The reign of the Terror Bandits began with a gun and ended with a scalpel.   On October 9th 1926, two men stole a car at 1350 Vallejo Street. During the next forty minutes they robbed two cabbies and two pedestrians at gunpoint. As police responded to the crimes the bandits moved into the south of Market Street area. At 8th and Bryant streets, the robbers accosted a group including Mrs. Emma Bird and her 13-year old daughter. They dragged Mrs. Bird into the car and drove off. Two blocks farther after flashing a light in her face and deciding, "She ain't young enough," they threw her from the automobile.
 
The auto bandits then doubled back down to Fifth Street and Harrison, where they pistol-whipped and robbed two more victims, then stole the evening’s receipts from a Lombard Street poolroom, shooting two patrons in the process. But they were just getting started.
 
Crossing back over Market Street they drove to Powell and Washington, where they fatally shot Mario Pagano, when he resisted them. SFPD Chief Dan O'Brien, and Sergeant Neely, who were in the area, found Pagano dying in the street, and exchanged shots with the bandits.  The killers robbed three more people before ending the spree at 2:30 a.m. In all, the robbers made about $400 and assorted pieces of jewelry from the dozen robberies. Ten hours later police recovered the stolen car but had little to go on other than a description of two young white males.
Two days later, on Monday, the terror began again. Two men flagged down Walther Swanson, a Yellow Cab driver, murdered him at 16th and Third Street and threw his body under a viaduct. Using his cab they drove to Mariposa, Street where they stopped and asked a man, for the time. When the man took out his watch, they shot him to death. The killers continued their spree on Potrero Hill where they robbed nine more people, killing one of them.
 
They were robbing a man at a gas station when Officer Dorsey Henderson drove up.  A running gun battle ensued which ended at 16th and Mississippi, where the killers smashed the cab into the curb.   They fled through a lumberyard, stole another car and disappeared down the Bayshore highway. The entire rampage was over in less than an hour. Chief O'Brien ordered the mobilization of the entire police department.  Supplemented by volunteers, force of 2,000 men was soon patrolling the streets with orders to "shoot to kill."
For the next week, as police blanketed the city, detectives worked tirelessly. They got a tip from an underworld source and raided a bootleg joint on Waller Street where they found items taken in the robberies.

The detectives picked up Lawrence Weeks, 22. who quickly confessed to the Saturday night holdups. Weeks named Clarence "Buck" Kelly, 22, as ringleader of the group. Kelly, a sometimes cabdriver and club boxer was a well-known South of Market thug with a criminal record dating back to age 16. In April 1926, he was arrested for rape and his case was pending at the time of the murders.
Police surrounded the apartment in South Park where Kelley lived with his family. As Kelly tried to escape down the back stairs, he was shot twice by detectives and was taken to San Francisco General Hospital in critical condition. He refused an operation, stating, “ I want to die right now.  I don’t want to live and have the cops hang me.”  He was guarded by a squad of heavily armed police to protect him from being lynched by angry cab drivers
Police soon arrested a third man, 17-year-old Michael Papadaches. After indicting the three men the grand jury urged the passing of a national bill to restrict the sale and use of firearms, citing the ease in which the bandits procured their weapons.
 
At the trial Kelly denied everything but the evidence against him was overwhelming.  His gun was matched to the killings; eyewitnesses identified him and his co defendant, Michael Papadaches, testified against him.  After only 30 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Kelly guilty on three counts of first-degree murder.
Kelly was sentenced to death and sent to San Quentin, where his father, John, was serving time on a robbery conviction. Neither father nor son requested to see each other. On May 11, 1927, after an unsuccessful appeal, Buck Kelly was hung in San Quentin.   

​But the unkindest cut of all was yet to come. In a classic example of adding insult to injury, Dr Leo Stanley, San Quentin’s Chief Surgeon, removed Kelly’s testicles to be later implanted into an older man. This cutting edge procedure, known as “gland therapy” was promoted at the time as a treatment for afflictions such as sexual dysfunction and dementia. There was a scandal when the operation became public knowledge, though many came to Dr Stanley’s defense. The San Francisco Examiner supported Dr Stanley in an editorial entitled “San Quentin’s Valuable Work For Science Should Continue,” and the furor died down.
 
