Montie Ralph Rissell, born in Wellington, Kansas in November 1958 and raised from the age of seven in Alexandria, Virginia, raped and killed five women between August 1976 and May 1977. All five killings were committed before his nineteenth birthday, most of them around the apartment complex in western Alexandria where he lived. He drowned, stabbed or strangled the victims, who ranged in age from their early twenties to their mid-thirties.
He had been convicted of rape by the age of 16 and had been repeatedly institutionalised as a juvenile. Police already had him under surveillance when a search of his car on May 18, 1977 produced possessions belonging to one of the victims. He confessed to all five killings and pleaded guilty, and the abduction and rape counts were dropped in exchange; the twelve rapes usually attributed to him are therefore admitted rather than proved at trial. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences on October 11, 1977, aged 18.
He wrote a 461-page account of the killings in prison and was among the subjects interviewed by the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, which is how the case entered the profiling literature. He has been parole-eligible since 1995 and has been refused at each annual hearing since. Some sources give four consecutive life sentences rather than five.