34 Facts About Earle Nelson

In undertaking his crimes, Earle Nelson had a modus operandi: Most of his victims were middle-aged landladies, many of whom he would find through "room for rent" advertisements.

Earle Nelson was a source of inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt.

Earle Nelson was born Earle Leonard Ferral on May 12,1897, 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.

Earle Nelson was sent to live with his maternal grandmother Jennie Earle Nelson, a devout Pentecostal who raised him alongside her two younger children, Willis and Lillian, who were ten and eight years his senior, respectively.

Earle 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.

Earle Nelson's grandmother noted occasions where Nelson would embark to school in freshly-cleaned clothes and return home in rags, as though he had exchanged clothes with a homeless person.

Earle Nelson began his criminal activities at a young age, and was sentenced to two years in San Quentin State Prison in 1915 after breaking into a cabin in rural Plumas County, which he believed had been abandoned.

Earle Nelson was paroled for this offense on September 6,1916, but was arrested again in Stockton on March 9,1917, for petty larceny.

Earle Nelson spent another six months incarcerated before being discharged, after which he was arrested in Los Angeles for burglary charges.

Sometime in late-1917, Earle Nelson enlisted in the US military, but deserted after six weeks.

Earle Nelson repeated this pattern on several occasions, enlisting in different military branches under different names before deserting.

In 1918, Earle Nelson was committed to the Napa State Mental Hospital after behaving oddly and erratically during one of his brief stints in the United States Navy.

Martin would later recall various bizarre behaviors she witnessed while living with Earle Nelson, which included protracted disappearances from their home and unusual bathing practices that entailed him pouring glasses of water over his toes.

On May 19,1921, Earle Nelson posed as a plumber to enter the residence at 1519 Pacific Avenue in San Francisco and attempted to molest 12-year-old resident Mary Summers in the basement.

Earle Nelson's attempt was thwarted when she screamed and attracted help from her nine-year-old brother.

Earle Nelson fled, but was captured hours later while riding a trolley.

Earle Nelson would escape again on two occasions before being discharged from the institution in 1925.

Earle Nelson's first known victim was Clara Newman, a wealthy 60-year-old San Francisco landlady.

Earle Nelson found this suspicious, given that he had paid multiple days' worth of rent in advance.

Two days later, Earle Nelson murdered 27-year-old Mary Cecilia Sietsma in Chicago, Illinois.

Earle Nelson's demeanor was reportedly so calm and cooperative that the constables assumed they had the wrong individual.

Earle Nelson made the mistake of trying to catch the same train that was transporting members of the Winnipeg police, and was recaptured twelve hours after his initial escape.

Earle Nelson was taken to the Rupert Street Police Station in Winnipeg where he was photographed, fingerprinted, measured, and prepared for identification lineups.

Earle Nelson's fingerprints matched those left behind at several of the crime scenes, and his teeth matched marks found on victims.

At the time of his arrest, Earle Nelson was wanted in six US cities, and was held to be tried in a Manitoba court for the murders of both Cowan and Patterson.

Earle Nelson was charged with two counts of attempted molestation and one count of burglary.

Earle Nelson's trial was scheduled to begin June 27,1927, but postponed at the request of his attorney, and instead began on November 1 at the Winnipeg Law Courts Building.

In late December 1927, Stitt submitted a thirty-page document to Minister of Justice Ernest Lapointe, petitioning for clemency on the grounds that Earle Nelson was insane and that his personal history had been unfairly presented to the jury via the press.

When his identity was still unknown, law enforcement surmised that Earle Nelson was a predator who "possessed a dual personality," likening him to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Earle Nelson's victims were mostly landladies, whom he would approach on the pretext of renting a room.

Earle Nelson, well-versed in Christian theology, often studied his worn Bible, using it to keep his victim at ease and off-guard.

At the peak of his killing spree, Earle Nelson was killing once every three weeks on average.

Earle Nelson was the first serial murderer in American history whose crimes were subject to widespread media attention in newspapers, national magazines, and the then-new medium of the radio.

Earle Nelson's confirmed murder count, which exceeded twenty, remained a record high for nearly fifty years until the discovery of Juan Corona's crimes in 1971.