Gerard John Schaefer Jr. was a former police officer and sheriff's deputy in South Florida who was convicted in 1973 of murdering two teenage girls, Susan Place, 17, and Georgia Jessup, 16. The girls left Place's home in Oakland Park on September 27, 1972, with a man who called himself "Jerry Shepherd." Their remains were found on Hutchinson Island, in St. Lucie County, on April 1, 1973. By then Schaefer was in jail in Martin County for an earlier offense: he had tied two other teenage hitchhikers to trees on the same island, and they had freed themselves and gone to the police.
A jury in Fort Pierce found him guilty of both murders, and on October 4, 1973, the Circuit Court of Florida's Nineteenth Judicial Circuit sentenced him to two concurrent life terms. Investigators also examined him in connection with the disappearances of other women and girls, and in the spring of 1973 newspapers reported tallies of possible victims that ran into the dozens. None of those cases was ever charged. From prison he denied the murders, sued authors who called him a serial killer, and lost. He was stabbed to death by another inmate at Florida State Prison in 1995. In 2022 the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office named him as its likeliest suspect in the death of a 15-year-old girl whose remains had gone unidentified for nearly 50 years, while saying it had no physical evidence linking him to her.
Little is on the record about Schaefer's early life. In May 1973 the Fort Lauderdale News gave his age as 27 and reported that he had lived in his mother's home on Riverland Road in Fort Lauderdale until he married in the fall of 1972. It said he had lived for a short time in Europe and North Africa.
He had worked as a police officer in Wilton Manors, a small city in Broward County, and had been fired, the paper reported. He had also failed the psychological examination given to applicants for deputy jobs with the Broward County Sheriff's Office. In 1972 he became a deputy with the Martin County Sheriff's Office, to the north, and moved with his wife to Stuart.
Before he moved, he left instructions that no one was to open his room in his mother's house.
Earlier in 1972, before Place and Jessup disappeared, Schaefer, then a Martin County deputy, tied two teenage girls who had been hitchhiking to trees on Hutchinson Island, a barrier island along the Atlantic coast. The girls freed themselves and reached the police, and he was fired, WKMG News 6 reported in 2026; it said he was released on bail soon after his arrest. He admitted handcuffing the girls, according to the Fort Lauderdale News. The federal appeals court that later reviewed one of his lawsuits described the case in a single sentence: two young women he had abducted and tied to a tree escaped and contacted police.
The place where the girls were tied, the Fort Lauderdale News reported, was seven miles south of the spot where the remains of Susan Place and Georgia Jessup would later be found.
The case ended his career as a deputy. He was convicted of aggravated assault on the two girls and sentenced to a term in jail. His lawyer, Jerry Randolph, had represented him in court the previous winter, The Palm Beach Post reported in April. In May 1973 the Fort Lauderdale News said his jail sentence was due to end on June 15.
Susan Place was 17 and lived in Oakland Park, in Broward County. Georgia Jessup was 16 and lived in Fort Lauderdale. On September 27, 1972, the two friends left the Place home with a man they knew as Jerry Shepherd. They were not seen alive again.
Susan's mother had seen the man. She gave police a description of him and of his clothing, and she gave them the license number of his car, The Palm Beach Post reported at the trial. The Fort Lauderdale News said the car was a blue-green Datsun.
Little else was reported about the two girls themselves: their ages, their towns, and that they were friends who left together.
On April 1, 1973, the skeletal remains of the two girls were found on Hutchinson Island in St. Lucie County, The Palm Beach Post reported. The Fort Lauderdale News, writing in May 1973, said the girls had been found in Martin County; the trial coverage places the site in St. Lucie County, and the case was tried in Fort Pierce.
A witness had noted the license number of Schaefer's car, the Fort Lauderdale News reported. By then he was already in the Martin County jail.
On April 7, 1973, police went into the north bedroom of the Riverland Road house with a search warrant, the Fort Lauderdale News reported. It was the room Schaefer had asked to be kept shut. A federal appeals court later confirmed the date in general terms: in a lawsuit Schaefer brought in 1979, the court noted that police had seized items from him under a search warrant in April 1973, and that some of them had been introduced at his trial.
