--- alias: - Gerard Schaefer - G.J. Schaefer - Killer Cop - Butcher of Blind Creek born: 1946-03-26 category: Crime & Abuse Networks created: 2026-09-22 died: 1995-12-03 location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida summary: Martin County, Florida, deputy sheriff convicted in 1973 of two murders and linked by recovered possessions to at least six missing women, and by one account a Wackenhut security guard in 1970. tags: - Person - GerardJohnSchaefer - Florida - SerialKiller - Wackenhut - MartinCounty updated: 2026-09-22 --- Gerard John Schaefer (March 26, 1946, Neenah, Wisconsin, to December 3, 1995, Florida State Prison) was a Martin County deputy sheriff convicted in September 1973 of the first-degree murders of Susan Place and Georgia Jessup, two teenagers whose remains were found on Hutchinson Island on April 1, 1973. A trunk and jewelry box seized from his mother's house in [Fort Lauderdale](/places/fort-lauderdale/) held jewelry, teeth, identity documents and photographs belonging to or depicting other women who had disappeared in southern [Florida](/places/florida/) between 1969 and 1973. He was never charged with those deaths. Within a month of joining the sheriff's office he abducted two hitchhikers, Nancy Trotter and Paula Sue Wells, handcuffed and gagged them and tied them to trees with nooses at their necks, then left; both escaped. Trotter and Wells told a state investigator the next day that he had talked of selling them into "white slavery" and had "started estimating how much he could get for us."[^1][^2][^3] ### Teaching, Security Work and the Police Schaefer grew up in Nashville, Atlanta and, from 1960, Fort Lauderdale, graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in 1964, and took a degree at Florida Atlantic University in 1968; a university psychological evaluation that year found "impairment in reality testing." He student-taught geography at Plantation High School from September 23 to November 7, 1969, when he was dismissed after complaints from students and parents, and was let go from a second internship at Stranahan High School about seven weeks after it began on April 2, 1970. His first wife, Martha Fogg, divorced him on May 2, 1970, on grounds of extreme cruelty. He then travelled in Europe and North Africa, and on his return took work as a security guard, with the [Wackenhut Corporation](/organizations/wackenhut-corporation/) by one account and Florida Power & Light by another.[^1][^3][^4] Applying to the Wilton Manors police (the year is given as both 1970 and 1971), he claimed two years as a research assistant at the university and said he had recently returned from Morocco; the department did not check. He had already failed the Broward County Sheriff's Department psychological test. Wilton Manors dismissed him after six months for what its chief, Bernard Scott, called "a lack of common sense," and Martin County hired him as a deputy in June 1972 on the strength of a forged Wilton Manors recommendation.[^1][^3] ### Evidence, Trial and Prison Searches in April 1973 recovered a locket engraved "LEIGH" belonging to Leigh Hainline Bonadies, a teenage neighbor of Schaefer's missing since September 1969; two teeth and a gold shamrock pin of Carmen Hallock, who had vanished in December 1969, together with a story of Schaefer's about the hanging of a woman in a black chiffon dress, the outfit Hallock was last seen in; the driver's license of Barbara Wilcox and passport of Collette Goodenough, hitchhikers last seen in January 1973; a chain and Madonna pin of Mary Briscolina, 14, missing with Elsie Farmer, 13, since October 1972; teeth and bone attributed to at least eight people; and photographs of women hanged or mutilated whose subjects police could not identify, along with pictures of Schaefer in women's clothing simulating his own hanging. Among the papers was a letter dated July 20, 1971, from a correspondent he had met in Morocco in 1970, enclosing a large number of pictures, several of women mutilated with bladed weapons; by a later account the correspondent wrote from Brunswick East, Victoria, and had taken the pictures in a village in the Sahara after what he called a "wog massacre" of Europeans and Arabs. Georgia Jessup's suede purse was in the possession of Schaefer's second wife, Teresa Dean, who said he had given it to her; when he pressed her and her brother Henry Dean to discard it, Dean gave it to police. The trunk held items from "at least six other women and girls." The jury convicted him on September 27, 1973, after about five hours, and he received two concurrent life terms on October 4.