 

Long before serial killers became commonplace, before Ted Bundy, John Gacy and The Zodiac Killer, there was Earle Leonard Nelson, San Francisco’s own Gorilla Killer. If you wanted to create a serial killer it would be hard to improve on the Earle Nelson recipe
Start with a large dose of Venereal Disease
(Earl’s parents both died of syphilis before he was two years old.)
Simmer slowly with fire and brimstone religion
(He was raised by a strict puritan Pentecostal grandmother)
Shake briskly and serve
(Earle received a severe concussion in a streetcar accident, which put him in a coma for five days).
 
Earle was a psychotic prodigy.  He was expelled from primary school at the age of 7.  His behavior included talking to invisible people, quoting bible passages about the great beast, and peeking at his cousin Rachel undressing. He would often leave the house with a new set of clothes and return days later dressed in dirty ragged clothing.
 
Though short, Earle developed large hands and tremendous upper body strength. He could walk on his hands for blocks at a time and lift chairs with his teeth.  If only he had joined the circus.
Earle left school at 14, worked in a serious of manual jobs and acquired venereal disease in the brothels of the Barbary Coast.  By age 19 Earle had been in San Quentin, the Navy and Napa State Mental Hospital.  Upon being discharged from Napa State he made his next illogical move, marrying a 58-year-old spinster who he soon abandoned.
After attacking a 12-year-old girl, Nelson was arrested and spent 3 more years in Napa State mental hospital, from which he escaped several times.  In a spectacular example of medical malfeasance he was discharged as “improved” in 1925. He spent the rest of his life proving how wrong his doctors were.
On February 1926 Nelson appeared at 2037 Pierce Street home of 60-year-old Clara Newman, a landlady who had a room for rent.  She soon disappeared and her strangled and mangled body was discovered in the vacant apartment the next day. 
He killed Landlady Lillian St. Mary, at 1073 Delores Street before taking his murderous act on the road.  Earle was on his best behavior when first meeting landladies with an apartment for rent.  He was polite and talked about his deep Christian beliefs. He would carefully inspect the rooms and took particular interest in the condition of the furnace. His goal was to get the landlady alone in the basement where he would attack them.
Witnesses described him as a dark, stocky man, with long arms and large hands. Because of this description and the ferocity of his attacks on the victims, newspapers started referring to him as “The Dark Strangler “or “The Gorilla Killer.” His list of activities also included necrophilia; after strangling his victims he would routinely have sex with their corpses.
As the police search intensified, Nelson crisscrossed the country, stopping in Portland, Council Bluffs, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago, leaving a corpse in each city.
On June 8th 1927, looking for greener pastures to bloody, Earle moved north to Winnipeg Canada with bible in hand and devout look in eye.  His landlady, Mrs. August Hill was impressed with his piety. Two days later, after Lola Cowan, a 14-year-old girl disappeared and another woman was strangled, a police check of boarding houses brought them to Mrs. Hill’s establishment.  When she described Roger Wilson as a short dark religious man, police searched his room.  Under his bed they found the decaying body of Lola Cowan.
Assuming that Nelson was headed back to the U.S Police sent descriptions to all police stations and post offices. Five days later two constables in Killarney, a border town, arrested a man named Virgil Wilson who fit the description. He was so relaxed and cooperative that they thought they had the wrong man.  They handcuffed him to a cell while they went next door to call Winnipeg Police Chief George Smith.  When they described their captive, Smith said, “Don’t let that man out of your sight.  I want one of you with him at all times! .” When the constables returned to the jail a few minutes later they found the cell door open and handcuffs dangling from the bar. 
Panic gripped the town, all the women and children spent the night in a church, guarded by dozens of armed men. A 500-man posse went from house to house while Nelson spent a peaceful night in the loft of a farmer’s barn. The next morning Nelson walked to the station and waited for the train back to the U.S. This train, however, led to a different destination. When the train doors opened dozens of armed detectives, led by Police Chief Smith, charged out and Nelson was quickly arrested.
In all, between February 1926 and June 1927, Nelson killed at least 22 women, all but two of them landladies. He was convicted of murder and executed in Winnipeg on January 13, 1928. The next day Landladies all over North America breathed a sigh of relief.