American sex killer known as the ‘Gorilla Murderer’. Over a period of less than two years this bible-loving killer raped and strangled twenty-two landladies in the USA and Canada.

Nelson was born in 1892 and suffered a childhood accident resulting in a head injury which caused him intense pain. In 1918 he was put in a home for mental defectives for assaulting a child. He escaped three times, and was judged insane by a California court.

In San Francisco on 20 February 1926 Nelson raped and strangled a 63-year-old woman in the attic of her rooming house. During the following months Nelson went across America, preying on women offering rooms or houses for rent. From San Francisco to Philadelphia he raped and strangled twenty women - at the peak of his activity, murdering once every three weeks.

In June 1927 he crossed into Canada and made for Winnipeg. There he took a room under a false name, telling the landlady that he was ‘a very religious man of high ideals’. Within days there were two murders in the city. A 14-year-old girl living in the same house as Nelson. Elsewhere in the city the raped and strangled body of Mrs Emily Patterson was discovered by her husband.

The police interviewed a second-hand clothing dealer who had sold some garments to a man changing his clothes in the store’s stock-room. He left behind some articles, including a fountain pen, which had been taken by the killer from the Paterson home. A description was circulated, Nelson was recognised by a Wakopa storekeeper and arrested four miles from the US border.

He was tried at Winnipeg in November 1927 for the murder of Emily Patterson. His wife’s testimony did him little good, showing him to be a jealous man who believed he had a Christlike appearance. The defence plea was based on insanity. The judge dwelled on this and asked whether Nelson’s cunning in changing his clothes, keeping on the move and altering his name were the acts of an insane man or a man trying to escape the consequences of his actions. The jury found Nelson guilty, and he was sentenced to death on 14 November 1927. He said ‘I have never committed murder; never, never, never.’ He was hanged at Winnipeg on 13 January 1928.