How Many Degrees of Separation Between YOU And A Serial Killer?

Here’s a list of things:

1. C and I have started going to this great new barbecue place down the street every Saturday. I think I’ve mentioned it before. It’s the kind of place where you sit at the bar and have a couple beers and then do a shot with the bartender. Also great barbecue, sort of modeled on Texas-style, meat by the pound served on butcher paper. It turns out the bartender graduated from the same high school as me (30 years later, but it’s Greencastle, Indiana so not a lot has changed in 30 years).

2. It also turns out that Megan, the bartender, is the grandniece of the notorious Indiana gay serial killer Larry Eyler, the “interstate murderer,” and, as she showed us a photo on her phone last night to illustrate, quite resembles him around the eyes.

3. From 1982 to 1984, Larry Eyler picked up I think 21 young men, some of them teenagers, raped and tortured, murdered and sometimes dismembered them, and then tossed their bodies in fields along the sides of highways. He grew up in Crawfordsville, which is just a few miles down the road from Greencastle.

4. 1983 just happens to be the year when I spent a few months back in Indiana, trying unsuccessfully to finish a college degree, and, just a few months ago, researching another crime from that same period of time for the show I’m writing, I repeatedly came across coverage of the “gay serial killer” in the local newspaper on microfiche in the library. They knew at that point that he was targeting young gay men, but they didn’t catch him until late 1984, so gay people were a little spooked.

5. Many of his victims were never identified, likely because they were kids who’d run away from or been kicked out of their homes because they were gay, so it wasn’t like anyone was looking for them.

6. I now know there is such a thing as Murderpedia.