was probably just like piercing oh my god and they were saying like he was telling them like all these things about the river and stuff like but they're not listening and they're just sitting there like okay dude can you just bring us to the beach like I don't want to be here anymore yeah it's getting freaky so they get back in the car and suddenly they said his entire attitude just completely changed Like he had been telling them all these and the river and this and this year they did this and this used to be the entrance for this.

Then he sits down. Suddenly he went like stone cold.

And they said he was suddenly super aggressive.

The friendliness was completely gone. And out of nowhere, he says, you two ran away.

You're runaways. And I know it. And they were like, we're like 17 and 18.

Like, no, we're not. And what? Like, they were like, what are you talking about?

And he's like, I'm arresting you as runaways out of nowhere.

And he handcuffs them both and puts them in the back of the car before explaining to them.

Do you know what I can do to you? I can sell you into slavery.

What the fuck? And they were like, what?

So he told and then he's like, I can bury you out here and no one would find you.

And then he said to them, there is no crime without a body.

And they were like, shit, what the fuck is going on?

And they were saying that they were thinking he was just an asshole.

Like they were like, he's just what the fuck is going on right now?

Like a cop on a trip. Their heads were probably like, I can't even comprehend what's happening right now.

So they were kind of calling his bluff. Like they were kind of being like, all right, fucker.

Like, you're an idiot. Because they're just like, I don't know what's happening.

Because I think they could also see that he was a fucking idiot.

Like, they were like, okay. So they're like, okay, yeah, like, you're gonna sell us to people.

Like, what are you talking about? Like, and I think one of them was like, okay, how much would I be?

Like, literally, they were like, you're dumb.

Yeah. And then he grabs out of his trunk pieces of rope.

And pieces of sheet. And he gags them both with the pieces of fabric.

And they're like, now I'm starting to get freaked out.

And he's tying them up, tying their legs, tying around their arms.

They're freaking out. And he explained to them that if one of them tries to escape anything he does, he was going to kill the other.

Oh, my God. So he goes, feel free. Feel free to run.

But know that I'm going to kill your friend because you ran.

And they were both, now remember, they didn't know each other forever.

So that's got to be a weird scenario where you're like, I really like this person and we're friends right now and we've been traveling.

But also like I want to survive. But fuck, like what am I saying?

Right. Now I have this like literal life experience. like commitment to this person that like I have to die because of like, it's like, yeah, what in their 17 and 18 years old, like what a thing to have to comprehend in that moment.

Too much, dude. And Nancy was said later, he took Sue out in a field.

He had my blanket, which she'd brought, which apparently they were bringing to the beach and he put it on the ground.

He made her sit on it and he tied her legs together.

And then he made another loop around her shoulders so that she was tied hand and foot.

Oh, handcuffed and gagged. Oh, my God. I was scared then.

I could have run away, but I couldn't because he had Sue there.

So Nancy literally was like, I could have run, but I just couldn't because he was going to hurt her.

I can't do that, right. Like, what a fucking, I'm like, yeah.

That's a great feeling right there. Yeah, like, you guys are great.

He took Nancy to the river where there was this huge, like, banyan and mangrove tree sticking out of the water.

And when the tide went out, the roots, like the huge gnarly roots of these things, you can kind of picture them.

They're the kind of trees you see in swamps and, you know, with the gnarly roots that are just huge.

They would become exposed when the tide would go out.

And it was out at this point. He made Nancy get up on one of those roots and balance.

And he put a noose around her neck and looped the rope a few times around the branches of the tree so that if she fell or moved off the root at all, she would hang herself.

What the fuck? fuck he also tied rope around her knees and she said she just sobbed she was sobbing and he was just smiling and then he just stood there and watched her cry that's so terrifying he also molested her while she was in this position and later she said quote and then he told me not to scream because he said if i screamed he'd come back and wrap the gag around me so tight i would shit my pants What the fuck?

That's what he said to her. So he's fascinated by that.

Yep. He told her he could rape her if he wanted to.

He was like, I could rape you right now if I want to.

But then he just stared at her and then left.

And she was like, so she has no idea what's happening.

She doesn't know if he's going to kill Sue.

She doesn't know if he's coming back. She doesn't know what the plan is.

She knows that if she moves anywhere, she's hanging.

And so she spits the gag out of her mouth and started chewing on the knot in the noose.

Wow, smart. She said, quote, I finally turned around and fell against the branch where the other end of the rope was tied on.

The rope was looser from my chewing on it, and I could untie it with my hand behind my back.

I undid the knot myself, and then I got all the ropes off.

I didn't take very long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, but I still had handcuffs on.

Wow, good for her to do all of that handcuffed.

She bit through the rope, loosened it up so that she could move backwards and untie the rope with handcuffed hands.

That's a bad bitch right there. Nancy! Like, Nancy, final girl.

Yeah, seriously. Like, your energy right there.

So she ran. She just ran. And she said she thought, which I'm like, that's brilliant, to take the ropes with her.

Because she said if I left them, maybe he could bind me again if he finds me.

But if I take them with me, maybe he doesn't have any more.

And I can get rid of them. Who would think that in that moment?

How did she think that? That's the thing.

Like, the things that people will think in these situations are like...

You are just remarkable. I'm like, I don't think I would have thought of that.

No. That's brilliant. Like that is really, that is survival right there.

I was sitting outside last night and heard a noise and I was like so terrified.

I thought there was a murderer in my backyard and all I had next to me, I'm not, okay, actually.

So what I thought I had next to me was only a bird feeder.

And I was like, okay, I'll just take this bird feeder and hit them in the head with it.

Obviously. There was a motherfucking knife sitting on that table and I missed it.

I missed it. You would just have used the bird feeder.

I mean, it would have worked. But, like, Nancy is like, I got to take these ropes with me.

I would have been like, I guess I'll find a bird to take with me.

Yeah, I guess. Is there a bird feeder around here that I can hit anybody with?

Like, let me take one of these roots. I guess that'll do.

There you go. Let me try to rip these up.

Like, wow. Well, she just started running.

Good for her. She just ran. She found the river.

She got in the river. Now, by the way, there's, like, all kinds of scary shit in that river.

There's, like, things that'll sting you and, like, can paralyze you and shit.

Oh, shit. There's, like, gnarly like crocodiles and like there's bad yeah we're in florida yeah so she's wading through it as fast as possible still handcuffed oh my god she heard someone call her name and she's like freaking out and she's like it's a woman like what the she hears it and she realizes it's sue calling her name and she's like sue is calling me and then she said she had this moment where she was like do I go to her?

Or is he making her call my name to draw me out?

Like, is this a trick? And so she says, she was like, you know what, I got to keep going.

And then I'll come back for Sue because she's like, I can't have both of us go down.

Like I got to go get help. Yeah. And I can get help.

So I have to get it. Well, and then at least like she can give a description and yada yada yada.

Somebody can hopefully help Sue. So she was like, I just kept going, which she said was like the hardest thing ever.

And that was Sue calling her, and Sue was not with Gerard Safer.

Like, she was actually calling her, but she understood it.

Like, she got it. She was like, you know what?

She was like, I would have done that, too.

Yeah, so she's like, you know what? She's free.

She's running. Great. I'm going to run, too.

So she's also handcuffed at this point. They both are handcuffed.

Sue now... Watches Nancy go off across the river.

So she made her way to the road. She actually, like, waded across the river.

Made her way to the road, and she got the attention of a truck driver.

Which, shout out to truck drivers. Like, shout out to truck drivers.

They are always there in a pinch. Morbid.

Always there. Supported by truck drivers.

And supportive of truck drivers. I was going to say truck driver, supported by morbid.

Hell yeah. So a truck driver helped her call the sheriff's department.

And now sheriff's deputies are out looking for Nancy.

And sorry, is this in the same jurisdiction as he was in?

Yes. His police force? Yes. Are you shitting me?

Sure is. Now, meanwhile, now that Nancy has made the hardest decision of her life to not go back to her friend and to just like trudge on to try to get help, she hid in the bush, like in this huge like bush area for hours with like snakes and spiders and bugs.

She said like spiders were crawling all over her.

Oh, God. And then ended up swimming in the river with handcuffed hands.

She swam through a school of jellyfish during this.

Oh, my God. Got stung twice while swimming after her ordeal with handcuffs on.

And she kept going. She got up on the shore completely exhausted, and she just cried for cars to help her.

Like, just was like, I just didn't know what else to do.

She was like, I was so beyond exhausted, like, in every way.

Yeah. So a sheriff's deputy car pulled over and her immediate thought was like, oh, my God, it's him.

Yeah. Like, luckily, it was a real protector.

The way you said it, I was like, no. I was like, oh, fuck.

No. Well, this was Sheriff's Deputy Robert Lewis Crowder.

He was the man who stopped and he was sincerely there to help her.

He had not originally heard the story from Sue and the truck driver calling the department.

He already knew that they were supposed to be out looking for this girl.

Oh, OK. How? He heard this story from Schaefer himself.

Yeah. Crowder. So Sheriff's Deputy Crowder was home that day.

He was like off that day. He actually said he was like mowing the lawn in one of the interviews.

He was like, I was literally mowing my front lawn.

And he said, I get a call from Gerard Schaefer.

