Gerard Schaefer： The 'Killer Cop' Who Fooled Everyone - True Crime Documentary

Gerard Schaefer： The 'Killer Cop' Who Fooled Everyone -  True Crime Documentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
In the history of US serial killers, Gerard Schaeffer stands
out for his deviant and unpredictable behavior, someone who even
other murderers eventually found despicable. Commencing in the early nineteen seventies,
he began a series of bizarre abductions and attacks, some
committed while he was a serving police officer. Psychological criminologist

(00:22):
and former FBI agent, doctor Brianna Fox is trying to
discover why Gerard Schaeffer defied authority and societal norms to
blatantly commit his brutal and sadistic murders.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
You would really need to go out of your way
to meet a more dangerous and despicable individual. There's no
doubt that he displayed the sort of characteristics that serial
killers generally display, but I think Schaeffer was much worse
than the average.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Were there early signs that he would descend into a
spree of killings? And could police have caught the man
who would become known as the Butcher of Blind Creek earlier?

Speaker 2 (00:58):
I'm doctor Brianna Fox, and this is the scent of
a serial killer.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Doctor Brionna Fox, a former FBI special agent, is now
a professor at the University of South Florida, where she
conducts research in the areas of psychological criminology and offender
risk assessment. Doctor Fox will be using her unrivaled expertise
and research to examine the case of Gerard Schaeffer, a
serial killer who may have killed up to fifteen people

(02:01):
in the early nineteen seventies.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Shaffer's case is a fascinating one. He seems to have
a far deeper understanding of his own twisted fantasies and
what's necessary to carry them out than most serial killers do,
but follows all the textbook red flags that he will
commit murder.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Shaeffer's targets were teenage female hitchhikers. He would abduct them,
tie them, and butcher them in the most callous and
vicious manner.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
To get a real sense of Gerard Schaeffer, we need
to examine where the red flags of this case first appear.
Alongside my fellow experts who have hands on knowledge, we
will investigate his descent into serial killing.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Gerard Schaeffer was the eldest of three children born in
nineteen forty six in Wisconsin to Gerard Schaeffer Senior and
his wife Doris.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
His father traveled a lot, and so they moved several times.
They went from Wisconsin to Tennessee. They lived in Nashville
for a while, then they moved to Atlanta, and then
they finally settled in Fort Lauderdale.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
The home was pretty conflicted and turbulent, according to him.
His father was a traveling salesman, was absent a lot,
apparently was an alcoholic, and just sort of distant. He
developed a sense of inferiority throughout his childhood. He always
felt as if he couldn't live up to what his
father wanted. Even both of his parents, according to him,

(03:32):
seemed to never be happy with him and to think
that he needed to do better or be better in
some way. So he always felt as if he just
wasn't good enough.

Speaker 5 (03:42):
One of the concerning things about Gerard Shaeffer when he
was younger was not that he liked hunting, and not
that he liked knives, because a lot of boys liked
these things. But there were stories about how he killed
animals for no good reason.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Not just animals, not just game to take home to eat.
It would be small animals, squirrels, turtles, crabs, just to
be killing them.

Speaker 5 (04:09):
There is a thing called the triad which people say
that serial killers exhibit. The triad is bed wetting, killing animals,
and setting fires. And you wonder why would they do
these three things? Well, the reason is because these are
three ways to get power and control. When you're just

(04:29):
a child, you can't do much. You don't have a car,
you can't go places. Probably you can't go off and
kill people. But you can urinate in your bed and
make your mother angry. You can set fire to the
shed next door. And you can kill animals, which gives
you a big thrill because this is your first your
chance at playing god, at seeing something die in front

(04:52):
of you.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Although the family moved a lot, Schaeffer's parents wanted to
ensure he ended up at a good school.

Speaker 5 (04:58):
He went to mostly Catholic schools. It didn't seem that
he had such a bad life and nothing that you
would say, oh obvious, that he had a horrifect childhood.

Speaker 6 (05:08):
No, as a matter of fact, he did very well
in school.

Speaker 7 (05:12):
Would joke with people a lot of times.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
The jokes were inappropriate, talking about inappropriate things and joking
about those either sexual or or people being murdered type
things that started sticking out.

Speaker 5 (05:25):
His peers did not think that badly of him, at
least the male peers.

Speaker 6 (05:29):
They thought he was kind of cool.

Speaker 5 (05:30):
He was good looking, he played some he played golf.
He seemed to know a lot about women, and they
liked that. They liked the stories he had to tell.

