Larry Eyler: the Highway Killer, the suppressed evidence and the confession after death

• Born21 December 1952; grew up in Indiana
• Known asthe Highway Killer, or the Interstate Killer
• Convicted ofOne murder, in Chicago in 1984; pleaded guilty to one more, in Indiana in 1982
• Claimed21 killings in 1982–1984, according to a list his lawyer released after his death
• Arrested21 August 1984, Chicago (earlier held in Lake County, Illinois, October 1983 – February 1984)
• TrialFound guilty by a Cook County jury, July 1986
• SentenceDeath, 3 October 1986; 60 years in Indiana on a guilty plea, 1990
• Died6 March 1994, Pontiac Correctional Center, Illinois, of AIDS-related illness, aged 41

Larry Eyler was a house painter who moved between Terre Haute, Indiana, and Chicago in the early 1980s, when the bodies of young men were being found in fields and ditches near the highways of Indiana and Illinois. In 1983 he was charged with one of those killings in Lake County, Illinois, but a judge ruled that the evidence against him had been gathered during an illegal detention, and in February 1984 he was freed. In August 1984 he was arrested in Chicago after the body of a 15-year-old boy was found in a dumpster beside his apartment building. A jury convicted him of that murder in 1986 and he was sentenced to death. In 1990 he pleaded guilty to a 1982 killing in Indiana. He died of AIDS-related illness on death row in March 1994, still denying the Chicago murder; two days later his lawyer said he had confessed to her that he had killed 21 people.

The case is remembered for its sequence as much as its scale. Investigators held Eyler from the autumn of 1983, with a knife and boots they believed tied him to a killing, until a judge threw the evidence out on constitutional grounds; the boy in Chicago was killed six months after his release. From death row he later offered to tell prosecutors about more than 20 killings if his death sentence were lifted, and was refused. He was convicted of only two killings in all. The rest of the tally rests on suspicion at the time and on a confession that came out only after he could no longer be questioned about it, though coroners in Indiana have since used it to put names to remains.

This account rests on contemporary reports by United Press International and the Associated Press, a long investigation by the Chicago Reader in 1992, the rulings of the Illinois Appellate Court, the Illinois Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court, and later reporting by CBS Chicago, NBC News and Oxygen, listed at the end. Where they disagree, it says so. In line with this site’s rules, the people Eyler killed or was suspected of killing, their families, the survivors and his own family are not named.

A house painter between two cities

Eyler was born on 21 December 1952, according to the Chicago Reader, and the ages given for him in news reports of the 1980s fit that date. The Reader, drawing on clinical records filed by his later lawyer, described an unstable childhood in Indiana: at ten he was seen at a child guidance clinic in Indianapolis, and at twelve he spent five months in a Catholic boys’ home. He left high school without graduating.

The Illinois Supreme Court’s later opinion says he lived in Terre Haute for a number of years before moving to Chicago in 1981. In news reports of 1983 and 1984 he was a house painter of about 30 with homes in both cities. The Reader also reported that in 1978 he was accused of stabbing a hitchhiker in Terre Haute, who survived, and was not prosecuted.

Bodies by the highways, 1982–1983

From late 1982 the bodies of young men were being found in rural areas of central and northern Indiana and around Chicago. According to the Illinois Appellate Court’s summary of the evidence, they had been bound and stabbed and left in remote places, and a task force, the Central Indiana Multi-Agency Investigative Team, was set up to review eight such deaths in central Indiana; by 1983 it was also helping with three killings in Lake County, Illinois, north of Chicago. Many of the dead had links to the gay communities of Indianapolis and Chicago, the Reader reported.

Eyler became a suspect after a telephone tip from someone who knew him, according to both the appellate court and the Reader. But, as the appellate court recorded, a task force officer testified that in September 1983 the police did not have probable cause to arrest him for any of the murders, and officers had been told not to arrest him.

The stop on Interstate 65

Early on 30 September 1983 an Indiana State Police trooper saw two men come out of a ditch beside Interstate 65 near Lowell, Indiana, and get into a pickup truck parked on the shoulder, where parking was prohibited. He stopped the truck. The driver was Eyler; the passenger was a young hitchhiker he had picked up. A radio check flagged Eyler as a murder suspect, and both men were handcuffed and taken to the state police post at Lowell.

Eyler was held there for about 12 hours and questioned by task force officers. He waived his rights and agreed to a search of his truck, in which officers found rope, tape and a hunting knife with blood on it; they kept his boots because the soles resembled prints found at a Lake County murder scene. He was not charged with anything and left at about 7 p.m., according to the appellate court. The Reader reported that laboratory tests later linked the blood on the knife to a 28-year-old Chicago man whose body had been found near Lake Forest, Illinois, on 31 August.

