Policeman Glad Killer Eyler Got Death Sentence
by George Stuteville
An Indiana State Police detective said Friday he was glad to learn that Larry W. Eyler was sentenced to die for killing a Chicago teenager. Detective Sgt. Frank Love, coordinator of a police task force that has investigated Eyler in at least 20 killings, said he hoped Eyler would cooperate with police and clear up at least five other unsolved Indiana homicides.
“He has nothing to lose at this point,” said Love. Eyler, 33, formerly of Terre Haute, was convicted of murder in July as he sentenced Eyler for the 1984 torture-slaying of Danny Bridges, a 16-year-old homosexual prostitute, a Cook County Circuit judge told Eyler, “‘You truly deserve, to die.” Judge Joseph Urso, who presided over the trial and nearly two years of court hearings, described Eyler as an evil person.
He said the dismemberment slaying of Bridges was a crime so “heinous it truly defies description.” “I only wish that I had been there in the courtroom to see Eyler’s reaction.” said Love. “I have no problem saying that, considering the misery he has caused.” Eyler, who lived in Terre Haute and Greencastle, frequented Indianapolis and Chicago gay bars during the early 1980s. In his trips between cities on 1-70, U.S. 40 and U.S. 41.
Love said, Eyler picked up male hitchhikers, drugged them, then bound them with duct tape and methodically killed them with knives. During several days of sentencing hearings earlier this week. Chuck Long, 27. formerly of Terre Haute, testified that he was picked up by Eyler while hitchhiking, forcibly abducted, stabbed and left for dead.
Love said he “definitely” believed Eyler had killed two young Indianapolis men during late 1982 and early 1983. Those victims were John L. Roach, 21 and Daniel S. McNeive, 22. Both men were thought to have been picked up by Eyler as hitchhikers. The detective also said that circumstantial evidence pointed to Eyler as the killer of a Terre Haute man, Steven Agan.
Agan’s body was found in Vermillion County the same day Roach was found. Eyler is also believed to be the killer of two men whose skeletal remains were found in Hendricks County in December 1983. Love said he doubted if Eyler ever would be convicted for one of the Indiana slayings. He said the best case was in the Agan killing, in which a key belonging to Eyler was found near the murder scene.
“I’m not sure Vermillion County would want to go to the expense for such a trial with only circumstantial evidence. But that’s the best we have. I’m glad that if we couldn’t get him, Chicago did.” Love said that, while he wishes Eyler would confess to the killings, he had little the former housepainter would do so.
He said he plans to meet with other task force detectives and Eyler’s lawyers to see if they could arrange a meeting with the convicted murderer. One possibility, Love said, would be for authorities in Chicago to negotiate a life sentence for Eyler, instead of the death penalty in return for a confession.
