The Gorilla Killer - Earle Nelson - Part 1

individual moving from city to city. Eventually, descriptions of this individual began to come out. He was hunched over, physically strong, with oversized hands. Now this description would soon lead to an ominous nickname that would go down in serial killer history. This is the story of the man known as the Gorilla Killer.

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was happening. Murders were investigated, you know, one at a time, and if a body was found in one city, then it was assumed it had nothing to do with the case that was happening and unfolding in another city. Police simply worked within their own jurisdictions, you know, building those cases based on what was directly in front of them. If something similar happened somewhere else, it was well, it was coincidence, that was it. Now. On top of that,

travel was certainly common. People moved between cities without much documentation. Someone could arrive in one town, rent a room, stay a few days, and leave without much of a trail behind them. There was no centralized system that was tracking anyone's movement, no shared databases connecting any sort of investigations, and no reason to assume that a crime being committed in California might be connected to one, say in Oregon

or beyond. And for people living through that exact scenario, everything felt local a woman goes missing, a landlady found dead in her home. A suspect is briefly there but then disappears. Each event was treated as its own tragedy, contained within the boundaries of that single city. There was no consideration of a broader pattern, or no larger framework to place it in, just a series of incidents that didn't quite make sense. Now. It wasn't that signs weren't there.

It was just no one had seen them to come together like this before. But before we get too deep into it, I should start at the very beginning. Earl Leonard Ferrell was born on May twelfth, eighteen ninety seven, in San Francisco, California. He would later become known by his mother's surname Nelson, but at birth he was Earl Leonard Ferrell. He was the son of Francis Nelson and James Carlos Ferrell. His life began in a home that

was already very unstable to start with. Both of his parents were infected with syphilis, and both would be dead before he was old enough to remember them. His mother died when he was still an infant, and his father followed not long after, leaving him orphaned. Before he turned only two years old.

and then a course caring for the baby alone. So by the time Earle was born, Francis was already seriously ill, and the discovery that she had advanced syphilis at the time during her labor only confirmed how bleak the situation was, so much so that there was an immediate concern that the infection could be passed along to Earl himself. Though the accounts agreed that he survived infancy without any obvious

signs of congenital infections. What mattered more in the short term was that his mother was no longer in a condition to raise him, at least certainly not for long, because she passed away. Now, after both parents did die, Earle was taken in by his mother's family in San Francisco. There he was raised mostly by his maternal grandmother, Jenny Nelson, and other family members there were as well, Like you know, in the household, there was his grandfather Lars Nelson as well,

plus their younger children, Willis and Lillian. Religion also seem to have been a very large part of that environment where he was brought up, though this is one of the places where sources start to differ from one another. Several accounts describe the household as very deeply Pentecostal and very strict, and they say that Earl was raised around

strong religious ideas from a very young age. Now. At the same time, some also mention the fact that his childhood religious upbringing could have been overstated in many of the retellings of this case. So the safest way to tell this is religion was present in his home, but the extent is mostly unknown now. Even as a young child, sources described Earl as very withdrawn. He was moody and strange in ways that stood out to a lot of

the people around him. Some accounts say that he talked to people no one else could see that He quoted scripture very loudly, and often. He would leave for school clean and ready for the day, but he would return home wearing different clothes, ones that were dirty, ratty, and torn. He was often described as isolated and for some reason seemingly resistant to normal social interaction, and many adults even noticed something was off with him. He attended school in

San Francisco, but that didn't last long. At just seven years old, he was expelled. The exact reasons very depending on the account, but they all point to the same direction. His behavior was disruptive and it was concerning enough for the school to decide that he could not remain there.

for his size. Combined with his now stocky build that was growing, it gave him a physical appearance that didn't match his age. And at the time it was just another detail, but later on in life it would become part of how his witnesses would identify him.

nearly every single account of Earl Nelson's life. A serious accident had left him unconscious for days and marked a very clear shift on how he was described afterwards. Now, reportedly, Earl was riding his bike through San Francisco when he was showing off in the streets to some other kids, and during this he ended up having an accident where he collided with a car. Now, the impact was severe, as he struck his head on the pavement hard enough

to cause a significant skull injury. Reportedly, it left a visible wound near his temple, and he was taken into the hospital very quickly, and for a time it wasn't clear if he was even going to survive there. He remained unconscious in the hospital for around six days, and for a child, that kind of head trauma is extremely serious, and the expectation from doctors at the time was if

he even did live, he might not fully recover. But against that though, Earle did regain consciousness and he recovered enough to return to daily life, but the people around him would later say that something had changed in him. He was weird before, but he got a little more odd now. Afterwards, he began to experience a lot of ongoing issues. He complained of frequent headaches and memory problems.