The Lake County charge and the ruling

At the end of October 1983 Eyler was arrested and charged with that man’s murder, and on 1 November a Lake County grand jury indicted him, UPI and the Reader reported. He was held on a $1 million bond. The Lake County sheriff told reporters that Eyler fitted an FBI description of a mass murderer, and the authorities named him a suspect in 19 other killings in Illinois and Indiana, according to UPI.

His lawyer, David Schippers, asked the court to throw out the evidence. In early 1984 Lake County Circuit Judge William Block ruled that, although the traffic stop had been lawful, holding Eyler for 12 hours of questioning without probable cause had not been, and that his statements and everything found as a result were tainted. The judge cut his bond to $10,000, and he was released in February 1984, according to UPI and the Reader.

The state appealed, and on 26 April 1985 the Illinois Appellate Court upheld the suppression by two votes to one; the dissenting judge would have let the case go to trial. On 6 April 1987 the US Supreme Court declined to hear the state’s appeal. Eyler was never convicted of the Lake Forest killing.

Chicago, August 1984

After his release Eyler took an apartment on West Sherwin Avenue in the Rogers Park area of Chicago, according to the Illinois Supreme Court and the Reader. Early on 21 August 1984 a janitor at the next building found that garbage bags dumped in his dumpster held human remains. Janitors told police they had seen Eyler carry heavy bags out to that dumpster the previous afternoon, and he was arrested in his apartment that morning, the court and UPI reported.

The dead boy was 15, according to the Illinois Supreme Court; he had last been seen leaving his family’s home on the city’s North Side on the Sunday night. Eyler was charged with murder and concealing a homicide. By then, UPI reported, he was a suspect in 21 killings in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin; a UPI report three days later, citing Indiana investigators, put the figure at as many as 24 in four states.

Trial and death sentence

The case came to trial in Cook County almost two years later. In July 1986 a jury found Eyler guilty of murder, kidnapping, aggravated kidnapping, unlawful restraint and concealment of a homicidal death; UPI reported that it deliberated for about three hours on the night of 9 July, and the Reader that it convicted on the first ballot. The case rested on the janitors’ testimony, physical evidence from the apartment and an account of his movements that night. Schippers, who did not put his client on the stand, suggested to the jury that Eyler might not have been the killer.

Eyler waived a jury for the sentencing hearing. The aggravated kidnapping conviction was the only legal factor making him eligible for death, the Illinois Supreme Court later noted. On 3 October 1986, according to the Reader, Cook County Circuit Judge Joseph Urso sentenced him to death, saying he had found no mitigating factors; he added 15 years for aggravated kidnapping and five for concealment. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the convictions and the death sentence on 25 October 1989.

An offer refused

In November 1990, the Reader reported, Kathleen Zellner, a lawyer from DuPage County, was asked to take on Eyler’s appeals. The following month she let prosecutors know that he would give information solving more than 20 murders in Illinois and Indiana if he were taken off death row and given life without parole. Cook County State’s Attorney Jack O’Malley, newly in office, refused, UPI and the Reader reported. After Eyler’s death Zellner released a letter in which he had offered to confess to the former Illinois governor, James Thompson.

The Indiana plea

At the same time, Indiana investigators had reopened a 1982 killing of a young man in the west of the state, and Eyler was the chief suspect, the Reader reported. In December 1990 he dictated a confession to that killing. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 60 years in prison, according to the Reader and the AP.

Fighting the conviction

In Illinois, Zellner filed a petition challenging the Chicago conviction. She argued that police files which might have helped the defence had been withheld, and that Schippers had laboured under a conflict of interest because part of his fee had been paid by a man who testified for the prosecution; the state denied that there was any conflict, the Reader reported. In April 1992, the Reader added, Judge Urso ordered an evidentiary hearing. Eyler maintained throughout that he had not killed the boy; his lawyers argued that someone else had done so in his apartment and that he had only disposed of the body.

When Eyler died, his appeal was pending before the Illinois Supreme Court, according to UPI and CBS Chicago. UPI reported that Zellner intended to ask for the case to continue despite his death.

Death and the list of 21

Eyler had been diagnosed with AIDS in 1990, UPI reported. He died on Sunday 6 March 1994 at the Pontiac Correctional Center, where he had been on death row since 1986; he was 41. Two days later, at a news conference in Naperville, Illinois, Zellner said he had described the killings to her over the previous three years and had agreed that she could make them public after his death; she said attorney–client privilege had barred her from doing so while he was alive, the AP reported.

She released a list of 21 killings with the places and dates where the victims were found, from 1982 to 1984: according to the AP, eleven in Indiana and nine in Illinois, with one body never found. She said he had an accomplice in four of the killings and that she would give that person’s name to the authorities, the AP reported. She described Eyler as manipulative and said his rage was fuelled by drink, drugs and arguments with his lover.

Officials greeted the list cautiously. A spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney, Andy Knott, said he did not think anyone was closer to establishing that Eyler had committed the killings, and prosecutors noted that a confession alone did not prove them, the AP reported. An Indianapolis police lieutenant said the list mattered most to the families, who wanted finality.