Speaker 6 (05:37):
There were some girls who said, he's kind of creepy.
You know, something is kind of wrong with him.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
The girl's instincts seemed to be right, as he started
displaying peeping tom tendencies, which law enforcement would classify as voyeurism.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
The sense of becoming a peeping tom is often about
having control over others, having a sense of superior where
they know that they can see you and you don't
know that they're out there. That would make sense for
someone like Shaeffer, who felt inferior. This was their way,

(06:13):
especially peeping on women. This was a way to feel
powerful over them.

Speaker 5 (06:18):
You can start stalking and you can watch women, and
you can get into their private space. That is a
huge red flag for what might come in the future.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
His invasion of privacy escalated past looking into women's windows.
He also started to steal their underwear.

Speaker 8 (06:37):
Some people end up with this fetish and they don't
go around killing people. But now add to it that
he also likes to hurt animals.

Speaker 9 (06:48):
He favors bondage.

Speaker 8 (06:50):
So now we have all these wires crossing in this
young Gerard Schaeffer's mind, and what we have is we
have some violent tendency he's crossing with his obsession with
women's underwear and actually being a female himself.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
He developed a sense of masochism where he would tie
himself to trees. He said he had become really obsessed
with death. He would tie himself to trees and then
he would get aroused and he would hurt himself.

Speaker 8 (07:24):
This is a very screwed up individual who is about
to become very violent.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
At least one Broward County Sheriff's officer I talked to,
who told me there was some cattle being killed in
the area and sodomized and mutilated. And so he built
up from small animals killing small animals, peeping tom collecting
onto her, pushing his sexual fantasies, and then finally he's

(07:51):
starting to push his killing fantasies.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Shaffer's upbringing does not highlight any particular red flags, although
he did later claim that his parents resented the fact
that he was not a girl. It's an interesting claim
to make, as gender roles would at the time have
generally skewed towards sons being the preferred children.

Speaker 10 (08:10):
But I believe his.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Parents recognize a lack of caring and empathy, traits that
at the time would have.

Speaker 10 (08:15):
Been considered feminine.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
In my experience, hunting solely for the pleasure of the
kill that's synonymous with psychopaths. I find his voaristic behavior
to be a frightening precursor of his ability to want
to establish dominance and power over people he sees as
sexually desirable. It is interesting that so early in his
development there's already a lack of trust from his female classmates.

(08:39):
He is a relatively intelligent person and realized that he
needed to develop a charming persona which would trick people
into liking him, which would make it possible for him
to manipulate them and give him the control that he desires.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Although his actions are unsettling for some, like many budding
serial killers, he can charm people when he decides to,
though he couldn't keep up the pretense of normalcy for long.

Speaker 5 (09:04):
Gerard Schaeffer did tell his girlfriend Sondra Lundon, who he
was with for one.

Speaker 6 (09:09):
Year during his teenage years. He did tell her about.

Speaker 5 (09:13):
Some concerning sexual fantasies that he had.

Speaker 6 (09:18):
He liked to peep into women's windows.

Speaker 5 (09:21):
He told her that, and he also told her that
he wanted to kill women.

Speaker 8 (09:25):
We talk about descending into madness, well, it is a
descent into madness, but for Gerard Schaeffer, he's escalating his behaviors,
and his behaviors becoming very sadistic in a sexual nature
with violence.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
When he started a relationship with a woman named Cindy,
his need for sexual gratification seemed to escalate.

Speaker 8 (09:52):
This relationship lasts for three years, which is I would say,
as an expert, a long time for a future serial
killer to have a relationship. It begins to unwind when
he begins to want to role play with Cindy. What
does Gerard Schaefer want to do? Well, he wants to

(10:14):
sneak up on his girlfriend, rip her clothes off, and
literally her in a violent way, and she wants nothing
to do with that.

Speaker 5 (10:23):
Just normal sex was not enough for making love was
not enough for him. He already wanted to experience the
concept of committing a role and that's a pretty young
age to do so, which goes to show that a
lot of fantasies start in the teenage years.

Speaker 8 (10:37):
If Cindy doesn't want to do it in role playing,
you know what he's going to do. He's going to
find somebody who's going to do it for him.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
It appears that is not his only sexual fantasy.

Speaker 4 (10:49):
He would talk a lot about dead bodies evacuating their bowels,
and especially when they were hanging. He was fascinated with that,
and he just described that in a lot of detail
that would make it into a paraphilia, something that aroused him.