According to the Fort Lauderdale News, police found two gold-crowned teeth, small bones resembling wrist bones, a sorority pin, a charm bracelet, a photograph, rope, rifles, hunting knives, and a quantity of manuscripts. The paper said the manuscripts described violence against women; some were typed and some handwritten, and police believed they were the work of one writer. They were sent to handwriting experts in Miami and Tallahassee. The paper also reported that police found defaced magazine pictures of women and a purse that belonged to either Susan Place or Georgia Jessup.
The federal courts that later heard his libel suits summarized the search in similar terms. The Seventh Circuit said police searching his mother's home found jewelry, women's clothing, human teeth, a passport and manuscripts describing ritualistic murders. The federal district court in Indiana said jewelry, teeth and clothing from several victims had been recovered from a trunk in the attic, and treated that recovery as a matter of public record.
The writings were evidence of what was in his room. They were never proof that any of the acts they describe took place, and no court treated them that way.
The search made Schaefer a suspect in more than the two murders. The Fort Lauderdale News reported in May 1973 that police suspected him in as many as eight deaths of Broward County girls and young women, and that investigators were looking at cases elsewhere in Florida, in West Virginia and Iowa, and in Europe and North Africa, where he had lived. Police were checking 28 cases of women and girls in South Florida. "I don't think the country has ever seen anything of this magnitude," said Robert Stone, the state attorney handling the investigation. He also said the case could be "the greatest crime in the history of Florida, even of the United States."
Two of the women the paper named were tied to items in the room.
Leigh Hainline Bonadies was 25. She disappeared on September 8, 1969, about a month after her wedding, and her car was found near a boat ramp on Southeast Seventh Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. She had known Schaefer since they were young teenagers, the paper reported. A charm bracelet bearing the name "Leigh" was among the things found in his room.
Carmen Marie Hallock, whose first name the paper spelled Carman, was 22. She was reported missing on December 18, 1969, and her car was found near George English Park in Fort Lauderdale. A dentist identified the two gold-crowned teeth found in the search as hers.
Stone said the missing women had a common pattern: they were of similar ages, and each had left abruptly without telling anyone. Neither woman's disappearance was ever charged against Schaefer. In the legal record they remain cases in which he was suspected.
The numbers grew quickly in the spring of 1973. The Seventh Circuit, reviewing the press record in 1995, listed four reports. The Palm Beach Post-Times reported on May 13, 1973, that he was a suspect in murders in South Florida, Virginia and Iowa. The Miami News reported him as a murder suspect the next day. Time magazine, in a story titled "Bluebeard on the Beach" on May 28, 1973, reported that he was under investigation for at least 20 murders. And in 1989 The Palm Beach Post, writing about a book he had published, described him as a suspect in several Florida deaths.
None of those figures came from a charge. They were the press's accounts of what investigators were examining, and no court ever tested them.
While the investigation went on, Schaefer stayed in jail in Martin County. In May 1973 he had still not been charged with murder, the Fort Lauderdale News reported. Two psychiatrists had said he should be hospitalized for tests, but a legal tangle kept him where he was. Lem Brumley, the chief investigator, said the work was not finished. "There are so many people and things involved, it just takes time," he said. Asked when charges would be filed, he said that was "a good question."
A Palm Beach Post report from Fort Pierce, dated only April 11, said that Schaefer, while serving his sentence for the assault on the two girls and while a suspect in a death investigation, had been taken to the Indian River Mental Health Clinic for a psychiatric examination. Authorities said he appeared to be close to a nervous breakdown. Witnesses had testified that he was suicidal, and he had been expected to be moved to a state mental hospital, but he refused the transfer. Circuit Judge C. Pfeiffer Trowbridge ordered an examination instead and told the Martin County Sheriff's Office to keep him under guard during it. His lawyer said Schaefer himself had asked to be examined.
Schaefer was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Susan Place and Georgia Jessup. The case was State of Florida v. Gerard J. Schaefer, Jr., number 73-103-CF-A-01, in the Circuit Court for the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, according to the federal court in Indiana that later cited the judgment.
