Leatherface in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”
Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs”
Otis Driftwood in Rob Zombie’s “House of 1000 Corpses,” who wears a mask made from the face of one of his victims.
David Spanbauer
A monster becomes a remorseless killer
David Spanbauer liked his victims young.
Born, as one judge put it, “a sexual deviant,” experts recommended psychiatric care for Spanbauer many times in his life, but it was never enough to stop him from fulfilling his sick urges.
David Spanbauer was born in January of 1941 to Frank and Evelyn Spanbauer, the oldest of three children including sisters Judy and Mary.
The German Catholic family lived near the Fox River, and David struggled to forge a relationship with his father, until the elder Spanbauer died when David was 14.
He then began what would be a lifetime of trouble with the law, including a stint in the Navy that led to three court martials for being absent without leave, which earned him seven months in the brig.
Although Naval doctors believed Spanbauer needed psychiatric care, there was no follow-up, and he returned to Wisconsin in late 1959 after being dishonorably discharged from the Navy.
The high school dropout attempted to go back to school in Oshkosh, but it lasted only a few weeks.
On January 3, 1960, Spanbauer broke into a home in nearby Appleton, stealing diamond rings, a .22 handgun, a hunting knife, money and a bottle of whiskey.
The next night, he used the stolen gun to rob a home in Neenah.
Chapter 1: Spanbauer was born for bigger crimes
Robbery soon turned out to be much less satisfying, and Spanbauer’s crime spree took an ugly turn a week later, when he attempted to rape a 13-year-old girl behind the garage of her home. His plan was foiled when he slapped her and she screamed, but a few days later, his sadistic sexual urges would be finally be satisfied.
16-year-old Carol Grady was playing piano at her aunt and uncle’s home in Green Bay, about 45 minutes from Appleton, while babysitting her young cousins.
Peeping Tom Spanbauer, 19, watched her through the window for a while before using his gun to gain entry to the home, and he then dragged Grady to a bedroom, tied her up to the posts of the bed, used a knife to remove her clothing and raped her.
When Grady’s uncle returned home, Spanbauer was still inside, and when the uncle walked in to find the deviant inside his property, Spanbauer shot the surprised man in the face, killing him instantly.
It would be almost two months before Spanbauer was arrested, and after facing charges for carrying a concealed firearm, he confessed to the rape and murder, along with the other crimes, saying, “All this started out because I owed two hundred dollars in bills out in California, and I had received the bills presently, the day before.”
He went through his entire trial without an attorney, and the prosecutor held out for the longer sentence, saying, “I think the Court must realize that the defendant, to be engaged in crimes such as these, that he must be somewhat ill.”
Spanbauer earned a 70-year prison sentence, which he promptly appealed.
His appeal included mental health reports that suggested he was a “very disturbed, extremely dangerous” sociopath who had potential for “an acute psychotic reaction,” although his intelligence was not impaired.
It seems a surprise, then, that Spanbauer – whose mother wrote copious letters to the judge, suggesting that Carol Grady was somehow to blame - only served a fraction of that sentence, and was paroled in 1972.
He left prison anything but a reformed man. A tattoo of a devil was now etched on his forearm.
His victim, Carol Grady, wasn’t informed of his release, and didn’t learn of it until Spanbauer again turned up in the news.
Living the straight and narrow? Hardly
Spanbauer moved to Wisconsin’s busy capital city, Madison, home to what was once considered one of the most prominent party schools in the country.
He was living at the YMCA while attending classes at Madison Area Technical College, where he earned good grades even as he found himself hanging out with exactly the wrong crowd.
After loaning his car to an escaped prisoner who used it to flee a robbery, Spanbauer was again arrested, although he was let out on work release, and spent his days working for the Madison Parks Department.
Unfortunately, that meant he was surrounded by pretty co-eds taking advantage of the brief months of summer to soak up some sun on the beaches of Mad Town’s four city lakes, each part of Madison’s parks department.
The scantily-clad girls caused Spanbauer’s sexual urges to resurface, and he did attempt to see a psychiatrist for help.
The professional, however, perhaps unaware of Spanbauer’s dark criminal history, shrugged it off, said Spanbauer was likely born “retarded,” and washed his hands of the man. In doing so, he unknowingly put several young girls in harm’s way. One hopes that at some point he watched the news, saw Spanbauer’s face, and realized his horrific mistake.
Next rape results in slap on the wrist
Spanbauer was driving along Hwy. 51 near Madison On Aug. 11, 1972, when he spotted a 17-year-old hitchhiker. The girl was a waitress who was hitching her way home after work. It was late, and she was tired after a long shift.
Instead of making it home, however, she ended up in the car of a madman.
He drove her to the 147-acre Token Creek Park, just north of Madison. On the way, he told the girl he was going to rape her, then run her over with his car and throw her body in a ditch.
The teen started to cry, and then so did Spanbauer. He then tied the girl’s hands and raped her.
After Spanbauer tired of the girl, he eventually let her go.
Afterwards, the girl told police that the man who raped her had a tattoo of a devil on his arm.
When police arrested Spanbauer, she identified him as her assailant.