Speaker 5 (11:06):
He wanted to see them die at the time they
were doing these things. That's what made it so absolutely,
absolutely creepy and was part of his signature.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
This is where Gerard Schaeffer starts to internalize very extreme
sexual desires, which will later form part of his mo
Many people have fetishes and fantasies that they can practice
in a safe environment with consenting partners, But when the
fetish becomes a paraphilia, something involving dangerous activities with unwilling participants.

Speaker 10 (11:40):
It becomes a red flag. In my experience.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Although the fantasy is about invasion of personal space and
establishing dominance, he begins to use coercive control to fulfill
his fantasies, a practice that he will continue and build
upon throughout his descent. What is amazing is that even
though he has consistently practiced killing animals for pleasure, voyeurism,

(12:04):
petty theft, I find it surprising that with this level
of antisocial behavior, it is yet to bring him to
the attention of law enforcement.

Speaker 10 (12:11):
This will have given him a feeling.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Of power, almost immunity, to carry on exploring his fantasies unchecked,
because there has been no retribution for his actions so far.
At this time, all red flags point is descent into murder.
By the early nineteen seventies, Gerde Schaeffer was showing a

(12:33):
concerning number of red flags. In my opinion, it's unusual
that he doesn't appear to have any inhibitions about verbalizing
or confessing to his paraphilias or actions, which could suggest
that his lack of empathy was so severe he didn't
even pick up on when he had crossed that line.
In a bid to give himself a higher social status,

(12:55):
Schaeffer appears to have started telling bare face lies to
project a grandiose sense of his own worth. He decided
to choose a career path that would have been tailored
towards power and respect in whatever form he could find it.

Speaker 5 (13:10):
Many people believe that serial killers do not have a
grasp of reality, but that's not true. Serial Killers absolutely
know what they're doing. They enjoy what they're doing, and
so they may tell fantastical stories. They may tell you
things that aren't true, but they know exactly what is
true and what is not true.

Speaker 6 (13:30):
They're just playing you their manipulators.

Speaker 5 (13:33):
Psychopaths tend to be pathological liars, and Gerard Schaeffer was
probably one of the best at doing this.

Speaker 6 (13:39):
He loved the fantasy life.

Speaker 5 (13:41):
He liked to exaggerate to people about what he did
and where he went. He said, he went to Europe,
he went to Bordellos, he went to North Africa. Oh,
he had this exotic life. No, he probably just stuck
the ferry across and came back. But hey, it doesn't
matter because he's enthralling people with the stories he tells,
and does he believe it himself. No, but he likes

(14:03):
getting the attention that he gets from telling these fantastical lies.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Now an adult, Shaffer decides to attend Florida Atlantic University.

Speaker 5 (14:13):
When George Schaeffer was a student, he met a fellow
student named Martha Fogg. They married and the marriage only
lasted a year.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
She found a suicide note from him one day. He
was starting to wave firearms around. His behavior was becoming
more erratic. So she took the suicide note into a
psychiatrist for the school, and he was referred to other
psychiatrists and they began to find out he had these fantasies.
He was suffering from depression. They hadn't labeled in paranoid

(14:47):
schizophrenic yet, but that diagnosis came down the road.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
As with his previous relationships, Schaeffer found it impossible to
separate the violent fantasies he had from real life.

Speaker 6 (15:01):
She filed for divorce for extreme cruelty.

Speaker 5 (15:04):
What was the problem with that marriage, Well, apparently, according
to Gerard, she wouldn't put out the way he wanted
her to put out. The sex wasn't good enough. Did
he want her to be involved in some kind of
sex act that she did not find particularly pleasing? And
we'll never know that, And it makes us wonder what

(15:26):
kind of sex did he want?

Speaker 1 (15:29):
When it comes to employment, Schaeffer's track record is just
as erratic as his romantic life.

Speaker 8 (15:35):
There's a couple of different jobs that Gerard Shaeffer tries
to get and it tells us a lot about him
in the ways thinking. So he tries to get into
the priesthood, but the Catholic Church will not have him.
Why because they say he doesn't have enough faith.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
He reacted to that, ra acted badly by deciding to
just leave the Catholic Church. And he began to talk
about the fact that all of his schooling had been brainwashing,
and you know, it was just doctrine and really was meaningless,
and it wasn't a shortcoming on his part, but it
was a shortcoming on their part.

Speaker 9 (16:14):
Then he tries to become a teacher.

Speaker 8 (16:16):
He wants to be around kids, he wants to be
around young people. He wants to be around people he
can control. That's what he's looking to do.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
He was authoritarian. He would impose his beliefs and the
students rather than helping and guiding them to form their
own beliefs.

