Before I get into this one, I just want to warn you: Some of the details are pretty gruesome.
One summer day in 1956, a woman named Margaret Harold went for a drive with her U.S. Army sergeant boyfriend near Annapolis, Md., when a man in a green Chrysler ran them off the road. He got out of his car, walked to theirs, placed a gun in the window, and demanded cash and cigarettes. The couple refused to give him any of it, so he shot Harold in the face.
Her boyfriend managed to escape and ran through the rural area until he found a home where he could call the police. Shortly after, authorities found Harold's naked body near the scene of the accident. She'd been sexually assaulted. While searching the area for the perpetrator, they came across an abandoned building, but what they found inside was disgusting. The walls were filled with pornographic pictures featuring violent acts, as well as pictures of female autopsies. Among the filth, they also found a yearbook that belonged to a woman who'd graduated from the University of Maryland in 1945. They were able to get in touch with the woman, Wanda Tipton, but she denied knowing anything about any of this. Police were unable to catch Harold's killer.
On Jan. 11, 1959, a man named Carroll Jackson, his wife Mildred, their 18-month-old daughter Janet, and their five-year-old daughter Susan, were driving home from a visit with Mildred's parents, about 15 miles from their own home near Louisa, Va. The family was in a great mood — Carroll was about to start a new job at a local bank — but it was cold and snowing, and rather than take the back dirt roads he normally used, he stayed on State Route 609. It turned out to be a fatal mistake.
The next day, Mildred's aunt found their car abandoned with the keys still in the ignition. Mildred's purse was still inside, and the girls' dolls were thrown about, but the family had disappeared, seemingly without a trace. Police were called, a search ensued, and the story became a major focus of the local media, but no one could figure out what happened. No one knew that the same man who killed Margaret Harold forced the car off the road, held the family at gunpoint, bound them, and led them to their demise.
In March, Carroll and Janet's bodies were found in a ditch on the side of the road. He had a gunshot wound in the back of his head, and the toddler, who was underneath him, died from either exposure to the cold or suffocation from being stuck under her father's dead body. Mildred and Susan's bodies were found soon after near an abandoned building in Annapolis — the same building near where Harold's body was found. Each one had been tortured and sexually assaulted after they died. Evidence, like a button from Mildred's coat, was found inside the building, leading police to connect the murders of Harold and the Jackson family.
The murder of the Jackson family became an even bigger media sensation once the bodies were found. They eventually labeled the perpetrator "The Sex Beast" due to the fact that he raped and assaulted the bodies of his victims after their deaths. The FBI got involved. A famous psychic, Peter Hurkos, was brought in. The public was understandably upset and demanded a resolution. There were several people of interest, but no conclusive evidence to prove any of them did it. The Jackson family was, by all accounts, a kind and quiet church-going family who was not involved in anything nefarious, so it had to be random, authorities determined. They offered a $10,000 reward.
And it may be that reward that prompted a Virginia man named Glenn Moser to send a letter to Fredericksburg authorities telling them to check into a friend of his: Melvin Rees.
Not much is known about Rees's childhood. It's believed he was born in the United Kingdom circa 1928, and his parents disowned him, shipping him away to the United States at an extremely young age. He attended Edwards Military Institute in Salemburg, N.C., and the Woodward School for Boys in Washington, D.C., and he eventually joined the U.S. Army after graduating from high school. Rees was a talented musician, even serving as a military musician during his service in Europe, and when he was discharged, he attended the University of Maryland, College Park. While there, he met and married a woman — their marriage only lasted a few years — and had a son.
During his college years, he continued pursuing music, but he eventually dropped out to focus on his career. He'd mastered the clarinet, piano, and saxophone, and he was a regular at D.C.-area jazz clubs with a reputation for his incredible talent. A tall and handsome man, he was seemingly popular with women.
Unfortunately, for Harold and the Jackson family, he was also pure evil.
In Moser's letter, he said that he and Rees, who was often under the influence of amphetamines, would talk about life, and in one such conversation, Rees told him that murder was just part of the human experience and not really a bad thing. He said at the time of Harold's murder, both of them were working in Annapolis, and he suspected Rees. He also said that when he confronted Rees, he didn't confirm or deny the accusations.
Thanks to help from Moser and, eventually, Wanda Tipton, the woman whose yearbook they found in the abandoned building (it turns out she'd dated Rees but broke it off when she found out he was married), the FBI determined that he was the most likely suspect. They tracked him down in West Memphis, Ark., where he was living with a topless dancer and working in a piano store. In his home, they found the gun he used in the Jackson family murders, as well as a journal in which he kept sadistic details of how he tortured, raped, and murdered his female victims. Harold's boyfriend also verified that this was the man who shot her. Rees was arrested in June 1960, four years after killing Harold and a year and a half after killing the Jacksons. He was tried in both Virginia and Maryland.
In addition to the murders of Harold and the Jacksons, Rees admitted to torturing and killing at least two other women, and police suspected he had more victims, many of whom were University of Maryland students, though they could never connect him to the crimes. At one point in 1955, he was also accused of assaulting a woman, but she refused to press charges.
Rees, who was allegedly "cool and composed" in court, was initially sentenced to death, but that was changed to life in prison in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court suspended all death sentences. He died in prison in 1995 from heart failure.
