The Serial Killer Next Door: The Double Lives of Notorious Murderers

Introduction

They walk among us, living alongside us in the same apartments and neighborhoods as we do. Some farm the food that we eat. Others take care of us when we are sick, diagnosing our ailments and helping nurse us back to health. Still others sell us the homes in which we live or wear the uniforms of the armed forces men and women who protect our national liberty.

They socialize in the same bars as we do or serve us drinks with a knowing smile. Some feel lonely and use online dating apps to meet people like us.

They even look like normal, everyday human beings who seem to have the same hopes, fears, and dreams as the rest of humanity.

Yet they are not us.

They are serial killers.

Growing up, we are taught that monsters are easy to identify. Fairy tales and movies depict them as ugly, grotesque creatures with telltale signs of their evil nature such as a physical deformity or perpetual scowl. The truth is very different. The serial murderer does not like to stand out. He or she wants to survive, if for no other reason than to continue killing and abusing their fellow human beings.

Their number one rule: don’t get caught.

There is an art to blending in with the rest of humanity that the serial killer must master if they are to have any sort of longevity once they begin to murder. The trick is to not stand out from the crowd, or—if one simply cannot help it—to not stand out for the wrong reasons.

As a means to an end, creating a second life is a strategy employed by many serial killers. In this way, they can completely divorce themselves from the brutality and evil of their primary interest. More often than not, it is a smokescreen, a part of the mask that is utilised to help them fly under the radar. Some are loners, but others cultivate a family life, marrying and raising children. They settle down, possibly in suburbia, mowing their yards and exchanging small talk with the neighbors.

There is a significant degree of compartmentalization involved with this process, the construction of an entirely separate persona that is walled off from its murderous counterpart. The serial killer is able to switch between the two, flipping the equivalent of a mental switch that invokes the transformation from apparently loving family man or woman into a sadistic, homicidal beast.

As time passes, however, the line between the two lives is increasingly prone to blurring. Elements of the murderous persona bleed across into the life of the mundane. Cracks develop. Red flags appear, sometimes subtle, sometimes gross, but increasingly frequent until they can no longer be missed. Then comes discovery, capture, and, ultimately, if we are fortunate … justice.

It is this duality of identity, the disparity between public and private lives, that many of us find so fascinating. In my first book for Visible Ink, Serial Killers: The Minds, Methods, and Mayhem of History’s Notorious Murderers, I explored this theme as it relates to many different offenders. Most were well-known criminals such as John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirez, and Ted Bundy. These names are iconic; their faces and list of atrocities infamous throughout modern popular culture. For this second volume, my intent was to put some lesser-known serial killers under the microscope. The names that comprise the chapter list for this book tend toward the obscure, but they are no less fascinating … and, unfortunately, every bit as appalling.

The serial killers on whom this book focuses are grouped together in a loose sequence based upon the nature of their public lives. Within its pages, we will meet paramedics, physicians, and nurses; painters, gardeners, and handymen; chefs, accountants, and real estate brokers. There are even entertainers and media personalities such as the author and TV presenter Jack Unterweger. Many were veterans, having served in their country’s military—some, such as Colonel Russell Williams, were even on active duty at the same time they were committing murder.

A career is not necessary for a serial killer to maintain a separate life. Steady employment is helpful, true, but hardly essential. Neither is being a lone wolf always the case. We will look at murderers such as Australia’s notorious Snowtown Killers, who formed a clique, and couples who killed together, as in the case of Canadians Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka—the so-called Ken and Barbie Killers.

Ranging from drifters to high-ranking military officers, it is clear that serial killers can be found in all walks of life. In addition to profiling 30 of them in this book, I have tried to address their motivations for doing what they do. The reader will undoubtedly notice that in many cases there is a sense of deep resentment and anger either at the world and humanity in general or directed at a specific human being—a parent, a spouse, or lover—which is then projected upon innocent victims.

The age-old debate of nature versus nurture arises again and again within these pages, and each individual chapter provides a slightly different answer. Some serial killers seem to be born broken, and whether they were raised in a warm and loving environment or grew up in an abusive, toxic nightmare they would probably have turned out the same way regardless. They are, to put it succinctly, born with bad wiring.