Speaker 8 (16:34):
He soon gets fired for inappropriate behavior. Schaeffer's a guy
who any job he gets that isn't like washing cars
or doing some manual labor. He's going to get fired
from because he cannot act right. It's not in him.
He's always going to act inappropriate.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Eventually, Schaeffer got a job where he felt affinity for
the role.

Speaker 5 (17:03):
The number one job of serial killers tends to be
security guards.

Speaker 6 (17:06):
Why do they pick this career? They wanted a uniform.

Speaker 5 (17:09):
They if they're lucky, they can become an armed guard
and they can get a weapon, and.

Speaker 6 (17:14):
That pleases them.

Speaker 5 (17:15):
And also security guards there's so many of them that
are needed that it's an easy job to get.

Speaker 6 (17:21):
But they love the power and control.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
He liked the authority of it, and he probably began
to fantasize and realize that authority would give him some
power over people.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Schaeffer fell in love with the control and power being
a security guard gave him, so the next logical step
he applied to be a police officer.

Speaker 5 (17:41):
One of the reasons psychopaths can get onto police forces
is simply the fact that there's a lack of manpower
that the police force is desperate to get new recruits.
Sometimes they simply don't have enough applicants and so they
lower the bar. And I think Gerard Schaeffer was one
of those people that got over on that because they
were desperate enough to get anybody in there, and they

(18:04):
accepted him.

Speaker 8 (18:06):
And picture this guy driving around a loose cannon, a
time bomb.

Speaker 10 (18:11):
What is he doing.

Speaker 8 (18:13):
He's pulling over women, accusing them of crimes, but then
he's telling them give me sex, I'll let you go.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Shaeffer did, however, start a successful relationship during his time
in the police force.

Speaker 5 (18:27):
Teresa Dean was Gerald Shaeffer's second wife. She met him
when he was a police officer and she was impressed
he had a uniform, he was serving the community, and
she found him attractive and she married him. And apparently,
oddly enough, that marriage seemed to be going pretty well.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
However, Schaffer still crossed the line discussing inappropriate private matters
concerning his wife with his colleagues.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
He would talk about his sexual relationships with his wife,
how he would come home and throw over a couch
and sodomize her, and it became uncomfortable for the other
officers to work with him.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Eventually, the culmination of the repeated issues led to a
review of his employment at the police department.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
He was put on notice from the chief and the
chief was trying to give him another shot, and in
the meantime, he had applied it another police department, actually
Martin County Sheriff's office, and he had bad mouthed his chief,
you know, saying bad things about him that she found
out about that and then finally let him go.

Speaker 8 (19:38):
You know, this is nineteen seventy one, seventy two, seventy three.
There's no computers, so records didn't really travel with you,
so he could have been inappropriate at the last job.
He gets this new job in Martin County. They don't
know what he's done today.

Speaker 9 (19:52):
It's a lot different.

Speaker 6 (19:53):
How did he get that job?

Speaker 5 (19:55):
He forged a letter of recommendation, and you wonder wouldn't
they have checked that out? Apparently not, And one question
the sheriff said, hey, we were desperate for people, so
we took him because he'd already been tough police academy.

Speaker 6 (20:08):
So they brought him on and there he was. If
he lasted for.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
Exactly one month, and then he committed a crime that
they could not excuse.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
From my academic experience, I find it fascinating that although
he's managed to be hired by not one, but two
police departments, he still hasn't learned to adjust his behavior
and topics of discussion to what would be considered socially appropriate.
He's still making his colleagues feel uncomfortable. Previous red flags
have all indicated that he would use his position of

(20:42):
power to gain course of control and fulfill his fantasies.

Speaker 10 (20:46):
In his unique position as.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Law enforcement officer, it allowed him to extract sexual acts
from the unsuspecting victims of his claims of legal infringements.
If you look at theories of positive reinforcement, you will
see in this case that he used the trophies as
a masturbatory aid, reliving the actions of his fantasy and
achieving pleasure, which reinforces the positive connection between how he

(21:10):
acts and how he feels afterwards. Research shows that eventually
he will need to escalate his crimes, as the pleasure
of the trophies will lessen and he will need a
greater thrill and more danger. And I believe that's why
he increased his victim count by taking two girls at once.