Spanbauer was found guilty by a jury for rape, abduction and sexual perversion, but Judge Richard Bardwell apparently found the crime to be less serious than Spanbauer’s first rape, since no one had died in the incident.
While still a sociopath, Spanbauer had shifted from “very dangerous” to “just dangerous, so there has been some improvement,” Bardwell said, adding that it was “a very mild rape case,” with “no violence.”
While the prosecutor had asked for the maximum 50 years on top of whatever sentence Spanbauer would receive for violating his parole from his 1960 rape and murder, Bardwell gave him just 12 years, to run concurrent with his revoked parole.
“The girl was in effect asking for it,” said Bardwell in court as he handed down the sentence. “They are tempting fate when they do it.”
“I remember being very, very angry after the sentencing,” said Dane County Assistant District Attorney John Burr, who said that Spanbauer was “in the top ten of the most vicious and violent people I’ve ever had the displeasure of coming in contact with.”
Chapter 2: Released after 12-year prison stint
Spanbauer left prison with $8,000 he’d earned doing various jobs, and moved in with his sister, Judy.
She was married to Clark Tadych, an Oshkosh police officer, so it seemed as though there would be somebody keeping an eye on Spanbauer.
Instead, the career criminal landed a job at the local Seven-Up bottling plant, and got his own place on Oshkosh’s west side.
While Spanbauer kept up with his parole officer – he sent regular letters, describing what he was up to, ending each with the word “Smile!” like a pre-technology version of an emoji – and said he was adjusting well to life outside of lockup, things were boiling under the surface.
A 1991 heart attack on Christmas Eve almost killed him, but doctors revived him, and he went back to the bottling plant.
After work, he would head to a local tavern to drink – bars are prolific throughout Wisconsin, home of Miller, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Leinenkugel
breweries, among others – although he never got too drunk and never caused any trouble, leading establishment owner to say he was a “nice guy.”
Laurie Depies: Gone in the night
Winneconne native Laurie Depies was a free-spirited 20-year-old working at Grand Chute’s Fox River Mall when she disappeared on August 19, 1992.
She had made plans to meet her boyfriend at his apartment in nearby Menasha after she finished her shift at the mall, and although she made it to the parking lot of his apartment building, she never showed up.
The only clue she left behind was a soda cup left on the roof of her car.
David Spanbauer was later cleared of any connection to the disappearance of Depies. Instead, a week later he encountered Ronelle Eichstedt, a 10-year-old girl out riding her bike, a misfortune that would later lead to Wisconsin truth in sentencing laws that would end early release for good behavior.
The proximity of both time and place would forever linked Depies’ disappearance with that of the younger Eichstedt.
A 10-year-old girl on a bike
On August 23, 1992, 10-year-old Ronelle Eichstedt disappeared while riding her bike.
A few weeks later, her blue and pink bicycle was found in some brush near her Ripon home.
“It appears the bike was thrown in from overhead, and not walked in and put back in there,” said Fond du Lac Sheriff James Gilmore. “There was no path leading to the bike. Someone threw it from the road.”
Ronelle’s mother said she was not giving up hope, despite the find.
“In the back of my mind, I still believe that she’s alive out there somewhere,” Charlotte Eichstedt told the Milwaukee Sentinel. “I can’t bear to think anything else.”
Six weeks after her disappearance, Ronelle’s body was found in a cornfield ditch near Tower Hill State Park, close to the Wisconsin River.
More than 1,500 people attended a memorial for Ronelle Eichstedt at Ripon Senior High School, including teachers, students, police officers and other survivors of tragedy, along with the mother of Laurie Depies.
“I had to come and let them know how much we cared and give them our support and a hug,” said Mary Wegner, who was unable to attend the entire service, as her emotions regarding the unsolved disappearance of her daughter were just too raw.
Spanbauer, meanwhile, sold the 1988 four-door Eagle Premiere he had used to transport Ronelle Eichstadt’s body.
In its place, he bought a maroon 1991 Pontiac Bonneville.
About seven months after Ronelle Eichstadt’s death, her mother, Charlotte, was working third shift at the cookie factory, and her father, Gary, was working construction.
Her sister, Regina Eichstedt, turned 12, and remembered clearly the day her sister disappeared.
The two had been riding their bikes together, until Regina decided to go inside to take a nap. By the time she went back outside, her sister was gone.
“Suddenly there was no Ronnie,” Charlotte said. “We have our good days. But we have our bad days, too. Days when it seems like the smallest things irritate us. It’s always there, in the back of our minds, no matter what we do. You can’t stop thinking about it.”
Too, they worried whether whoever took Ronelle would strike again.
“It’s frustrating,” said Charlotte, “because, to tell you the truth, we’re beginning to wonder if they’ll ever catch this person, whoever it might be.”
It would be another year and a half before they’d have the answers they were seeking.
A predator can’t stop hunting
It was a few days after the fourth of July, July 9, 1994, and 21-year-old Trudi Jeschke was home alone at the Appleton house she shared with her sister and brother-in-law.
She had moved there from Michigan about five weeks prior in order to take a job with a bank.
