On Halloween, excited children tell stories of the killer with the hook on his hand and of the phone call that comes from inside the house. At heart, they know that these are nothing more than fanciful tales. But as recently as 20 years ago, UW-Madison was in the grip of a scary story that was unfortunately all too real.
From 1968 to 82, seven young women were mysteriously killed in the Madison area in a string of murders dubbed the \Mad City Murders"" or ""Capital City Killings."" Most of the women had long hair parted in the middle and some connection to the university. Two of the victims were actually murdered on university grounds. None of the murders have ever been solved, and speculation remains that Madison was in the grip of a serial killer.
The series of unsolved killings began in May 1968, when a student peeking in the windows of Sterling Hall found the body of UW-Madison freshman Christine Rothschild in the bushes near the stairs. She had been stabbed and strangled. Police pursued several possible suspects, but were not able to bring anyone to trial.
Marv Balousek, a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal who covered the story in his book ""50 Wisconsin Crimes of the Century,"" said the Rothschild murder shocked many people on the quiet Madison campus.
""I do know that the Christine Rothschild case, the first one, really kind of jolted people because the campus seemed really serene at that point,"" he said. ""There was a real examination of whether the University Police should be abolished ... some people felt that they weren't protecting campus.""
Rothschild's death was forgotten amid the campus turmoil of the Vietnam War era. But in the late '70s, women began disappearing in rapid succession. The burned body of Debra Bennett, 20, was found in a ditch west of Cross Plains in July 1976.
Next to be killed was Julie Ann Hall, 18, a library assistant at the Wisconsin Historical Society, whose body was found in a shallow grave outside of Waunakee in the summer of 1978.
Julie Speerschneider, 20, disappeared in March 1979 after leaving a University Avenue bar and was found in the Yahara River two years later.
A blow to the head killed Hall, while Bennett and Speerschneider were too decomposed to determine their causes of death. Police began looking for connections and noticed all the victims were attractive, had long hair and lived in Madison.
The murders continued, as the city grew more frightened. Susan LeMahieu, 24, a cognitively disabled graduate of Madison East High School, disappeared in December 1979. Her body was found that spring in the Madison Arboretum. She had been stabbed to death.
Shirley Stewart, 17, disappeared in January 1980 after leaving the Dean Clinic, and was found in July 1981 in a forest north of Madison. Detectives suspected that the same predator killed the five women.
On July 2, 1982, the most audacious of the murders occurred when Donna Mraz, 19, was stabbed to death in front of Camp Randall Stadium. People who heard her screams ran to her just in time to see her assailant run off. According to Balousek, like the Rothschild killing 14 years earlier, the Mraz murder left many students concerned about their safety.
""What was most unusual about it is that it happened in an area where there were people around,"" he said.
Although the strangling death of Janet Raasch, 20, in Portage County bore striking similarity to the Dane County cases, Mraz's death was the end of the series of murders in the Madison area.
As the years went by, police began to see the first and the last homicides, those of Rothschild and Mraz on university grounds, as separate cases with different perpetrators than the five middle deaths. Balousek said the Rothschild and Mraz cases were different from the others partly because the police had more suspects in them.
""The Christine Rothschild one, I do believe that they had a suspect in that and they followed him to New York,"" Balousek said. ""I think they identified somebody, but they never could pin it on him. Also, the Donna Mraz case, they did have a suspect in that who was in prison and they tested him.""
University of Wisconsin Police Department Detective Doug Scheller, the officer assigned to the Mraz case, said he also believes the Mraz killing was unrelated to the others.
""We've never developed any connection between them, and from what happened and how it happened and so on, we don't honestly think there's a connection,"" he said.
However, many people still believe the murders of Bennett, Hall, Speerschneider, LeMahieu and Stewart were committed by the same perpetrator.
In 1984, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas told investigators that he and his partner, Ottis Toole, had passed through Madison many times on their way to Minnesota, and he confessed to several of the Madison murders. But his
reputation for false confessions and the fact that he was in prison during some of the murders cast doubt on his credibility, and he later withdrew his admittances.
According to Balousek, detectives were certain Lucas had killed at least Hall and Speerschneider.
""I think he probably was involved in a couple of them,"" he said. ""I was convinced at the time ... there were some really skilled and veteran detectives from both the Dane County Sheriff's Department and the Madison Police Department that questioned him, and they felt that he really knew some details about where the bodies were.""
The case files for these seven murders have long gone cold. But for the detectives involved and the families of the victims, these stories will never reach their conclusion. While children hear about imaginary murders and students dress up as killers this Halloween, Madison's real serial killer will remain unknown.