Others seem to be more a product of their environment and might not have grown into killers if they had gotten a better start in life. For every serial killer coming from a broken home, however, there is one whose family loved them and even doted upon them—perhaps even, in some cases, a little too much.

The reader will notice that the sections in this book vary in length. As I immersed myself in legal documents, reports, and other resource materials, it soon became clear that certain individuals were more suited to getting a deep dive than others. Shorter chapters are interspersed with longer ones in an attempt to break things up somewhat while still maintaining a structure that groups similar cases together.

Lastly, a word about the level of depth and description in the book seems apropos. The author of any true-crime book walks a fine line between providing an appropriate amount of detail in order to catalog the subject matter and not providing so much that the end result appears both lurid and in bad taste. I have striven to strike a balance to the best of my ability, and if the text errs too far on one side or the other, the responsibility lies entirely with me.

The subject of serial killers is, by turns, both fascinating and abhorrent. It is all but impossible to study them and their behavior without feeling a sense of overwhelming compassion for their victims, most of whom suffer an excruciating ordeal at the hands of these monsters. That sense of sympathy can, in some cases, extend to the family members of the murderers themselves, who oftentimes have no idea whatsoever about their loved one’s secret evil side. Our deepest sympathies should certainly extend to the next of kin of the victims whose lives are shattered by the actions of a remorseless predator they will often never meet—sometimes, the emotional damage inflicted upon them is beyond all healing and repair.

Richard Estep

Colorado

16 January 2022

THE BAYOU STRANGLER RONALD J. DOMINIQUE

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any of the serial killers covered in this book managed to successfully maintain two separate and distinct lives. One of them was usually a smokescreen: the mask of a career professional such as a soldier, pilot, police officer, farmer, or real estate agent, to name just a handful of trades. Many had families, loved ones who they cared about and who in turn also cared for them.

The other life was the real them, the raw truth of who each of them really was when all pretenses had been dropped. These were lives filled with torture, rape, and murder.

Some found this juggling of two different facets to be relatively smooth and easy. For others, it was more challenging, the source of much stress and anxiety. They would step out of their respectable blue- or white-collar worlds, snatch up a victim, strike, and then go back to their everyday reality as if nothing had ever happened. Not so in the case of Ronald J. Dominique, a serial killer who lived and moved in the same circles as many of his victims did: on the streets and in the homeless shelters of Louisiana.

During the span of just over eight years, he was responsible for the rape and murder of 23 transient men before his capture in 2006. Despite the sheer number of victims, however, he remains relatively unknown to this day.

Ronald Dominique was born and raised in Thibodaux, Louisiana. There was little in his childhood to suggest that he would one day grow up to become a serial killer. He showed no tendency to harm animals or sign of taking joy through causing pain to others. It was a modest upbringing, spent primarily in a trailer park. He had a reputation for being a good kid, for the most part, who liked to run around and play with other children his own age. His social life was unremarkable, and there were no problems at school, so far as we know.

After graduating from Thibodaux High School in 1983, Ronald Dominique had little in the way of career prospects. Interspersed between periods of unemployment were stints as a meter reader and a side gig delivering pizzas. He could never keep a job for very long, having the habit of somehow managing to rub his employers the wrong way. Dominique eventually developed a reputation for having a bad attitude. It became increasingly difficult for him to find work.

Leading a gay lifestyle was less than easy in 1970s–1980s Louisiana. It was not something one tended to advertise, as prejudice was everywhere. Dominique did frequent gay bars on a regular basis, where he liked to dress up as the female singer Patti LaBelle. Singing her hit songs in front of an appreciative audience brought him great joy.

Once he reached adulthood, Dominique’s helpful and cheerful personality underwent something of a sea change. He became moodier and more introspective, withdrawing into his shell and interacting less with others. Those who knew him remarked upon the change, but there was no obvious cause that anybody could pinpoint.

