Earle Leonard Nelson (né Ferral; 12 May 1897 – 13 January 1928), also known as the Gorilla Man, the Gorilla Killer, and the Dark Strangler, was an American serial killer, rapist, and necrophile who killed at least twenty women in various U.S. states and two in Canada between 1926 and 1927. He is perhaps the first known serial sex murderer of the twentieth century.
Though Nelson refused to admit to any of the crimes of which he was accused, he has been linked to a total of 22 murders that occurred between 1926 and 1927. His victims were all women, with the exception of one male infant.
Modus Operandi[]
Nelson's victims were mostly landladies, whom he would approach on the pretext of renting a room. Many of these victims were targeted after having placed "room for rent" advertisements in local newspapers. Nelson, well-versed in Christian theology, often studied his worn Bible, using it to keep his victim at ease and off-guard. Once he had gained their trust and was able to access their homes, he would kill them (almost always by strangling) and sometimes engage in necrophilia with the corpse. Nelson would often hide the body, leaving it under the nearest bed. In several of his murders committed in Portland, he went to additional lengths to conceal the body, hiding it in the attic or in a steamer trunk within the house. Other victims were concealed in closets or behind furnaces in the house.
Background[]
Earle Nelson was born Earle Leonard Ferral on 12 May 1897, in San Francisco, California, the son of an Iowa-born mother of Danish and Irish descent, Frances Nelson, and a father whose ancestry was Jewish, James Carlos Ferral. Both of his parents died of syphilis before he reached two years of age. Nelson was subsequently sent to live with his maternal grandmother Jennie Nelson, a devout Pentecostal who raised him alongside her two younger children, Willis and Lillian, who were ten and eight years his senior, respectively. Nelson exhibited self-loathing and other "morbid" behavior at a young age, and was expelled from the Agassiz primary school in San Francisco at age 7. Around age 10, he collided with a streetcar while riding his bicycle and remained unconscious for six days. After he awoke, Nelson's behavior became erratic, and he suffered from frequent headaches and memory loss.
Described as a "psychotic prodigy," Nelson exhibited increasingly bizarre, manic behaviors in his childhood, such as talking to imaginary people, compulsively quoting Biblical passages, and watching female family members undress. His grandmother noted occasions where Nelson would go to school in freshly-cleaned clothes and return home in rags, as though he had exchanged clothes with a homeless person. Nelson's strong religious upbringing remained a pervasive influence in his life, and he obsessively read the Book of Revelation as a teenager.
In his early teenage years, Nelson began frequenting brothels and bars in San Francisco's Barbary Coast red-light district, and contracted a venereal disease. As he progressed through puberty, Nelson grew into a stocky, physically fit young man. He would sometimes entertain his family with his physical talents, such as walking on his hands or lifting heavy objects with his teeth.
Execution[]
Nelson spent two months on death row. He was executed by hanging at 7:30 a.m. on January 13, 1928 at the Vaughan Street Jail in Winnipeg. His final words were: "I forgive those who have wronged me."