And he's like, what the hell? And he says, I answered the phone and he says, I've done something foolish.

You're going to be mad at me. I'm I've done something foolish.

You're going to be mad at me. That's literally word for word what he said.

I don't even care about the like, you're going to be mad at me.

I've done something foolish. I've molested a young woman.

That's so foolish of me. Abducted. tied up molested killed assaulted tortured and planned to murder and you said two women right you said abducted abducted yep yeah yeah you're gonna be mad at me foolish i did something pretty foolish like you didn't just like uh i don't know like forget your homework yeah you literally almost killed two women wow i literally hate you yeah he then proceeded to tell crowder that he had picked some girls up hitchhiking he decided for their own safety in the future that That he was going to demonstrate why hitchhiking was so dangerous.

No. By literally torturing these girls in the forest.

No, sir. I don't know if you know the law, which I would assume you would since you're a police officer, but that's not how it works.

No, he said, he said, I just wanted to teach them a lesson.

I wanted to scare them into not hitchhiking anymore.

And he goes, I admit I got carried away.

Carried away. Got a little carried away.

Carried away. Went a little, I overtaught.

I overtaught this one. You didn't put like a little extra icing on the cake.

Nope. You destroyed two women's lives forever.

Yeah. He, so it's just insane. So Crowder is like.

Oh, okay. Alrighty. So he calls the department and he tells them that he's like, you know what?

You need to call me if you get any information that comes in about two girls named Nancy Trotter and Pamela Wells.

He was like, I need to know about it. He was like, what the fuck?

So he was called when Sue and the trucker called the station, but he already knew that he was supposed to be looking for them.

So when they called, he was like, okay, now we got to go find them.

And he went to talk to Sue and this truck driver.

So he was like, OK, what happened? So Sue told him everything or as much as she could and said, Nancy's still out there.

Like, we got to go get her. So when he was driving by, he saw Nancy coming out of the river and he told her, I talked to Sue like Sue's OK.

Your friend is OK. And he's like, I'm going to keep you safe.

I'm going to keep both of you safe. You don't have to worry about.

And they're probably like, I really hope you're telling the truth, dude.

And Nancy said she was like, he was very kind and like very like comforting in that moment.

Like I give like he was a really good guy.

Now, luckily, Schaefer was immediately fired for this one.

This was not one of those disciplinary things.

Arrested? He was charged with aggravated assaults, but they let him out on bond.

For his trial, that wouldn't be for another six months.

What? So he was out on bond. He had just abducted two women.

Right. And only got aggravated assault. Like he molested her.

Yep. All right. He also was planning to kill them.

If she had stepped off of that rope, off of that route, she would have hung.

Right. And he told her that. It's the same thing, though, as like attempted murder.

Yeah. Yeah. So now he's out on bond for months and more women are now going to be in extreme danger.

Yeah, you don't say. He has six months before his trial.

And in these six months, he's pissed. He fucked up.

He fucked up. He was not satisfied by what he did.

So it was during this time that he met 17-year-olds Susan Place and Georgia Jessup.

Susan Place went to the high school that Gerard taught at, the Plantation High School.

This is probably where he first saw her.

She was blonde. She had blue eyes. She was sweet.

She was kind. She was just like a cool girl.

She was really independent. She was born with partial paralysis on her left side, and she did suffer from epilepsy.

But other than that, she tried to live a normal life.

She didn't let it get to her. High school was a little tough because of all of this.

Remember, epilepsy was something people were very shitty about back then.

Even as recently as in the 70s? Yeah, they just didn't get it.

I didn't realize that. They didn't understand what it was.

And so she even lost a job at a grocery store once because they said that their insurance couldn't cover an epileptic working there.

Wow. Yeah. which was just wild to me. And I found this out in Patrick Kendrick's book.

So again, read that book. She and her family were super close.

She loved music, like loved it. She played a ton of instruments like piano, guitar.

She could sing. She was just like really creative.

When she was 17 years old, she ended up leaving high school and starting her education at an adult education center.

It was there that she met a man who was 26 years old and his name was Jerry Shepard.

It wasn't, though. Yep. She felt very accepted by him, very encouraged by him.

He was a nice guy. He told her, like, you can be great things.

Like, she felt like he got her. Mm hmm. Now, at the same adult education center was a girl named Georgia Jessup, who was 16 years old at the time.

Everyone describes her as a flower child.

Love. Like you would have loved Georgia.

Love. She was called Crystal by everyone just because she liked being called Crystal because she was like crystals.

Yeah. She believed in reincarnation. Same.

She loved the idea of astrology. Same. She was that cool 70s chick.

Free spirit girl. She was beautiful. She had brownish red hair.

Again, we have a blonde and a brunette or redhead.

Does he have a thing for like redheads, too?

I don't know. I don't know. But her mom described her in the book American Ripper as a rose in bloom.

Oh, yeah. She was really sweet. She was really kind, just like just like her friend.

And she was also really trusting, which could get her in a little bit of trouble.

And it wasn't because like she was like immature or anything.

She was just trusting. She just wanted to believe the best in people.

She just wanted to believe people were good.

She was a flower child. Even like with all this podcast, I'm still you still want to believe you want to believe that people are better.

It's also thundering right now. And the mood is set.

You might hear it. So she also loved interior design.

She was very creative. She was very appreciative of architecture and structure.

She just really had an eye for that. And at 17.

Yeah. And she did a little modeling. She was very beautiful.

She, like her friend, like Susan, she ended up leaving high school to attend the same adult education center.

They were all going there together. She also met 26-year-old Jerry Shepard.

She apparently told everyone she knew that she had met him in a previous life, she felt, because they had just like a connection.

They clicked. Yeah, they clicked. Because he's a manipulative piece of shit.

He's 26 years old. He's in that age group that's like cool to a 17-year-old, you know, like a 26-year-old like guy that just is like, I'm a cop.

Exactly. And you look back on it and you're like, why was he hanging out with us?

Exactly. But they at the time, you don't think they were like, when you're 17, you're like, I'm just cool.

Like, that's what this is all about. She was really like into him.

She really liked him. She thought he was so cool.

And she ended up hiding a lot of stuff from her parents about him, which was not something that she would do otherwise.

Like they were finding out like she was kind of lying and like sneaking around a little bit.

And they were like, this is just not like her.

Well, and he's older, too, so she probably felt like she had to.

Exactly. Now, every woman he brought into his web and made a victim of his, they all shared something like, or most of them, I should say, shared like they were emotionally going through something.

It's like he picked people that were emotionally vulnerable.

That was kind of his thing was he could they were like in a state where he could easily overpower them in every way, physically, emotionally, financially, mentally, everything.

And this was no different. They were both kind of in a weird place in their lives.

They had left high school. They're kind of like trying to figure out what they want to do.

They were like, you know, it's the 70s. It's being 17.

Everything sucks. And it's just like, you know, no one understands me.

You know what I mean? It's just like he knows that that's 17 year olds are in that spot no matter what.

That's almost their default position. So he knows that.

Yeah. That's why he preys on them. So Jerry eventually told Susan in Georgia that he was going to be going to Mexico and then he was going to go home to Colorado where he lived.

He did not live there. And it makes me wonder, because again, this is during that six month period that he was awaiting trial, that he was telling these girls this.

So it makes me wonder if he was actually really planning to skip town to avoid that trial.

I think he was maybe thinking he was going to leave for Mexico.

Yeah. I could see that. But he asked them, do you want to come with me?

We can make this a big adventure. You know, like everybody's hitchhiking.

Everybody's going everywhere. Like, you know, free love.

Let's go. Like, let's do this. So these girls are like, fuck, yeah, that sounds awesome.

And again, they're a bit unsettled right now.

So he's like, let's do this. They both wanted to go.

They were both totally into it. They were like, we need some adventure in our lives.

Let's get the hell out of here. Yeah. So September 27th, 1972, they both ended up leaving with Jerry Shepard together.

Remember, this is two months before his trial for the for the things he had just done to Nancy Trotter and Sue Wells.

Two months. Georgia at the time when she left, she was wearing blue jeans with like these brown leather patches on them.

One was in the shape of an owl and one was in the shape.

It had like the Roadrunner on it. Oh, cool.

Like which was like super cool at the time.

And she had left, Georgia had left a note for her parents, basically telling them that she was running away.

Like she was just running away to have some adventure.

I'll be back at some point, but I'm running away for now.

She had gone away for small periods of time before, like kind of took off for a little while and come back, but she always returned.

Her parents knew she was kind of going through it a little bit.

Yeah. They didn't like it, but they knew that she would come back.

And they probably didn't want to press too hard and not come back.

Exactly. And again, the 70s are just a different situation.

And Susan actually told her mother, Lucille, Lucille Place, that she was like, you know what?

I want to go with this guy and with Georgia and we're going to have an adventure.

Like she told her about it. She was like, this is what I want to do.

Her mother was not happy about it. Lucille was like, I don't know about that.

But she was like, you know what? She was turning 18.

I felt like I should let her do this. She said she remembered Jerry and Georgia coming over that day, September 27th, to get Susan.

And she spoke to them both. So she spoke to Jerry.

She spoke to Georgia. She said she got a weird feeling about Jerry.

He wasn't like creepy, but she was like, I just got a vibe.

