On this day, Sept. 17, in 1973, the trial begins in Florida for former Deputy Sheriff Gerard Schaefer for murders he committed as a patrolman.
Witnesses included two teenage hitchhikers who had been abducted by Schaefer. The girls said Schaefer picked him up in his patrol car, handcuffed them and threatened to sell them into slavery. Schaefer left them balanced under a tree with nooses around their necks so that if they fell they would hang themselves. But the girls escaped and Schaefer telephoned his boss to say he had done something foolish, but was only trying to teach the girls a lesson.
Schaefer, then 26, was fired and charged with false imprisonment.
Four months later, the decomposing bodies of two other teenagers were found tied to a tree. Police searched Schaefer’s home and found the personal possessions of eight young missing women, including one victim’s teeth.
Schaefer was convicted of murdering the two teens, but later boasted of killing 30 girls and women. He received two life terms.
In 1995, Schaefer was fatally stabbed by his cellmate.
— Scott McCabe
