The WVU Coed Murders

Some said that the killer couldn't be a local. Others claimed that he was the wealthy son of a prominent Morgantown family. Whispers spread that Mared and Karen were sacrificed by a satanic cult or had been victims of a madman poised to strike again. Then the handwritten letters began to arrive: You will locate the bodies of the girls covered over with brush—look carefully. The animals are now on the move.

Investigators didn't find too few suspects—they had far too many. There was the campus janitor with a fur fetish, the harmless deliveryman who beat a woman nearly to death, the nursing home orderly with the bloody broomstick, and the bouncer with the girlish laugh who threatened to cut off people's heads. Local authors Geoffrey C. Fuller and S. James McLaughlin tell the complete story of the murders for the first time.