Jury selection began in Fort Pierce in September 1973 before Judge Trowbridge. The Palm Beach Post reported on September 18 that six jurors, five men and one woman, had been seated after 24 people were questioned on the second day. The judge had called 102 prospective jurors for each of the first three days. Robert E. Stone, the state attorney, led the prosecution with the Broward County state attorney, Philip S. Shailer. The public defender, Elton H. Schwarz, and his chief assistant, Bruce H. Colton, represented Schaefer.
Stone told the panel that the burden of proof was on the state and that the defendant did not have to testify. "We want to get a fair trial for the defendant and also for the State of Florida," he said. He asked whether prospective jurors could convict on a chain of circumstantial evidence and whether sympathy would cloud their judgment. Schwarz asked whether they could accept that Schaefer had been insane when the girls disappeared, if insanity were raised, and reminded them that witnesses might not remember dates and faces many months later. Many people were excused because they had children at home or medical certificates. One man was excused after saying that, from what he had read, he believed Schaefer was guilty; several others said they had formed an opinion but could still be fair.
The Post also reported that, the week before, Schaefer had led authorities on a tour of places in Palm Beach and Broward counties described in writings attributed to him. Schaefer's family attended court.
The jury found him guilty of both counts of first-degree murder. On October 4, 1973, he was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences. The federal court in Indiana described the sentences in those words in 1994: "two (2) concurrent life sentences for the murders of Susan Carole Place and Georgia Jessup." A federal court in Illinois described the convictions in 1993 as a single double murder, though it gave the year wrongly as 1983.
He maintained his innocence, WKMG reported. In 1994 the federal court in Indiana noted that he disputed his guilt of the two murders and that the convictions had not been set aside.
Schaefer appealed to Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal, which affirmed the convictions in 1975. The Florida Supreme Court declined to review that decision without opinion in 1976. A later opinion of the same appeals court cites them as Schaefer v. State, 311 So.2d 137 (Fla. 4th DCA 1975), cert. denied, 327 So.2d 34 (Fla. 1976).
He later moved for post-conviction relief under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, and the trial court denied the motion. On January 19, 1983, in Schaeffer v. State, number 82-268, the Fourth District affirmed in a short opinion. The issue he raised, the court said, was exactly the issue it had decided when it affirmed his murder convictions. It was bound by its own earlier decision, the Supreme Court had denied review, and the court found that there had been no change in the law since then that would allow it to revisit the question. The 1983 opinion does not say what the issue was.
On October 9, 1979, Schaefer filed a federal civil rights suit against Edward Stack, a former sheriff of Broward County, and others, to recover property seized under the April 1973 search warrant. His lawyer had moved for the property's return in September 1973 and February 1974, and some of it, though apparently not all, had been returned. Schaefer argued that the violation was continuing and that solitary confinement and a poor prison law library had kept him from suing earlier.
The district court dismissed the suit under Florida's four-year statute of limitations. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed on March 30, 1981, in Schaefer v. Stack, number 80-5636. "It is evident that appellant knew that his property had been seized in 1973; some of it was introduced at trial," the court wrote. It held that the claim was not a continuing violation and that "imprisonment does not suspend the running of the statute of limitations on a civil rights claim." Later courts cited the decision as 641 F.2d 227.
In prison Schaefer wrote fiction. The Seventh Circuit noted that he published a book in 1992, Killer Fiction, and quoted its introduction, which said there was no way to separate the fact that he had been "publicly accused of murdering 34 women." The federal court in Indiana found that the material in one author's files included Schaefer's own claims to have killed between 80 and 110 people.
None of this was evidence of any killing. His claims to writers contradicted his denials of the two murders he was convicted of, and his stories were stories. No court relied on his writings or boasts as proof of any death.
Schaefer brought several lawsuits against writers and publishers who described him as a serial killer. Two produced written decisions.
The first was against Jay Robert Nash and CrimeBooks, Inc., over three paragraphs about him in Nash's Encyclopedia of World Crime, which identified him as a serial killer. Schaefer asked for 5 million dollars in compensatory damages and 5 million in punitive damages. On June 11, 1993, Senior District Judge Shadur of the federal court in Chicago denied him leave to proceed as a poor person and dismissed the suit without prejudice. The claim had arisen when the book was published in 1990, the court said, and it was barred by the statute of limitations under both Illinois and Florida law, which made it frivolous. The court is cited as Schaefer v. Nash, 149 F.R.D. 583 (N.D. Ill. 1993).
