On this day, June 26, in 1957, a Washington-area jazz musician forced a couple off a remote road near Annapolis, then shot and killed the woman while her boyfriend escaped.
During the sweep, police found a building full of violent pornography and photos of murdered women.
The killing of Margaret Harold remained unsolved until two years later, when the decomposing bodies of Mildred Jackson and her 5-year-old daughter were found near Apple Grove, Va., not far from the abandoned building of the culprit’s hideout.
The media picked up the story, labeling the killer the “Sex Beast.” Tips led the FBI to Melvin Rees, then working at a piano store in Arkansas. Inside a saxophone case, they found a gun that matched the one used in the killings and a newspaper clipping about the Jacksons’ slaying with a chilling note, “Now the mother and daughter were mine.”
Detectives found evidence that linked Rees to the slayings of four other young women in the Maryland area.
Rees was convicted of the Harold and Jackson murders. He died in prison from heart failure in 1995.
