The term “killer cop” is used loosely these days, but nothing speaks the term more loudly and truthful than that of the story of Gerard John Schaefer. Schaefer, who was convicted in October 1973 ,of the rape, torture and murders of Susan Place(17) and Georgia Jessup(16), is suspected of murdering more than 30 women and young girls within a span of four years(1969-1973).
*The suspected victims will appear in italic in order for the article to flow in a timeline*
Schaefer, the oldest of three siblings, was born in Wisconsin, but raised in Atlanta, Georgia, where he attended Marist Academy until 1960. It was during that year that his family moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. According to Schaefer, his childhood was turbulent and conflicted. He and his father didn’t get along because Scheafer believed his sisters were favored and shown more attention. In his teenage years, he became obsessed with women’s panties and became a peeping tom, spying on a neighbor and tennis partner, Leigh Hainline. He claimed that Ms. Hainline was “taunting” him by undressing in her bedroom with the curtains open. Sadly, Leigh Hainline’s name will appear again in this story.
He later admitted to killing small animals and claimed he was into cross-dressing to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam war. It worked! Although, later in his writings he admits at the age of 12, he would wear women’s underwear, fantasized about dying and that he began to experiment with bondage and sadomasochism, even tying himself to trees because it aroused him sexually.
At 14 years old, Schaefer had a girlfriend named Cindy. Their relationship of three years was sordid and bizarre. He would make her take part in role-play fantasies in which he tore off her clothes and “raped” her. In 1963, she broke up with him.
On October 2, 1966, Nancy Leichner(20) and Pamela Nater(21) had joined their boyfriends and the Aquaholics Diving Club for a scuba diving excursion at Alexander Springs Park. While their boyfriends were diving, the girls decided to walk the park’s nature trail. Later, a witness reported to have seen the two girls walking along the trial with an unidentified male following close behind them. No one has seen them since. Investigators determined that the girls were most likely taken from the park and killed. Craig Macki(Nancy’s boyfriend) and Benny Dautermn(Pamela’s boyfriend) where suspects in the beginning, but no evidence pointed to them being responsible for the two girl’s disappearance. 
Schaefer graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in 1964. He married his first wife Martha Fogg in 1969 while attending college to become a teacher. However, not long after receiving his degree, Schaefer was fired for what was referred to as “totally inappropriate behavior”. Some reports have stated that it was the result of Schaefer trying to impose his own moral and political values on his students. While others claim it was because of sexual harassment of female students.
On September 8,1969, Leigh Hainline Bonadies, Schaefer’s former neighbor, had disappeared. She married Charles Bonadies on August 21,1969 and their relationship was often times rocky. When Leigh announced that her childhood neighbor and sometime tennis partner had offered her a $20,000 salary to join the CIA, Charles laughed and thought it was ridiculous. Then on September 8, he came home to find a note from Leigh, saying the she had gone to Miami to speak with Schaefer about the job. When Leigh’s brother called Schaefer to ask him if he had seen Leigh, he was told a bizarre story. Leigh had called him and asked for a ride to the airport because she was flying to Cinncinati, Ohio. She wasn’t sure of the departure time, so she would call him back with the info. He never heard from her. Leigh’s car was found parked in a Fort Lauderdale parking lot.
While Schaefer was employed as an intern/student teacher at Plantation High School, a beautiful 22-year-old cocktail waitress, Carmen Marie Hollock, called her sister-in-law on December 18, 1969, to tell her that she had an appointment with a male teacher from a local junior college that evening. The unidentified teacher claimed to also have done undercover work for the government and could possibly have an employment opportunity for Carmen, which would include international travel and a high salary. Carmen told her sister in law that she had purchased a pair of black leather high heel shoes and had planned to wear a black cocktail dress with those heels to the meeting. Not hearing from Carmen since their telephone conversation on the 18th, her sister-in-law went to check Carmen’s apartment on Christmas Day. Carmen’s car keys, driver’s license, and vehicle registration were missing. Also absent were the black cocktail dress and new black high heel shoes. Her car was later found abandoned in a parking lot but Carmen was nowhere to be found. Her skeletal remains were finally discovered in January 1978 in Boca Raton, Florida, in the subdivision of Boca Del Mar, which was under construction at the time .