It was just a mom vibe. Yeah. And then there's all these reports that she said they had told her they were going to go away.

They were going to go on an adventure. But she said, right now, we're just going to go to the beach and play some guitar and hang out.

So she was like, OK, that's fine. You can go do that.

We'll discuss all this later. Like, you know.

So she says she watched his blue-green Datsun that Jerry has.

Who else has one of those? Oh, another guy with a name kind of similar to Jerry.

Could it be Gerard? Gerard Schaefer. She watched it pull away, and she said she could see Susan take one last look at home before she went out of sight, never to be seen alive again.

Oh, no. Oh, I can't imagine like feeling that.

Oh, I feel so horrible for these parents.

And that picture is probably just burned in her memory.

Burned. And luckily, Susan's mom, Lucille, while she's watching this, she said while she was feeling that weird feeling, she said, I kept looking out at that vehicle in my front yard while they were in the house.

And she goes, and I kept looking at it. She goes, and then I just was like, you know what?

I'm going to write that license plate down.

Yes. And she wrote that license plate number down.

Hell yeah. Because she was like, and it proved to be one of the most important things that anyone did in this trial was write that down.

Now, Susan's mother started getting worried as she didn't come home.

Right. And she was only supposed to be at the beach.

And days went by, weeks went by, no call from Susan.

She also noticed at one time when she was cleaning up her room, she said she noticed her epilepsy medication was not on her person.

It was in the drawer. Okay. Oh, no. So she's like, she did not mean she didn't intend to leave for long.

She was going to be coming home because she never would have left without that.

So she gets this weird feeling about it.

So she calls one of her friends and she's like, have you heard from her?

Do you know where she could be? And the friend gave her the number of Georgia Jessup's mother, Shirley Jessup.

And she was like, I know they were going to be hanging out with that guy, Jerry.

So she calls Shirley. They connect. And Shirley explained, you know, Georgia left us a note.

She said she ran away. And she was like, you know what?

In the note, she said, sorry, I just have to find my head.

So apparently she was feeling a little lost.

And she's like, we were worried, too, but like we didn't know what to do.

And we were hoping she would just come back.

Hearing that Susan had not run away, but had told her mom what she was doing, but had not contacted her mother, Shirley was like, oh, that's concerning.

So together, the two moms called the Oakland Park Police Department, and they reported the license plate number that Lucille wrote down.

And they reported the car and also said his name is Jerry Shepard.

Nothing came of it. Because I'm sure they probably were like, these are two...

Runaways. And they just decided to go. Well, and also, this is great.

So Lucille sat there and wrote down that license plate.

She thought about it. She gives it to the police.

The police write their license plate number down wrong from her telling them.

So it matched a completely different car and address, which led to nothing.

Of course. A dead end. Later, they found out that Lucille did have the right number.

She had not copied down the number wrong.

And it was the police that wrote it down.

So they were able to use her right number to actually lead back to Jerry.

But the police wrote it down wrong. How are you not double checking that?

Right, exactly. And like, had you not written that down wrong?

Yeah. Who knows what could have happened?

The police really shit the bed with this one.

Like, really shit the bed. Basically, these mothers were told it was hard because they're almost of age to leave home.

But they're not yet. So let's not say that to me.

So luckily, after this, the Jessups and the places, all the moms and the dads, they kept in touch.

They would drive around together looking for their daughters all together.

Oh, God. They were investigating the case together.

Yeah. They were all doing this. They did the police's job for them at this point.

Now, remember, at this moment, he's out on bond.

Right. He's out on bond. He's about to go on trial in November for literally abducting, assaulting and attempting to torture and murder two teenage girls.

And now he's literally awaiting trial. with two teenage girls meanwhile as all of this is happening gerard's trial was in november 1972 and at this time when the trial was happening what is about to happen nancy trotter and sue wells the survivors they decided to stay where this happened in stewart florida they stayed there they got jobs and lived there where they were abducted and assaulted and almost murdered just so they could be there for the trial to testify against him wow a bad bitches i was Just going to say a couple of bad bitches.

Got jobs. Like we're like, we're not going anywhere.

Good. Like we're staying here and we're going to make sure you get your shit.

And for all they knew, he could have, he was probably lurking right around there, you know?

That's the thing. They're literally living in the same area this happened and they have to deal with him being out and about.

And like the thought of like running into him at some point.

Yeah. Yep. Now, this is wild to me. During the trial.

So when the trial finally happened, it was like a quick trial.

The girls did testify. They did like fucking amazing.

Did he show up to trial? He showed up. Oh.

He showed up. Because remember, right now, all that the places and the Jessups know is this Jerry Shepard man.

They don't know who Gerard Schaefer is. So Gerard Schaefer shows up.

He didn't go anywhere. He's still around.

So where are the girls? Yeah, exactly. So he shows up to his trial.

He goes through the whole thing. The judge was Martin County Circuit Court Judge D.C.

Smith. And he said to Schaefer in that courtroom...

Are you ready? No, I don't think you're ready.

I can tell by your facial expression and the furrow in your brow that I am not ready.

He said, I don't want to embarrass you. I do.

But I can't conceive how you were such an automatic jackass and a fool as you were.

I think we all concur in that you were a thoughtless fool.

I don't know if that's quite the words that I would use.

I don't want to embarrass you. Thoughtless fool?

How about a fucking monster who was fully planning to torture and murder these girls and had slung a fucking noose around their necks?

No, Elena. Let's make his cheeks a little red.

That's one of his own. Let's humiliate him just a little bit.

You would think so. I think this is a time when we can say, you know what?

I do want to fucking embarrass you. I would want to embarrass the shit out of him.

You fucking piece of dung. Are you kidding me?

I don't want to embarrass you, you fool.

That's the good old boy system, though. Stop calling him a fool.

He's a monster. Right. He's an attempted murderer.

Hello, everybody. Hello. What is happening here?

Everybody's just like, you're such a fool.

That's them taking care of their own, though.

It truly is. It's wild. So Gerard told reporters outside the courtroom with a smile because he was always smiling.

I bet he was. He said, I made a stupid mistake.

There was no sex involved. No one got hurt.

Yeah, because they got away, dude. And actually, yes, they did get hurt.

No one got hurt. Are you kidding me? The girl was stung by multiple jellyfish escaping you.

They both had to swim across a fucking river in the Everglades, basically, to fucking handcuffed.

Yeah. Are you kidding? No one was hurt. They're going to be destroyed for the rest of their lives emotionally from that.

Like, what the fuck, dude? So he ended up accepting a plea deal.

Oh, my God. And he only had to plead guilty to one charge of aggravated assault.

That's... Absolute bullshite. And this meant that Gerard was sentenced to one year in jail with the possibility of parole after six months.

Wow. And three years of probation. Which he was just going to skip out on anyway.

He attempted to hang two teenage girls and sexually assaulted them while planning to murder them.

But okay, justice system. Alrighty. Okay.

Totally. Yeah. But this was in December that he was even officially sentenced.

The trial began in November, remember? And he did start serving his sentence, but he started serving it January 15th, 1973.

He was sentenced in December, didn't start serving until January 15th.

I never understand how that works. They just let him out.

They just let him out for a little while longer before he had to come serve a sentence.

Get your affairs together? Is that what it is?

Yeah, just get your shit together. So he didn't start that sentence until technically six months after he had done the crime.

And then he could, like, you could have, they're in the same community.

He could have hurt them and you just, like, let him walk around.

Exactly. Cool. And now Susan Place and Georgia Jessup have been missing for months at this point.

And they were last seen with Jerry Shepard, whose car, physical description and home later we find out match fucking Gerard Schaefer.

I gotta go. Now, days before he began his sentence on January 15th.

Two more women went missing. Are you serious?

Days before he went into jail. Because he knew he was going away for a few months.

Colette Marie Goodenough and Barbara Ann Wilcox were both 19 years old, one blonde, one brunette.

They matched the profile. They were friends from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who were looking to hitchhike across the country from Iowa to Florida.

They said they were going to be staying with a friend.

This friend was a male friend from college who they had met in Iowa, but this guy had lived in Florida.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. He told them he was going back and they should come stay with him when they could in Florida.

He was like, I'm going back to Florida. Come stay with me.

So they were like, cool. It'll be a fun road trip.

Yeah. So they stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi, where they were staying with family on the way.

And then sometime between January 8th and January 11th, so before he's in jail, they left again to hitchhike to Florida, according to family members they were staying with.

They said they left our house then. So this is between seven and four days before this guy starts serving his sentence.

And he's just out in Iowa. Yep. Now, during this time before Colette and Barbara left Iowa in the fall of 1972, they were in Iowa before they left to go to Florida.

Schaefer admits he left the state unlawfully while out on bonds.

Wow. In the fall. Either right before or during his trial.

Are you kidding me? So he said he left to go.

So later he was like, yes, I did leave unlawfully because you were out on bond.

You're not supposed to leave the state. No.

He says he went to go on a hunting trip.

And he said, I went somewhere like South Dakota.

Somewhere like South Dakota. And they were like, well, you would probably know where you went.

Where did you go? And he's like, I don't know, somewhere around South Dakota.

Oh, you just don't know? Yeah, you just went to a place.

But he was later discovered that during this time, there was long distance phone calls made to his home in Stuart, Florida during this time from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

There you have it. He was in the place these girls were living for a while.