Speaker 10 (21:27):
His own comments are really revealing.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Doing doubles is far more difficult than doing singles, but
on the other hand, it also puts one in a
position of twice as much fun.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
I would guess it was because he wanted to control
the two of them and force one to watch what
he did to the other, because that would give him
a witness to his depravity and his power over someone,
as well as amping up the psychological terror that he'd
want to experience in the final victim.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
On July twenty first, nineteen seventy two, Gerard Schaeffer decides
to use his authority as a police officer to cross
the line. On his descent, he pulls over two victims
with the intention to kill.

Speaker 5 (22:18):
Gerard worked for the Sheriff's department for one month and
he did something.

Speaker 6 (22:24):
That he called the silly mistake. He picked up two girls.

Speaker 5 (22:28):
They were hitchhiking, and so he picked them up and
he said, you know, you shouldn't do that, girls, And
he took them home. He said, you know, don't do that.
But he told them he would come back the next
day and pick them up and.

Speaker 6 (22:39):
Take them to the beach. And they thought, well, you know,
it's a police officer. He took us home. He must
be a safe guy.

Speaker 5 (22:45):
So the next day he picked them up and he
didn't take them to the beach.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
He told them that he wanted to show them something
he had had this place out on Hutchinson Island that
they would probably be interested in seeing. And then he
dropped them off where they wanted to go. But they
were at this point getting a little nervous. But now
Schaeffer has a way to control them. He has a gun,
he has knives, and he takes them onto this this

(23:12):
isolated island.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
He tied them up, and he tied one he tied
one to a tree in one area, hog tighter and
tight her to a tree. And then he took the
other one to a place near the water and tied
her to another tree, making their balance on a set
of roots.

Speaker 4 (23:32):
If they do anything that would make them slip, then
they're going to die because the rope is going to
hang them. So this is a way for him to
up the terror to make not just for you know,
one individual, but they watch each other afraid for the
situation they're in, Afraid that they're going to die. And

(23:54):
he also had molested them, He had touched them, and
they now knew that this is a actual predator who's
probably coming back to and kill them.

Speaker 5 (24:04):
But then he had to go back to work, so
he left them there and this is the one time
he did a really bad job of what he was
good at doing in the past.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
One of the girls got away and swam swam across
the river there and as she was getting to the
other side, here comes to Martin County Sheriff police car
and she thought it was him again, and she thought,
oh no, I'm done for. And it turned out it
was Robert Crowder, the actual shareff, and the other girl

(24:35):
had gotten away in the meantime, Paula se Wells, and
she had been picked up by a truck driver who
took her to the police station, and the story was out.

Speaker 9 (24:44):
When he comes back to gone, now he's in trouble.
So what does he do.

Speaker 8 (24:50):
He calls his boss and he says, listen, I've made
a mistake.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
I picked these girls up and I told them that
I wanted to scare them. I wanted them to know
how that hitchhiking is terrible and dangerous, and so I
took them out to this island and really scared them,
you know, and made them believe that they were in deep,
deep trouble because I wanted to teach them a lesson.

(25:16):
And now they've gotten away and they're probably going to
think that this was much more dangerous than it really was.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
So he lost his job and of course was you know,
charged with kidnapping. That was reduced to aggravated assault and
faalse imprisonment, probably because he was a policeman. He had
no other record, and he went to trial for that

(25:46):
and he received six months in jail.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Bravely, the victims of the kidnapping faced chaffering court and
testified against him. They not only re enacted the crime
for all to see, but they discussed how one of
the most terrifying things was how his persona changed from
what they thought was a trustworthy policeman to an extremely
dangerous individual.

Speaker 7 (26:09):
They testified that.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
He went from mister friendly to you know, an absolute
dark killer and told them, you know, you know I
can tie you up out here and kill you and
no one whatever know. That was in July of seventy two,
and so he had his attorney approached the court and say, well,

(26:36):
the holidays are coming, could leave mister Shaeffer out of
jail until January of seventy three, and they agree to
do that.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
The abduction of Nancy Trotter and Paula Wells together is
an extremely brazen act, which I've rarely seen in all
of my experience. He is dismissive of his actions, trying
to justify to his boss, the person who found the girls,
that it was not a serious man, despite the fact
that he kidnapped and sexually assaulted two girls, the fact

(27:05):
that he was caught in the middle of a crime that,
in my opinion, would have quite likely have escalated in
a murder. It is all the more surprising given the
trajectory to date but no criminal record. It was considered
his first defense and he was released back into the community. Sadly,
that degree of leniency would prove fatal. After a host

(27:28):
of red flags were not picked up by law enforcement,
Shaeffer has finally.