Dominique had been a fairly clean-cut kid, not the sort to get into trouble beyond what was normal for young boys. When he got older, all that changed. A series of minor run-ins with the law ensued. Arrests for driving under the influence, speeding, and making harassing phone calls were the first clear signs of problems.

Dominique’s meekness and charm helped trick his victims into allowing themselves to be tied up and helped deflect police suspicion even when accusers came forward.

While it is true that none of those offenses should be taken lightly, it is also fair to say that none of them would have landed Dominique in jail for any great length of time. However, there were at least two opportunities to capture Ronald Dominique and imprison him before he went on to murder 23 innocent men.

In 1993, a rape victim came forward and made a report to a police officer about a terrifying interaction that had taken place. He had accepted a ride from Dominique, the man stated, and the journey had ended in a nightmare: he was tied up, with a gun held to his head, while Dominique sodomized him.

Police officers found the accused rapist and questioned him. Unsurprisingly, his story was very different. Yes, Dominique admitted, the two of them had had sex—but his accuser had consented to it, and it was only when Dominique found things getting a little scary that he felt compelled to draw a weapon for his own protection. This caused the man to leave.

The police seem to have taken Dominique’s story at face value, because he was never incarcerated for the crime. This was a great shame, because history repeated itself three years later, when a second male victim came forward and told the same story, almost word for word. Once again, the perpetrator tied his victim up while he used a gun to keep him compliant. When the restraints were in place, Dominique traded the gun for a knife and held the blade at the man’s neck throughout the ordeal. After he finished, the rapist untied his victim and allowed him to leave with his life. Future victims would meet a very different fate.

This second time, the rape accusation was assigned to the same officer who had dealt with Dominique three years prior. The many similarities between the two sets of victim statements were obvious. Once again, Ronald Dominique found himself being questioned by a cop. He made every effort to weasel his way out of it, claiming that once again, the sex had been consensual, and that both men had requested he tie them up. Why had he pulled weapons on them? the officer wanted to know. Because they had tried to extort him out of some money, Dominique explained. The fact that the likelihood of two different men, some three years apart, both spontaneously deciding to grift him for money was apparently lost on him.

Unsurprisingly, the police did not find his story to be particularly convincing. Charges of rape were filed, and by the summer of 1996, he was jailed and facing years, if not decades in prison. If Dominique had been successfully convicted, then 23 innocent lives would have been saved. Tragically, that’s not how things worked out. The case never went to trial, and the charges were dropped. By late fall, Ronald Dominique was released back into society.

The following summer, he took his predilection for violent rape even further. In July 1997, the murders began.

Unable or unwilling to hold down a steady job, Dominique had little money to his name and lived either on the streets or spent the night in homeless shelters, whenever a bed was available.

He hunted for victims in a wide area in the southeast part of Louisiana. With no permanent residence to tie him down, Dominique moved from place to place whenever he felt like it, and he killed when the mood took him.

His first victim was 19-year-old David Lavon Mitchell Jr. He had attended a family gathering during the day and was trying to thumb a ride home when Dominique picked him up. He was assaulted, strangled, and his body abandoned in a ditch near the side of the road. It was discovered on July 14. To make this young man’s loss even more tragic, his family, who were already worried by their son’s disappearance, learned about his death when it was announced on the TV news. The police officers sent to inform the Mitchell family of David’s death had not even made it to their front door yet.

David Mitchell did not fit the profile of Dominique’s future victims. He was not homeless; he had a loving family waiting for him at home. He was not an outsider, as many of those Dominique went on to kill would be. What made him vulnerable to the predations of a killer were the fact that he was hitchhiking and was perhaps a little too trusting of the man who pulled over to offer him a ride.

Before beginning his killing spree, Dominique first targeted male hitchhikers as rape victims, a strategy he would carry forward when he added murder to his crimes.

Although nobody caught it at the time, something about the death of David Mitchell didn’t quite make sense. His body was found floating in water, and a subsequent autopsy found more of it inside his lungs. This led to the false conclusion that he had died via accidental drowning. Apparently, nobody thought it strange that the dead man’s pants and underwear were pulled down around his ankles, something often seen in the setting of sexually motivated murders. A toxicological screen revealed no evidence of drugs or alcohol in Mitchell’s bloodstream. How, exactly, does a healthy and unimpaired young man spontaneously drown in a body of water so shallow that he could simply have stood up in it?

