Nash was born in 1924 and by the mid 1950s was living rough around the Los Angeles waterfront and the downtown streets, working occasionally and drinking heavily.
Between 1955 and 1956 he stabbed people he encountered, including a ten-year-old boy on the Santa Monica pier and men he met at night. He was arrested in 1956.
In custody he talked, extensively and to anyone who would listen, describing himself as the king of the killers and putting his total at eleven. Some of the accounts matched open cases and some did not. He appeared to enjoy the attention and gave the press the quotations it wanted, including a line about how cheap killing was, which was reprinted for years afterwards.
He was convicted and executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin on August 21, 1959.
The figure of eleven is his own. Two killings are firmly established in the accessible record and the rest rests on what he said. His case is an early and clear instance of a pattern this archive records repeatedly: a man in custody with nothing to lose, a press eager for a number, and a figure that has been carried ever since without anyone testing it.