As a child, Harvey enjoyed hanging himself while jerking off. The family physician told his parents that he would soon get over it and in the mean time they should "try to keep him busy." As an adult, Harvey never lost his fondness for ropes. Through classifieds adds he started meeting women using the old photographer-looking-for-models-trick. When the hopeful models arrived, he told them that he was shooting an S & M portrait for a pulp magazine.

Harvey Glatman was a random/want-ad killer. As a child he enjoyed bondage, and would often hang himself in his attic and just before blacking out, he would have an orgasm. Doctor's ensured Glatman's parents that it was just a phase that he would grow out of.

In 1945, he tried to make a girl undress by threatening her with a cap gun. He was picked up by police, but immediately fled to New York after being released on bail. He was imprisoned for Robbery while there. When released in 1951, he was still recieving psychiatric treatment. He eventually settled in Los Angeles and opened a small TV repairshop. He was pretty much a recluse, avoiding social contact with the opposite sex for six years.

In late July 1957, Glatman made a house call to the home of nineteen year old Judy Dull, a model. He persuaded Judy to accept a modeling assignment, for fifty dollars. On August 1, Judy arrived at Glatman's home ready to model for the cover of a magazine. At gunpoint, Glatman raped Dull several times, then drove 125 miles east to Indio, where he photographed the woman in her underwear. He later strangled her with a rope and buried her in a shallow grave.

Glatman found his second victim, Shirley Bridgeford, in March 1958. On their only date he drove her to the desert east of San Diego. He talked her into posing for a set of bondage photos for a detective magazine. He eventually choked her to death with a rope and left her to rot behind a cactus. He committed another murder on July 23, this time it was a part-time stripper named Ruth Mercado. Soon Glatman started placing ads of his own. He met a woman named Loraine Vigil. While in Glatman's car, he had pulled out his pistol and demanded for her to undress. When she refused, he shot her in the thigh. Then Ruth grabbed his pistol, holding him and his rope away until a cop on patrol drove by and noticed her situation.

Glatman confessed quickly to his crimes. He was sentenced to die in a three day trial. He stated "It's better this way.... I knew this is the way it would be." In August 1959, Glatman died in San Quentin's gas chamber by breathing lethal fumes of cyanide.