An independent truck driver from Missoula, Montana, Wayne Nance had been known as a "weirdo" since his teens, when he boasted of worshipping Satan and once used a hot coathanger to brand himself with Satanic symbols. [ReadOn]

Al Neelley couldn't get along with women. His first marriage was a violent debacle, marked by savage beatings, and he once served time for shooting his wife in the back with a pistol. Defense attorneys claim that wife number two received the same kind of treatment, and worse, transforming her into a virtual slave, but Alvin tells another story, describing Judith Ann as his murderous soul-mate, the "brains" behind most of the dozen-odd murders he later confessed.  [ReadOn]

A homosexual drifter, Kenneth Neu claimed his first victim on September 2, 1933, in the person of wealthy New Yorker Lawrence Shead. The men met in Times Square, and Shead followed Neu to the latter's hotel room. [ReadOn]

The town of Somersworth, New Hampshire, is a peaceful place, immune to the endemic violence that has blighted larger cities in the years since World War II. It is a place of simple pleasures, a traditional respect for God and country, unaccustomed to the limelight of publicity. [ReadOn]

In 1966, authorities in Bergen County launched a probe of nine suspicious deaths at Riverdell Hospital, a small osteopathic facility located in Oradell, New Jersey. In each case, patients were admitted to the hospital for surgery and died of unrelated causes, before or after routine surgical procedures. [ReadOn]

Between September 1965 and August 1966, the Jersey Shore of Monmouth and adjoining Ocean County was the scene of half a dozen unsolved murders, marked in nearly every case by similar - if not identical - technique. [ReadOn]

New Year is a time of fresh beginnings, marked by resolutions for the future and a sense of cautious optimism, but for homicide detectives in Louisiana, there would be no celebration over New Year 1988. On January 1, the naked, strangled corpse of 27-year-old Ruth Peart was found in the crawl space beneath a neighbor's house, around the corner from her own New Orleans home. [ReadOn]

On May 25, 1985, Janet Scott, age 85, was found dead in her New York hotel room. An autopsy determined that death was caused by repeated blows to the head with a heavy, sharp instrument similar to an ax or hatchet. [ReadOn]

Investigators cautiously refused to speculate on possible connections in the deaths of five women, strangled in Manhattan and Brooklyn between March and August 1982, but spokesmen for NYPD told the press that a link in the series of crimes was "not discounted." [ReadOn]

In January 1973, a series of brutal, stabbings cast a pall over New York City's free-wheeling homosexual community, sparking angry demands for police protection in quarters where officers are normally viewed as the enemy. [ReadOn]

On March 21, 1986, Pedro Gonzalez, a 43-year-old restaurant worker, was found tied up and strangled in his Corona, Queens, apartment. Six days later, homicide detectives told the press his death bore similarities to two other homicides in Queens, committed since July of 1985. [ReadOn]

On September 29, 1915, Joseph Miller, night watchman at a pier on South 11th Street, in the Williamsburg section of New York City, noticed two dark objects floating in the Hudson River. Scrambling into a boat, Miller followed the current and fished out the pieces of flotsam, appalled to discover that two baby girls had been thrown in the river to drown. [ReadOn]

On June 6, 1990, identical handwritten letters were mailed in New York City to the New York Post and the production office of the CBS news program 60 Minutes. The letters read: This is the Zodiac the twelve sign will die when the belts in the heaven are seen the first sign is dead on march 8 1990 1:45 AM [ReadOn]

While homicide detectives in Ohio stalked the Cleveland "torso killer" through the latter 1930s, they were periodically distracted by reports of unsolved slayings from the area of New Castle and West Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [ReadOn]

One team killer who was in it for the thrill was Leonard Lake.  When he was arrested in 1985 for illegal possession of a weapon, he swallowed a cyanide capsule.  The police were mystified by his rather extreme reaction, but then they found out his secrets. [ReadOn]

Some people believed she was the unluckiest mother alive.  Life magazine even did a story on her in 1963 as the most famous bereaved mother in the country.  Marie Noe had one child after another, ten in all, and every single one of them died.  One was stillborn, one died right after birth, but the others had all seemed healthy.  [ReadOn]

Canadian born in 1908, Northcott would later claim that his father sodomized him at age ten. The old man finished his life in a lunatic asylum, and one of Northcott's paternal uncles died years later, in San Quentin, while serving a life term for murder. [ReadOn]

A psychiatric social worker with the Federal Correctional Institute in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Nuss was justly famous for his rehabilitation programs, aimed at helping prisoners "go straight" upon release. Unknown to his associates, Nuss led a double life as "Donald Russell," well known in the local gay community that offered him at least two victims in October 1966. [ReadOn]