On 15 November, 1944, in a seedy downtown area, in a run-down hotel at the corner of Fourth and Main streets, a maid discovered the mutilated body of a prostitute, Virginia Lee Griffin, sprawled on a bed. The street girl had been slashed open from her throat to her vagina and her entrails pulled out of her body. Her breasts had been cut off and an arm and a leg partly severed. The murder weapon, a razor-sharp carving knife, lay near the body. A second mutilation murder was reported in another downtown hotel only three blocks away. The victim was another prostitute, thrity-eight-year-old Lillian Johnson. Her mutilations were less severe, but she was slashed from throat to knees. Witnesses from both hotels gave similer descriptions to the police. They took the information, creating a dragnet around a twenty-block area. One officer spotted a man matching the description in a Fourth street bar. He was in a booth in deep conversation with a brunette in a tight red dress. He lit his cigarette with a matchbook from the hotel where Griffin had been killed. Police arrested the man, and found that his fingerprints matched those found at both crime scenes. He easily confessed to both killings, admitting his compulsion toward bloodlust. He told police that his first wife had left him because he would creep up on her when she was naked and slash at her buttocks with a razor. His favorite pasttime was kissing and licking the blood away while he appologised for his odd behavior. He stated that the fantasies had gotten out of control when he picked up the two prostitutes. Steve Wilson was executed in the gas chamber of San Quentin Prison in September of 1946.