There were reports of what were described as spells, moments where he seemed disconnected or not fully aware of what was happening around him. His behavior also became a lot more erratic, where he had already been very withdrawn and difficult before, while those traits now appeared much more pronounced. He was described even more as being moody and unpredictable and very much so more difficult to engage with. The combination of his earlier behaviors and the changes following the

accident had shaped the way people saw him. He wasn't just a quiet or troubled kid anymore. He was someone who made people feel uneasy. Now. Unfortunately, as Earl moved into his teenage years, the instability had been building through his childhood and it didn't level out. It expanded into new areas of his life too. By his early teens, he had started spending a lot more time out of the structure of his family home, particularly in areas of San Francisco that exposed him to things most kids his

age wouldn't have been. Around. The Barbary Coast, known at the time for its bars, brothels and nightlife, became one of the places that he frequented. It was there that he began drinking alcohol regularly and engaging in early sexual experiences. And he's what just early early teens.

he was developing in a different direction. He became strong, noticeably so. Multiple accounts described him as having unusually powerful an unusually powerful upper body. He could perform physical feats that people remembered, like walking on his hands for extended distances or lifting up objects with his teeth alone. Combined this with his large hands his stocky frame, it gave him a very intimidating and distinctive presence, making him very

memorable to those he encountered. Now, as he moved further into his late teens, the gap between him and a normal life widened. Earle wasn't setting into work, family, or even a community. He was drifting between places and increasingly between legal boundaries as well. On July twenty fifth, nineteen fifteen, at just eighteen years old, Earl was arrested for robbery. Now, the charge came out of Plymouth County, California, and it

marked his very first serious entry into the criminal justice system. See. Up to that point, there had been signs that he was struggling sure socially, mentally, and even behaviorally, but this was different. This was a clear, documented crime, and in fact, it resulted in a prison sentence. He was sent to San Quentin state prison and given a two year sentence for his crime. Now, for someone his age, it was a very significant moment. Prison was not just a punishment.

It was supposed to be a turning point, a place of reform, where someone might come out with the clear direction or at least a stronger sense of consequences. But in Earle's case, though, that didn't happen. He was paroled and released on September sixth, nineteen sixteen, after serving thirteen months and twelve days. But whatever the expectation that was there that he would, you know, stabilize after prison, right, that didn't hold. Instead, the pattern of drifting and instability

continued almost immediately. In March of nineteen seventeen, less than a year after his release, he was arrested once again, this time under the alias Clark for petty larceny. Now he was sentenced to another six months in jail. The use of an alias is a small detail, but it was one that showed up repeatedly after that later on in his life. Even at this stage, he was already moving between identities and not staying tied to one name

or place for very long. Now, two years later, in March of nineteen nineteen, he was arrested once again, this time in Los Angeles for burglary, and like before, he was using a different name, which was Feral. He was held in the Los Angeles County Jail, but this time something different happened. After serving about five months, Earl actually escaped prison, and it introduced a new pattern, not just

committing crimes but actively avoiding confinement. Now around this same time, he also attempted to enter the military, not once, but multiple times. He enlisted in the Army and then later in the Navy, but each attempt followed the same sort of pattern. He would join, remain there for a short time, and then disappear. In some cases he deserted it outright, in others he was discharged after showing signs of instability.

Though by the end of this period, Earl Nelson had already served time in prison, been arrested for multiple times under different names, and escaped custody, while also failing to remain in any sort of structured environment, even like the military. By nineteen eighteen and into nineteen nineteen, the pattern of his behavior and his life had become very clear. Short

periods of structure followed by instability followed by disappearance. But around this time something else changed, Something changed in how authorities began to view him. He was no longer just a repeat offender. He was now being seen as someone who was mentally unstable as well. After his repeated issues with the military and his erratic behavior, he came into

contact with medical professionals who began evaluating him very closely. Now, a naval psychiatrist eventually described him as being in what they called a continual psychotic state, a term used at the time to describe someone who was fundamentally unstable in a way that wasn't expected to improve. Because of this, he was soon committed to a mental institution, and this marked the beginning of another cycle that would repeat itself

over it over for the next several years. It would go something like confinement, escape, return, and then release, and so Earle repeatedly escaped care Some accounts suggested he got out multiple times in relatively short periods, and rather than being consistently brought back or more tightly controlled, there were moments where the staff simply failed to enforce strict containment, and this created a situation where he was moving in and out of custody without any sort of long term

solution being put into place. Now. In between these periods of confinement, he attempted to live something resembling a normal life, at least for him anyways. At one point he did find some work and he was employed as a janitor in a hospital, and during that time, in about nineteen nineteen, he met and married a woman named Mary Martin, and

the age difference between them was very significant. He wasn't the older one, though she was decades older than he was most accounts, she was close to forty years his senior, and the relationship itself was unstable from the very beginning, like.

