Interstate Strangler /// Part 2 /// 955

True Crime Garage

This episode investigates the brutal crimes of Larry William Eolem, known as the I-70 Strangler or Highway Killer, who targeted young men ac

Key takeaways

• Larry William Eiler is suspected of murdering at least 21 young men between 1982 and 1984.
• Eiler died in 1994 from AIDS-related complications while serving a death sentence.

Main topics

• Larry William Eiler's crimes
• The I-70 Strangler investigation

Notable quotes

He kills and he makes a call. It's his pattern.

Conclusion

The episode provides a deep dive into the forensic and legal intricaci

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:39) Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Nick, and with me, as always, he plays Russian roulette every day, a man's sport. Here is the captain. Speaker 1 (0:51) It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend. Speaker 2 (0:58) Today we are drinking Rusty Husky Amber Ale by Bancroft Brewing Company in beautiful Ontario, Canada. This amber ale is made with European and Canadian barley as well as English and West Coast hops, giving it a great flavor, sweet with a medium body and a dry finish. Garage grade three and a half bottle caps out of five. And let's give some thanks and praise to our... good garage friends. Speaker 1 (1:26) Rusky Husky was the name of my girlfriend in high school. A big talk came in the air to Robin Jennings and Morrisville PA. And Speaker 2 (1:34) last but certainly not least, we have a shout out to Lena Arnett listening in Linden, Tennessee. Everyone we just mentioned went to truecrimegarage.com, helped us out with this week's Beer Run, and for that, we thank you. Speaker 1 (1:47) Yeah, B-W-E-R-U-N, Beer Run. Are you a true crime mommy? Are you feeling fommy? Then you need to check out the new merch in the merch store at truecrimegarage.com. And Colonel, that's enough of the beers, Nia. All Speaker 2 (2:00) right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. Speaker 2 (2:22) Who killed the victims along I-70? Was it one person responsible for all of them or were multiple predators hunting and overlapping spaces at the same time? Did Herbert Bowmeister commit some of the I-70 murders before the crimes connected to Fox Hollow Farm? Or were the similarities misleading the result of different killers targeting the same vulnerable population? From ghost at Fox Hollow Farm to a confirmed monster we go, and we have to discuss Larry William Eiler. Eiler was born in December of 1952. Now, over time, he became known as the interstate killer and the highway killer. Long after his crimes, books would be written about him. One published in 1990 was titled Freed to Kill, the true story of serial murderer Larry Eiler. Another published in 2017 was titled The Highwayman. Larry Eiler, the Hoosier Highway Killer. Eiler murdered at least 21 teenage boys and young men between 1982 and 1984. The bodies of his victims were found in places close to or easily reached from the interstate highway system in Indiana and Illinois. The geography of those crimes became central to the investigation. Eiler was eventually convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection. While Eiler was on death row, he voluntarily confessed to the 1982 murder of 23-year-old Stephen Agin. He also offered to confess to his role in 20 additional homicides if the state of Illinois would commute his death sentence. Speaker 2 (4:13) to life imprisonment without parole. Now, that deal was never completed. Larry Eiler died of AIDS-related complications in 1994 while still incarcerated on death row. Shortly before his death, Eiler spoke to his defense attorney, Kathleen Zellner, you may recognize that name from Making a Murderer, and confessed to the murders of 20 young men and boys. Even then, he continued to deny. that he had personally carried out the killing of Daniel Bridges. So to be clear here, Captain, that is the murder which he was convicted of and sentenced to die. Eiler claimed that Bridges had been killed by an alleged accomplice, his name, Robert David Little, whom he also said had been involved in or had knowledge of several of the other homicides. Now, with Larry Eiler's consent, his defense attorney, Kathleen Zellner, released his confession after the formal announcement of his death. So this was still. a bit of a negotiation at the time of his death. Larry Eiler was still hoping to get life imprisonment instead of being executed. And so they were holding the details of this confession from law enforcement until that deal was struck. Now, he's in prison on death row, convicted of one murder, however, was suspected in all, if not more murders than what he would. ultimately confessed to well Speaker 1 (5:54) what's your thoughts on this confession because he's obviously saying hey i'm a monster i committed these crimes but i didn't do this one well Speaker 2 (6:01) i think okay so what happened here is during this negotiation process keep in mind you have multiple jurisdictions these bodies were found the victims of larry eiler were mostly in Speaker 2 (6:22) northwest Indiana, and then up by Chicago and kind of throughout the eastern half, if you will, of Illinois. So you have these multiple victims here. Now, a lot of these jurisdictions, they wanted to close their cases and their thought like he's locked up. He'll never get out. There's no possibility of parole. We want to close these cases. We want to give the family some form of closure. we would happily take his confession. The jurisdiction for which he was, the murder for which he was sentenced to death would not agree to those terms. Their thought was, we've already got you convicted, boy. You know, you're in trouble now. Like, you can give us this confession if you want. We'll take it, but we're not letting you off. You're going to pay for this. And keep in mind, too, it's, well, he's convicted of one. Everybody's... pretty darn convinced this guy's killed 