She was on the phone in her darkened bedroom when Spanbauer moved a picnic table beneath the window and cut a screen to gain entry.
He believed the home was empty, but when he entered the room where Jeschke was chatting on the telephone, she screamed, so he shot her in the chest and ran away from the site of the bungled robbery.
“This whole thing raises a lot of anger, of what the parole board used to let him loose,” said Jeschke’s mother, Linda Jeschke. “I’d give anything if he hadn’t been let out.”
In 1998, Spanbauer helped lead police to the weapon he used to kill Jeschke. He later ditched the gun at Menominee Park in Oshkosh.
“It doesn't change a lot for our family,” said Trish Hummel, Jeschke’s sister. “I mean, Trudi’s gone either way, with the gun or without the gun, the last four years. But I think it’s a final piece to the puzzle. It’s nice to know it’s done.”
Chapter 3: Cora Jones, A bike marks the spot
It was September 5, 1994, and Cora Jones was celebrating Labor Day at her grandmother’s house near Waupaca, a town in central Wisconsin that’s best known as a recreational area thanks to the nearby Wolf River, a popular spot for canoe trips and tubing.
She had just started seventh grade at Weyauwega-Fremont Middle School.
The older sister to brother Zach, Cora was missing a kidney from a childhood illness, and had plans to become a kidney specialist because of it.
She was, according to her family, “a typical seventh-grade girl.”
She liked music, taking on the phone with her friends and playing the French horn in the school band.
She was in Girl Scouts and participated in a variety of church activities, and spent time volunteering with her mother at a local health center.
Her favorite colors were pink and purple.
Fear or premonition?
Ironically, one of Cora’s lifelong fears was being kidnapped, and her terror only grew after 10-year-old Ronelle Eichstedt disappeared.
According to her mother, Cora often prayed for Jacob Wetterling, a Minnesota boy who was kidnapped while riding his bike and was featured on a missing poster that hung in Cora’s doctor’s office.
“We would pray for that little boy. She thought about him a lot,” Vicki Jones said.
Two weeks before her disappearance, a man in a car had asked Cora to help him look for his lost dog, prompting Cora, who had watched a video on how to avoid being abducted almost incessantly, until her parents made her stop, said, “No! Are you a creep or something?” and walked away. She later asked her mother, “What would I do if someone tried to grab me?”
While one can never know if it all was a premonition on the part of Cora Jones, her fears came true that Labor Day, when her bicycle was found on nearby Sanders Road, Cora nowhere in sight.
Volunteers come in droves
Hundreds of volunteers were soon combing the area in search of the girl, born Dec. 8, 1981, an early Christmas gift for her parents.
It was “very stressful,” said Al Kraeger of the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Department. “The family is wondering and you’re pulling your hair out asking why, and what for, and what kind of person would want to harm an innocent child.”
Five days later, two hunters found her body in a ditch about 75 miles away.
“You wonder how he picked that spot,” Kraeger remembered. “It’s almost like he wanted somebody to find her.”
Jones had been molested, strangled and stabbed.
There was little evidence left behind. Jones was naked and her hands were tied behind her with the scraps of her pink T-shirt.
But there was a carpet fiber, too. And authorities knew the importance of such a clue.
“The case was very personal,” Kraeger said. “Anytime there is a case where children are involved, it tears you apart. Is it going to happen again? I’m sure that was a constant thought in everybody’s mind. There’s fear and sadness for the family. Everybody’s guarded and heartbroken. And you hope and pray it doesn’t happen to you.”
A legacy left in words
Two weeks before she died, Jones asked for a new notebook.
In it, her mother discovered lat
er, were two poems that Jones wrote, her spelling that of a girl still learning.
GOD
by Cora Jones
God is a good word
He is like a spring bird
Don’t be afraid to pray
God will forgive you always
He will guide you through life
No matter what road you take
God will always live within you
CRYING
by Cora Jones
It’s all write to cry
Just let out a little sigh
Don’t be afraid
You’ve got it made
Cry for love
Cry for hate
I’m just letting you know
Sometimes it’s alright to cry.
Chapter 4: Mistakes lead to arrest
“Even before Cora's funeral, I realized the laws need changing,” said Cora’s grandmother, Elizabeth Schwirtz. Now I live and breathe trying to change the laws.”
Meanwhile, on Oct. 20, 1994, Spanbauer raped a 15-year-old girl in her Appleton home, telling her he was not afraid of killing her. Two weeks later, on Nov. 5, 1994, he raped a 31-year-old Appleton woman in her home while her young daughter slept in another room.
Spanbauer was driving a maroon car on July 3, 1994, when he attempted to abduct 24-year-old Miriam Stariha, a small woman in a ponytail who was riding her bike near Hartman Creek State Park.
The car, Stariha said, pushed her off the road and the driver threatened her at gunpoint.
He fled when another car drove by, but Stariha had seen his face, and that would lead to Spanbauer’s ultimate arrest.
Officers showed Stariha pictures, and she identified a Madison man as the one who had attempted to abduct her, a mistake that led to news crews and the police swarming the man’s home.
True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology) Page 17