look at how a serial killer came to be. Now there's no specific recipe to say, well that's the moment that became a serial killer. There's you know, there's product of environment, and there's product of people even say, you know what, being born a killer, a serial killer, a monster. But there are patterns, which is interesting. But what I find most interesting about this case is almost everything about

is upbringing was was different. What do you mean there's no specific thing where you can say, oh, well, that's like Jeffrey Dahmer, or that's like this killer or that killer, or this person or that person. He is a very unique individual.

of can we fix them. I mean, there was the can we fix them in the term of like you're a science project, But they didn't look at them as people, as humans.

marriage wasn't exactly any sort of sunshine and rainbows. I want to make that clear. Accounts describe his behavior during this marriage as very erratic and very difficult. I mean, he was kind of like that anyways. But he reportedly refused to bathe, He had sudden mood swings, and struggled to function in any sort of consistent normal way. Earle also wanted to have sex on a nightly basis, and his wife Mary would sometimes well not be in the mood, which is very reasonable.

another head injury. Even in that setting, though he didn't remain under supervision for very long, as he just escaped once again, leaving the hospital with his head still bandaged up. They were also increasing reports of hallucinations and paranoia with Earle. He had apparently been hearing voices more and more and

even believing that people were trying to harm him. Now, whether these symptoms were consistent or episodic, it's very difficult to say, since Earle often refused to stay for any sort of medical assistance, but they were serious enough that medical professionals certainly took notice when they did have them

in their care. Now, by nineteen twenty one, Earl Nelson had already spent years drifting through jobs that didn't last, and time in prison and time in institutions, and repeated attempts to fit into some kind of structure that never held. But up to this point, his criminal record had been mostly centered around theft and disorder, but that all changed in May of that year. On May nineteenth, nineteen twenty one, Earl approached a home in San Francisco, and he used

a simple excuse to get inside. He told the occupants he was a plumber and that was enough for him to gain entry. He was let in without much suspicion. Once inside, he came into contact with Mary Summers, a twelve year old girl. Now what happened next escalated very quickly. He attempted to assault her, but almost immediately the situation broke down. Mary screamed as he approached her, loudly enough

to alert the others in the house. Her brother, who heard the noise, rushed in and interrupted the act before it could go any further. Earle then fled the scene, but it didn't give him much of a head start, as police were soon notified and it didn't take long for them to catch up to him and arrest him. Now, instead of sending him back to prison, he was evaluated and declared insane, and based on that assessment, he was

committed to NAPA State Mental Hospital. While they where Earle didn't respond to treatment in any sort of meaningful way. He was described as unpredictable, difficult to manage, and at times openly threatening towards staff. Some medical professionals believed he should remain institutionalized indefinitely, but despite that, the institution was

never able to fully contain him. Just like before he escaped, he would slip out and return to the outside world before then being brought back in, and each time this occurred, the system was supposed to hold him, but it showed that same sort of weakness. It wasn't built to keep someone like Earl there permanently. Within these periods of confinement, he was able to move through everyday life in ways

that didn't immediately draw attention. He worked some odd jobs, stayed in different places, and blended in when he needed to the line between being institutionalized and being free became that inconsistent and almost fluid normal moments in his life. That's what normal, not the jobs, not being in a

place of care, but that in between. There were stretches where he was under supervision, followed by stretches where he wasn't, with no clear system holding anything together, and eventually, on March tenth, nineteen twenty five, Earl Nelson was officially discharged from NAPA State Hospital. The circumstances around that release aren't entirely clear, but what stands out is that it wasn't

a result of stable recovery. This was someone who had already shown violent behavior, who'd been labeled mentally unstable, and who had repeatedly escaped from care. Yet by March of nineteen twenty five, he was no longer confined.

