Overcrowding. Good behavior. Even age: There are as many reasons for a convicted
killer to be released on parole, but is it always a good idea? All convicted once,
they were released to the streets… and killed again.
When Robert Lee Massie was executed in 2001, his last words were
"Forgiveness. Giving up all hope for a better past."
There was a lot to forgive, because it wasn't even his first time on death row. Between January
7 and 15 of 1965, Massie embarked on a spree of robberies and assaults that included the shooting
death of Mildred Weiss. Several others were shot and wounded, and when it came time for his trial,
the counts of murder, attempted murder, and robbery were enough to get him the death penalty.
Things changed in 1972, though — that, says the Office of the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney,
was when the State of California overturned all death penalty convictions and ruled that the
whole idea was unconstitutional. In a shocking change of fortune for the convicted killer,
he went from death row to a freed man when he was paroled in 1978.
And that's when he killed again: Massie was robbing a liquor store on January 3,
1979 — just 8 months after he was released from jail — when he shot and killed liquor
store owner Boris Naumoff. He was once again on trial for murder, and in spite of the fact
that it was argued he hadn't been in control of his actions and suffered from mental illness,
Massie pulled appeals and insisted on his own execution — just as Executed Today says he did
when on death row in the 1960s. He got his wish at San Quentin State Prison on March 27, 2001.
Kenneth McDuff's first stint in jail came when he was 18 years old — it was 1965,
and he was serving 52 years on burglary charges ... in theory. The charges were
concurrent rather than consecutive, and he was out in less than 10 months.
After his release, McDuff murdered three teenagers — including a girl whose neck he broke with the
aid of a broom handle. McDuff would brag about his violence against women saying,
"Killing a woman's like killing a chicken. They both squawk."
The murders got him the death penalty, but Texas Monthly says that fate intervened in
1972. All death sentences were overturned, and suddenly, McDuff was facing life.
And then, he was looking at getting paroled. He started trying for parole in 1976, and in
1988 — after overcrowding increased pressure to get people out on the streets — he was approved.
"The general reaction was, 'How on earth could this man get out?' This is the Broomstick Killer."
That day, the local sheriff in the town he was released to predicted:
"I don't know if it'll be next week or next month or next year,
but one of these days, dead girls are gonna start turning up."
The sheriff was too optimistic. Sarafia Parker was killed just three days after McDuff's release,
and he was connected to the murder of eight other women before he was arrested again.
There's a good chance that Louise Peete already had a few victims under her belt when she left
Waco, Texas, to head to Los Angeles — an undeniably exciting place in 1920.
LA Mag says it was there that she hooked up with wealthy mining exec Jacob Denton,
and when he disappeared in May of the same year, Peete claimed he had argued with
someone she described as a "Spanish-looking woman." Then, she claimed he had gone into
hiding as he was embarrassed she'd chopped off one of his arms and one of his legs.
Denton's body was later found buried in his own basement, and Peete was tracked to Colorado,
where she'd since remarried. She was found guilty of the murder but was released on
parole in 1939. That parole came with the help of some very vocal advocates,
including Arthur and Margaret Logan. The Logans — who had cared for Peete's daughter,
Betty, while she was in prison — gave Peete a job and a place to stay on her release.
Margaret soon disappeared, and Arthur — who was suffering from dementia — was
committed by his so-called sister. The sister, of course, was Peete,
and it didn't take too long before someone noticed all the forged signatures on their
financial documents. That, says Executed Today, was when she was arrested again. This time,
she became the second woman to be executed in California's gas chambers.
When Albert Flick was convicted of murder in 2019, it was another in a long list of murders
that kicked off when his wife, Sandra, served him with divorce papers in 1979. Three weeks later,
he stabbed her 14 times, and after her 12-year-old daughter summoned a
neighbor for help, she made sure everyone knew who'd done it with her dying breath.
The Washington Post says Flick served 21 of his 30-year sentence before being
released for good behavior, then was arrested again in 2007 — this time,
for stabbing and punching a woman. A list of violent offenses finally culminated in
another murder that took place in 2018, after he was released again.
