1968 Mad City Murders
1966 Zodiac Killer
1934 Torso Murders
1912 Iowa Axe Murders

All dates that correspond to the note a killer sent me in 1978. Who is he? Why does he take pleasure in killing? Can anyone really have been in the business of murder for so long?

My name is John Palmer.

I have been tracking the mind of a solitary serial killer for the past twenty six years. And although it may be a far cry from your reality, he is probably the single most untouchable, untraceable, unobservable, unreal executioner to draw breath in the last century. Maybe longer.

Many, many years. One purpose. One perpetrator.

It began in June of 1978.

I was employed as a reporter for the Beacon out of Troy, Missouri and was investigating a couple of unsolved murders from a few years previous.

Two murders, four days apart, both cold. And except for the proximity in time, the murders seemingly had nothing in common and baffled law enforcement.

Troy is an small, midwestern town with very little in the way of violent crime, so it was understandable that these two murders, committed in such a short time frame, shook the community to its core. Due to Troy's practically non-existent violent crime history and the lack of solid leads or evidence, it was assumed by police and locals that they were committed by a transient who wandered into the area and then quite simply....

left.

i am invisible
i walk among you, unseen
i am your worst fears made flesh, the embodiment of your darkest, most depraved desires
i am invisible
i have left my mark across this land, in every generation
i share my cursed fate with you
i am invisible
i am the wolf among the sheep, the scythe among the wheat
i am your bloody end
i am invisible

1968 capital city
1966 san francisco
1934 chicago
1912 villisca

the seventh of seven, the lore made flesh

...and so it began and continues to this day. Somewhere out there is a killer who has murdered possibly dozens of people over a span of several decades.

And he thinks he is becoming... something. The notion of the killer transforming himself is obviously not a very new one. Borges and Lovecraft mention it. Thomas Harris has used it in several of his novels, famously The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon. But this, unfortunately, wasn't just a work of fiction. It was real, and it was ugly.

The Beginning
My investigation
Investigation part 2
News - Updated 10/22/2004
Evidence
Pictures

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