The face of evil - psychotic murderers; includes related article - Cover Story

National Review, Jan 23, 1995 by Eugene H. Methvin

ON March 14, 1992, at a peaceful country lake between Canton and Zanesville, Ohio, a 49-year-old man was fishing, when he was shot dead by a high-powered Swedish Mauser rifle.

Six detectives spent a week investigating the crime and came up clueless. Then a deputy sheriff remembered a random shooting that had occurred three years before in a neighboring county. A man had been shot as he walked or jogged near his rural home. The police soon found another case: James Paxton, 21, killed 50 miles away on November 10, 1990, by three shots from a .30-caliber rifle as he stalked deer with a crossbow.

Paxton's murder had never been solved. But six days before the first anniversary of his death, a letter had arrived at the Martin's Ferry Times Leader from the murderer, who proved he was no hoaxer by identifying the murder weapon and offering other details known only to the killer and the police. "Paxton was killed because of an irresistible compulsion that has taken over my life," the killer wrote. "I knew when I left my house that day that someone would die.... This compulsion started with just thoughts about murder and progressed from thoughts to action. I've thought about getting professional help but how can I ever approach a mental-health professional? I just can't blurt out in an interview that I've killed people (Paxton was not the only one). Technically I meet the definition of a serial killer (three or more victims with a cooling-off period in between) but I'm an average-looking person with a family, job, and home just like yourself."

On April 5, while the cops scratched their heads, another fisherman was killed with a shot from a Swedish Mauser two counties farther south, near Interstate 77. Federal, state, and local lawmen formed a task force to find the Hunter of Humans, as reporters tagged the killer. All the murders had happened on weekends, at or near rural roads not far from the two major interstates, I-70 and I-77, that quadrisect the area south of Akron and Canton. All the victims were alone, shot from a distance with a high-powered rifle. None was robbed, mutilated, or sexually assaulted. Four other killings in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana bore intriguing similarities. And around the same time there was a rash of animal killings: a thousand cows, horses, dogs, and cats shot dead throughout southeast Ohio.

A Break in the Case

ON August 24, 1992, after the task force had publicized its manhunt and opened a toll-free hotline, investigators got a break. A telephone caller who requested anonymity described a hunting companion, a man he had known since high school, a loner and "gun nut," whom he suspected of the murders. The suspect was Thomas Dillon, 42, a husband and father who had worked as a draftsman for 22 years in the Canton Water Department. The informant described himself as having been Dillon's only close friend. On hunting trips Dillon would shoot dogs and cats from public roads, and he kept a calendar in his bedroom recording his score. Once, the informant recalled, Dillon had taken potshots at a farmer. By the early 1980s, Dillon was boasting that his death count had reached 500, and the informant broke off their friendship.

In 1989 Dillon announced he had quit killing animals and invited the informant to accompany him to gun shows. On their long drives, they would talk about guns, hunting--and serial murders. Both had read many books about serial killers. Once Dillon remarked: "Do you realize you can go out into the country and find somebody and there are no witnesses? You can shoot them. There is no motive. Do you realize how easy murder would be to get away with?" During a trip in the summer of 1992, they discussed Ted Bundy and how he had escaped detection for so long. Dillon asked the informant: "Do you think I've ever killed somebody?"

Caught off guard, the other man said, "No, I don't think so." And Dillon repeated the question. "I'd never seen him like that before," the informant said. "I thought to myself, 'Has anybody been shot?'" When the informant read about the serial killings of five outdoorsmen, he wrestled with his memories for several days and decided to call the police.

Investigators began following Dillon's rural ramblings by airplane, saw enough to alarm them, and managed to arrest him on gun charges. When a prosecutor seeking to deny him bond named him in court as a suspect in the serial killings, another witness stepped forward with a Swedish Mauser he had bought from Dillon at a gun show on April 5, the day the second fisherman was killed; ballistics tests nailed Dillon, and he eventually pleaded guilty to five murders. He is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.

Serial killers were once rare. Although reports in Europe date back as far as the fifteenth century, London's Jack the Ripper was one of the few to be widely written about before the mid twentieth century, and by modern standards he was a piker, claiming only five victims over three months in 1888 (see p. 38). Yet in the last two decades serial killings have become increasingly frequent, with as many as half a dozen peppering the headlines and newscasts simultaneously, terrorizing entire cities and regions--the Boston Strangler; San Francisco's Zodiac Killer; New York City's Son of Sam; Atlanta's child murderer, Wayne Williams; Los Angeles's Hillside Strangler; Chicago's John Wayne Gacy; Houston's Dean Corll; California's Co-Ed Killer, Ed Kemper; Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal; and a host of others.