Eugene Butler had been dead a full two years before his crimes were finally exposed, discovery of skeletal remains beneath his rural home outside Niagara, North Dakota, writing finis to an eerie chapter in the region's local history. A paranoid and recluse, Butler lived southeast of town, avoiding contact with his fellow man for years, until he was declared insane and sent to an asylum, at Jamestown, in 1906. He died there in 1913, but two years elapsed before routine excavation at his home revealed six skeletons, lined up in shallow graves beneath the floor. According to the coroner, Butler's victims -- all male -- included five adults and one young man between the ages of fifteen and eighteen years. Each had been killed by crushing blows to the skull, then lowered through a hidden trap-door in the floorboards, buried in a crawlspace underneath the house. The homicides apparently had spanned a period of four or five years prior to Butler's ultimate incarceration. Without a living suspect or a known identity for any of the victims, the authorities were left to theorize on motive, speculating that the hermit may have thought his transient farm hands planned to rob him, striking first, before they had a chance to carry out their schemes. In light of other cases -- such as those of Northcott, Corll, and Gacy -- it would seem that violent homosexuality may be another likely motive for the North Dakota murders.