[^1][^2][^3][^5] In prison he wrote the stories later published with Sondra London as Killer Fiction, described conversations with Ted Bundy, whom he called "a tyro when he nabbed Ott and Naslund," and forged letters in the name of Ottis Toole to John Walsh, Sears and Florida newspapers on the promise of a book deal. He sued London three times, and also Michael Newton, Colin Wilson, Robert Ressler and Patrick Kendrick, for calling him a serial killer; the suits against London were dismissed after she filed his handwritten confessions as an exhibit, the Seventh Circuit affirmed judgment for Newton in June 1995, and the Wilson court declared him libel-proof. He was found stabbed more than forty times in his cell on December 3, 1995. Vincent Faustino Rivera was convicted of the killing in 1999; the official account gave a quarrel over hot water, while letters from Danny Rolling to London describe Schaefer as a "manipulating SNITCH" whose cell had twice been set on fire.[^2][^3][^6][^7] [^1]: "Crime: Bluebeard on the Beach," *Time,* May 28, 1973, p. 31 (the 1968 evaluation, the Broward rejection, Chief Scott, the trunk, and the arrest 22 days into the Martin County job). https://time.com/archive/6844470/crime-bluebeard-on-the-beach/ [^2]: London, Sondra. "Killer Cop," introductory essay to Schaefer, G.J., as told to Sondra London, *Killer Fiction,* Feral House, 1997 (reissued 2011); reproduces the investigator Littman's interview of Trotter and Wells, Schaefer's Bundy letter, the litigation and Rolling's letters. Archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20180514185819/http://sondralondon.com/tales/cop/index.htm [^3]: "The Butcher of Blind Creek: Gerard John Schaefer," *CrimeCult,* November 16, 2024, a compilation drawing on *Palm Beach Post* coverage of May 1973 and Lane, Brian, *Real-Life Crimes,* Eaglemoss, 1992-93; the underlying clippings, on newspapers.com, were not examined. https://www.crimecult.com/p/gerard-john-schaefer [^4]: The Wackenhut attribution is Lane, Brian, "Gerard Schaefer," *Real-Life Crimes,* Eaglemoss, London, 1992-93, p. 162, as cited in later accounts and not examined directly; the Crime Library profile of Schaefer, intermittently offline, gives the employer as "Florida Light and Power." No account describes his duties, names who hired him, or connects him to other Wackenhut personnel. [^5]: The letter's date and the pictures of mutilated women are in the CrimeCult account. The Brunswick East origin, the Moroccan acquaintance of summer 1970 and the "village in the Sahara" after a "wog massacre" are given only in Kendrick, Patrick, *American Ripper: The Enigma of America's Serial Killer Cop,* BluewaterPress, 2020, pp. 224-225, as summarized in later accounts; the book was not available for examination, and the letter is not mentioned in London's essay or in any 1973 press account located. A count of 37 Polaroids is attributed to "'Grave' Site Probed for More Victims," *Fort Lauderdale News,* May 24, 1973, not examined. Kendrick's earlier *Extended Family* is a novel drawing on the case; "Up Close: Patrick Kendrick," *The Big Thrill,* August 2020. https://www.thebigthrill.org/2020/08/up-close-patrick-kendrick/ [^6]: Gilmore, Tim. "Stalking Ottis Toole, chapter 109: Framing Ottis Toole," *Jax Psycho Geo,* correcting the account in Matthews, Joe, and Les Standiford, *Bringing Adam Home,* 2011. https://jaxpsychogeo.com/north/springfield-ottis-toole-house/ottis-toole/stalking-ottis-toole-chapter-109/ [^7]: *Schaefer v. Newton,* 57 F.3d 1073 (7th Cir. 1995) (unpublished order affirming summary judgment; text not examined). The Rivera conviction and the hot-water account are in the CrimeCult compilation.