The second was against Michael Newton and Avon Books, over an entry in Newton's encyclopedia of serial killers, Hunting Humans. The entry said Schaefer was "theoretically linked with the murders of at least 20 persons." Schaefer's complaint said he had never been linked to 20 murders, that he was not a serial killer, and that he should not be listed in such a book. He sought damages and an order against the publishers.
On July 11, 1994, Judge William E. Steckler of the federal court in Indianapolis granted summary judgment for Newton and Avon Books, in Schaefer v. Newton, number IP 93-614-C. The court found that Schaefer was a public figure on the subject of serial murder and so had to prove actual malice. Newton had researched the entry from law enforcement and court records, press reports, published material and Schaefer himself. The court struck most of Schaefer's own exhibits as unauthenticated and found that the record showed he had been linked with at least 20 people. "Neither Newton nor Avon Books had any knowledge that any fact in the Schaefer entry was false," the court wrote. It ordered Schaefer to pay costs and a 120 dollar filing fee.
He appealed. On June 8, 1995, the Seventh Circuit, in an unpublished order by a panel of Chief Judge Posner and Circuit Judges Pell and Eschbach, affirmed. His pro se status did not lower the standards of evidence he had to meet, the court said, and the district court had been right to strike his unauthenticated papers. Truth was a complete defense, and the evidence showed that "the disputed entry contains a true statement: Schaefer murdered two women and was linked with the murder of over twenty." The order is reported in table form at 57 F.3d 1073.
What the court found true was that he had been linked, in public reports, with more than 20 deaths. It did not find that he had committed them, and no court ever did.
Schaefer served his sentences at Florida State Prison in Starke. In 1995 he was stabbed to death there by another inmate. The Tampa Bay Times, then the St. Petersburg Times, reported on December 5, 1995, that a fellow inmate was suspected in the killing of the former sheriff's deputy. Later reports by the Associated Press, NBC News, Fox News and WPTV in West Palm Beach agree that he was fatally stabbed by a fellow inmate in 1995.
Reports do not say what that inmate was charged with or how his case ended. Schaefer died having been convicted of two killings. Every other death linked to him remains a suspicion.
On the morning of June 16, 1974, the partial skeletal remains of a young woman were found in mangroves on Singer Island in Palm Beach County, in an area along State Road A1A once called Burnt Bridges. She had been tied to a mangrove tree with wire. Investigators could not determine a cause of death, and an anthropologist found no trauma to the bones. For almost five decades she had no name.
The body was exhumed in April 2014, and a DNA profile developed in 2015 found no match. A new facial reconstruction released in 2019 brought no identification. In December 2021 the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office sent the remains to Othram, a private forensic laboratory in Texas, which used genetic genealogy to produce leads in March 2022. DNA from relatives, including her mother, confirmed her identity. The sheriff's office announced in June 2022 that she was Susan Gale Poole, born February 12, 1957, who was 15 when she disappeared shortly before Christmas 1972.
Susan Poole had dropped out of high school and divided her time between her family's home in a Broward County trailer park near Fort Lauderdale and a friend's apartment in Wilton Manors. She often hitchhiked. When she vanished, her clothes and her purse were left behind at the apartment. "I knew something was wrong when I saw her purse on the couch of a friend of hers," her sister, Patti Poole, told WWBT. "My search is finally over."
Detective Bill Springer of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office called Schaefer the best suspect in her death. Schaefer had picked up hitchhikers, as she did, had worked as a police officer in Wilton Manors, and had lived in the part of Broward County where she lived, Springer said. The way she was found, tied to a tree, also pointed to him. But Springer was clear about the limits. "Everything kind of fits that way but I don't have any physical evidence to link him to it," he told NBC News. He said he was working with the Broward County Sheriff's Office to check whether any of her belongings were among the items seized from Schaefer's home. He asked three people who had known her to come forward. On June 6, 2022, Fox News reported that no tips had come in.
Her death was never charged. It is attributed to Schaefer by investigators as a suspicion, nothing more.