yet connected to anything that would draw attention. There are accounts that suggest he may have begun killing in this gap, which is earlier than what is officially documented. In particular, there are three murders in Philadelphia in late nineteen twenty five, the murder of Ola McCoy, May Murray, and Lilian Wiener, murders that share similarities with what would later come. Each victim was attacked in their own home, and each case

there were elements that would eventually become familiar in other investigations. However, these cases are they've never been definitively proven to be his. The connection comes from a combination of witness descriptions, patterns in the crime, and the fact that items belonging to the victims were later linked to a man matching his description. Even so, they remained attributed rather than confirmed. But I digress. So this period sits in a kind of uncertainty this

gap in time. On one hand, there is a stretch of time where nothing is officially tied to him, but on the other there are early signs that something may have already been happening, just without evidence needed to fully connect it. What is clear is that by this time in nineteen twenty six, when it began, Earle was once again fully on his own. He was moving freely, using different identities and interacting with people who had no reason

to question him. Then on February twentieth, nineteen twenty six, San Francisco, that would all change. Clara Newman was a woman in her early sixties and she had operated a room out of her house at two zero three seven Pierce Street. Like many landladies at the time, she rented out space in her home to supplement her income. A simple sign advertising a vacancy was all it took to bring people to her door. He was a normal arrangement

and it didn't attract much attention. But on that afternoon, at around one thirty PM, a man arrived asking about a room, and Clara let him in. Her nephew, Merton, was in the house at the time. He saw the man when he entered and was able to observe him briefly. The man appeared to be around thirty years old, about five foot seven, wearing a mix of clothing that didn't quite match, an army style shirt with cimiliant pants. He had a darker complexion, but nothing about him stood out

as immediately alarming. He was just another man responding to the sign in the window. Clara took him upstairs to show him the available room, but he wasn't up there very long. A short time later, the man came back down on his own. He passed Merton and he said something simple, almost very casual, as he walked past. He told him to let Clara know that he would be back at about an hour to rent the room, and then he left the house. Nothing about this exchange was

out of the ordinary. It was a regular kind of interaction, in fact, that could have happened dozens of times without anyone ever remembering it, especially for someone showing the room frequently to potential renters. Yeah, but the hour passed and Clara didn't come back downstairs, and the man didn't come back either, And at some point Merton went upstairs to check on Clara, and there upstairs he found her dead.

suspect to anything, no obvious trail to follow. The man who had entered the house had just left just as calmly as he arrived, and aside from Merton's brief observations of him, there wasn't anything else to go on.

she had been renting out rooms. Like Clara, she had let someone into the space without much of a second thought. Her husband would ultimately be the one who had found her dead. She was strangled with the silk belt from her own dress pulled tightly around her neck. There were clear signs that she had struggled, and further examination showed that she had been sexually assaulted as well. Now the

case was investigated on its own. At that time, there was no immediate connection that made the murder of Clara in San Francisco tying to this one. It was a different city, it was different jurisdiction, had no shared system to compare cases in real time. To investigators in San Jose, this was just another violent crime that needed to be solved on its own.

was becoming a little hard to ignore. Three women, all operating boarding houses or renting rooms, all attacked in their own properties, all strangled after letting someone in. It wasn't enough yet to identify a suspect, but it was enough to raise a bit of a question. Investigators, for the first time began to look at these cases side by side. The way the attacker gained access, the type of victims he chose, and the method he used. They all lined up in a way that didn't seem to feel random.

But they weren't the only ones who began to connect the dots. The newspapers started to take notice to but without a name or a face to attach to the crimes, they began to describe the person responsible in broader terms, based on witness descriptions of a stocky build, darker complexion, unusually large hands. Well, the press gave him sensationalized names on their own, things like the dark Strangler and the gorilla killer.

of mouth, or even newspaper coverage. Even within California, coordination wasn't consistent. What might have been obvious in hindsight was still something that they had to piece together step by step. And while that process was under way, while Earl's killings didn't stop. In Santa Barbara, on June twenty fourth, nineteen twenty six, Ollie Russell, another woman renting out rooms, was

found dead after being strangled. As in the previous cases, there were signs of a struggle, but no suspect left behind. In some accounts, neighbors reported hearing unusual noises, something that might have been a disturbance, but nothing that triggered immediate

concern or response. By the time anyone realized something was wrong, well, it was already long over with and then less than two months later, on August sixteenth, nineteen twenty six, in Oakland, Mary in this bit was killed the very same way. She too had been renting out of space. She too had allowed someone in her home, and once again the attack followed the same pattern, quick controlled and leaving almost

nothing behind for investigators to work with. But by now that pattern was cemented, the victims were similar, the method was consistent, The circumstances lined up too closely to be a coincidence, and investigators no longer asked if the cases were connected. They were operating under the assumption that yes, they in fact were.