17, 18, 20, 21 victims. And I think really at the heart of it is like so many people, he is terrified of dying. I think that he attempted to negotiate this so he could get out of that death sentence when that didn't work. That's what's tricky here. He might have been smart enough to strategize and set the stage in a way prior to, but maybe when this didn't work, he wanted to attribute this one particular murder, the hang-up, that is preventing him from getting a commuted sentence and point the finger at somebody else. Speaker 1 (7:57) Yeah, so he had motivation to lie. Speaker 2 (8:00) Absolutely. And his situation is extremely complicated. Okay, so I'm going to do my best to describe it in a way that we can all easily understand it. Because he is living a life, his adult life. Mind you, he's only, I believe, 40. He was only in his early 40s in 1994 when he died of AIDS complications. So he was relatively young. And young when he was committing these murders and young when he was locked up. Yeah, he was 41 when he died March 6th, 1994, still Speaker 1 (8:40) being housed at the Pontiac Correctional Center in Pontiac, Illinois. Speaker 2 (8:45) In his adult life, his personal life connected him to multiple locations. That is what's going to become very important to investigators. when they're looking into some of these unsolved murders, because what they have here is, oh, we have a guy that somehow falls onto our radar and his movements, where he stays in his work and his movements, we're finding bodies in these areas. Speaker 2 (9:16) He ultimately will separate himself from a good deal of other suspects just by being in these areas and being able to connect him to these areas where some folks remember, number one, you got to be able to put your guy in the area of the murder or where the body was found, or you're going to have a lot of trouble. It probably won't ever get to court. Speaker 1 (9:35) Hey, sometimes the internet is not worried about if they can put the person at the scene of the crime or not. Speaker 2 (9:42) We all know that Ted Cruz. even though he wasn't born yet, was the Zodiac Killer. He may have been born, but he would have been like a child. Who knows how old Ted Cruz is? Maybe that's the real mystery. Anyway, so what's going on here is Larry Eiler had a relationship with a guy named John, and I'm just going to refer to him as John D., not because we don't know who he is, but because I cannot pronounce his last name. And I, look it up, folks. I'm not saying you won't be able to, but I encourage you to look it up and give it your best shot because it's a name that I look at and I go, no clue. So not going to attempt here. John D, there was an interesting arrangement here. So Larry Eiler and John D had a lengthy romantic relationship. Now, John D, however, is married with children. But as I understand the story, John D's wife was tolerant of. his husband and this relationship in particular. So husband, yes, Speaker 1 (10:45) her husband, I'm sorry. Speaker 2 (10:47) So Larry Eiler, he worked as a painter and some other jobs during the regular work week. Okay. And he did most of this work in Illinois. This is also where John D lived. So he would pay one third of the rent and live. He was basically shacking up with his family, but he would primarily only stay there during the weekdays. Then on the weekend, he would travel out to the greater Terre Haute, Indiana area, where he worked at a liquor store on Saturday nights. And there he had another relationship. This is with a man named Robert David Little. Then he would work his weekend job and stay with Robert David Little. And I'm going to do my very best here because in all the reports, he's referred to as Robert Little. However, I do know that Larry Eiler referred to him by his middle name and called him David. So if I slip and say Robert or say David, I am talking about the same person. Speaker 1 (11:54) Well, because it's similar time periods, is there any thought that they... they knew of or had any connection with Casey. That Speaker 2 (12:04) is intriguing, especially given Larry Eiler's line of work. I don't think so. I mean, Larry Eiler is a weird serial killer in the sense that he's a more obscure serial killer. However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of mystery surrounding him other than his. general relationship with this Robert David Little. That seems to hold most of the mystery of Larry Eiler. His crimes, suspected crimes, are very well documented. He has a very large Wikipedia page that is, I mean, for as obscure of a... serial killer that he is. It's an incredibly, there's a wealth of information about this guy. And I think I mentioned on yesterday's show, there's two books written about him, but he is in a way like you were talking about with Fox Hollow Farm, where we got a lot of people reaching out to us. Fox Hollow Farm and Herb Bowmeister is one of those dudes that like, you can't swing a bat in the state of Indiana without hitting somebody that knows about that case. You go outside of Indiana and it's not so well known, especially the facts and details of that case. And Larry Eiler seems to be very similar in that regard. People have studied him. People in these general areas know a lot about him. But you get further beyond those territories and he's a much lesser known name. I think part of that, too, is having only been convicted, actually convicted of. So few actual murders. They died in the same year, Gacy and Eiler, but in different correctional facilities. And as we know that Gacy was apprehended years before Eiler and Speaker 1 (13:59) even apprehended years before it's suspected that Eiler started killing. Speaker 2 (14:04) Now, again, we talked about his locations, his movements. A lot of the victims that they're finding are. between these two places where he's staying or found in these areas that he's staying. And then the other part of it too, and this is really some weird psychological stuff,