Over the span of the next nine years, Ronald Dominique raped and murdered 22 more men, using the exact same technique of entrapment and method of murder. Once he was finished with them, he abandoned the bodies in a variety of out-of-the-way places. As the number of suspicious and unexplained deaths began to rise, the police realized that they might have a serial killer on their hands and established a task force to hunt him down.

As happens with most cases of suspected serial killers, the FBI also assisted with the case, lending its technical expertise to the investigation. Dominique was not yet on the police radar as a potential murder suspect. As he moved from one parish to another, slowly leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, more officers from the various police departments involved joined the search. They were determined to stop him before he killed again.

Finally, in 2006, they caught the break they had been looking for. Forty-two-year-old Dominique had taken a young man named Ricky Wallace back to his trailer, with the intent of raping and murdering him. Wallace refused to allow himself to be tied up, however, and rather than push the issue, Dominique had permitted him to leave. Detectives spoke with Wallace and learned about the incident, quickly realizing that Wallace almost perfectly matched with the pattern of the serial killer’s victim type. Based on this information, they went looking for the man who had offered him a ride.

Most importantly, Wallace remembered the location of the trailer and was able to direct detectives there. The occupant was listed as Ronald Dominique. A background check revealed that he had been the subject of two rape accusations back in the 1990s—and both victims had been male.

It was now December 2006, and law enforcement operatives had finally caught up with Dominique. They went to the homeless shelter he was currently staying at to pick him up for questioning. Rather than cause a scene or try to escape, he allowed himself to be handcuffed and went to jail quietly. It was obvious to him that the game was finally up.

For those experiencing homelessness, life is often difficult and challenging at best. During the wintertime, it can be even harder. Perhaps bearing this in mind, Dominique made no attempt to lie his way out of the multiple murder charges he now found himself facing. It may simply have been that a roof over his head and three hot meals a day was a more attractive prospect than spending the rest of his life living rough on the streets.

Once Dominique started talking, the flood gates opened. Out came victim names, dates, and the exact location of body disposal sites.

This did not track with his stated motive, however. When police asked him why he had murdered his victims in cold blood, Dominique told them matter-of-factly that he needed to keep them quiet because he had already been to jail once (for rape, in 1996) and did not want to end up back there. Murder had therefore seemed like the only viable option.

Quoted in a 2006 interview published in the Seattle Times, Sheriff Jerry Larpenter, one of the officers responsible for questioning Dominique, said that he believed Dominique simply developed a taste for murder somewhere along the way. This is not an uncommon development in the life of a serial killer, and it often causes them to increase the frequency of their crimes once the urge to kill takes a greater hold over them.

Whatever his true motivations may have been, Ronald Dominique stayed pleasant and cooperative with detectives as they continued to ask him questions, slowly building up a bigger, more complete picture of his crimes. He even voluntarily consented to giving up a sample of his own DNA, which matched that found on the bodies of some of his victims.

Once Dominique started talking, the flood gates opened. Out came victim names, dates, and the exact location of body disposal sites. Detectives made exacting notes of everything he said, checked and double-checked. Almost everything matched up. Most tellingly of all, he knew things that only the killer could have known, including precise details about how the victims had died, which were not available publicly via the media.

In court, Ronald Dominique pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder. His rationale for doing so was simple: it was the only way to guarantee that the prosecutors would not push for the death penalty. He got his wish, being sentenced to life imprisonment instead. This also meant that the state was able to skip giving him a trial.

One of the reasons for Dominique’s ability to ensnare male victims was his appearance and the vibe he gave off. On a first meeting, he did not appear to be much of a threat. He was overweight, bordering on obese, and short in stature. His health was generally poor. This was not a man who could have physically overpowered his victims under normal circumstances. Neither was he particularly charming, in the traditional sense, unable to flatter his way into the good graces of the men and boys that he targeted.

