4A | SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2022 | THE GLEANER More than 30 years passed before the serial killer responsible for the rape and murders of three women in Kentucky and Indiana was identified. Using investigative genealogy, Louis- ville native Harry Greenwell has been named as the “I-65 Killer.” Also known as “The Days Inn Killer,” Greenwell’s known victims were all clerks at motels along the Interstate 65 corridor. Officials believe he may also be linked to other attacks and killings, giv- en similar crimes took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Minnesota, Kentucky and Illinois. Congress defined “serial killings,” as a series of three or more killings by a person or persons that have common characteristics, with at least one com- mitted within the United States. Over the years, Kentucky and Indi- ana communities have been haunted by several serial killers who collectively claimed dozens of lives.

Here is a look at some of those cases: Donald Harvey, the ‘Angel of Death’ Years active: 1970-1987 Died: March 2017 A former nurse’s aide known as the “Angel of Death,” admitted to killing more than three- dozen hospital pa- tients while working in Ohio and Ken- tucky. Harvey’s first-known victim died in 1970, and it wasn’t until 1987 that he pleaded guilty to killing 37 people — most of whom he murdered while work- ing in Cincinnati and London, Kentucky. He often used arsenic and cyanide to poison chronically ill patients, claiming he was trying to end their suffering. After his conviction, Harvey claimed he killed another 18 patients while work- ing at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Cincinnati. He died in 2017 after he was attacked and beaten in his prison cell by another inmate.

Samuel Little, the most prolific seriel killer in the US Years active: 1970-2005 Died: December 2020 Dubbed the most prolific serial killer in US history, Little confessed to killing 93 people between 1970 and 2005, with at least one of his victims being from Kentucky. Little was arrested at a Louisville homeless shelter in 2012, where au- thorities had tracked him down after us- ing DNA testing to determine he was in- volved in the murders of three women in the 1980s. Little was connected with the 1981 murder of 23-year-old Linda Sue Boards in Warren County, Kentucky, according to the Bowling Green Daily News. How- ever, court records show the case didn’t make it to trial because of “administra- tive procedure.” Of the 93 killings Little confessed to, nearly 60 have been confirmed by po- lice. Most took place in Florida and Southern California.

He also killed peo- ple in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Missis- sippi, Nevada and Arkansas. He died in a California prison in 2020 at the age of 80. Herb Baumeister Years active: 1980s-1996 Died: July 1996 Baumeister was identified as a serial killer when investigators found thou- sands of human bone fragments buried on his Indiana property in 1996. He is believed to be responsible for the deaths of 16 teenage boys and men who he picked up from bars in Indian- apolis, then strangled. Baumeister, 49, was the wealthy owner of Sav-A-Lot thrift stores.

The property where many of the bodies were recovered was worth more than $2 mil- lion. About one week after the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department began in- vestigating the discovery of the bones, Baumeister drove to Canada, where he shot and killed himself. Two years after his death, police con- cluded he also had killed nine other young men whose partially nude bodies were found dumped into shallow streams along Interstate 70 across Cen- tral Indiana and western Ohio during the 1980s. Larry Eyler, ‘The Highway Killer’ Years active: 1970s-1980s Died: 1994 Dubbed “The Highway Killer,” Eyler was linked to the deaths of 23 young men in the late 1970s and early 1980s, mostly in Illinois and Indiana. His general pattern was to pick up men who were hitchhiking or some- times in gay bars, give them alcohol and slip them a strong sedative so they would lose consciousness.

He would then take them to a secluded spot and viciously kill them, sometimes mutilat- ing or dismembering his victims. In 1986, he was sentenced to death for one of those murders in Illinois and was also sentenced to 60 years for an In- diana murder. But, after his death in 1994 because of complications related to AIDS, his attor- ney handed over a list of 17 men Eyler claimed he had killed and the names of four others allegedly killed by an un- named accomplice. The ‘I-70 Killer’ Years active: 1992 – 1993 An unknown serial killer dubbed the ‘I-70 Killer’ is believed to have started killing in April 1992 when the manager of a shoe store in Indianapolis that was easily accessible from I-70 was shot to death. Over the next four weeks, five more people in three states were slain in stores and communities along the high- way.

After that series of slayings, there was a pause. In 1993, a second series of shootings began that bore a marked similarity to the I-70 series. These, how- ever, were committed in Texas, but with easy access to Interstates 35 and 45. The cases remain unsolved. Contact reporter Krista Johnson at kjohnson3@gannett.com.

‘I-65 Killer’ isn’t KY’s only serial killer Krista Johnson Louisville Courier Journal USA TODAY NETWORK Vicki Heath, Jeanne Gilbert, Margaret “Peggy” Gill. PHOTO PROVIDED In this Sept. 1987 file photo, serial killer Donald Harvey stands before a judge during sentencing in Cincinnati. Harvey, who was serving multiple life sentences, was found beaten in his celland later died at a state’s prison in Toledo, Ohio. He was 64.

AL BERHMAN, AP Harry Edward Greenwell the “I-65 Killer” also known as “The Days Inn Killer.” PROVIDED BY THE INDIANA STATE POLICE.