And according to American Ripper, Patrick Kendrick reports that Colette was a lover of poetry and often wrote it herself.

She was also suffering from some emotional issues and sought professional help from them.

I want you to for like for her emotional issues.

I want you to hold on to that because that does come back later.

Colette and Barbara were close friends. They were like ready to set off on an adventure together.

And they definitely came across Gerard Schaefer during this time.

100% the theory is that, I mean, he made phone calls from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to home.

He was there during this time. It was definitely, he was pretending to go to college and he met them.

They became friends because he was able to charm.

And he told them, you know what? I'm going back home to Florida.

Why don't you come out and visit me? And I'm going to be back only for this short period of time.

So you got to get there before I go to fucking jail.

He didn't say that, but he was definitely being like, I got to be somewhere in January.

So get here. Right. So there's that. Now, meanwhile, so that happened.

They went missing. They never arrived in Florida.

Nobody heard from them. And their families were like they would have told us where they were.

Now, meanwhile, January 17th, 1973, two days after this schmuck finally starts serving his sneeze of a sentence.

Yes, for real. Another horrific discovery was found that would later be linked to Gerard Schaefer.

Remember, this six-month period of time that he was allowed to troll around was really detrimental.

He also did a ton of shit before this, but that time he definitely did some shit during this time.

So in Plantation, Florida, remember where he had worked as a teacher, where he had met some of the victims.

In Plantation, Florida, two workers were surveying an empty lot because they were going to be building condos there.

Mm-hmm. One of these workers, James Christian, was surveying near a set of bushes and he just noticed something red in the bush.

He went closer and he quickly discovered that what he was seeing was part of a dead body.

It was horrifically battered. The red he had seen were from a pair of hip hugger maroon pants that were not on the body but near it.

The body's legs were spread apart, and they were still wearing a red, white, and blue t-shirt.

Her hands were covered in, like, I guess they were, like, buried in the soil a little bit.

Okay. Which made them weirdly preserved, like, really well preserved.

And there were several broken fingernails on her hands, showing a lot of defense wounds had occurred.

She had struggled. Yeah. Now, somehow, this got worse.

Her head had been severed from her body, and it was lying in a puddle of blood nearby.

Oh, my God. The lower jaw of her head was shattered and a tooth was missing, at least one.

The body appeared to be that of a young girl in her teens.

So police were called to this scene. They closed it all off.

They bring the body in for identification and an autopsy.

And when they searched the scene with excavation tools, they found a pair of, like, young teenager girls' underwear, the missing tooth from the skull, and several fingernails, which were literally ripped off her hand.

My God. You also wonder what happens to the people that find these bodies, like, afterward.

I feel bad for those kind of people. I can't imagine.

Because nothing can prepare you for that.

No. nothing especially that brutal brutal now an autopsy showed that the shattered jaw was part of a blow to the head that was likely the one that killed her she was a teenager they said between the ages of what they thought was 16 to 22 approximately and she had been dead likely somewhere between one and three months maybe four at the most okay she was brunette about five five medium build she remained unidentified at this time One month later, February 15th, in the same exact lot, they were moving forward to build the condos because they're like, okay, I guess we just have to go forward with this.

In an area only 200 yards away from where the first body was found, another body was lying there ready to be found now in the open.

She too was a young teen girl and was found with a blow to the head and was decapitated.

These bodies and their discoveries were covered a lot in the news, but no one was coming forward to identify either of them.

Then one night, a man named Anthony Briscalina was watching the news when a story came on, and he immediately felt his heart drop.

His daughter, Mary Briscalina, had run away in October 1972, months earlier, and he had not heard from her since.

She was only 14 years old, had brown hair and had left home with a pair of maroon hip huggers, just like the ones found next to the body.

14 years old. And the reason that they estimated it was like between 16 and 22 was I think she was just like taller for her age and like resembled an older.

Looked a little older. He got her dental.

So her father ran and got her dental records to bring to the M.E.

And immediately they were compared. They were a match.

The body was his missing daughter. Oh, no.

Now, this led them to identify the second body because they knew that she was with a girl who was only 13 years old.

Oh, my God. A girl named Elsie Farmer. Now, Mary's younger sister told investigators that she had seen Mary leave October 22nd, 1972, with Elsie.

This was right before, remember, his trial.

Yep. Right before. The month before. And that they were running away.

Together, they were going to run away. They had been having some issues with that lately, taking off. hanging with a bad crowd, kind of like going through it.

Now, her little sister had tried to convince her to stay, but she watched Mary pack those maroon pants and leave with some boys.

Now, Elsie lived with her half-sister, Linda Walker, and Linda's husband, Robert.

Her family life was really rough before staying with her half sister.

Her parents had literally just left her, like left the house and kicked her out of it when she was 10 years old.

She came home from school one day and they were just, that's it.

They were gone. Like you have no family.

And it was her half sister who brought her in and took care of her.

Yeah. October 24th, Linda said she and Elsie or Linda, her half sister, said that she had seen Elsie at the trailer they lived in with Mary, a boy named John Higgins and another boy named Russ Coleman.

They were they were in a guy named Bob Wyatt's car.

And Bob was at one time dating Mary. So these were just all people who knew each other.

Now, Elsie or excuse me, Linda, the half sister, said she had left for an appointment.

And when she came back, everyone was gone.

And there was a note that Elsie had left saying she would be back later.

But she never came back. So she and her husband, Robert, searched themselves for her and then immediately filed a police report.

Nothing came of it. They now knew that the second body was that of LC Farmer, but they were nowhere near finding the killers or killer.

We'll get back to this later. So right now, unidentified.

And I'm sorry, both were decapitated? Both were decapitated.

Okay. Yeah. So at this point, Gerard is now, because now we've made it to his sentence, he is now in jail for the horrific crimes against Sue and Nancy.

And police are still snoozing on any information about the missing Georgia and Susan.

Right. So early 1973, Lucille Place, Susan's mom, called up detectives she had spoken to, and she said, you know what?

You're not doing anything, so I'm just going to investigate this myself.

So she said, send me everything you have.

I'll do this. And they did. I love that they were just like, yeah, we aren't going to do shit.

So here you go. Wow. What a bunch of fucking assholes.

So now together, Susan and George's parents, not the police, ended up matching a letter Lucille found in Susan's room from Jerry Shepard to the address on the envelope going to the address that was connected to the Datsun where they had finally gotten the right plate.

The car was indeed registered to that address.

So they were able to link that up. She spoke to the apartment manager where the address was, and the man confirmed that the car and the man who lived there was named Gerard Schaefer.

And he said, yes, he drives that Datsun.

That's his license plate. He lived here.

But he told her he knew Gerard. He said he's really strange.

He's really belligerent. And he says he's actually a former police officer.

And they were like, what the fuck? And then he goes, yeah, but he's not anymore because he's actually in the sheriff's department jail being held on assault charges for two female hitchhikers.

Right. And they were like, are you fucking kidding me?

And like our two girls are missing. This must have been terrifying to hear.

Of course, because at that point you probably just lose all hope that you're ever going to find them alive.

Exactly. And they were probably like, wait, how long has he been in jail?

Because they're probably hoping in their head, like, okay, maybe this isn't him.

Maybe he's been in jail this whole time and this is wrong.

And so he was like, no, he just wanted to go.

He was definitely out during that time. And they're like, fuck.

And to think of what he had done to Nancy Trotter and Sue Wells, and now he is possibly the man your daughter's left with months ago.

I just can't even. No. So the places and the Jessups are still doing the police's job.

And after they learned that Gerard Schaefer was actually the man who was likely Jerry Shepard, and that his landlord said he was in jail for assaulting two teenage girls, they went right to the jail. where he was being held.

And they spoke to a sergeant there and they explained the situation and the places actually gave the sergeant a photo of Susan.

And they said, you go back there and you show it to him.

And you ask him if he knows this girl. So he went back there and he talked to him and he denied ever meeting Susan.

But the cops came back and the sergeant was like, yeah, he's a bullshitter though.

Like I don't believe him. Like he's an asshole and a compulsive liar.

So he gave the sergeant actually gave the places a negative, like a photo of Schaefer.

And they said, like, they kind of showed the lineup and they were like, is he in here?

They were like, that is Jerry Shepard. Oh, she was like, he was in my house.

I know that man. That is him. That is the man that left with my daughter that day and her daughter.

But that's it. Nothing. Nothing happened.

The police were like, wow. OK, what the fuck?

Like, I don't know what to tell you, dude.

So now the places in the Jessups were like, well, we're going to bring this to the media now.

Yeah, exactly. You want to find out. So they spoke with a woman named Jane Ellison, who was a reporter for the Palm Beach Post Times.

And she was like, all right, I'm going to get on this with you.

Like, I'm going to help you get this out there.

Now, it wasn't until April 1st, 1973, a couple months later that two bodies were found.

Now, a man named Henderson Hawley and his son Jesse were collecting aluminum cans in Hutchinson Island, Florida.

Hutchinson Island might sound familiar because that is where Gerard Schaefer brought Nancy Trotter and Sue Wells.

So as Henderson wandered off to collect some more cans, he said he saw in the bushes, he saw like what he thought was clothing.