That's when witnesses say he became obsessed with a woman named Kimberly Dobbie. When she
didn't reciprocate, he stabbed and killed her. The murder was captured on a surveillance camera,
and witnessed by the victim's 11-year-old twins, and Flick was convicted. The families
of his victims were outraged: Elsie Clement — the daughter of Flick's 1979 victim — said,
"There is no reason this man should have been on the streets in the first place, no reason."
So, why was he? In 2010, Maine Supreme Court Justice Robert E. Crowley explained the short
sentence he was handed after threatening to kill a woman with a screwdriver. His rationale was this:
"At some point, Mr. Flick is going to age out of his capacity to engage in this conduct,
and incarcerating him beyond the time that he ages out doesn't seem to me to make good sense."
Today, Arthur Shawcross is known as the Genesee River Killer, the serial
killer so-named after his New York State hunting grounds. Shockingly,
he did most of his killing after being paroled from a sentence for earlier murder convictions.
Shawcross' first victims were a 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl,
killed four months apart in 1972. He was sentenced to 25 years,
and according to The New York Times, he started the parole process in 1987.
After several rejected attempts, he was released on parole in 1987, and settled in Rochester,
New York. By the time he was arrested three years later, he was connected to the deaths of at least
11 women — although it was suspected he had at least a few more victims. Law enforcement found
Shawcross — who didn't own a car — borrowed vehicles before heading out to pick up
local sex workers, who he either suffocated or strangled when they got into the car with him.
Not surprisingly, there was a massive outcry and a demand to know why the
state's parole board had authorized Shawcross' release, but the county's district attorney,
Howard R. Relin, told the Times that tragedies weren't as uncommon as one might hope. He said,
"Every prosecutor in New York State can recount three or four
horror stories about people who never should have been paroled and were."
Shawcross was given a sentence of 250 years, and died in prison in 2008.
"People tell me, 'Hey, you're going to go die and go to hell.' And at least I won't be lonely."
Andrew Dawson is from Ormskirk, a town in Lancashire, England. It's not far from Liverpool,
and it's where he killed his first victim. That was a 91-year-old shopkeeper named Henry Walsh,
and according to the Liverpool Echo, Dawson had stabbed him 11 times before stealing about £50.
Dawson was handed a life sentence in his 1982 trial, but by 2010, he was back on the streets.
The BBC says his next victim, John Matthews, was discovered in his own apartment on July
25, and just five days later, Paul Hancock was discovered in the same apartment building. Both
had been stabbed multiple times, and both were discovered in their bathtubs. Dawson claims he
saw himself as an "Angel of Mercy," and admitted to the killings at his trial.
Those who testified against him said he had a fascination with serial killers,
and his brother testified that he often repeated the belief that killers — particularly Peter
Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper — didn't actually know what they were doing — and
he wasn't going to be arrested: He was going to go out "in a blaze of glory."
That didn't happen. Dawson was arrested in Whitehaven — a town that had been the
site of a mass shooting just a few months prior — and was sentenced
to life in prison. Again. As for the parole board, they explained:
"We always knew he was a difficult man,
but there was nothing in all the years to indicate ... he was planning to kill again."
When 15-year-old Randy Laufer went missing in 1987, John McRae — the
father of one of his friends — wasn't a suspect. Not, at least,
until Florida investigators called detectives with questions about other missing boys.
McRae, it turned out, had been convicted of murdering an 8-year-old when he was just 15
years old. After spending decades in jail, he was paroled in 1971, bringing an end to what
had been a life sentence. Not long after Laufer disappeared, McRae and his son headed to Arizona,
and while Oxygen says he was questioned, there was no real evidence of his involvement.
It wasn't until 1997 that workers on McRae's old property found Laufer's remains. He had been
brutally murdered and buried, just about 25 feet from the McRae's home. McRae was arrested along
with his son, who was charged as an accessory, says the Associated Press, but since he had been
a minor when the murder took place, it was ruled that he couldn't be tried as an adult.
It took a jury just three hours to find him guilty on the charges of first-degree murder,
and even though it took until June 15, 2005 for the sentence to be handed out, he was given life
in prison. On June 29, 2005, the Midland Daily News reported he had died of natural causes.