11 Facts About David Meirhofer

David Meirhofer was born on June 8,1949, in Bozeman, Montana, one of Clifford and Eleanor Meirhofer's five children.

Shortly after his birth, the family moved to the small town of Manhattan, where David Meirhofer would spend his childhood and adolescence.

David Meirhofer attended the local Manhattan High School where, due to his melancholic temperament and introverted nature, he was considered an outcast and periodically bullied by other students.

In 1973, David Meirhofer was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps and returned to Manhattan.

David Meirhofer first came to police attention following the kidnapping of 7-year-old Susan Jaeger.

David Meirhofer took a polygraph test, whose results proved inconclusive.

Searchers found bloodied women's clothing, washed-out blood stains, and a human hand and several fingers, the latter of which David Meirhofer had kept in the refrigerator.

Some Montana crimes that David Meirhofer was suspected of committing were later attributed to Wayne Nance, another serial killer active in Montana in the 1970s and '80s; and to long-haul truck driver Richard William Davis, who was posthumously linked by DNA to the 1974 murder of a five-year-old girl in Missoula, Montana.

Four hours after giving his confessions, David Meirhofer was found dead in his jail cell, having hanged himself with a towel.

Jailers had not been informed David Meirhofer was a murder suspect and he was not put on suicide watch.

David Meirhofer was convicted in 1988 and released in 2017.