He was fully aware of his limitations, and instead, put on a meek and mild performance to lull them into a false sense of security. For their part, Dominique’s victims found that he raised few if any red flags, and when he offered something they wanted, they felt safe enough to take him up on it. He approached men who were hiking, usually catching them on stretches of road with little or no traffic to minimize the likelihood of being seen. What Dominique offered varied. It could be the promise of a ride to wherever the man wanted to go, or a fistful of money—anywhere up to $300 tended to be enough. He was willing to promise drugs to those with an addiction, if that’s what it took to get them to go with him.

Not all his victims were gay men. Some were straight. In the latter cases, Dominique concocted a story about his having a wife or girlfriend who needed the attention of a man. The story went that she had been molested when she was a young girl, and the only way she could have sexual intercourse now was if her male partner permitted himself to be tied up in restraints. He kept a photograph of an attractive woman in the glove box of his pickup truck to help sell the story. She was even willing to pay the man for the inconvenience of allowing himself to be tied up, Dominique would add. Free money and sex with a beautiful woman—an irresistible combination. More often than not, the ploy worked.

After each crime, Dominique would move the victim’s body to a remote place, where time and the elements would degrade evidence before the body could be found—in at least one case, leaving little more than a skeleton.

Once they reached Dominique’s trailer and consented to being tied up, things would turn nasty. Suddenly, the amiable and low-key man who picked up the hitchhiker up was gone. In his place was a sadistic maniac, one who would not let them out of the restraints alive.

What if the potential victim got back to Dominique’s place, didn’t like the look of things, and changed his mind at the last minute? Dominique was a relatively cautious man in such cases. Knowing that if he attacked an unrestrained man, the odds were good that he would get a beating in return, he allowed them to leave. This is one reason why he lived to kill another day—no unnecessary chances were taken.

Looking back, it is possible to see the foreshadowing of Ronald Dominique’s future serial murders. By 1996, he had not yet taken a human life, but his propensity for violence was beginning to rear its head repeatedly with two violent and sadistic rapes. Although he had not pulled the pistol’s trigger or stabbed either of his victims with the knife, Dominique brandished both weapons and relished the sense of power and control that they gave him over his victims. It is likely that the gratification he felt during the rapes was heightened by the presence of the weapons, and when he committed his first murder the following year, it represented the logical next step in Dominique’s quest for sexual fulfillment.

Taking a closer look at the 23 victims reveals a number of commonalities between them. All were males, which fits Dominique’s status as a homosexual, sexually motivated predator. He was partial to African American men, who ranged in age from the teens through to the mid-forties. Dominique killed eighteen black men and five Caucasians. Of that number, some, but not all, were gay. He liked to target the homeless and indigent, though not exclusively. This partly was because those were the circles in which he moved. These were Ronald Dominique’s peers, men who lived on the streets and scrabbled to make a living, just like he did.

In addition, he was fully aware of the fact that when a homeless person disappears, fewer questions tend to be asked. There is a tacit assumption that the missing person may simply have moved on elsewhere, heading to another town or city in search of new pastures. Rarely is it assumed that something bad may have happened to them. There are also few, if any, family members around to ask questions or to file a missing person’s report. This goes a long way toward explaining why sex workers, drug users, and those experiencing homelessness have long been preyed upon by serial killers.

Ronald Dominique’s capture is announced at a press conference in Houma, Louisiana.

Police noted that a number of the dead men had been involved either directly or peripherally with the illegal drugs market, leading to some initial speculation that their deaths could have been due to feuding between rival dealers. However, drug dealers do not tend to suffocate or strangle their targets when lashing out at them. Shooting and stabbing are far more likely to be the cause of death in such instances.

One of the reasons it took so long to finally catch Ronald Dominique was the sheer randomness of his murders. After killing his victim, the serial killer drove around with the body in the back of his vehicle until he found a dumping site that appealed to him. There was no rhyme or reason to it; he simply chose a place that was isolated and dark. He left few clues behind as to his possible identity. The bodies sometimes took days or weeks to be discovered. In that time, they were exposed to the elements. By the time police crime scene technicians were alerted, they had little to work with in terms of identifying them.

