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RHOADES Paul Ezra

*1957

...

1985

1987

ID UT

Verdict/Urteil:

An Idaho native, born in 1957, Rhoades boasted a record of small-time arrests dating from age 21. In May 1978, he was charged with refusal to disperse, and grand theft charges were filed against him six months later, the latter count dismissed prior to trial. A new charge of refusal to disperse was lodged in March 1982, and June of that year saw him booked for petty theft. Rhoades was arrested for driving without a license in June 1985 and again in March 1986, but more serious charges of burglary were dismissed in January 1986. So far, he had been lucky, but police were only chipping at the apex of a lethal iceberg. If the authorities are right in their suspicions, Rhoades began his hunt for human prey in the adjoining state of Utah, gunning down 16-year-old Christine Gallegos, in Salt Lake City, during May 1985. Eleven months later, 20-year-old Carla Maxwell was shot to death in the robbery of a Layton, Utah, convenience store. Lisa Strong, age 25, was the third Utah victim, blasted on a Salt Lake City street in May 1986. On February 27, 1987, Stacy Baldwin, 21, was kidnapped from her job at a convenience store in Blackfoot, Idaho, shot dead and dumped outside the city limits. Officers saw no connection four days later, when a 19-year-old college co-ed was abducted, robbed, and raped in Rexburg, but the links would show, in time. On March 16, 20-year-old Nolan Haddon was fatally wounded in the robbery of an Idaho Falls convenience store. Three days later, Susan Michelbacher, a 34-year-old schoolteacher, vanished en route to her classes in Idaho Falls. She was discovered, shot to death outside of town, March 21. Paul Rhoades, meanwhile, had fled the city in his mother's car, the vehicle reported to police as stolen. He was picked up in Elko, Nevada, on March 25, after a traffic accident led to identification of the missing car. Ballistics tests matched a confiscated revolver to the three deaths in Idaho, and warrants were issued charging Rhoades with murder, kidnapping, robbery, rape, and "an infamous crime against nature." The courts ruled out an insanity plea in November 1987, and Rhoades was held over for trial on the outstanding charges.

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