Who Was Gerard Schaefer, the Florida Deputy Known as the 'Killer Cop'?

Gerard John Schaefer Jr. had been a Martin County, Fla., sheriff’s deputy for only about a month when two teenage girls escaped from the woods and told police the man sworn to protect them had instead tried to kill them.

It was July 1972, and Schaefer was still early in his law enforcement career. Before that, he had been rejected by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office after failing a psychological test and fired from the Wilton Manors Police Department after six months for what his former chief called a “lack of common sense.” Still, Schaefer managed to land a job as a deputy in Martin County.

Schaefer later became known as the “Killer Cop” and “the Hangman,” a nickname linked to the way he restrained victims with ropes or wires and nooses around their necks. He was convicted in 1973 of murdering Susan Place, 17, and Georgia Jessup, 16, whose remains were found in a wooded area near Port St. Lucie, Fla., months after they disappeared. 

In the 1972 attack that first exposed him, Schaefer encountered two hitchhikers, Nancy Trotter, 18, and Paula Wells, 17, while on duty. He told them hitchhiking was illegal, though it was not, and offered to drive them. He then took them to a remote wooded area, tied them to a tree and placed nooses around their necks. The girls were forced to balance to avoid choking. Schaefer left after receiving a police radio call, and they escaped in his absence.

Schaefer claimed he had merely gone too far while trying to teach the girls a lesson about hitchhiking, but he was ultimately charged with aggravated assault and false imprisonment and released on bond.

Weeks later, Place and Jessup disappeared. Place’s mother, Lucille Place, had seen her daughter leave home with a clean-cut man she knew as “Jerry Shephard.” Susan said they were “going to the beach to play guitar.” Jessup left a note for her parents that read, in part, “I love you both very much. I have to find my head.”

At first, police treated the girls as runaways. But Lucille had written down the license plate number of the blue-green Datsun her daughter left in. Eventually, that car led investigators to Schaefer.

The girls’ remains were discovered in April 1973. Afterward, investigators searching Schaefer’s mother’s home found a trunk filled with jewelry, women’s clothing, teeth, a passport and other “souvenirs.” They also found pages of writings describing acts of murder, mutilation and necrophilia.

Schaefer’s trial began in September 1973. Trotter and Wells testified about their own abduction and escape, and prosecutors used the similarities between their attack and the murders of Place and Jessup to build the case. A jury found Schaefer guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to two life terms.

Prison did little to quiet the case. Schaefer sued authors and publishers who called him a serial killer and in 1995, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected one of those claims, writing that Schaefer had “murdered two women and was linked with the murder of over twenty.”

In 2022, the remains of a teenage girl found in Palm Beach County in 1974 were identified through genetic genealogy as Suzanne Gale Poole, who disappeared in 1972. Detectives said she may have been a victim of Schaefer because of similarities to his known crimes. 

“She was tied up in the mangroves with wire to a tree,” Detective Bill Springer told the press.

Robert Stone, the prosecutor who handled Schaefer’s case, once called him “the most sexually deviant person I had ever seen. He made Ted Bundy look like a Boy Scout.”

Schaefer died before he could face charges in any additional cases. On December 3, 1995, he was found stabbed to death in his cell at Florida State Prison, and a fellow inmate was later accused in the killing. 

More than three decades after his death, Schaefer remains one of Florida’s most disturbing examples of a killer who hid behind a badge.