The Graveyard Killer – The Story of Larry Dewayne Hall

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Episode Title: The Graveyard Killer - The Story of Larry Dewayne Hall

Introduction: Dive into the mysterious case of Larry Dewayne Hall, a figure entangled in over 50 disappearances of young women from 1980 to 1994. Known as the "serial confessor," Hall's peculiar confessions and recantations have puzzled authorities and intrigued true crime enthusiasts alike.

Segments:

1. The Enigma of Larry Dewayne Hall: Explore Hall's background, from his twin birth in the "Swinging Sixties" to his unsettling childhood marked by a stint in neonatal care due to oxygen deprivation and a fascination with Civil War reenactments.
2. A Dark Descent: Delve into Hall's adolescence, marred by bullying and a troubling introduction to death through his father's role as a sexton, setting the stage for his suspected evolution into a sexual sadist and necrophiliac.
3. The Crimes: The chilling case of Jessica "Jessi" Lynn Roach's disappearance in 1993 highlights Hall's potential MO, with an eyewitness linking a van matching Hall's to the scene.
4. Into the Psyche: Analyze the psychological factors that may have contributed to Hall's alleged criminal path, from early trauma to the complex interplay of cognitive limitations and sadistic tendencies.

Conclusion: Reflect on the haunting parallels between Hall and other notorious figures, challenging preconceptions about the capacity for violence and the fine line between truth and deception in the realm of true crime.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Crystal Garcia

Host

Jose Medina

What is Body of Crime?

Body of Crime is a true crime podcast for crime lovers. Join hosts, Crystal, Joe, and Alicia as they present cases and dissect each body of crime. Rather your love is to hear true crime stories, research, debate, and / or even attempt to solve some of the world’s most intriguing cases, we have you covered. Get ready to put your detective hats on and take some notes – you never know which mysteries will get messier with each case!

Larry Dewayne Hall

Welcome fellow true crime enthusiasts to today’s case file, The Graveyard Killer – The Story of Larry Dewayne Hall

INTRODUCTION

Between the years of 1980 through 1994, more than 50 White and Hispanic females, ranging in ages from 10 to 28 mysteriously vanished, across fourteen states. An unlikely individual immediately popped up as a potential suspect, as he voluntarily stepped forward with a confession about several of the disappearances. The authorities quickly dismissed the man as a mere "serial confessor," attributing his claims to a troubled mind marked by recantations and an unmistakable air of peculiarity.

The Serial Confessor, who the police identified as Larry Dewayne Hall was known throughout his town as being a bit strange and a little bit off, but overall they identified him as harmless. No one suspected Hall, even when he came forward with details about the missing girls that authorities had not shared with the public. Somehow, Hall was able to hide in the open, the town’s suspicion of him dissuaded by his awkward social strangeness and what appeared to be a diminished intellect.

Hall found a way to move in the shadows of his of his small-town life, where neighbors and residents ignored him. Besides his burnside mutton chops, which he wore proudly, he was otherwise unordinary. His passion for history presented in his participation in civil war and revolutionary war reenactments, which coincided eerily with the locations of the women's disappearances. His odd and strange demeanor became a camouflage, rendering him invisible to those who believed he was either too stupid to commit the atrocious acts of kidnappings, rapes, and murders, successfully getting away with, or not violent enough. They would all be proven wrong.

Despite Hall's confessions and the mounting evidence linking him to the unspeakable acts of strangulation, mutilation, and post-mortem sexual assault, he almost managed to continue slipping through the fingers of lady justice, as the local police fumbled through failed interrogations and spent time driving Hall around looking for makeshift graves he claimed he had left some of the women buried, never finding them, and eventually recanting his confessions.

As we take a peek into the psyche of Larry Dewayne Hall's dark mind, exploring the twisted path that gave birth to the perversions that would be expressed as sexual sadism and necrophiliac behavior, you will find a man who was a lot smarter than most gave him credit for. Hall used the power of under estimation to not only carry out a series of barbaric crimes, but he flaunted them at law enforcement, unburdening his conscience with confessions and then recanting those confessions without repercussions. Eventually his tangled web of lies began to break apart as his veneer of normalcy eroded and his unspeakable horrors came to light.

LARRY DEWAYNE HALL

1962 was known as the “Swinging Sixties”. Amidst the harmonies of the United States chart topping “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by the “Four Seasons”, the United Kingdom’s Return to Sender by Elvis Presley, and the gripping tale of "Lawrence of Arabia" on the silver screen, Larry Dewayne Hall emerged unto the world alongside his twin brother Gary Wayne Hall.

Born to a forty-year-old WWII seasoned U.S. Navy veteran, Robert Rolland Hall, and his third wife thirty-three-year-old Aera Bernice Flora, the Halls were Sagittarius twins, a sign shared with their father in the quaint town of Wabash, Indiana. Larry's entry into life was marked by a stint in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a consequence of a rare Monochorionic Pregnancy where oxygen deprivation haunted him after an unsettling "feeding" incident in the womb by his twin, Gary.

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world, while John F. Kennedy was President, where tailored skirts and Harrington jackets were the fashion du jour, Larry's early life unfolded in the sparsely populated city of Wabash, Indiana, with a geography of just 9.1 square miles, most recognizable as the first city in the world to be electrically lit. Lassie and the Gumby Show were popular during this time.
The Halls were no strangers to military service, as even Aera’s first husband and her oldest son’s dad, Charles F. Cloe, was a WWII and U.S. Army Veteran. Aera’s oldest sone, Elmer Eugene Cloe, a Capricorn, born on January 7, 1946, was 15 years older than both Larry and Gary.

