In the early 1980s, eight young women were killed all at once in New York and Connecticut. All of the victims were in their teens or early twenties.
Not only that, but they all died the same way and showed signs of having been sexually abused. As the police looked for what seemed to be a serial killer on the loose, they found Michael Ross, who was known at the time as “The Roadside Strangler.” “Signs of a Psychopath: Guess I’ve Got No Conscience” on Investigation Discovery goes into detail about how Ross worked and how he was caught. Let’s look at his life and crimes in more depth, shall we?
Who Michael Ross hurt
Michael Ross was known as “The Roadside Strangler” because of how he chose his victims and how he killed them. He was born on July 26, 1959, and grew up on a chicken farm with his three younger siblings in Brooklyn, Connecticut. Even though Michael’s family life was hard, he did well in school and got a degree in economics from the prestigious Cornell University in May 1981. But nobody knew that he killed his first person that same year while he was in New York for school. Before he was finally caught in 1984, he had killed seven more women.
On May 12, 1981, she was last seen studying at campus’s Warren Hall. When she didn’t go back to her rooming house, her friends and family called the police. About five days later, Tu’s body was found in Fall Creek Gorge. Michael had raped and strangled her, then thrown her body into a lake. Later, when he was working as an insurance agent, he killed Tammy Williams in Brooklyn on January 5, 1982.
The 17-year-old victim was walking home from her boyfriend’s house when Michael grabbed her near his family’s farm. He then raped and strangled her. Tammy’s body was found in a fieldstone wall a few years after her death, even though her family and friends thought she was still alive. Eight weeks after killing her, Michael did the same thing to Paula Perrera, who was 16 and from Wallkill, Orange County. In March 1982, she hitched a ride from him to get to her boyfriend’s house after school, but that was the last time anyone saw her.
Paula was raped and strangled by a man from Brooklyn on a side road in nearby Middletown. He then dumped her body in a marsh, where it was found on March 20, 1982. In the same year, he picked up Debra Smith Taylor, who was 23 years old and from Griswold, Connecticut. She was walking on the side of the road near Danielson. She and her husband had run out of gas and were looking for more when Michael took her into his car and did the same things to her that he had done to his other victims. Four months later, Debra’s body was found in Canterbury, Connecticut. After more than a year, he went after a 19-year-old girl in Norwich, Connecticut, named Robin Dawn Stavinsky.
Robin was hitchhiking on October 23, 1983, when Michael grabbed her and killed her by strangling her. A week later, some joggers found her body at the entrance to the Uncas-on-Thames Hospital in Norwich. On April 22, 1984, he added April Brunais and Leslie Shelley, two 14-year-old friends from Griswold, to his list of victims. Michael took the girls away near a pizza place and tied them up and gagged them. He then sexually assaulted April and strangled her. As a scared Leslie watched, he choked her right away and dumped both of their bodies in a culvert in Preston, about 9 miles from where they lived.
Wendy Baribeault, 17, from Griswold, was the Roadside Strangler’s last victim. He picked her up in his car on a highway on June 13, 1984. She was killed the same way as the other seven girls, and her body was found under a pile of rocks two days later. But Michael was finally caught because witnesses said they saw Wendy get into a car that matched the description of Michael’s car. This was a terrible thing that happened to Wendy. After looking through vehicle records, the police zeroed in on him because he lived in Jewett City, which is close to where all the bodies were found.
Also, the fact that all of the victims were strangled from behind helped the police figure out who did the killings. Michael was arrested in late June 1984 for killing six people in Connecticut. He eventually admitted to the killings and even led the police to the places where he had dumped the bodies of Tammy, April, and Leslie. In November 1985, he admitted to killing Debra and Tammy and was given 120 years in prison as a result. In July 1987, he was put to death in Connecticut for the last four murders he did and for raping Wendy and Robin.
How Did Michael Ross Die?
Michael said he killed Tu in 1987 and Paula in 1994. In 2001, he pleaded guilty to killing Paula and was sentenced to 8 and a half to 25 years in prison in New York. Even though the jury thought he was too mentally ill to stand trial, he agreed with his death sentence, and in 1994 and 2000, the court upheld the previous convictions. His execution was put off a few times because psychiatrists said he was not mentally stable enough to agree to the death penalty. So, Michael Ross spent about 18 years on death row at the Osborne Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut. He was finally put to death by lethal injection on May 13, 2005.