Attributed and claimed

In law, Eyler was responsible for two deaths: the Chicago murder for which he was sentenced to death, and the Indiana killing to which he pleaded guilty. The larger figures were never tested in court. While he was alive the authorities named him a suspect in 19 to 24 killings, depending on the date and the agency; the confession released through his lawyer put the number at 21, and later wire reports describe him as having confessed to at least 20.

The confession has nevertheless been treated as a working guide. In October 1983 the remains of four young men had been found buried at a farm in Newton County, Indiana; according to the AP, Eyler’s confessions said he had killed all four. Two were identified early on. The Newton County coroner and the DNA Doe Project used genetic genealogy to identify the third in 2021 and the last in 2023, and a 19-year-old found in a Jasper County field in October 1983 was identified in 2021. Coroners there had been pressing for such identifications since at least 2010, CBS Chicago reported.

Where the accounts differ

• The Chicago victim’s age: the Illinois Supreme Court, UPI’s report of the verdict in 1986, the AP in 1994 and NBC News in 2023 say he was 15; UPI’s first report in August 1984, the Chicago Reader in 1992 and CBS Chicago in 2010 say 16.
• Eyler’s age in 1984: the Illinois Supreme Court says he was 32 at the time of the murder; UPI and the Reader both gave his age as 31, which fits a December 1952 birth.
• What tied him to the Lake County killing: the AP reported in 1994 that the dead man’s blood was found on his boots; the Reader said the blood was on the knife from his truck and that the boots matched footprints at the scene, and the appellate court says the boots were kept because their soles resembled prints at the scene.
• Whether the Lake County charge was dropped: a UPI report of 26 August 1984 said the charges had been dropped after the evidence was ruled illegal; the Illinois Supreme Court records that in August 1984 the case was before the appellate court on the state’s appeal, which was not finally rejected until the US Supreme Court refused to hear it in April 1987.
• Where the 1982 Indiana killing happened: the AP and UPI in 1994 called it a Terre Haute killing; the Reader placed it at an abandoned house off a state highway and said the case belonged to the Vermillion County prosecutor.
• The letter to the governor: the AP said Zellner released a 1990 letter to James Thompson that was never mailed; UPI described a 1991 letter in which he confessed to the killings.
• The list itself: the AP said seven of the 21 victims on Zellner’s list were not named; UPI said she read out 15 names and that the other six were unidentified.
• How many killings: UPI reported him a suspect in 19 killings in 1983, 21 in three states and then as many as 24 in four states in August 1984, and 19 in four states in 1986; the Reader said 23 at the time of his release in 1984; the 1994 confession named 21, and the AP in 2023 wrote “at least 20”.

The portrait

The portrait above is a detail of the coloring page drawn for Bloody America, which gives one killer to each state. The full page shows Eyler balding, with a moustache, in a shirt and plaid tie, against a background of coiled ropes and whips. A pair of handcuffs hangs on one side; a cleaver and a knife stand on the other, beside a medallion holding a fixed-blade knife. In one corner is a map of the United States labelled Indiana; in the other, a hooded reaper with a scythe beside the figure 23, which follows the suspicions and claims rather than anything a court found. The nameplate reads “Larry Eyler”, “The Highway Killer” and “1982 – 1984”, with a judge’s gavel and the word “AIDS” beneath it. For other case files, see John Wayne Gacy, Randall Woodfield and Jeffrey Dahmer.

If you find an error in this account, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. Eyler compared to John Wayne GacyUnited Press International, 29 October 1983
2. Returns murder indictment against EylerUnited Press International, 2 November 1983
3. Eyler charged in dismembermentUnited Press International, 23 August 1984
4. Suspected serial slayer had two personalitiesUnited Press International, 26 August 1984
5. People v. Eyler, 132 Ill. App. 3d 792Illinois Appellate Court, Second District, 26 April 1985 (Caselaw Access Project)
6. Eyler convicted in homosexual slayingUnited Press International, 10 July 1986
7. Illinois v. Eyler, 481 U.S. 1007 (certiorari denied)Supreme Court of the United States, 6 April 1987 (Caselaw Access Project)
8. People v. Eyler, 133 Ill. 2d 173Illinois Supreme Court, 25 October 1989 (Caselaw Access Project)
9. The Return of Larry EylerChicago Reader (John Conroy), 30 July 1992
10. Lawyer: Eyler was serial killerUnited Press International, 8 March 1994
11. Before dying, killer confesses to 21 murdersAssociated Press (The Seattle Times), 9 March 1994
12. New push to ID 3 more victims of serial killerCBS Chicago (WBBM), 12 October 2010
13. What to know about the Highway Killer before ‘Mark of a Serial Killer’ returnsOxygen, 6 October 2021
14. Remains found at Indiana farm in 1983 identified as those of Chicago teen slain by ‘Interstate Killer’Associated Press (NBC News), 27 July 2023

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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