Speaker 10 (27:32):
Been caught in the act committing a crime. I believe
that no one.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Thought about what his forward trajectory would be or where
his actions may descend to. Despite the fact that crimes
like this will typically escalate into murder. Shaeffer would have
realized that he was on a limited time frame and
would have been afraid of losing control over his crimes.
Because he's become almost numb to the intensities of the crime,
he needs to escalate his crimes further and find more

(27:58):
ways of exhibiting more power and control and higher levels
of manipulation, which will give him a more intense thrill.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
The two that got away were just very fortunate, but
he learned a lot of lessons from that, and one
lesson was don't separate the girls when you want to
kill them.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
In late nineteen seventy two, and whilst on bail awaiting
trial for the attempt at kidnapping and murders of hitchhikers
Pamela Wells and Nancy Trotter, Schaeffer tries again.

Speaker 8 (28:30):
He's out on bail and remember now he had tied
two women to a tree, but they escaped, so he
needs to fulfill that fantasy in full.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
On September the twenty seventh, he attacks again and targets
Susan Place age seventeen, and Georgia Jessop sixteen after meeting
them at a GED a General Education development course.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
But he'd met the girls before they were going to
they both opped out of high school, and we're doing
one of these like GED type programs, and for some
reason he was there and got to meet them there
and then was comfortable enough with them to they invited
him to their house.

Speaker 7 (29:17):
Season place's house.

Speaker 5 (29:18):
Particularly showed up at their homes and the mothers got
to see what he looked like, and then he said,
you know, I'm off with the girls and he went
away with them, and she actually looked out the door
as she saw the car leaving, and she wrote down
the license fate number.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
She went to the police and gave them the tag number.
The policeman that wrote it down wrote down one of
the digits and the tag number incorrectly, so nothing happened.

Speaker 7 (29:45):
No one was found.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Eventually, the kidnapping trial happens in January nineteen seventy three,
and the media coverage alerts the girl's parents to a
potential lead after they noticed the similarity in victimology and.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Then the kidna apping case that came to their attention
that he was going to jail for that the ones
where the two girls got away in July of seventy two.

Speaker 6 (30:09):
So they.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Go to Martin County where he's starting his jail time
that six months that he put off till after the holidays,
and they found out his address. They go by the house,
they see the car, they see the tag on it.
They go to the police station say, this is the
guy that left with our children and then never came back.

Speaker 5 (30:31):
The mother of one of the girls he had kidnapped,
she went to his wife's home and they were chatting,
and at the wife's home there was actually a purse
there that was one of the girl's purses, and there
was evidence right there in the wife's home.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
However, legally, law enforcement did not have enough evidence to
apply for a warrant because they had not yet discovered
the girl's bodies. Their only hope was that police would
be able to get a confession.

Speaker 7 (31:00):
Issue was they hadn't been found yet.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
And they showed a picture of Schaeffer to the parents
and they said that's the guy that left, and he said, well,
I never met him, so it was their word against his.
And then, just through serendipity, a few months later, while
he's still serving his six month term, there were some
men out looking for beer cans for scrap metal for

(31:24):
money on Hutchinson Island and they found the bodies of
susan place in Georgia Jessup on April first, nineteen seventy three.
Teeth were pulled out the top to the top of
their skulls were never found either one of them. Georgia
was cut in half at the waist, her spine severed.

(31:47):
Both of them were missing an arm.

Speaker 7 (31:50):
They're just pretty mutilated all the way around.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
The police are able to connect his victimology and method
of abduction between his kidnap victims and bodies they found.

Speaker 8 (32:03):
What's interesting about this is law enforcement realizes, hey.

Speaker 9 (32:11):
This looks familiar. Where did this happen before.

Speaker 8 (32:16):
Gerard Schaeffer did it to two girls that he picked
up hitchhiking.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
The debts of Susan Place and Georgia Jessop and the
obvious linkage to the previous attempt with Pamela and Nancy
lead police to Gerard Schaeffer and to the properties he
lives in and has access to.

Speaker 8 (32:33):
So they tie these two murders to the abduction that
he was arrested for, and they get a search warrant
for his mother's house where he previously lived. And what
do they find there? They find what we call trophies,
items that he took from victims that.

Speaker 4 (32:51):
Gave them reason to be very concerned that he might
be a serial killer. He might not have murdered these
two young women, but also murdered other people and they
started to make a list of women that these items
found in his possession linked to.

