David Gore and Fred Waterfield

Born in 1951, in Florida, David Gore resembled the stereotypical Southern redneck, weighing close to 275 pounds, and such a firearms fan that he studied gunsmithing in his free time. He also studied women, but in a different fashion. He lost one job as a gas station attendant after the owner found a peephole Gore had drilled between the men's and women's restrooms. Born in 1952, cousin Fred Waterfield was another product of Florida's Indian River County. He was a high school football star whose bad temper and liking for violent sex made him and David seem like brothers. In 1976, they put their heads together and decided to combine their favorite sports by hunting women.

Their first attempts were embarrasing. Following a female motorist outside Yeehaw Junction, Fred flattened her tires with a rifle , but the intended victim escaped on foot. Later, the cousins followed another woman from Vero Beach to Miami, giving up the pursuit when she parked on a busy street. Their first successful rape took place near Vero Beach, and while the victim notified police, she later dropped the charges to avoid embarrassment in court. By early 1981, Gore was working days with his father as caretaker of a citrus grove, patrolling the streets after dark as an auxiliary sheriff's deputy. Fred had moved north to Orlando, managing an automotive shop, but he made frequent visits home to Vero Beach. Together they recognized the potential of Gore's situation, packing a badge by night, killing time in deserted orchards by day, and Fred offered to pay cousin Dave $1,000 for each pretty girl he could find. It was an offer David could not refuse. In February 1981, David found 17-year-old Ying Hua Ling disembarking from a school bus, tricking her into his car with a flash of his badge. Driving her home, Gore "arrested" her mother and handcuffed his captives together, then phoning Waterfield in Orlando before he drove out to the orchard. Killing time while waiting for his cousin, David raped both victims, but Fred was more picky. Rejecting Mrs. Ling as too old, he tied the woman up in such a fashion that she choked herself to death while struggling against her bonds. He then raped and murdered the teenager, slipping David $400 and leaving him to get rid of the corpses alone in an orchard a mile from the Ling residence.

Five months later, on July 15, David made a trip to Round Island Park, looking for a blonde to fill his cousin's latest order. Spotting a likely candidate in 35-year-old Judith Daley, Gore disabled her car, then played Good Samaritan, offering a lift to the nearest telephone. Once inside his pickup, Gore pulled out a pistol, cuffed his victim, and called cousin Fred on his way to the orchard. Waterfield was happier with this delivery, writing out a check for $1,500 after both men finished with their victim. Two years later, Gore would tell about Judith Daley's fate, describing how he "fed her to the alligators" in a swamp ten miles west of Interstate Highway 95. A week later, Gore fell under suspicion when a local man reported that a deputy had stopped his teenage daughter on a rural highway, attempting to hold her "for questioning." Stripped of his badge, David was arrested days later, when officers found him crouched in the back seat of a woman's car outside a Vero Beach clinic armed with a pistol, handcuffs, and a police radio scanner. A jury deliberated for thirty minutes before convicting him of armed trespass, and he was sentenced to five years in prison. Turning down psychiatric treatment recommended by the court, he was paroled in March of 1983.

A short time after Gore's release, his cousin moved back home to Vero Beach, and they took up where they left off. On May 20, they tried to abduct an Orlando prostitute at gunpoint, but she slipped away and left them empty-handed. The next day, they picked up two 14-year-old hitchhikers -- Angelica Lavallee and Barbara Byer -- raping both before Gore shot the girls to death. Byer's body was dismembered, and buried in a shallow grave, while Levallee's was dumped in a nearby canal.

On July 26, 1983, Vero Beach authorities received an emergency report of a nude man firing shots at a naked girl on a residential street. Surrounding the suspect house, owned by relatives of Gore, officers found a car in the driveway with fresh blood dripping from its trunk. Inside, the body of 17-year-old Lynn Elliott lay dead with a bullet in her skull. Outnumbered by the police, Gore surrendered, directing officers to the attic where a naked 14-year-old girl was tied to the rafters.

As the victim told police, she had been thumbing rides with Lynn Elliott when Gore and another man picked them up, flashing a pistol and driving them to the house, where they were stripped and raped repeatedly in separate rooms. Elliott had managed to free herself, escaping on foot with Gore in pursuit, but she had not been fast enough. Gore's companion had left in the meantime, and detectives turned to their suspect in to find out who he was.

Gore cracked while in custody, describing crimes committed with his cousin. On January 21, 1985, Fred Waterfield was convicted in the Byer-Levallee murders, receiving two consecutive life terms with a specified minimum stint of 50 years before parole. Gore received the death penalty for his part in the crimes. Both are still currently incarcerated in Florida.