A drifter and escaped convict, linked with Southern "outlaw" motorcycle gangs, 30-year-old Julian Kennedy was confined in Lake City, Florida, awaiting trial on armed robbery charges, when he began confessing to multiple murders in March 1973. According to his statement, Kennedy committed his first murder in Tampa, at age 15, helping other bikers beat a man to death as part of an initiation ceremony. Another male victim was reportedly strangled, wrapped in plastic bags, and left on the front seat of a car parked outside the Tampa police station. One victim was a serviceman from McCoy Air Force Base, in Orlando, killed during a quarrel with Kennedy, while another died in an argument over a game of pool. In Hillsborough County, the killer reportedly strangled a woman in a dispute over drugs. While drifting aimlessly across the continent, he had committed holdup murders in the states of Arkansas, New Mexico, and Texas, later abducting motorist Elva Jones in Valdosta, Georgia, taking her life in the course of a September 1972 jailbreak. Charged with murder in the latter case, he was returned to Georgia for trial and ultimate conviction.