Between October 1965 and December 1966, female Cincinnati residents were terrorized by a series of stranglings and sexual assaults, recalling memories of recent turmoil generated by the "Boston Strangler." Seven women died and one was injured in the space of fourteen months, the ultimate conviction of a suspect in a single case relaxing tension only when the murders ceased, thereby supporting homicide detectives in their claim that all eight crimes had been committed by a single man.

The killer blew his first attempt, on October 12, 1965, when he beat and raped a 65-year-old woman, failing in his effort to strangle her with a length of plastic clothesline. Two months later, on December 2, his weapon was the same, employed to strangle Emogene Harrington in the basement of her own apartment building. Police linked the two crimes in theory, but the panic was yet to come.

On April 4, 1966, 58-year-old Lois Dant was raped and strangled in her first-floor Cincinnati apartment. Two months later, on June 10, 56-year-old Jeannette Messer was found in a city park, raped and strangled with a necktie. On October 12, Mrs. Carl Hochhausler, 51, was found by her daughter in the family garage, beaten, raped and strangled to death by an unknown assailant. Eight days later, in a crime that police called "an exact copy" of the previous murders, 81-year-old Rose Winstsel was savagely beaten in her home, strangled with the electric cord of a heating pad. Authorities were less certain in the death of octogenarian Lula Kerrick, found in the elevator of her apartment building on December 9. The strangulation looked familiar, granted, but she had not suffered sexual assault.

A few days later, suspect Posteal Laskey was arrested and charged with the "similar" slaying of a seventh victim, Barbara Bowman. Convicted and sentenced to life for that crime, Laskey was never charged in the other stranglings, but police remain confident of his guilt, an assumption seemingly supported by the abrupt cessation of murders after his arrest.