On this day, Sept. 18, in 1959, the serial murderer known as the Lonely Hearts Killer was executed in California for killing three women. Harvey Glatman was a TV repairman who posed as a Hollywood detective magazine photographer, luring models to pose for him in crime scene reenactments. He would tie the women up, take their photos, and then rape and murder them. He then posed the bodies and snapped more gruesome photos. Police arrested the sadomasochistic killer in the midst of a kidnapping of a woman he had targeted to be his fourth victim. He confessed and led detectives to the photographic evidence of his earlier crimes.

He was executed in the gas chamber of San Quentin State Prison. His last words were, “I knew this is the way it would be.”