Serial Killer of the Month: Larry Eyler, the Interstate Killer

Larry Eyler, then 31, had been a house painter and liquor store clerk. In the summer of 1983, a string of murders across the dusty cities of Indiana and Illinois had similarities: All the victims were young men, and they were all bound and stabbed. Eyler had been arrested in 1978 for handcuffing and stabbing a young hitchhiker. He was a notoriously mean and short-tempered man. He traveled the roads where the murders had happened: the liquor store where he worked in Greencastle, Indiana; a friend’s house in Terre Haute, and Chicago where he lived with his lover and his lover’s wife, and cruised the bars on the weekends. The highways connecting these cities had been littered over the summer with these punctured, corseted corpses. He was soon, appropriately enough, suspected in the murders.

As the summer was ending, the body of a 28-year-old Chicagoan – Ralph Calise – was found bound and stabbed seventeen times in a field. Nearby were clear car tracks and boot sole impressions in the dirt. On September 30, Indiana state troopers stopped Eyler for speeding and found that his boots and tires matched the evidence found at the scene. As October rolled around, evidence implicating Eyler in the summer’s string of murders gathered like flies on shit. The FBI profile of the highway killer fit: “He is a macho-image, beer-drinking homosexual with a hatred for himself because he is homosexual.”

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

Charged with the Calise murder, Eyler was freed on February 1, 1984 on bond to await trial. This came about because a judge ruled that Eyler had been the victim of illegally obtained evidence. The police, once again, had behaved criminally, thus doing a double injustice to society: freeing a killer and destroying the already tenuous public trust of the police. (Remember O.J.?)

Seven months later, police received a call from a janitor. Eight trash bags Eyler had heaved into a dumpster in Chicago contained the dismembered remains of a teenage boy. Eyler was arrested and charged with the murder and kidnapping of Danny Bridges. This time the cops followed the law, and a conviction based on fingerprints and blood trace evidence earned Eyler the most exquisite of punishments: death.

After four years on death row, Eyler has offered complete information on twenty other killings in return for life without parole. The state was not interested. As of 1992, Eyler was still on death row.

Read more Serial Killer of the Month from the SLUG archives:
Serial Killer of the Month: David Berkowitz
Serial Killer of the Month: Jerome Henry Brudos

Having a killer time in the depths of the archives? Consider becoming one of our donors!