Yet catch him, they ultimately did. As is the case with so many serial killers, it was Ronald Dominique’s sloppiness that finally helped bring him to justice—in conjunction with solid detective work on the part of the task force created to identify and bring him to justice. That, coupled with his own willingness to confess to his crimes, meant that the serial killer nicknamed the Bayou Strangler will never be free to kill again.

THE AUSTRIAN RIPPER JOHANN JACK UNTERWEGER

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an a leopard ever truly change its spots? There are those who believe so. Yet there are also those who are convinced that once a murderer, always a murderer. Such people might point to the example of Johann Jack Unterweger.

When he stepped off the plane at Los Angeles International Airport in the summer of 1991, the Austrian-born Unterweger was living the dream. To all outside appearances, the 40-year-old writer and poet was a poster child for the promise of criminal rehabilitation. A convicted murderer, Unterweger had served his time in prison, been released, and gone on to great professional success—so much so, in fact, that he had traveled to the United States to write about its criminal underworld. What better place to accomplish that than one of the country’s poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods: the infamous Skid Row?

Once an opulent destination, Hotel Cecil had long been in decline (along with neighboring Skid Row), already well known for transience and vice by the time Unterweger chose it for his base of operations.

Unterweger chose the Hotel Cecil as his temporary residence. The hotel would later become infamous for the death of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 2013. Her dead body was found floating in a rooftop water tank. The cause of death remains unproven to this day, with the coroner’s finding of accidental death being disputed by those who suspect foul play.

Nor was Jack Unterweger the only killer to take a room at the Cecil. During his 1984–1985 reign of terror, the so-called Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, rented a room on the top floor. It has been suggested that Unterweger may have chosen to stay at the Cecil as a sick homage to Ramirez, though there’s no evidence proving it to be true.

A far more likely reason for the Austrian to have picked the Cecil was its proximity to the Los Angeles sex trade. Prostitutes were a common sight in the vicinity of the hotel, and Unterweger used his charm to finagle a ride-along with a Los Angeles Police Department patrol unit. His stated purpose was to observe the seamier side of the city for himself in order to write about it, but in reality, the seemingly earnest writer had far more sinister intentions.

He wasn’t in L.A. to observe crimes. He was there to commit them. Because Jack Unterweger was a serial killer.

Much of Unterweger’s early life is shrouded in mystery, not least because as an adult, Jack liked to tell stories about his upbringing—stories that would, he hoped, generate sympathy. He claimed to be the son of a U.S. Army soldier, a man who physically abused his son before abandoning him. Unterweger then spent time in and out of orphanages.

As a young man, Jack Unterweger developed a sadistic taste for brutality. His preferred outlet for the rage he felt was women, and more specifically, sex workers. He took to beating them savagely, telling police later that he was symbolically beating his own mother, who had been a prostitute herself and the true target of his ire.

Violence turned to murder in 1974, when he beat 18-year-old Margaret Schäfer unconscious, then strangled her with the straps of her own bra—which would become Unterweger’s modus operandi in future murders. He was convicted of the murder in 1976 and sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in prison.

Unterweger made good use of his time behind bars by reading and writing. He wrote poetry and short stories, some of which were intended for children. He also penned an autobiography, which painted him in a sympathetic light. In the manuscript, Unterweger cast himself as an abused child who had grown up to inflict abuse in return. The book, titled Purgatory; or, The Trip to Prison—Report of a Guilty Man, went on to earn critical acclaim and reap financial success. It was more fiction than fact, an attempt to misdirect the reader into thinking of its author as something other than the monster he truly was.

Remarkably, there was no shortage of people who bought the book and bought into its message. A grassroots campaign arose, one aimed at getting him out of prison early.

Upon his release from prison on May 23, 1990, Jack Unterweger seemed to be a reformed man. In reality, he was nothing more than an actor playing a part. He knew exactly what to say and do to make people believe that he had turned over a new leaf. After all, his supporters pointed out, hadn’t he served his time,