A Serial Killer Downloads His Doom
(‘X Marks the Spot,’ Forensic Information)
Maury Travis favored to victimize girls who already led unhappy lives. He picked up road prostitutes and took them to his secret basement chamber. Some had consensual intercourse with him; some had been raped. He held them in opposition to their will, taunted them about their circumstances, then tortured and killed them.
When police caught Maury, nonetheless, he refused to confront his personal life selections or reside in captivity.
As Forensic Information watchers will keep in mind, he dedicated suicide in jail.
However questions stay.
What features of Maury’s younger life turned him right into a menace to down-on-their-luck women of the evening? Was Maury at all times thought-about dicey or creepy — or had been locals shocked that he turned out to be the monster behind the homicides they’d been studying about within the newspaper?
For this submit, I looked for some solutions, so let’s get happening the recap of “X Marks the Spot” together with additional data from web analysis:
Beginning in 2000, our bodies of ladies who labored as prostitutes started exhibiting up round St. Louis, Missouri, and adjoining East St. Louis, Illinois. The primary was Mary Shields, 61, discovered on July 31.
A few of them, like 34-year-old Alysa Greenwade, found in April 2001, had ligature marks on their wrists and ankles. Half a dozen extra girls from the world quickly turned up murdered.
These girls had been all prostitutes — however not the glamorous name women like these imagined in Hollywood films. As an alternative, they labored proper on the streets, entering into prospects’ vehicles after agreeing on a worth and a intercourse act. Some didn’t get an opportunity to vary their garments from each day. Most had been hooked on medicine.
Sadly, many wouldn’t be reported lacking immediately as a result of they lived on the margins of society.
The murders continued.
“By the tip of the summer season, it was one after one other after one other,” former St. Louis Police Division Captain Harry Hegger later instructed the Oxygen Community. “We had been actually shocked by the month-to-month incidence {that a} intercourse employee — discovered nude, typically undetermined trigger [of death] or strangulation — would flip up in a mess of jurisdictions.”
Authorities suspected that each one the murders had been dedicated by a serial killer who was African American — the identical race as all of the victims. At first, they thought the attacker is likely to be a truck driver as a result of the our bodies had been discovered close to roads and highways.
Investigators put male DNA discovered on two the victims within the Mixed DNA Indexing System, referred to as CODIS, however no matches got here up.
FBI brokers fashioned a activity pressure with native authorities. However the first massive break within the case got here not from regulation enforcement however moderately from the press.
St. Louis Submit-Dispatch reporter Invoice Smith thought it will assist the investigation to jot down a human curiosity story about one of many victims, Teresa Lynn Wilson. Smith wrote about Teresa’s regular childhood — albeit with not-too-vigilant mother and father — spent roller-skating and going to the films together with her finest good friend. Teresa grew to become pregnant at 17, dropped out of faculty, and turned to prostitution to assist her daughter, Chastity, in addition to a cocaine behavior.
Typically Teresa would ask little Chastity to attend on a bench whereas she turned a trick. Teresa’s girlhood good friend seen how skinny Teresa had develop into from substance abuse and provided to assist, however Teresa refused. A neighborhood man who noticed Teresa working the road gave her a job at his bike store, however she quickly started stealing money and forging checks to purchase medicine. Her daughter was taken away from her. Teresa’s physique was present in East Alton, Illinois on Might 15, 2001. Chastity wrote a tribute to her mom: “I cried so many nights considering of how you’d make it by way of the evening. Now I see you had your individual way of life and nobody might inform you what to do. Your child, Chastity.”
Shortly after the story ran, Smith acquired an nameless letter in orange cursive font. “Good sob story,” it stated. The author claimed that there have been 17 victims, greater than the police knew about, and he included a map with an X the place one other physique could be discovered. Police found skeletal stays of an unidentified lady on the location in West Alton, Illinois.
The provenance of the map was the actual gold mine. Investigators decided it got here from Microsoft through Expedia.com — and that just one pc person had downloaded that exact map between the looks of the newspaper story and the arrival of the letter.
The IP handle linked it to “MSN/maurytravis.”
Maury Travis, a waiter in his mid-30s, lived in Ferguson, a group close to St. Louis, in a home owned by his mom, though she now not lived there.
The duty pressure started secretly monitoring Maury, being attentive to when he took out his trash. They recovered a spoon containing the DNA of two victims, Yvonne Crues, 50, and Brenda Beasley, 33.
When police knocked on his door at 7 a.m. on June 7, 2002, Maury and a girlfriend answered. “You already know why we’re right here,” one of many officers stated. Maury hung his head.
Seated in Maury’s immaculate front room, investigators questioned him and petted his pleasant calico cat. However Maury didn’t give many solutions, and he indignantly picked up the little roaming animal and positioned it by his aspect, in accordance with the St. Louis Submit-Dispatch.
Investigators discovered the complete home clear and orderly, together with his basement, which had a TV and a shelf filled with movies, together with family-friendly fare.
Then, they seen a locked door. It led to a room with the overwhelming scent of blood and cleansing fluids. They discovered ropes, shackles, a stun gun, chains, girls’s footwear and wigs, and home made movies.
Some footage confirmed Maury chatting with a girl pleasantly, giving her crack, and having consensual intercourse together with her. However different movies captured him raping and torturing girls. He additionally demeaned them with phrases. He made one sufferer name him grasp and say she existed for his pleasure. (Among the audio is on the market on-line, however I couldn’t stand to take heed to all of it; the ladies sounded so meek and crushed down by life.)
