Residents of Houston, Texas, are accustomed to reports of violent death, but nothing in their past experience prepared them for the string of crimes which dominated headlines in the latter part of 1979. Between the last week of July and first week of October, four lives were extinguished by a killer who seemed bent on claiming human heads as trophies of the hunt. Despite sensational publicity surrounding the attacks, the case remains unsolved today. The first attack took place in southwest Houston, with a female victim cornered and beheaded in her own apartment, on the twenty-seventh of July. Investigators had not found her head by August 10, when yet another victim was discovered, spared complete decapitation when her killer was disturbed and frightened off. Five blocks away, the residents around Freed Park were roused from sleep by screams and gunshots in the late-night hours of October 3. Police responded to the call but found no evidence of any crime in progress. Daylight on October 4 would lead them to the body of 16-year-old Joann Huffman, shot to death and dumped beside a picnic table with her jeans unzipped. Nearby, her boyfriend's car was found abandoned on a used-car lot, the headless body of its driver -- 18 year-old Robert Spangenberger -- locked inside the trunk. To date, no trace of either missing head has been discovered, and police in Houston hesitate to link the several homicides, despite the geographic and forensic similarities. The killer's motive and identity remain unknown.