Serial Killer Was Dating Game Winner

Wesley Shermantine, partner killed up to 20 in decade-long murder spree

(NEWSER) - A serial killer on Death Row is giving up the locations of the bodies of up to 20 people he killed—for the tidy sum of $33,000, reports the LA Times . Convicted murderer Wesley Shermantine drew maps of two dumping grounds after he was paid by a Sacramento bounty hunter to reveal where he and his partner hid their victims' bodies from a drug-fueled murder spree that began in the mid-1980s and lasted more than a decade. "We have information that we may have 10 to 20 bodies in that well," said an investigator yesterday, referring to a farmland site identified by Shermantine. More»

Itzcoatl Ocampo to be charged with stabbing Raquel Estrada, Juan Herrera

(NEWSER) - Authorities believe Itzcoatl Ocampo, the 23-year-old Iraq veteran charged with stabbing four homeless men to death in California, also killed two other people—ones that he knew. Ocampo will be charged today with the murders of Raquel Estrada, 53, and her 34-year-old son, Juan Herrera, the mother and brother of a friend Ocampo has known since high school. That friend, Eder Herrera, had originally been charged with the murders, but those charges were dropped Friday, CNN reports. More»

Itzcoatl Ocampo was a changed man after serving in Iraq, family says

(NEWSER) - Itzcoatl Ocampo, the California man accused of stabbing four homeless people to death , often gave money to the homeless, says his father, who is homeless himself. Refugio Ocampo, who lives in the cab of a broken-down truck, says that just a few months ago, his son gave a beggar his last $5. "I said, 'Why did you do that?'" his father tells the Los Angeles Times . "Itzcoatl just said, 'Don't you see people are starving?' " More»

On a NYC rooftop with Rodney Alcala, and lived to tell the tale

(NEWSER) - Judy Cole posed for a serial killer and lived to tell the tale. Cole and eight other women came forward this week after police released a trove of pictures taken by photographer-turned-serial-killer Rodney Alcala, also known as the Dating Game killer , who was sentenced to death last month. Cole tells the Daily News she spotted herself in a picture taken in the 1970s and realized she was "lucky to be alive." More»

(NEWSER) - The half-sister of the California woman who asserted Wednesday that their father was the dreaded Zodiac killer of the 1960s isn’t having any of it, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Janice Hendrickson’s father “couldn’t hurt a fly,” she said today. “He did have a temper, and he did hit me, but did he kill people? I don’t believe he did.” More»