Speaker 9 (33:12):
But now they have to begin searching for all these bodies.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
He had a collection, a diary, if you will, of
some of his fantasies, and they're quite lurid. They're always sexual.
There's always someone being bound, tied up and typically hung,
and eventually in the stories the victims die, and then

(33:41):
he would have sexual relationships with them afterwards.

Speaker 7 (33:43):
So he was a necrophiliac.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Why did Schaefer engage in necrophilia? Was this because they'd
be easier to control? Would it be the conclusion of
his elimination fantasy?

Speaker 10 (33:56):
What it reduces.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Victims to an object of sexual pleasure.

Speaker 10 (34:00):
Answer to all of this is yes.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
In spite of the massive amount of evidence against him,
Gerard Schaeffer is only tried for the murders of Susan
Place and Georgia Jessup, both of which he has found
guilty of. However, in a strange twist of fate, the
death penalty was not available in Florida between nineteen seventy
two and nineteen seventy six.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
He got two life sentences, and they were supposed to
be concurrent so actually he only would have had twenty
years in jail. Somebody went back in and changed that
to consecutive, so he ended up with forty years. He
was in jail with Ted Bundy, with Danny Rawlings, with
Otis Tool.

Speaker 7 (34:48):
All of them were serial killers.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
All of them get the death penalty, but he didn't,
so he had a pretty free ride.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Even once he was found guilt of the murders, he
was still looking for a way to manipulate and control
people's perceptions of him.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
I interviewed him in nineteen eighty five. I was able
to sneak a tape recorder in and record him. I
was able to get and I stayed five hours with
him while he told me all of his stories and
excuses in his most convincing fashion.

Speaker 7 (35:23):
I just wasn't sold on it.

Speaker 4 (35:25):
I was trying to holder there to come back to
kill her or.

Speaker 8 (35:28):
The one to kill the other, and all this stuff
that they're making up and trying to sell the public.

Speaker 7 (35:35):
They said, always a big noose and all this stuff.
It wasn't news.

Speaker 5 (35:38):
It's just like you're saying, I.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Have a like a loop in the end of him
and slip it through there, and then you were you're.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Thinking it's aid tether, and I put it around her
neck and tied it to the tree to keep her
from walking away.

Speaker 5 (35:52):
She wasn't tied to the tree.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
She wasn't tied to the tree.

Speaker 5 (35:58):
All it was was sudden to.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
Keep wandered away.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
After realizing no one would believe that he was innocent,
Schaeffer took a sharp turn in the opposite direction.

Speaker 8 (36:12):
He's put on trial for the two murders and he's convicted.
But now that's not enough for him. He needs the credit.
He needs to take credit now right. He needs to
become that nickname serial killer.

Speaker 9 (36:27):
That's what he wants.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Later, while incarcerated, Shaeffer decides to co write a book
called Killer Fiction, in which he described some of the
depraved acts he committed while he was free to murder.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
In all my investigations in his Serial Killers, I've consistently
found that there is a percentage of the population that
experiences hypristophilia, or sexual attraction to people who have committed crimes.
By releasing his book and gaining the infamy, he would
have also been able to reach and manipulate and exert
control over a whole new pool of people because Schaeffer

(37:06):
no longer has the trophies he took from his victims.
His book becomes a trophy substitute by acting as a
memory aid, which is not uncommon in my experience.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
But his horrifying and despicable reminiscences are a prelude to
what is to eventually happen to him.

Speaker 4 (37:24):
The police are about to interview him about three missing
women when he was murdered in prison.

Speaker 5 (37:30):
One problem with Gerard had was that he was an
unpleasant guy. He just was one of those guys that
really annoyed everyone. He was an egotistical, obnoxious human being.
And even in prison, he didn't make friends with a
lot of the prisoners. And eventually one of those prisoners had.

Speaker 6 (37:50):
Had enough of him and he stabbed him to death.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
I actually got a call from the warden and in
prison because we stayed in touch. He said, just when
in follow me, mister Shaeffer was killed in jail yesterday.
He was stabbed forty seven times. His throat was cut
and his eyes were gouged out and thrown in the wreckyard.
And just thought you'd want to know. Gerard Shaffer had

(38:18):
many different diagnosed. He's anything from depression to paranoid schizophrenia.
But he would change his story and tell people different things,
and a psychiatrist can only feedback what they hear from
the patient.

Speaker 8 (38:34):
He was rejected when he was a child. He took
that rejection and he turned it into a volcanic rage
against females. He's rejected by the Catholic Church. He's rejected
as a teacher, he's rejected as.

Speaker 9 (38:47):
A police officer.