On December 29, 1969, Peggy Rahn(9) and Wendy Stevenson(8) vanished from Pompano Beach, Florida. A family friend had decided to take Peggy to the beach that day , while Wendy came with her uncle. The girls both attended Palmview Elementary School but didn’t know each other very well before that day. It was just a chance meeting at the beach for the two little girls. Around 1:00pm, the girls decided to walk to the parking lot to buy an ice cream. The last person to see Peggy and Wendy was a store clerk who identified the two girls from photographs, saying he had seen a strange man buying ice cream cones for the girls. The stranger was described as being a white man, 6ft tall and weighing about 200lbs, in his twenties, with sandy colored hair, gray eyes and a humped nose. Although Wendy was known to be a good swimmer, authorities initially believed the girls had drown, but nobody saw either of them in any distress in the water that day. Their bodies have never been found. Peggy was last seen wearing a pink baby doll bikini and Wendy had on a blue and white checkered bikini. 
Martha Fogg filed for divorce in May 1970, citing “extreme cruelty” as reason for divorce. After the split with Martha, Schaefer decided to join the priesthood but was rejected because according to Schaefer he was told that “he didn’t have enough faith.” Being raised Catholic, this angered him and he decided to quit the Catholic church.
So, deciding that if he couldn’t be a teacher or a priest, he would become a policeman. He applied to several departments and was rejected by the Broward County sheriff’s office after failing a psychological test, but was soon hired at Wilton Manors Police Department. He graduated from Broward Community College as a patrolman in 1971, at the age of 25.
Debora Sue Lowe(13) was last seen on the morning of February 29, 1972, walking to Rickards Middle School in Pompano Beach, Florida. It was about a mile long walk from her home to school. She never arrived and has not been seen or heard from since. Her school books were found in a trash can a block from her home. At first it was believed by authorities that Debora had ran away from home to return back to Palestine, West Virginia, from which her family had just moved. But her family refused to believe she had simply ran away, without any prior history of such behavior. Gerard Schaefer worked with Debora’s father and had visited her family’s home numerous times, as well as the family visiting Schaefer’s home for cookouts on a few occasions. Debora or her remains have never been found and she is still considered a missing person, but her family believes she is a victim of Schaefer’s.
On January 5, 1972, Belinda Hutchens’ husband and two-year old daughter watched her get into a blue Datsun with a strange man and disappear from their lives forever. Belinda(22) a cocktail waitress, was married to a drug addict who later told police that she had her own lifestyle and did what she wanted to do. Arrested for prostitution in November 1970, she had paid a $250 fine in Fort Lauderdale. There were no more arrests, but Hutchens flaunted her extramarital affairs. She is known to have dated Schaefer while he attended or right after he finished the police academy.
In March 1972, Schacfer earned a commendation for his role in a drug bust, but just one month later, on April 20, he was fired. Turns out, Schaefer was disciplined for running female traffic violators through the departments computer, obtaining personal information, and later calling them for dates.
Near the end of June, Schaefer needed a job. So, he signed on with the Martin County Sheriff’s Department, pulling up stakes and moving to Stuart, Florida. Less than a month later, he made what he called a “dumb mistake”. A mistake that would cost him his job and ultimately lead to a sinister web of sadistic torture and murder.
