A native of Lowell, Oregon, Daniels was convicted of manslaughter in 1970, winning parole from his sentence in 1981. Within a year, he had stopped checking in with his parole officer at Eugene, and new Oregon warrants charged him with parole violation, passing bad checks , and driving with a suspended license. Along the way, more serious charges began to surface, making Daniels a suspect in at least six homicides and two attempted murders. The first to die, on December 10, 1981, were 60-year-old Harold Pratt and his wife Betty, 55. The Tucson residents were camping out on Arizona's desert, 75 miles southeast of Phoenix, when they were robbed and shot in the back of the head, execution-style, their bodies left as food for scavenging predators. On June 25, 1982, 62-year-old Arthur Gray, Jr., was killed in similar fashion at the Twin Springs Campground, 80 miles east of Eugene, Oregon. The following month, Arizona residents Benjamin and Edith Shaffer, both in their sixties, were robbed and shot to death in Mendocino County, California, their bodies Iying undiscovered through December 1983. Ernest Corral, 38, was the victim for November 1982, shot execution-style and dumped in a desert ravine near his hometown of Apache Junction, Arizona. There had also been survivors of the murder spree, with Edwin and Ida Davis, both 64, reporting that they had befriended a younger couple near El Cajon, California, in March of 1982. On March 22, Edwin and Ida were overpowered by their "friends," injected with powerful horse tranquilizer and left to die, but they were discovered in time for physicians to save their lives. Recuperating from their ordeal, both identified Robert Danielson, from mug shots, as one of their attackers. On February 9, 1984, an all-points bulletin was issued on Danielson, accompanied by a federal warrant charging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution in Oregon. Formally charged in the Gray and Shaffer homicides, he remained a suspect in several other cases while investigations were continuing. Two months after federal warrants were issued, on April 7, FBI agents traced Danielson to his job with a traveling carnival, then playing in Odessa, Texas. He was arrested without incident and returned to Oregon for trial, facing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in a state where the death penalty had been abolished.