And he said it was stained and ripped and strewn around everywhere.

And he saw a pink blouse shirt, white underwear, black heels, and another pair of shoes that were blue.

And he was nearing a tree seeing this, and he said the smell was outrageous.

But he said there was a nuclear plant nearby, and he was like, I don't know if that's what makes this.

Something's weird. Yeah. There were clouds of flies everywhere, and he said he suddenly saw a part of a human body.

But he said it was still tied to the base of a tree.

Oh. Oh, my God. And he said it had been slightly hidden by palm trees, but almost like it was like a joke.

Right. Like, I'm not really trying to hide this, but I'm going to pretend.

There was no head to this body, and the spine had been broken.

Oh, my God. One arm was removed, but the other had rope attached to it, obviously a ligature.

There were claw marks on the tree that came from this person trying to fight to free themselves.

Oh, my God. As he backed away, he stumbled over a second body.

Oh, my God. It was also headless and the spine had been cut in two.

This body still had a pair of jeans on and the jeans he noticed had a leather patch on it.

One was a Roadrunner patch and one was an owl.

Georgia. So these were Georgia and Susan.

Now, it was Jane Ellison, the reporter, who suggested to police that they should look into these bodies as possibly belonging to Georgia, Jessup and Susan Place.

You think? Because she's working with the parents now and they're like, you need to tell me these are not my kids.

Like, so she also told them, by the way, Gerard Schaefer should definitely be a suspect here.

Like, why are you guys not fucking looking into this?

Like, why is everyone doing your job? Yeah, like the mom literally was able to identify him in the lineup.

Now, four days later, they were both identified by dental records as Georgia Jessup and Susan Place.

April 7th, 1973, after the discovery of Susan Place and Georgia Jessup's murdered remains, a search warrant was executed at Schaefer's mother's home since he is now a suspect.

They hit the jackpots. Now, I'm not going to list everything they got out of here.

I'm telling you, go read the book. He has a complete list of every single thing they took from this house, and it is extensive and terrifying.

Great. I'll just mention a few things. They found women's jewelry, human teeth in a vial.

They also found a ton of weapons like machetes, several guns, several knives.

They also found a bunch of photos of mutilated women.

They found small bones that were clearly human.

Then they went to this was just at his mother's home, by the way.

And it was in a room where he told everybody, don't you dare go in that room.

So no one was allowed to go in that room at his mother's house.

She's also like, this is my house, Gerard.

This is my house, buddy. But yeah. So then they did a search warrant on Schaefer's home and they found a white pillowcase with stains on it, which would make sense later when you read some of his writings.

They also found some more guns. They found a bunch of ammunition.

They found cloths that had been ripped into like little straps, like gags.

They found human teeth in his house as well.

A lot of teeth, a lot of gold fillings that had been extracted.

A lot of photos of women's genitals. like just random photos and a lot of photos of mutilated women, a lot of photos of him in sometimes wearing women's clothing and like, quote unquote, hanging, basically BTK.

There was also a seven page typed paper with that was like handwritten to like it was like typed and then handwritten on the margins.

And it was about the hanging of a woman in a swamp area.

She was in it. She was stripped. Pillowcase was put over her neck.

A noose around her neck. He dressed her in some kind of like shroud.

He literally tortured her, terrorized her.

The description is... Horrific. Horrific.

There is so much descriptive awfulness in this.

And it tells about like how he felt. It tells about like the sexual pleasure he derived from this.

It tells about murdering her, about mutilating her, about dumping her remains.

There was also a five-page handwritten letter, and it basically talked about some unknown female who was wearing a white waitress dress, which will come back later, in the area of Powerline Road, which is a road that will also come back later.

Didn't say the date, didn't say the time, but talked about terrorizing her, killing her, doing the same kind of thing.

There was also sketches involved in all of this.

And these sketches were what he had drawn of women hanging, being tortured, being murdered, being mutilated.

Very vile, very focused. Also, all these descriptions, like I said before, on what happens after you die.

Urination, defecation, all the awful stuff.

They also found an envelope that was addressed to Gerard Schaefer, and it was from a publication company.

Because remember when I told you before, he used to pretend to be a research assistant to try to get information.

This letter was postmarked May 15, 1970, and it was a two-page letter.

And it said, can't help you with information you requested.

And the letter that was attached was one they had sent back to Schaefer.

And it was him asking for information about women being executed and wearing waterproof underwear during executions.

What the fuck? Yeah. There was another envelope addressed to him.

And it was from Victoria, Australia from 1971.

And it contained 13 black and white photographs of nude women.

11 of them appeared to be in the middle of being hanged.

One was decapitated. What the fuck is this world?

Yeah. It's horrific shit. Yeah. In May 1973, and there was more.

There was even more. There was hundreds of pages of handwritten, what he said was fictional stories that he had written about several abductions, tortures, mutilations, murders.

The most horrific shit you will ever read in your life.

Patrick Kendrick has a lot in the book, but...

It's a lot. Now, in May 1973, he was solidly charged with first-degree murder in the cases of Susan Place and Georgia Jessup.

Because after they found all that shit, they were like, well, I think you did it.

Now that the trial was about to begin, these things were all over the news.

Because of this, two investigators started speaking to a lot of people who suddenly felt like Gerard Schaefer may have known their missing loved ones.

Because now this is going everywhere. And they're like, wait.

They might have been around that guy. I think I have a connection here.

And I have somebody who's missing. A guy named Raymond Cummings was a guy who was friends with John Higgins, who was Mary Briscalina's friend.

She was the one who Elsie and her were last seen with.

Now, John Higgins and Ray Cummings told investigators that they saw photos of Gerard Schaefer on the news and they said, wait, we know him.

But he said, but we know him as Gary Shepard.

Mm-hmm. Gary Shepard now. Oh, yeah. Exactly like Jerry Shepard.

Now, Shepard had told these guys that he was an ex-police officer, and they told investigators that the reason Mary and Bob Wyatt, whose car they were driving that night, were not dating anymore was because when she went missing, he was sure before that that she was seeing Gary Shepard, that something was going on between them.

So that 100% tells you that they weren't, like, around each other.

True. was like 13, right? She was 14. 14.

Yeah. They had been seen together on several occasions.

Several people identified a photo of Gerard Schaefer as Gary Shepard.

And now someone came forward to say that Mary and Elsie were also last seen getting into a car with Gary Shepard.

Oh, no. So 100%. When all of this happened, Mary Briscalina's family were asked to see if any of the belongings found in Schaefer's home and his mother's home belonged to Mary.

They identified three pieces of very unique jewelry as belonging to her.

Oh, no. One was a Madonna in cross metal.

Another was a bracelet with 11 rose beads on it.

And the third was a green glass pin. And it was shaped by, it was either shaped like a dog or like a poodle or something like that.

Okay. It was just very unique. It was like green glass.

Right. Like not something everybody would have on them.

Yeah. He had her jewelry. Now, Patrick Kendrick asked investigators why they never bought these murder cases against Gerard.

They were like, OK, well, clearly he did this.

Like you have all the information you need aside from a full blown confession.

And so Patrick Kendrick was like, why did you not charge him?

And the police were basically like he was going to prison already.

So. Oh, yeah, that's how that works. He's already going to prison.

Literally told Kendrick they believed he was the prime suspect and that this evidence was damning to say the least.

But they were like, we had it, I guess. So there's that.

Now, a newspaper clipping telling of the missing girls, Lee Hainline Bonadiz and Carmen Halleck, were also found among his possessions.

Just a newspaper clipping about that. Oh, yeah, just that.

And there was also found in those belongings, just to tie this back to other ones, a story about a woman named Carmen.

He had named the victim in his story Carmen.

In the story, there's a woman wearing a black dress and black heels, which is what she was seen leaving in the evening that she went missing.

And those things were not found in her home, those pieces of clothing.

And he mentions something in this story about auburn hair, which she had.

And auburn hair is not, like, that's a very specific hair.

And she had it. Now, this story about this particular person is...

Brutal in a way I can't even describe to you.

You're not going to say it, right? Nope.

Cool. Definitely not, because I couldn't even say these words out loud.

I could not even say this story out loud.

The description of her assault, torture, rape, murder, and mutilation is unlike anything your worst nightmares could conjure up.

No. Like, I write horror. This is something so beyond and so real.

Like it is so reality and it's so horrific that I can't even begin to, I can't even begin.

And Patrick Kendrick has the entire thing of this particular story in the book.

I, again, encourage you to read that book because it's so fascinating.

And he did such hard work investigating this case.

But I just want to warn you that is in there.

He gives you a warning in the book that it's coming.

So you're not just going to stumble upon it.

Yeah. It's really bad. Just to forewarn you.

But, again, read Patrick Kendrick's book.

Now, either way, I don't want to scare anybody away from reading it because, again, he gives you a warning.

But either way, there's literally a story about a woman named Carmen and a description of what she's wearing when the real Carmen Halleck went missing and the color of her hair.

And he writes in this tale, quote, the lower jaw I buried and the rest of her skull with the face smashed in and the teeth pulled out.

I put in another canal some 10 miles from the rest of the body.

Two of the teeth found in his home were that of Carmen Halleck.

And he never got tried for her murder. Nope.

And they were identified as belonging to Carmen Halleck.

