Earle Nelson

Earle Leonard Nelson (né Ferral; May 12, 1897 – January 13, 1928), also known in the media as the Gorilla Man, the Gorilla Killer, and the Dark Strangler, was an American serial killer, rapist, and necrophile, who is considered the first known serial sex murderer of the twentieth century. Born and raised in San Francisco, California by his devoutly Pentecostal grandmother, Nelson exhibited bizarre behavior as a child, which was compounded by head injuries he sustained in a bicycling accident at age 10. After committing various minor offenses in early adulthood, he was institutionalized in Napa for a time.

Nelson began committing numerous rapes and murders in February 1926, primarily in the West Coast cities of San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. In late 1926 he moved east, committing multiple rapes and murders in several Midwestern and East Coast cities before moving north into Canada, raping and killing a teenage girl in Winnipeg, Manitoba. After committing his second murder in Winnipeg, he was arrested by Canadian authorities, convicted of his final murder only - that of Emily Patterson - and sentenced to death. Nelson was executed by hanging in Winnipeg in 1928.

In undertaking his crimes, Nelson had a modus operandi: Most of his victims were middle-aged landladies, many of whom he would find through "room for rent" advertisements. Posing as a mild-mannered and charming Christian drifter, Nelson used the pretext of renting a room in the landladies' boarding houses to make contact with them before attacking. Each of his victims were killed via strangulation, and many were raped after death. His penultimate victim, a 14-year-old girl named Lola Cowan, was one of three victims to be significantly mutilated after death.

Nelson's crime spree is believed, through recent research, to have included 22 murders and 22 other attacks. He was a source of inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt.