Serial killer attacks during the summers of 1981 and 1982 haunted the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Three victims in total had their lives taken, though the police's first encounter with the murderer began six months earlier on the night of New Year's Eve 1980 in Preston, Wisconsin. Karen Sue Potack was badly beaten after leaving a party and, in what would become his modus operandi, the perpetrator called to report the attack and disclose the location in a high-pitched voice.
The first murder occurred on June 3, 1981. 18-year old Kimberly Compton was found at a highway construction site with sixty-one stab wounds. She was last seen at a bus depot where she had left her bags, with witnesses stating that she left with an unknown individual. The police again received a call from a frantic-sounding man who said, "God damn, will you find me...I just stabbed somebody with an ice pick. I can't stop myself. I keep killing somebody."
The outburst led to the nickname of the 'Weepy-Voiced Killer,' and curiously, "god damn" was left out of news reports quoting the call. He called again two days later claiming that he was going to turn himself in, but never did. This unsolved case stayed in the mind of the public, with actor George Kennedy even providing re-enacted scenes and composite drawings on his television program on May 3, 1982.
The second known murder happened over a year later on August 6, 1982. 40-year old Barbara Simons had met a man at the Hexagon Bar, later identified by a waitress as Paul Michael Stephani. He offered Simons a ride home, and she was later found in a wooded area off West River Road in Minneapolis stabbed over one hundred times. The Weepy-Voiced Killer called two days later, admitting to the murder and also tying himself to the Compton death.
The final attack took place ten days later on August 16, and initial news reports were confusing: it was first stated that 18-year old Mary Gross had been stabbed several times while hitchhiking in St. Paul, but this turned out to be a lie given to police by the victim herself. She was really Minneapolis prostitute Denise Williams who was wary of giving away her true identity, testifying that she had been arrested for prostitution more times and under more names than she could remember.
Williams had been picked up in the red light district by Stephani, who stabbed her fifteen times with a screwdriver. However, she managed to smash a glass bottle over his head and escape with the help of a random passerby. Stephani soon called for an ambulance, claiming that Williams had tried to rob him while he was having a seizure, but police quickly recognized his voice and made the arrest.
Stephani's court case focused largely on the study of aural similarities between his voice and what had been heard during the Weepy-Voiced Killer phone calls. The defense condemned this identification technique as quackery but kept Stephani himself from testifying and called no other witnesses. The trial ended with Stephani convicted of second degree assault on Denise Williams and the second degree murder of Barbara Simons. He was sentenced to forty years in prison.
Stephani was diagnosed with cancer in 1997 and, given less than one year to live, decided to confess to murdering Kim Compton and also the heretofore unconnected Kathy Greening, who had been drowned in a bathtub in what police thought was a home invasion in 1982. He died on June 12, 1998 and would later be the focus on, among other things, an episode of A&E's Cold Case Files.
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Information taken from KSTP-TV news story transcriptions via the Minnesota Historical Society
Listen to the Weepy-Voiced Killer's 911 recordings HERE.
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