On July 21, 1972, while on patrol, Schaefer spotted two teenage girls, Pamela Wells(17) and Nancy Trotter(18) hitchhiking in Stuart, Florida, on what was only their second day in town. Schaefer stopped them, took their names and told them that hitchhiking was illegal, which it wasn’t in Martin County. He told the girls to get in the car and he would take them back to the half way house at which they were staying at the time. Once there, he offered to give the girls a ride to the beach the next morning and trusting an officer of the law, they agreed. The next day he showed up but instead of heading toward nearby Jensen Beach, he drove toward swampy Hutchinson Island , off state road A1A. All the while telling the girls he wanted to show them a Spanish fort. When arriving in the remote wooded area, Schaefer pulled out his gun and ordered the girls to get out of the car. He handcuffed and gagged them, threatened to kill them or sell them into prostitution as “white slaves”. He then tied them to a tree, putting a noose around their necks, leaving them to balance themselves on the roots. If they were to slip, they would have been hanged. Luckily, or maybe it was just divine intervention, Schaefer got a call over his police radio and had to go, leaving the girls tied up and promising to return. Miraculously, the girls managed to free themselves and ran to the nearest police station, which happened to be the same station that Schaeffer worked at. But, Schaefer wasn’t there, he had returned to the woods and discovered the girls had escaped. Believing he could lie his way out of what he had done, he called the station and explained that he had only pretended to kidnap the girls and was trying to show them how dangerous hitchhiking was. And that he had only threatened to kill them to deter them from ever hitchhiking again, calling it just a “dumb mistake”. Schaefer’s story didn’t spin with his boss, he was stripped of his badge and charged with false imprisonment and assault. Schaefer’s bond was set at $15,000. He posted bail and was released.
Just two months later on September 27, 1972, he abducted, tortured and murdered Susan Place(17) and Georgia Jessup(16) and buried them on Hutchinson Island, the same remote wooded area that he had taken Pamela Wells and Nancy Trotter to just a year earlier. Susan’s parents said the girls were last seen at their house, leaving with an older man named “Gerry Shepherd” on their way to play guitar at a nearby beach. They never came back, but Lucille Place had noted a license number, along with a description of his blue-green Datsun. 
Elsie Lina Farmer(14) and Mary Alice Briscolina(14) disappeared from Pompano Beach, Florida on October 23, 1972. Elsie was reported missing the next day, while Mary’s family waited another week, thinking she had just ran away from home. Elsie’s skeletal remains were found on January 17, 1973 at a construction site near Plantation High School. On February 15, about 200 yards away, Mary’s remains were also found. Both girls were identified via dental records.
In November 1972, Schaefer appeared in court for the charges of the abduction of Pamela Wells and Nancy Trotter on July 21. He pled guilty to one assault charge and the other counts were dropped. Judge D. C. Smith sentenced him to a year in county jail to be followed by three years probation. Although Schaefer was sentenced for the Trotter-Wells assault in December 1972, he did not actually enter jail until January 15, 1973.
On January 8, 1973, just seven days before Schaefer started serving his sentence , Collette Goodenough(19) and Barbara Ann Wilcox(19), both from Iowa, left Biloxi, Mississippi, hitchhiking to Florida. No one seen or heard from them again. Then in January 1977, the skeletal remains of both girls were found in a wooded area at Oak Hammock Park in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. No cause of death could be determined.
On March 25, 1973, while Schaefer was serving his one year sentence for assaulting the teenage girls, investigators traced the license plate number of the blue-green Datsun that Susan Place and Georgia Jessup were last seen leaving in, tying the missing girls to Schaefer. Although he denied any contact with Place and Jessup, the case began unraveling on April 1, 1973, when skeletal remains were found on Hutchinson Island by three men collecting aluminum cans. Four days later, the victims were identified from dental records. Susan Place had been shot in the jaw, detectives remarking that evidence from the crime scene indicated the two girls were “tied to a tree and butchered.”
On April 7, police searched the home of Schaefer’s mother and his then wife Teresa Dean Schaefer, where Schaefer had personal items stored in a spare bedroom. Found in that spare bedroom were 100-plus pages of lurid stories and sketches, describing torture, rape and murder of women, who he referred to as “whores and sluts”, photos of unknown women and of Schaefer dressed in women’s underwear, an envelope addressed to “Gerry Shepherd” and 11 guns and 13 knives.
Items:
*Three pieces of jewelry belonging to Leigh Hainline Bonadies, also newspaper clippings about her disappearance.
