Victim Targets - Men

Ryan Gene Erickson was a Catholic priest in Wisconsin who was identified after his death as the likely perpetrator of the 2002 double murder of funeral director Daniel O'Connell and mortuary science intern James Ellison. The two men were shot inside O'Connell's funeral home in Hudson, Wisconsin, on February 5, 2002. Investigators eventually developed evidence linking Erickson to the killings, including his knowledge of previously unreleased crime-scene details and an alleged admission to a church deacon. Police questioned him in late 2004 and searched his rectory, but Erickson died by suicide on December 19, 2004, before he could be arrested. In October 2005, a judge ruled there was probable cause to conclude that Erickson had committed the murders.

Elizabeth Anne "Betty" Broderick was convicted of murdering her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, in San Diego, California, on November 5, 1989. After years of an increasingly bitter marriage, divorce and custody dispute, Betty entered the couple's home using a key she had obtained from one of her children and fired five shots from a .38-caliber revolver, killing both while they slept. She surrendered to police later that day. After her first trial ended in a hung jury, Broderick was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder at a second trial in 1991 and sentenced to 32 years to life imprisonment. She died in custody on May 8, 2026, aged 78.

James Dupree Henry was convicted of murdering 81-year-old Orlando civil rights leader Zellie Riley during a robbery at Riley's home in March 1974. Henry bound and gagged Riley before suffocating him and stealing property from the residence. Five days later, Henry shot and seriously wounded Orlando police detective Ronald Ferguson while attempting to avoid arrest. Convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, Henry maintained his innocence throughout his decade on death row. His case became the focus of civil rights and capital-punishment campaigns, with Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King and Riley's son asking Florida officials for clemency. Henry was executed by electrocution at Florida State Prison on September 20, 1984.

Robert Austin Sullivan was convicted of murdering Donald Schmidt, the manager of a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Homestead, Florida, during a robbery in April 1973. Sullivan and accomplice Reid McLaughlin abducted Schmidt, bound him and drove him to a remote area, where he was shot twice in the head with a shotgun. Sullivan initially confessed to the murder before later recanting and maintaining his innocence. Convicted of first-degree murder and robbery, he was sentenced to death and spent ten years on Florida's death row. Despite numerous appeals and pleas for clemency, including an intervention by Pope John Paul II, Sullivan was executed by electrocution at Florida State Prison on November 30, 1983.

John Arthur Spenkelink was a convicted robber and prison escapee who murdered Joseph Szymankiewicz in a Tallahassee, Florida, motel room in February 1973. Spenkelink shot Szymankiewicz twice while he was in bed and then attempted to delay discovery of the body by giving the motel proprietor a false account before leaving the area. He claimed the killing was self-defence, alleging that Szymankiewicz had robbed and sexually assaulted him, but prosecutors established that the murder was premeditated. Convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, Spenkelink became a major figure in the American death-penalty debate after capital punishment was reinstated. Following years of appeals and stays, he was executed by electrocution at Florida State Prison on May 25, 1979, becoming the first person involuntarily executed in the United States after the modern resumption of capital punishment.

Alexander Christopher Ewing was responsible for four murders during a series of violent attacks in the Denver metropolitan area in January 1984. On January 10, he sexually assaulted and murdered 50-year-old Patricia Louise Smith in her Lakewood home, and six days later attacked the Bennett family in Aurora, killing Bruce Bennett, his wife Debra and their seven-year-old daughter Melissa with a hammer. The crimes remained unsolved for more than three decades until DNA evidence linked Ewing, who was already serving a prison sentence in Nevada, to the killings. He was convicted of the three Bennett murders in 2021 and Patricia Smith's murder in 2022, receiving three consecutive life sentences for the Bennett killings and another life sentence for Smith's murder.

Harlow Cuadra was convicted of murdering Cobra Video founder Bryan Kocis in January 2007 as part of a conspiracy with Joseph Kerekes to seize control of Cobra Video and profit from the career of Sean Lockhart, better known by his stage name Brent Corrigan, whose exclusive contract with Kocis had become the centre of a bitter legal dispute. After killing Kocis inside his Pennsylvania home, Cuadra and Kerekes set the residence on fire in an attempt to destroy evidence and conceal the murder. A lengthy investigation involving DNA evidence, financial records and witness testimony ultimately exposed the conspiracy. Cuadra was convicted of first-degree murder and related offences in 2011 and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Adam Matos murdered his former girlfriend Megan Brown, her parents, and her new boyfriend in a brutal quadruple homicide in Hudson, Florida, in 2014. Matos killed Megan, 27, her parents Gregory and Margaret Brown, both 52, and Megan's new boyfriend, Nicholas Leonard, 37, at the waterfront home where Matos had been living with members of the Brown family. Megan and Gregory were shot, while Margaret and Leonard were killed by blunt-force trauma. Matos subsequently moved the bodies from the property and left them stacked in a nearby field, where they were discovered during the investigation.