And he just found them somewhere. Is that what they thought?

Forensic dental professionals said these are identified as Carmen.

And she was like, he talks about it in that story.

Well, I just don't understand how they could not, why they wouldn't do anything.

And as if this doesn't prove it, a man named John Dolan came forward to say that he had actually been Gerard Schaefer's roommate at one time.

And John Dolan said he, John Dolan, had dated Carmen at one point.

So he goes, Gerard definitely knew her. She was coming back to our house.

He had seen her. He had talked to her. Right.

He knew who she was. What the fuck? They also knew each other because of the Brower Junior College thing.

Like there was so many connections between this and they're like, yeah, I don't know.

Yes. Her teeth are just in his. I don't know.

He's so crazy. He's saying he just wrote a story and it's like, oh, what the fuck?

Her teeth are in his home. Carmen was never found.

Carmen was never found. And in this story, he talks about how he like made sure she would never be found.

Why do you think he went to such lengths to make sure she was specifically not found?

I don't know. I don't know. Because she, maybe because she was one of the first ones.

Yeah. She was an early one. Okay. Like way, she was with Lee.

Like that was one of the really early ones in 69, 70 that he was, I think, starting out.

And was Lee found? Lee was, she eventually is found.

Okay. Okay. Not only that, but they also found jewelry in his possession that was identified as having belonged to Lee.

Wow. Her family confirmed it. There was a swimming club pin, a Disney pin, and a gold locket with the name Lee inscribed on it.

Oh my god, dude. There was also a story, another horrifically graphic one, that described the torture and murder of a woman, like I said before, in a white waitress uniform.

Oh. that's what lee was wearing the day she disappeared the store she was literally supposed to be at work and was wearing a white waitress uniform the story mentioned that this woman was tortured and killed off power line road well in 1978 later a group of men hunting found the top half of a human skull off Power Line Road.

The top half? The skull had three large bullet holes in it and was later identified as that of Lee Hainline.

That's awful. That would be one hell of a coincidence.

I would say so. And also, you heard that right.

The top half of a skull, which turns out to be part of his thing, is he cuts the skull in half.

How? He's... unlike anything you've ever seen.

They found several of Colette Goodenough's handwritten and signed poems in this search as well.

And they also found an ID card with the name Colette Goodenough to enter treatment at an emotional health center she was attending.

Because like I said, she had been entering professional treatment.

They found an ID card from one with her name on it.

They also found her literal birth certificate in They found her passport and other identifications with her name and information on them.

In his home. In his home. Later in 1977, a truck driver found two entangled skeletons while walking along a canal in St.

Lucie, Florida. The arms of the skeletons were tied together and to each other with bailing wire, which is like really gnarly, like silver wire.

Yeah. And the tops of the skulls had both been cut off.

Okay. Just like Lee. It took a long time, but forensic dental experts identified the skeletons of those of Colette Goodenough and Barbara Wilcox.

In 1981, that canal in St. Lucie where they were found dried up and someone found the top of Barbara Wilcox's skull there.

Colette's top of her skull has never been found.

What? It's like in one of the stories, which was handwritten, he also says that whoever his like he calls his bad guy the ghoul.

Okay. He's so fucking stupid. He's the ghoul.

And he talks about how he used to use pliers and he would pull out gold fillings.

They found a shit ton of gold fillings in his possession.

And he always and he says something in his writings that like we always salvage something from the bodies.

And he talked about gold fillings again.

They found so many of them. Like it is very clear that this is not fiction.

No, it is reality. He's living it like it's stuff in his house.

They also found envelopes with the name Jerry Shepard on them in his position.

Come on. What more did they want, though?

Yeah, come on. And it also became clear that he was not like... another serial killer that they could point to like this was a very we he was so beyond anything his predilections were so specific and so fucking vile he was obsessed with torture he was obsessed with humiliation and causing terror in his victims and he also sexualized defecation and urination so he would force his victims to drink a lot so that they would urinate while he hung them He also loved to dismember and mutilate, and he was a necrophiliac.

Oh. It was just a storm of the worst shit.

In one person-shaped evil cloud of swamp gas.

Like, that's what he was. Yeah. He's a person-shaped...

Evil cloud of swamp gas. That's what he is.

And he had the benefit of wearing a fucking police uniform while doing it.

That's insane to me. So people trusted him.

Now, during the murder trial, Schaefer literally smiled like he was posing for photos.

Because he probably was. Mothers and fathers took the stand and he would lock eyes with them and smile like cheese.

What a fucking dick. Vile creature is what he is.

A lot happened during the trial, like Schaefer's friend calling in a bomb threat to move the trial.

Yeah. I have to go. Read the book. It says it all.

But something came out about Georgia Jessup and Susan Place's crime scene that was also pretty wild and unexplained.

Patrick Duvall from the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office was on scene the day that they found those bodies.

And he was cross-examined on the stand. And during this, he talked about how horrific that scene really was.

And he said he found both the girls' scalps in different places.

And the tree was clearly used as a method of torture and murder.

Excuse me. He said there was a bunch of chop marks in the tree on the bottom.

And there were pieces of cloth from the girls' dresses in the chop marks.

Yeah. He also mentioned that the initials G.J. were carved into the tree and they were done recently.

He said it hadn't healed over yet. And Patrick Kendrick explains in his book that people either think that Gerard John Schaefer went back to the crime scene and did this.

Like G.J. got interrupted or just didn't finish his initials or that Georgia Jessup carved her initials into that tree to be identified while watching her friend being massacred because she may have done this so she could be identified later.

And that's the thing, too. Sorry. Oh, no.

No, you go ahead. That's the thing, too, with how he picks two people is one of them has to sit there and watch the other one and know what's going to happen to them.

And they said that was 100 percent part of it.

Absolutely. He would pick two women because he wanted one of them to watch the other one.

That is. And just we can't even fathom what possibly happened out there.

You can't even rap. And none of us should.

None of us should ever. Just to hear that the cloth from their dresses or whatever they were wearing was in the tree.

Like, he's just like hacking away at them.

Yeah, he's... So beyond an animal or like he's just he's undescribed.

I was going to say that's not even an animal.

He really is. And during the murder trial for Susan Well, or excuse me, for Susan Place and Georgia Jessup, Nancy Trotter and Sue Wells took the stand again.

Wow. During the murder trial, like two badasses and testified about their ordeal with Gerard Schaefer.

Meanwhile, his lawyers were trying to paint these two survivors as runaways and basically saying they were being taught a lesson and he just got carried away.

Oh, yeah. Taught a lesson. Have you ever been taught a lesson like that?

And they're like, OK. Yeah. Like, sure. at that point i'd be like do you want to learn the same lesson why don't we have him take you out there too is that a lesson you want to learn you can figure out the lesson that i learned yeah oh my tell me what i learned having to sit there and hear that and to sit there and be like yeah okay yeah it was just a lesson yeah thank you for that and you know you know some of these men truly believe that oh absolutely truly believe he was teaching you a lesson and it's like fuck you right So the state brought up Dr. Joseph Davis, the Dade County medical examiner, to explain the findings of the finding of the bodies.

And the picture painted from him was even worse.

He said both heads were missing and there was evidence that a sharp instrument was used to cut them off.

One of them had cuts into the fourth cervical vertebrae, so he'd cut directly through.

And he went into, like, detail about the crime scenes and about how, like, there's an interview in the book about this that, like, they go back and forth, like, the cross-examination and how he's, like, the attorney was trying to be, like, so this couldn't be self-inflicted.

And he was, like, no, I do not think that they cut their own heads off.

No. Thank you for asking, though. Like, he's literally, like, are you fucking kidding me?

Thanks for wasting my actual time. that is the exact day that they were taken from their house oh wow like a year to the day he was found guilty of first-degree murder for the deaths of both susan place and georgia jessup you know that reincarnation is real georgia because georgia did because georgia did that 100 that's what i was thinking the date again the exact day yeah Now, October 4th, on what would have been Susan Place's 19th birthday, he was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences.

Bye. Like, on Susan Place's 19th birthday.

Yeah. Come on. That's some spiritual shit right there.

Now, he was smiling and chatting with reporters outside the courtroom.

He told them he had written something on the prison cell wall in the courthouse where they kept him.

And what they found out it said was, this is the land of lost content.

I see it shining plain. The happy highway is where I went and cannot go again.

And I did not look it up. I wanted to see if you knew what that was from.

Can you say it one more time? I'm sorry.

This is the land of lost content. I see it shining plain.

The happy highways where I went and cannot go again.

It does sound familiar. Doesn't it sound familiar?

I was hoping that you would catch, but I don't know what it is.

I'm going to look it up right now. I just wanted to see if you would know what it was.

No, it sounds very familiar. I feel like I'm going to be pissed when we figure it out.

Okay, I looked it up. And it is a poem by A.E.

Hausman. And it is called A Shropshire Lad XL.

I don't know why this sounded familiar to us.

It sounded very familiar, but maybe we read it in like something.

I don't know. Like high school, probably.

But basically the analysis of it is that, I mean, the analysis of this act that he did was to seem like he is intelligent and deep in any way, but he is not.

But it's basically like that whole little stanza is that like, I'm looking back with nostalgically at like what I once had and where I once lived, but I can't go back there.