One other lady was berated for getting in his automobile and instructed she was a nasty mom who frolicked “in your again smoking crack,” in accordance with ABC Primetime. One video confirmed him standing over a useless physique and saying “First Kill is nineteen years outdated. Title? I don’t know.”
He choked one lady to dying along with his belt on digicam.
Counseling was provided to investigators who needed to see the torture chamber and watch the movies.
A minimum of certainly one of Maury’s victims lived, however she suffered a lot mind trauma that she couldn’t assist with the investigation, the Los Angeles Instances reported.
So who was this deranged dungeon grasp?
Maury Troy Travis was born on October 25, 1965 to Sandra A. and Michael V. Travis. The household lived within the Carr Sq. public housing complicated in St. Louis and later moved to the ranch home on a tree-lined road in Ferguson, Missouri. Maury’s mother and father divorced in 1978; his mom remarried however divorced once more, in 1993, in accordance with the St. Louis Submit-Dispatch.
Maury, whose associates known as him Toby, was notably keen on his mom.
At Ferguson Junior Excessive College and McCluer Excessive College, Maury wasn’t a very good pupil however he wasn’t a troublemaker both. He stored a low profile.
Maury would later acknowledge that he wasn’t abused as a baby. He stated that he grew to become a violent predator as a result of he was born that manner.
After faculty, he joined the Military Reserve and labored as a trucker. His life got here aside after he entered Morris Brown Faculty in Atlanta and have become hooked on cocaine.
To fund his $300-a-day behavior, he robbed footwear shops, together with two areas every of Purchase-Ceremony Footwear and Payless Shoesource, plus a Kangaroos USA. In court docket, he admitted his crimes and stated he had overcome his drug issues. Letters written by members of the group urged the choose to indicate leniency. Maury was a pleasant younger man whose habit and lawlessness had been unlucky anomalies, they stated.
In 1989, a choose sentenced him to fifteen years. From jail, he wrote a letter pleading with the choose to let him out. He cried himself to sleep, suffered cramping, feared turning into a sufferer of sexual violence, and battled suicidal ideas.
Maury didn’t win parole till June 14, 1994. He moved right into a duplex within the 8800 block of Lucas & Hunt Highway, the place his next-door neighbors recalled him as thoughtful and courteous. The mom of a girl Maury dated known as him an ideal gentleman.
“Even when he did the armed robberies, he by no means damage anybody,” longtime good friend Khadiza Massey later instructed the St. Louis Submit-Dispatch. “He’s simply not aggressive. He’s not an enormous man.”
However he ended up again in jail when his drug issues, this time crack and heroin, resumed. He additionally accrued site visitors offenses together with working cease indicators and driving with a suspended license.
By 2000, he was free and dealing as a waiter on the Mayfair Resort in St. Louis. He lived in his childhood dwelling in Ferguson; it was nonetheless owned by his mom, however she had moved elsewhere.
In some unspecified time in the future, he lived with a girlfriend named Felicia who would later seem on ABC Primetime. She described Maury as human being who needed to assist her overcome her drug behavior and begin a profession as a nurse. However he grew to become threatening, so she moved out in March 2001. After that, our bodies began exhibiting up.
(It’s not clear whether or not Felicia reconciled with Maury later and moved again in or whether or not the lady investigators met on the home was a distinct girlfriend.)
Nonetheless, his neighbors suspected nothing. They recalled Maury, who waited tables on the Wholly Mackerel restaurant, often washing his 2000 black Mitsubishi Eclipse, cleansing his gutters, and mowing his garden. One instructed the St. Louis Globe-Dispatch that Maury wouldn’t damage a fly.
However Maury didn’t have a lot empathy for people. At St. Louis Metropolitan Police headquarters, he solely sneered when requested him to present closure to households by revealing the names and burial locations of everybody he killed.
When investigators instructed Maury that the map he downloaded led to his seize, he was not amused.
Along with quite a few different offenses, authorities might cost him with federal kidnapping as a result of he took two of his victims throughout state traces.
Maury noticed an opportunity for escape when guards on the St. Louis County Jail skipped two of their 15-minute-interval checks. He threaded rope made from sheets by way of the small holes in a wall vent, created a noose, tied his personal fingers behind his again, put a material in his mouth and a pillowcase over his head, stood on the bathroom, put the loop over his head, and jumped off.
In line with the Los Angeles Instances, some authorities believed that Maury utilized to himself the identical sadomasochistic expertise he had developed when torturing his victims.
Maury left a observe saying he didn’t wish to reside in jail. To his mom, he wrote, “I’ve been sick for a very long time (sick within the head) since I used to be 14.”
Regardless of all the things, Maury had supporters in his household. One among whom, a cousin named Stephanie Talley, 36, stated that Maury was murdered in his cell and that he was harmless of all of the murders.
The authorities had been extra involved about his victims. Along with Teresa Wilson, Yvonne Crues, Brenda Beasley, and Alysa Greenwade, murdered girls that authorities knew about included Mary Shields, 61; Betty James, 36; Verona Thompson, 36; three unidentified girls discovered as skeletons; and one lady who survived however sustained everlasting mind accidents and couldn’t provide the police data, the Los Angeles Instances reported.
Maury claimed 5 different victims however refused to determine them, tragic for his or her households and irritating for the authorities.
However the activity pressure could be happy with stopping him after they did: On the time of his arrest, Maury had ordered extra handcuffs and leg shackles and was trying to increase his basement chamber of horrors for extra crimes in opposition to girls.
The Oxygen community produced an episode about Maury Travis for the collection Unknown Serial Killers of America, however solely a brief preview is on the market on-line. Likewise, only a 15-minute section of an American Justice episode turned up on the web.
That’s all for this submit. Till subsequent time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Information episode on YouTube
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