5 of the Most Infamous Serial Killers in Missouri’s History
I had no idea that there were so many serial killers from Missouri, over 100, but these are the worst of the worst in Missouri's history.
The very first serial killer on record is Dr. Bennett Hyde who was convicted of murdering his father-in-law and relatives of his wife back in 1909. He was sentenced to life in prison, but in 1917 that decision was overturned and charges were dismissed. Hyde was a pharmacist and supposedly poisoned his victims, but there was a lot of miscommunication between lawyers and jurors which ended in several mistrials and finally a dismal of charges.
Robert A. Berdella
Bedella was convicted of killing six men from 1984 to 1987 by injecting them with drugs and torturing his victims, the bodies of the six men were never found. On April 4th, 1988 a victim that Berdella was keeping prisoner escaped from his house and that is how he was arrested for murder after the KCPD suspected him of other kidnapping cases. Berdella dies in prison of a heart attack in 1992 and complained that the prison guards were not giving him his heart medication, his death was never investigated.
William Cook Jr.
Born in Joplin, Missouri in 1929, Cook was convicted of killing a family of five (including three children) when he forced them to drive cross-country in their family car. Once he arrived at his located his shot all five family members, and then hijacked another car and killed that driver as well. Cook was caught in Mexico and extradited back to the United States. He was executed in California by asphyxiation gas in 1952
Lorenzo J. Gilyard
Lorenzo Gilyard was convicted of raping and killing at least 13 women from 1977 to 1993 but wasn't arrested for those crimes until 2004. Most of his victims were prostitutes and runaways that he found while working at his trash company in Kansas City. After a blood sample was tested in 2004 (15 years after these women were killed) it was linked to Gilyard in several of the murders. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2007.
John Robinson Sr.
From 1984 to 2000 is when John Robinson Sr. committed his crimes of rape and murder. In all, he was convicted of killing three women but later confessed to five additional murders. He is known as the "Internet Slavemaster" since he met most of his victims online. He was convicted in 2003 and received the death sentence on January 21, 2003. Robinson currently remains on death row in Kansas.
Maury Travis
From Ferguson, Missouri Maury Travis never saw the inside of a courtroom for his 17 plus women that he claimed to have killed. He committed these crimes between 2001 and 2002 and was arrested in St. Louis on June 7, 2002. He was caught when he emailed a map from expedia.com to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch leading police to where one of his victims where. He never made it to trial because on June 10, 2002, Travis hung himself in the St. Louis county jail.
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