Right. So it's like, so it's like you did.

I don't know why I said so. It's like twice.

I recognized it as soon as the second one came up.

But it's basically him being like. I murdered a bunch of people and did all these horrible things.

So I can't go back to that life I once had where I was a police officer and I was this and I was that.

I can't go back to that land of being free to abduct teenage girls and murder them because now I have to face this.

Yeah, exactly. That's what that says to me.

Like, I can't go back to that life of killing.

Which to me is... Because I've been caught. pretty confessional to me one might say pretty confessional but to him i think he thinks it's like deep kind of a confession but not really and it's also like him being like i just love poetry guys i bet and it's like you're you're fucking idiot no one believes you read poetry get out of here i wonder if one of the girls showed him that poem i'm sorry who did you say loved poetry i wonder if colette showed him that poem i wondered that too because colette wrote poetry a lot or maybe even had a book of poetry with her and he read it in there It's true.

It definitely could have been that because he was also a creative writing major at one point.

He did enjoy it. He may have read it. But that's not a bad point that Colette probably, because she was known to be a poetry girl.

Right. She wrote it. She read it. She always had it with her.

Right. So that would be something. And that's an obscure one, it feels like.

Yeah. It feels like something that maybe she would have brought up.

Yeah. Which I think is another like he's doing another needle at the parents, basically.

Now, remember, at this time, he's still married, by the way.

I don't know if we all forgot that. The way that you just dropped a motherfucking bomb.

I thought he got divorced. He got divorced from his first wife, Martha.

He's still married to that girl he met at the grocery store.

Oh, shit. He is still married. Didn't have kids, but he's still married.

Because this all happened in the span of not that long of time.

It's only a couple of years. That poor woman.

So this woman is still his wife. Still married to him.

Oh, my God. Watching all this. Oh, my God.

I can't imagine. Oh, yeah. And we're going to get back to her in a second because something happens.

OK, so Susan Place's mother, Lucille, said after the verdict, quote, I'll never accept the fact that Susan has been murdered or that she is dead.

I cry every day how she must have suffered if I only knew right now that her death for her was quick.

But who knows what he did to her? And she also said she was happy with the sentencing.

She said, quote, At first I thought I would like to see him dead, but I think people suffer more with confinement. which i agree no now his writings were a pivotal part of convicting him it was introduced as evidence like here they are he wrote what happened word for word some of the names of his writings by the way into the mind of the ghoul flies in her eyes oh my god blonde on a stick and whores what to do about him I want to castrate him.

And in 1991, in an interview, he was asked about his writings.

And he goes on this long rant. You can look it up on Google, his interviews.

They're wild to watch. Can I ask if he's still alive?

He's not. And don't worry. It's a good ending.

It's a good ending. Cool, cool, cool. But he went on like, so he's asked about the writings and he goes on this long rant about how they're just fantasy and other horror writers don't get blamed for doing the things they write.

But I think that's because they don't have teeth in their house, Gerard.

I think that's why. Yeah. I think that's why.

I would say so. I would say so. Which I was like, I was waiting for the interviewer to be like, I don't know.

I think that's because they don't have body parts in their house.

Yeah. That are connected to actual murder victims.

And jewelry belonging to murder victims.

Like he literally acts like they're in. At one point, he acts like the interviewer is just begging him to read these out loud because he keeps saying, well, you'll just use it like a confession if I read it out loud.

And the guy's like, you really don't have to.

It's fine. Like, I'm like, I don't want.

I'm honestly not asking you to. And then he goes with absolutely no pushing.

He goes, you want me to read it? OK, I'll read it.

I'll read it out loud. And the guy's like, I don't want you to read it, sir.

And he goes, I'll just he goes, I'll just trust you to do the right thing.

So he was like, you're going to use a snippet of this as a confession.

And then he's like, all right, I'll read it.

I want to read it out loud. What? Because you are that narcissistic and you're that desperate for anybody to give you any attention that you're like, all right, I'll just read it out loud, I guess.

What the fuck? He wanted to read it so badly out loud and he's cheesing while he's reading these vile things out loud.

He can barely contain himself. And he says he is better than Stephen King.

I beg to differ. To which I say, no, you're not.

Nay, sir. And he's just being, he says, I'm just being convicted because I wrote horror.

And he says, and I was exceptional at it.

That's why I'm being convicted because I am an exceptional writer.

That's why. To which I say, no, it was the teeth.

I think partly it was the teeth found in your house.

I think it was the teeth and I think it was the birth certificate of a murder victim and the jewelry of a murder victim.

The several witnesses seeing you with murder victims.

The stained pillowcases that you wrote about in your writings.

The machetes, the weapons. Probably all that.

The fact that you freely admitted and were convicted of bringing two girls under the same circumstances to the same place where other murder victims were found and trying to kill them.

And also... Based off of the titles of your writings, I don't necessarily think you're a prolific writer.

Nope, don't think so. Into the mind of the ghoul.

Blonde on a stick. Horrific. Yeah, I don't think so.

No. Now, it has been speculated a lot how many murders he is truly responsible for.

I mean, I bet. Because there's definitely more.

Oh, yeah. Because around this time, too, there was a lot of hitchhikers, a lot of runaways.

A lot of people going missing. And unfortunately, he had that...

Women are, you know, that Madonna whore complex.

And he wanted to his whole thing was I want to rid the world of these whores.

That's what I want to do. And if he thought you were away from his like his value system, then he was going to rid the world of you.

And did he say what his value system was?

Well, he goes back and forth with it because he's a bullshitter.

Because he just hates women. He just likes to kill people.

Yeah, exactly. And he just hates women. But you know there were some like sex workers.

There were some people traveling through, runaways, people who didn't have families who didn't report them missing.

Right. That were definitely on his list.

Absolutely. And just the fact that there were people that we know he killed that were never found.

Yeah, exactly. We know he's capable of hiding a body.

Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, very well. Absolutely.

So District Attorney Robert Stone actually had the list at 34.

He believes he is at least 34. Wow. Now, he actually wrote in a letter because he was writing to his ex-girlfriend, Sondra London there for a while out of prison.

We'll get to her in a second. He wrote, as you know, and this was in 1991, he said, I've always harped on District Attorney Robert Stone's list of 34.

In 1973, I sat down and drew up a list of my own.

Now, remember, he's claiming he's never murdered anyone.

Right. But now he's writing a list. As I recall, my list was just over 80.

I'm sure. So, yeah. So then he went on and said, I'm not claiming a huge number.

I would say it runs between 80 and 110. But I thought you didn't kill anybody.

Yeah. But over eight years and three continents.

Oh, please. And this is really horrific.

And I just want to warn you right now. Trigger warning.

This is just like a really gross thing to say.

He said, one whore drowned in her own vomit while watching me disembowel her girlfriend.

I'm not sure that counts as a valid kill.

Did the pregnant ones count as two kills?

It gets confusing. Oh. Fuck off, dude. That's what he wrote.

And then he tried to say... That's horrific.

I didn't kill anyone. What are you talking about?

He's also... Like, he did absolutely 100% kill these people.

He is writing this shit for shock value.

Exactly. Three continents. Exactly. He 100% killed more people, and he's a vile, sadistic monster of unbelievable proportions.

But I also think he's a little bitch. Mm.

And he likes to scare people. That's part of his thing.

That's part of what he would do to these women was terror.

He inflicted terror on them. He likes to do it to people when he's in prison.

He likes to do it to people anytime he can.

So it's one of those things. I just like to write.

It's like Albert Fish. I just like to write this shit because I get off on it.

Exactly. And I can scare people. He's reliving it.

This is what I would have done. Yeah. And then I watched another interview with him and he said, I know a lot of serial killers in here.

Remember, he was in prison in Florida. So in the 70s.

So he did. He said, I know a lot of serial killers in here and none of them deny it.

Yeah, most of them do, actually. Like, a lot of them deny it.

Most of them do. Like, Ted Bundy was like, I didn't do that.

He actually tried to prove his own case, if you remember.

But in the same interview, he says the latest Donald Evans, you can't shut him up.

Donald Evans was convicted of killing at least three people between 85 and 91.

And unfortunately, he's right about that.

The guy confessed like a billion times, even to people at rest stops.

Like, he couldn't stop confessing. Wow. But it's like, no, that you just pulled one that's like a weird one that just like liked confessing to people.

Right. And then he says in this interview, he was like flexing that he like talked to other serial killers.

And I was like, are you all right, sir? He's like, this is a club.

He said in this interview, oddest tool. I talked to him this morning.

Oh, cool. It's because you're locked in a fucking cage with him because you're a goddamn evil creature from the depths of the bowels of hell's ass.

Like that's that's not cool that you're like, oh, I talked to him this morning.

Yeah, you're locked in the same cage, you idiot.

Of course, you're going to see him. I'm jealous.

You're dumb. You both got caught. And he said he goes, Otis doesn't deny anything.

He says Henry Lee Lucas is lying. He says we killed over 100 people together and he's trying to say we didn't.

So we're just believing Otis Toole now? Like, we've picked Otis Toole as the haven of truth in the unholy duo of Otis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas.

The beacon of light. We're really just looking at him as like, well, Otis said he did.

Yeah, well, Otis said. Otis, okay, yeah, definitely.