*A gold filled tooth confirmed by a dentist as belonging to Carmen Holluck , a shamrock pin and also newspaper clippings about her disappearance.
*An address book belonging to Belinda Hutchens.
* A purse belonging to Susan Place.
*A piece of jewelry belonging to Mary Briscolina.
*A passport, diary and book of poetry belonging to Collette Goodenough.
*A driver’s license belonging to Barbara Wilcox.
With the amount of items found in the search of Schaefer’s spare bedroom, the list of suspected victims had grown, but Schaefer faced charges in only two murders. He was indicted on May 18, 1973, for the slayings of Susan Place and Georgia Jessup and held without bond pending trial. He was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder in October 1973, drawing concurrent terms of life imprisonment.
Schaefer appealed his conviction, 19 times in all, claiming that he had been framed by drug dealing lawmen and Martin County prosecutors. All appeals were denied!
Teresa Schaefer made her one and only prison visit on November 17, 1973, to serve Gerard with divorce papers.
Schaefer later began filing frivolous lawsuits, trying to sue one true crime writer for daring to describe him as being overweight. While separately trying to sue authors Colin Wilson and Michael Newton(Avon Books) and former FBI agent Robert Ressler for describing him as a serial killer. All of Schaefer’s lawsuits were thrown out of court.
One of Schaefer’s biggest hobbies behind bars was writing more macabre stories, some of which were suspected of being real accounts of murders he had committed and others were grisly fantasies. In one story simply titled Whores, he recounts hanging a prostitute and having sex with her corpse. He writes about “Doing Doubles”, in which he states, “is far more difficult than doing singles, but it puts me in a position to have twice as much fun. There can be some lively discussions about which of the victims will be killed first.” In another titled Spring Break, he recounts “one whore drowned in her own vomit while watching me stab and disembowel her girlfriend during sex”. A series of stories was about a “rogue cop” who moonlights as a serial killer targeting prostitutes. In his writings, Schaefer claimed to have started murdering women as early as 1965, when he was 19.
During high school, Schaefer dated a young girl by the name of Sondra London. Years later she became a true crime author. She got in touch with Schaefer following his conviction and in 1989 she published Killer Fiction, short stories and drawings found in Schaefer’s house after his arrest. A follow-up, Beyond Killer Fiction, was later released. Following his death, London released another edition of Killer Fiction, containing the stories and rambling articles by Schaefer that were in the previous two books, together with Schaefer’s letters to her where he boasted of killing 34 women and girls and how he was admired by fellow inmate Ted Bundy. At the same time Schaefer had been writing these boastful claims, he was unsuccessfully appealing his conviction and trying to sue anyone who dared to call him a serial killer. Sondra and Schaefer were briefly engaged in 1991, but she broke it off, leaving him for another serial killer, Danny Rolling, also known as “The Gainesville Ripper”. Schaefer didn’t take the rejection well, and began sending her death threats. He tried, unsuccessfully, to sue her three times for stealing his work. In his death threats to London, Schaefer had claimed to have links to the Dixie Mafia and the Ku Klux Klan who would do his bidding on the outside. Nothing was further from the truth, Schaefer was despised by fellow inmates and had been attacked several times.
The final attack came on December 3, 1995, when another inmate barged into his cell, slashed Schaefer’s throat, and stabbed him in both eyes. Prison officials named the killer as inmate Vincent Rivera, serving life plus 20 years for two murders in Tampa. No clear motive was given as to why Rivera killed Schaefer but prison rumors of Schaefer being a “snitch” or owing some prisoners money have been told.
At the time of Schaefer’s death, a Fort Lauderdale homicide detective was preparing to file charges against Schaefer for three unsolved murders, to ensure that he never got out of prison.
Schaefer’s sister claims it was a murder to cover up Schaefer’s attempt to verify the confession of Ottis Toole, who confessed to the murder of Adam Walsh, but then retracted.
Debora Lowe’s mother died on December 23, 1994. In an ironic twist, Schaefer was killed on her mother’s birthday. Debora’s family takes it as a sign of their mother telling them that it’s finally over.
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