he left the city. Now, after killing Mary Nisbitt in Oakland, the killings had been building across California, and they seemed to all of a sudden stall out for a short period of time, there were no new cases that clearly followed the same structure that police were After there were no new reports of land ladies found strangled in their homes, no new scenes that matched what investigators had been slowly piecing together. It looked like whatever happened had simply stopped,

But the absence didn't mean the danger was gone. It only meant that it moved. In October of nineteen twenty six, nearly two months later, a series of murders began in Portland, Oregon, and they carried the very same detail that had already started to concern investigators in California. It was on October nineteenth when Beta Withers was found dead inside her home. She had been strangled, and after her death, her body

had been concealed in a trunk. The discovery of what had happened was made by her teenage son, who came across the scene after the fact. It was a brutal, contained act of violence, carried out in a familiar space, with no immediate explanation for how it happened. But what made it more alarming was what followed. The next day. On October twentieth, another woman, Virginia Grant, was killed the

same way, and then on October twenty first. The next day again a third victim, Mabel Fluke, was found dead in the attict of her boarding house.

moved through multiple homes without being stopped. But as information began to circulate beyond the city, the similarities earlier in other cases like California, well they came into the picture as well, and it became hard to say that they were not connected. See the victims in Portland, like those in San Francisco, San Jose in Oakland, where women who had opened their homes to someone, They were operating board boarding houses and renting out rooms, and in each case

the person responsible had been allowed inside. The method was consistent as well. Each victim was strangled and in several cases their body had even been hidden somewhere within the home, delaying discovery and giving the killer more time to escape and leave. Looking at the cases side by side, the pattern wasn't subtle. It wasn't just a series of similar crimes. Now, it was a continuation of the same behavior, just appearing in a different city. And just as suddenly as it

began in Portland, it stopped. There were no immediate follow up killings in the area, no suspect taken into custody, and no clear direction for investigators to move in. The person responsible had come into the city, committed multiple murders in a short period of time, and then left before anyone had the chance to even try to identify them.

I have to go on, Okay for confirmation on that. Now, by the time authorities began to seriously consider the possibility that the same individual was responsible for both California and the Oregon cases, well, he was already gone once again. What started out as a localized problem was now suddenly something much bigger. The killings were out of control, no longer confined to a single region, and the person behind them wasn't staying put in one place long enough to

be caught. He was moving between cities, repeating the past, and leaving behind just enough evidence to suggest connection, but not enough to stop him in the moment. Now, for investigators, that shift changed everything. They realized they were trying to track someone who didn't stay put, someone who crossed jurisdictions fast and without warning, and someone who at this point

had already shown he could disappear just as quickly as arriving. Now, the biggest problem that investigators were facing wasn't a lack of effort, It was the lack of connection between it all. Each department was working on its own case, building up its reports and following its own leads. In San Francisco detectives had been focused on the early murders tied to

the boarding houses. In San Jose and Oakland, similar cases were being investigated, and now in Portland, authorities were dealing with their three killings, and each location had pieces of the same story, but no one had the full picture. At the time, there was no centralized system to tract violent crimes across cities or states. The information surrounding each act didn't move quickly, and it certainly didn't move automatically either.

If connections were going to be made, they depended on investigators recognizing patterns on their own or learning about other cases through newspapers, word of mouth, or delayed communication between departments.

So think of it this way. You're in San Jose, you're investigating a murder, you're working towards something, You're questioning people, you're trying to find evidence, you have a description, and you wake up one morning after already working on this case for a few weeks, open up the newspaper and you see a report that a week ago someone was killed in the same manner in Portland. And now you need to connect the dots. Now you need to get

a hold of people in Portland. You need to see what's happening in their investigation, the information they're finding out, see if the descriptions are the same. How do you even do that?

looking for a place to stay. And, as you pointed out, with zero trail in his wake.

enforcement was equipped to do efficiently. It hadn't happened like this before, and as a result, the investigation remained reactive. Each new crime scene added another piece to the puzzle, but those pieces were being collected after the fact, and not in a way that could stop anything that would

be coming next. And all while investigators were trying to connect the dots in the wake of each murder, the man they were looking for was already moving again, entering new cities, finding new victims, and repeating the same pattern. It seemed absolutely hopeless. However, that feeling of hopelessness soon changed into the feeling of hope on November of nineteen twenty six, when someone survived an encounter with the Gorilla Killer and was able to tell police about it. And

I think that's where we're going to stop Part one. Okay.