A live oak in Oak Hammock Park in Port St. Lucie has long been known locally as the Devil's Tree and tied in popular stories to the Schaefer case. In October 2026 the City of Port St. Lucie told WKMG News 6 that the tree is a southern live oak probably more than a century old and that it is not the tree associated with the murders. The city said vandals had chopped its bark, painted it and set a fire at its base, and that the hollow had been filled with cement. It called a story about workmen dying after their chainsaws failed on the tree "100% urban legend."
Proven by final judgment: the first-degree murders of Susan Carole Place and Georgia Jessup, who disappeared together on September 27, 1972 (two counts, jury verdict, two concurrent life sentences imposed October 4, 1973, affirmed on appeal). Proven earlier: aggravated assault on two teenage girls he tied to trees on Hutchinson Island in 1972.
Suspected and never charged: the disappearances of Leigh Hainline Bonadies and Carmen Marie Hallock in 1969, in which items found in his room were linked to the women; other cases investigators examined in 1973 in Florida, other states and abroad; and the death of Susan Gale Poole, in which the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office says he is the best suspect but has no physical evidence.
Not evidence: his fiction, his manuscripts, and the claims of 34 or of 80 to 110 killings that appear in his own book and in his own statements found in an author's files. Newspaper tallies of 20 or more victims in 1973 reflected what investigators were examining; none was tested in court. When the Seventh Circuit called the "linked with over twenty" statement true, it was describing the public record, not finding him guilty of any further killing.
Points on which sources differ: whether the remains of Place and Jessup were found in Martin County (Fort Lauderdale News, May 1973) or St. Lucie County (Palm Beach Post, 1973; trial held in Fort Pierce); the spelling of Carmen or Carman Hallock; the year of his convictions (1973 in the Indiana court and the press, 1983 in the Illinois court's opinion); and the year of his death (1995 in most reports, 1996 in one 2022 television report).
1969: Leigh Hainline Bonadies disappears on September 8; Carmen Marie Hallock is reported missing on December 18. Both cases are later linked by investigators to items in Schaefer's room; neither is ever charged.
By 1972: Schaefer works as a police officer in Wilton Manors and is fired; he fails the Broward County Sheriff's Office psychological examination.
1972: becomes a Martin County sheriff's deputy and moves to Stuart.
1972, before September 27: ties two teenage hitchhikers to trees on Hutchinson Island; they free themselves and go to the police. He is fired, released on bail, later convicted of aggravated assault and jailed.
September 27, 1972: Susan Place, 17, and Georgia Jessup, 16, leave the Place home in Oakland Park with a man calling himself Jerry Shepherd. Susan's mother notes the car's license number.
December 1972: Susan Gale Poole, 15, disappears shortly before Christmas.
April 1, 1973: the remains of Place and Jessup are found on Hutchinson Island.
April 7, 1973: police search his room in his mother's Riverland Road home in Fort Lauderdale under a warrant.
April 11, year unknown: psychiatric examination ordered by Judge C. Pfeiffer Trowbridge.
May 13 to May 28, 1973: newspapers and Time magazine report him under investigation in many cases.
September 1973: jury selection begins in Fort Pierce.
October 4, 1973: after the jury's guilty verdicts, he is sentenced to two concurrent life terms.
June 16, 1974: unidentified remains, later identified as Susan Poole's, are found on Singer Island.
1975: the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirms the convictions; in 1976 the Florida Supreme Court denies review.
October 9, 1979: he sues former Broward Sheriff Edward Stack for the return of seized property.
March 30, 1981: the Fifth Circuit affirms dismissal of the property suit as time-barred.
January 19, 1983: the Fourth District affirms denial of his Rule 3.850 motion.
1992: Killer Fiction is published.
June 11, 1993: his libel suit against Jay Robert Nash is dismissed in Chicago.
July 11, 1994: summary judgment for Michael Newton and Avon Books in Indianapolis.
June 8, 1995: the Seventh Circuit affirms.
1995: he is stabbed to death by a fellow inmate at Florida State Prison; the Tampa Bay Times reports the killing on December 5.
June 2022: the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office identifies Susan Gale Poole and names Schaefer its best suspect, without physical evidence.
October 2026: the City of Port St. Lucie says the "Devil's Tree" in Oak Hammock Park is not the tree tied to the murders.