Speaker 8 (38:49):
He claims to be rejected for being male, that his
parents wish they had a female. But one thing in
all of this is very important, and we have to
distinguish this with serial killers. He knew exactly what he
was doing the entire time.

Speaker 4 (39:07):
Often, when these kinds of serial killers take victims, the
victims belong to them. That's their attitude.

Speaker 6 (39:16):
These are not our mind.

Speaker 4 (39:17):
They came into my web and I can do with
them whatever I please and there won't be any remorse
because they feel entitled to have done.

Speaker 6 (39:27):
What they did.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
So what drove Gerard Schaeffer to merger in such a
depraved way? With accumulation of the red flags that have
been highlighted. Crucially, how did Shaeffer get away with it
for so long?

Speaker 2 (39:45):
From my research, There are many contributing factors which allowed
Schaeffer to carry on his descent. His crimes as a
young teen were considered normal, and then he would grow
out of them, which meant they were never reported because
there was no punishment. His confidence and grandiose sense of
self worth continued to escalate as he explored his fantasies unchecked.

(40:07):
It was not until recently when it became a criminal
act for police officers to have sex with people in
their custody. In my many previous investigations where women have
been asked for sexual favors by people in authority, the
likelihood of any repercussion had they spoken up would have
been very slim. At this time, as a police officer,
he was supposed to be a trusted member of society,

(40:29):
and he exploited that to his own gains by making
use of his professional knowledge. He went undetected, choosing various
body disposal sites he knew would not be monitored, ensuring
that he picked high risk victims like hitchhikers, who were
willing getting the cars with strangers and might well have
been out of contact with a family for various periods

(40:49):
of time.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
They can hide these things very well. They're typically very smart,
they speak well, they can avoid detection that way.

Speaker 7 (41:03):
They're isolated.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
They can be you know, glad handing, shake hands and
working in a company, but they're usually still a little
bit different. They're off by themselves quite a bit, and
they don't hang out with other men.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
Cold case review teams connected Schaeffer to many more victims
and were planning on returning to charge Schaeffer with further
murders when he was killed.

Speaker 5 (41:26):
One thing that Schaeffer did well was he wasn't interested
in being caught. There were so many crimes that were
committed before he made the mistake of the two girls
escaping from him that the police had no idea he
was a serial killer. They had no idea who committed
all these crimes because he covered his tracks very very well.
He picked young women who might not be missed right away,

(41:51):
and he hid all the evidence. He was not interested
in the public knowing what he did until after he
got convicted.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
The most important question to be answered is would he
be caught now, would law enforcement be able to catch
up with him, and would today's many technological advances make
the critical difference in tracking down a dangerous guy like
Gerard Chaefer.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
With technology today, everybody has a digital footprint that can
be traced. We can track number plates, mobile signals, CCTV,
and a whole host of methods available for keeping track
of people, which could have connected Schaeffer to their disappearances
at a much earlier point. Even if people are traveling,
they are far more likely to be in regular contacts

(42:36):
with their families, so they're more likely to be reported
missing quicker. With an increase in crime rates, law enforcement
now would realize that had a prolific offender in the area,
even without the discovery of the bodies.

Speaker 8 (42:50):
If all the tools we have today, forensic genealogy, forensics,
blood typing, you know, all the expert scientific crime scene tools,
if we had them back in the day, would he
have been caught sooner? And my answer is nu. He
chose his victims at random. He chose victims of opportunity.

(43:12):
Those are the hardest serial killers really, in my opinion,
to catch, because you can't predict what they're gonna do.
Red flags will start popping up if bodies start popping up. Look,
law enforcements started to find different women tied to trees
and murdered in a brutal way all over the state.

Speaker 9 (43:35):
Well, they know they got a serial killer on their hands.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
The criminal justice system had a very clear opportunity to
stop him when he was arrested for the kidnapping of
Pamela Wells and Nancy Trotter, but it failed to do so.
He exploited the time he had to kill Susan Place
and Georgia Jessup. George Schaeffer was an evil and insatiable killer,
but he was not stopped when law enforcement had the chance.

(44:03):
Looking at Shaeffer's descent into serial killing, there were obvious
red flags voyeurism, killing animals, trophy taking, paraphilias, who's a
pathological liar? Exhibited coercive control, psychopathy, kidnapping, murder, and necrophilia,
which today would have culminated in.

Speaker 10 (44:24):
A very different outcome.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
There are four victims of Gerard Schaeffer, but sadly, there
could be many more which we will never know about.