For sure. Between the two of them, I'm good.

We haven't covered them yet, but... Are we going to?

Just you wait. We are going to. It's going to be bad.

But okay, Gerard, we get it. You're in prison in Florida.

You're going to meet some bad guys. So less than two months after the trial, this is where we get back to his wife.

Oh, okay. Yeah. What's up? Two months after the trial.

No. His lawyer, his defense attorney, Elton Schwartz, and Gerard's wife, Teresa, got married.

She divorced Schaefer for this man. He married, like, she married the man that was defending her husband against murder.

His attorney married the wife of the man he was defending against.

What? What? Yes. What? Yes. Two months after the trial, Teresa, his wife, who he was still married to, married his defense attorney.

What? I found an article from 1990 where he was requesting a new trial because his defense attorney was just getting, he says, my defense attorney was just getting me put in jail in order to marry my wife.

I mean that. Which would be valid. Yeah.

It would be valid if it was anyone else.

Obviously, this guy is a raging, murderous, disgusting monster and deserves to have his attorney steal his wife.

But like, that's a conflict of interest.

Elton Schwartz, what the fuck were you doing?

You just gave him all the leverage in the world to claim that he didn't get a fair trial because you wanted him in jail so you could marry his wife.

What the fuck? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Love makes you do crazy things. Sure does.

Like, make this guy look like he has a valid point.

What the fuck? Blew my goddamn mind. I don't even know if... Blew my mind.

Yeah, I'm fried over here. Like, what the fuck?

I'm just like, in this same year that this happened, his former girlfriend, Sondra London, published, self-published, excuse me, no one was actually going to publish this, a collection of his stories.

She published them. Yeah, we have to stop here because I'm actually physically, mentally, emotionally, financially just done.

It is called killer fiction, and I hate it.

Why did she fucking do that? Why would you ever do that?

Why would she do that? The issue here, too, is these are not only his sick fucking thoughts.

This is what he did. They're like legitimate confessions just veiled as fiction.

They're thinly veiled, too. And he just wants to tell everyone what he did without getting in trouble for it.

That's all this was. And I'm sorry, so is this the same woman that married his defense attorney?

No, this is Sondra London, his former girlfriend from high school.

Yep. And she also got involved with other serial killers.

I have to... So she was, like, into this thing.

You... Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But she also... And later she was like, oh, yeah, no, I don't want anything to do with him.

But I'm like, you published his stories.

Why did you do that? Why would you put his stories out for the world to see?

Did she ever say why she did that? She just... Her interviews are wild.

You need to find her on there, too, because...

This is him—it's another way for him to be powerful and for him to make people read what he has actually done.

Right. And even— Like, for the families to know that those books are out there.

Or that that book is out there. Even some of the inmates who were in there with him who were actual serial killers said they couldn't even read his writings.

They didn't even want him to read them out loud because they were like, that's too much.

Yeah. Yeah. He would also, for a while, sue anyone who mentioned him in anything.

Every author who mentioned him in a true crime book, he would sue them, drag them into court.

It would get dropped, but they would have to pay legal fees and all his shit would be covered.

What the fuck? He even sued someone who referred to him as overweight.

He sued them for referring to him as overweight.

Like you could medically just like figure that out.

Yep. He also claimed that his writing was fiction.

He was innocent. But he said they were writing about me like I really did this.

And it's like you are in prison for murder.

You've been convicted. You are in prison.

There's no smear campaign going on, sir.

You're literally a convicted murderer. And he would say, I never killed anyone, but I am also the most prolific serial killer in history.

He was a born again Christian or he claimed to be one.

But again, he was a bullshitter of the highest order.

He was also a snitch in prison. He would pretend to help other inmates with legal stuff, claiming that it was because he was in law enforcement.

He could do this. And then he would turn around and sell them all out and tell everything that they had told them.

You and like, where did you think you were going to get with that?

He claimed that he had an accomplice at one point named Tony and that Tony was the one who planted those teeth in his house and like framed him.

Totally, dude. Yeah. And this is a letter that he wrote to his ex-girlfriend, Sondra London, while in prison.

So, again, he's claiming he hasn't killed anybody, but then saying he also has killed everybody.

He said, and this is this is where he his head's at.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. One drowned in her own vomit while watching me disembowel her girlfriend.

So he claimed that again, which is a little scary.

Yeah, I think that definitely happened. I've crucified women, watched the flies work on living flesh, and seen gagged women strangled to death on their own vomitus.

I've skinned women. I enjoyed each and every experience.

That's what he had to say. This is the thing.

Why is that letter allowed to leave prison?

I never understand that shit. Thank you.

Because that's what I don't understand either.

How was she able to get this? Like, no, that doesn't need to leave prison walls.

Because they're being read. These letters are being read before they go out.

Why are you being like, fuck no, you can't write this shit?

There must be, like, some kind of law or something.

But, like, I don't really think it should apply.

He lodged over 20 appeals. They obviously all failed.

Just, like, stop wasting everyone's time and just shut up and die in there.

Oh, yeah. Now... British criminologist Colin Wilson wrote about him, and I thought it was a really great way to describe him.

He said, Gerard John Schaeffer was undoubtedly one of the nastiest serial killers of the 20th century.

Schaeffer suffers from a kind of halitosis of the soul, and the stench quickly induces disgust.

Halitosis of the soul. Halitosis of the soul is a brilliant way to describe him.

That's pretty rad. Now, December 3rd, 1995, when he was 49 years old, Gerard John Schaefer was murdered in prison by fellow inmate Vincent Rivera.

His cell door was left open. Oh. Weirdly.

How'd that happen? I wonder how. He was stabbed over 40 times.

His throat was cut ear to ear and both of his eyes were gouged out. deserved yeah this man deserved to have the worst done to him yeah i will say that i don't even yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah whatever i'm fine with that one bye oh yeah oh no absolutely i'm absolutely fine with that i'm actually just like not saying yeah you're like i'm just wowie in june 2022

A Jane Doe from 1972 was identified as 15-year-old Susan Gale Poole.

She had gone missing before Christmas in 1972, and her skeletal remains were found June 1974.

She was found tied to a mangrove tree with wire.

Now they are pretty sure she is one of the victims of Gerard John Shafer.

Wow. And she was finally identified this year.

I'm happy that she was able to be identified.

Her family was very happy that she was identified.

And they are hoping to know what happened to her.

Oh, God. But they have to find out what happened to her.

And now he's dead. So it's hard to really find out for sure now.

Right. But it was interesting that in June 2022, this is still unfolding.

Wow. And that... is the story of Gerard John Schaefer.

Coming in at like a pretty chill two hours and I can't see that far minutes.

16 minutes, I think. How do you see that far?

Again, I was going to cut this in two, but I was like, I don't know where to cut that.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't want to cut it in a weird spot just to cut it.

Yeah, no, I agree. Sometimes you need a long episode.

Sometimes, hey, maybe you're going away.

People drive a lot of places. Or you can just digest this over a few days.

Maybe you have so much laundry to do. So much laundry.

So many dishes. So much. That was a terrible one.

Yeah. I'm glad it's over. I'm glad it's out of my system and into yours now.

I'm sorry about that. Give someone a hug.

Give someone a hug. I don't even care if you like hugs.

I don't even like them. Go give somebody a hug.

This guy sucked. In every way that any human could ever suck.

That man put it perfectly. Halitosis of the soul.

Halitosis of the soul. That reminds me, here's a little palate cleanser for you.

You know that book Halitosis that I used to read to the girls during TT bedtime?

Yeah, it's a good book. That was also the ex-girlfriend of Salem Saberhagen on Sabrina the Teenage Witch was Hallie Tosis.

Oh, my God. I forgot about that. Yep. This bitch can connect anything to Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

And I will. And I think that's where we should end this, right?

I think it is. But again, guys, go read that book by Patrick Kendrick, The American Ripper, and I will I will tag it in here.

There's also there's a I mean, there's a ton of articles on the Internet about this guy.

And there's a ton of newspaper articles you can read on newspapers dot com because I love that that site so much.

I fucking love newspapers dot com. But honestly, like Kendrick did an amazing job and go listen to those other podcast.

I didn't listen to all of them, but I'm going to now.

But I listened to part of the Notorious podcast where they interviewed him and it was really fascinating.

I've been meaning to listen to that show.

Really well done. Yeah. I've heard really great things.

I'll link that in here. Check it out. I'm going to start listening to that.

So there you go. And buy that book, Halitosis, for your kids.

It's about a dog with bad breath saving the family.

There you go. And watch the Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode with Halitosis, the ex-girlfriend.

And we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird.

I'm literally never going to tell you not to keep it as weird as Gerard Schaefer, because if I have to tell you that, you should probably not be walking this earthly planet.

Nah. Love you. Bye. Bye. Listen to that thunder.

Bye. I'm not. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.

But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.

The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.

His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.

Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.

I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.

As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.

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[The Horrifying Crimes of Gerard John Schaefer: The Killer Cop]-[Episode 358: Gerard John Schaefer "The Hangman"]

📋 Summary

The Twisted Life of the 'Killer Cop'

A History of Violence and Manipulation

The Anatomy of a Predator

The Survivors: Nancy Trotter and Sue Wells

A Legacy of Failure and Justice

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript