He killed again in 2004, when he claimed the life of 34-year-old Christina Outz Parker. In 2000, he attacked an unidentified woman, but she survived. His first victim was 37-year-old Sharon House Pressley in 1997. In fact, a local police officer would later comment that Williams seemed to have lived a normal life, “except on three or four occasions” when he brutally raped and murdered local women. She claimed the murders were based on an impulse to shop.Ī road crew worker for the Department of Transportation, Scott Williams seemed content with an uneventful existence in Monroe, North Carolina. She was never charged with the death of Norma Davis, but police are confident she was the murderer. Gray was arrested and eventually admitted to the murders of Roberts and Beebe and the attempted murder of Hawkins. Hawkins was able to give the police a description of Gray, and the police soon tracked her down, finding Beebe’s credit card inside her house. Beebe’s credit card paid for a $1,000 mountain bike, some perfume, and a boogie board. Once inside, she strangled the senior citizen and beat her to death with a clothes iron. Gray’s last victim, 87-year-old Dora Beebe, would not be so lucky after Gray knocked on her door to ask for directions. When Roberts was dead, Gray took her credit cards and went on a shopping spree, including a meal of crab cakes and scampi, a $500 suede jacket, a pair of $161 earrings, and a $5.99 toy helicopter for her stepson.Īfter Roberts, Gray moved on to Lake Elsinore, where she attempted to strangle 57-year-old Dorinda Hawkins, who was working alone in an antique shop, leaving her for dead. She left her five-year-old stepson outside in the car while she committed the murder.
Gray strangled her with a phone cord and repeatedly hammered her in the face with a wine bottle. Her body was found on February 28, 1994, stabbed in the chest and the neck. The first to be killed was 86-year-old Norma Davis, who was Gray’s step-grandmother. But little did the people of Canyon Lake know that there was already a dangerous person living in their midst. With shopping malls, a golf course, a man-made lake, and elegant residential homes, Canyon Lake seems like any other affluent American town-with the added bonus of fences and security guards to keep unwanted people out. After striking a deal with prosecutors, he was given a 24-year sentence.Ĭanyon Lake is a gated community in California with a population of about 10,000. Inmon claimed to have killed Achten because he was a drug addict who had shot his dog.Īlthough he admitted some guilt over the Flores murder, Inmon insisted it was his duty to cleanse the world of those he deemed undesirable, and said he would have killed others if he hadn’t been caught. A deaf Vietnam veteran, dubbed “Hummer Dan” for his tuneless humming, Achten was found in a shallow grave near his house. His second victim was Daniel Achten, who was killed early in 2009. Inmon said that McCarragher had touched him inappropriately and claimed to have murdered him so he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. After his death, it was revealed that he had a record of sexual offenses under a different name. A local rancher, McCarragher was known for carrying large amounts of cash and frequently hired local kids to do odd jobs for him. The first came in April 2007, when he shot 72-year-old William “Stoney” McCarragher. Weeks after confessing to the Flores killing, Inmon came clean about two other murders. As West listened, Inmon confessed to killing 16-year-old Ricky Flores with a single shotgun blast, allegedly at the urging of Flores’s girlfriend’s father, who disapproved of his daughter’s relationship. Johns’ police were looking through his home because he was involved in a murder. Over the next four hours, Inmon basically told West his life story. Instead, he invited Inmon to sit down and talk. Inmon, who had perhaps watched too much crime fiction, thought that West wouldn’t like other cops invading his territory and hinted that he should probably run them out of town. Johns had a search warrant to look through his house. The 21-year-old fled his home and ran two blocks to the local police station, where he told Chief Steve West that officers from neighboring St. The strange case of William Inmon started to unfold in September 2009, in the rural town of Springerville, Arizona. WARNING: Some of the crimes discussed in this article are of an extremely disturbing nature. How could a murderer flourish in a place where everyone knows your name? But behind the comfortable facade of small-town America have lurked some very disturbed individuals.
Rightly or wrongly, we still tend to think of small towns as a more innocent place.