True Crime On This Day September 18th

September 18th

On this day, throughout history, there are serial killers, murders, executions, and shootings. Those born on September 18th are Virgos.

1979

In Cass County, Indiana, Robert E. Sherwood killed his wife by strangling her and then drowning her in a creek. He was arrested shortly after confessing to relatives who reported him. Sherwood was a career criminal who had been in trouble with the police on many occasions. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

1980

In Pima County, Arizona, University of Arizona student Laura Webster was raped and stabbed to death by Scott Drake Clabourne and his accomplice Larry Langston. Webster had been drinking at the Green Dolphin Bar with friends when she met her two killers and agreed to go with them.

They took her to a friend’s house where they repeatedly raped her and stabbed her in the heart. Her body was dumped in a dry creek where it was discovered the next day. The pair were arrested shortly after and convicted of murder. Langston was sentenced to life in prison. Clabourne was sentenced to death.

1981

In Cricklewood, London, on September 18th, serial killer Dennis Nilsen murdered 23-year-old Malcolm Barlow. He had gone to Nilsen’s home to thank him for having ensured he received medical attention the previous day.

Barlow’s body was stored in a kitchen cupboard before being dissected, as Nilsen had run out of space under the floorboards. Nilsen is one of Britain’s most infamous serial killers.

He murdered 15 young men in London over a five-year period and kept the victims’ bodies in his home. Then he dissected them and either burned the remains or flushed them down the toilet. He was arrested in February of 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment for six murders and two attempted murders.

The Home Secretary later imposed a whole life tariff, which meant that he would never be released and would subsequently be denied any requests for parole. He died of natural causes in 2018.

1982

In San Antonio, Texas, 27-year-old Tony Waiters was shot dead outside of the McDuff’s nightclub on Vargas Street. He left the club to drop his car off so he could ride in his brother-in-law’s new car instead. Upon exiting his vehicle, another car drove by and the passenger opened fire, hitting Waiters in the chest.

He was rushed to hospital but died of his wounds shortly after. Despite witnesses to the attack claiming the suspects were two black males, the murder has never been solved.

1983

In Bellevue, Nebraska, 13-year-old Danny Joe Eberle, disappeared on his newspaper delivery route. He had been abducted, tortured, and stabbed to death by American serial killer John J. Joubert. Eberle’s body was discovered three days later after a large local search, at which point the FBI were called in.

On January 12^th 1984, Joubert was arrested after suspicious behaviour around a school. He then confessed to three murders of young boys between 1982 and 1983, and attacks on several others.

Despite his lawyers claiming insanity, Joubert was sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair in Nebraska, on July 17^th 1996.