Robert Hall, Larry, and Gary’s father served as a Sexton for Falls Cemetery, and their mother, Aera, was a stay-at-home mother. A Sexton is a fancy term for a Gravedigger and typically the role requires the Sexton to maintain both the church and the cemetery, often living on the grounds. Both Larry and Gary grew up surrounded by the historical echoes of their small town with a few famous people and businesses getting their start there, like race car driver Jimmy DeWalt, Country Singer, Crystal Gayle, Mark Honeywell founder of the Honeywell Corporation and others. The twins were Civil War Reenactment actors, but Larry Hall really loved it the most.

As with most psychopathic deviants, their perversions typically begin to present in their youth, and this was no different for Larry Hall. Beneath the seemingly idyllic surface of Wabash, Hall's adolescence took a dark turn, as he suffered the brunt of bullying as he was teased for being slower than his peers. He suffered from a speech impediment, had frequent nightmares, and continued bedwetting during his time at West Ward Elementary School. Hall's environment incubated anti-social tendencies.

To add fuel to the fire, Hall regularly assisted his father as a Sexton, gradually desensitizing Larry to being around dead bodies and handling the dead at a crucial time in his psychological development and during his puberty phase. This would set a stage for a chilling metamorphosis, as it is suspected that Larry’s first exposure to the opposite sex was through the exposure of cadavers and corpses.
Suspected in petty crimes, including arson and vandalism, Larry, and even his brother Gary, remained oblivious to the impending revelation that Hall would evolve into a sexual sadist, necrophiliac, and ultimately, a serial killer despite his logged IQ of 80.
As Larry's dark secret began to unravel, many of the town’s residents echoed the sentiment that this seemingly odd and slow young man couldn’t be the meticulous and calculated murderer of the missing women. No one could imagine Larry being responsible for such unspeakable horrors. From their experience, Hall wasn’t outwardly violent and often spoke in a soft, non-threatening tone. The town categorized the strange Hall as harmless, but they were far from wrong.
In a story that seems to fit crookedly in a 1960’s picture-perfect small American town,
Larry Dewayne Hall's gradual descent into darkness pulls listeners into a gripping narrative where the line between being a normal person and being a monster blurs, leaving a long wake of bodies as he toured the nation from one Civil War Reenactment scene to another.

CRIME(S)
In the autumn of 1993, the quiet town of Georgetown, Illinois, was shattered by the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Jessica "Jessi" Lynn Roach. A high school sophomore with dreams of becoming a jet pilot, Jessi embarked on a routine bike ride down Mill Street on September 20th. The last sighting of her, walking next to her bike and smiling, came from her sister Myndi at 3:30 pm. However, when Myndi returned home from a store run, Jessi's bike lay abandoned in the street, and Jessi was gone. The mystery deepened when, 42 days later, a farmer's combine harvester in Perryville, Indiana, revealed Jessi's mutilated body in a cornfield. Autopsy results exposed a fractured jaw, signs of strangulation, and evidence of sexual assault.

The investigation took a haunting turn when an eyewitness recalled a van matching the description of one owned by thirty-one-year-old Larry Dewayne Hall seen near the cornfield on the day of Jessi's disappearance. Calls about stalking incidents involving a similar van, but this time with a tag number, began shining a light squarely at Larry Hall. However, when Vermilion County Sheriff's Department Detective Gary Miller reached out to the local Police Department in Wabash, Indiana, he encountered a puzzling response. An officer, who had grown up with Hall, painted him as harmless, albeit odd individual, despite suspicions of arson and theft.

This perplexing case serves as a chilling window into Hall's potential Modus Operandi, with numerous alleged victims connected to him based on proximity to their disappearances and shared characteristics of being bound, strangled, and sexually assaulted. As internet searches unveil varying estimates—ranging from 35 to potentially over 50 murders—the complexity of Hall's crimes becomes a web of uncertainty, with Jessi's tragic fate serving as the one that ultimately led to his imprisonment.

PSYCHE
When we peer into the darkness that is Larry Dewayne Hall's psyche, we can see early seeds of evil and perversion being sown early, as the shattered fragments of his broken family and the alcoholic storm that was his father left an indelible imprint. Hall's formative years were marred by a volatile cocktail of emotional and physical abuse, exacerbated by gruesome acts of grave robbing during a crucial period of puberty and sexual development. The convergence of deviant behavior and trauma in his upbringing became the ominous foundation for the horrors that lay ahead.
As Hall's alleged criminal journey unfolded between the ages of 18 and 32, a chilling dichotomy emerged within him—a meticulously organized approach paired with disorganized traits. His below-average IQ of 80, coupled with a diagnosis of anxiety and depression, hinted at cognitive limitations that coexisted with a disturbing capacity for meticulous planning. The scars of cruel bullying in his school years, coupled with the visceral pain inflicted by his father, molded Hall into an individual marked by increasingly antisocial tendencies.

Between 1980 and 1994, Hall's reign of terror cast a shadow over more than 50 women, spanning from young girls of 10-years-old to college students on the brink of independence. His victims, a mosaic of white and Hispanic backgrounds, fell prey to a methodical predator adept at abduction, rape, torture, stalking, and murder. Hall's confession to over 30 abductions and murders, though later recanted, unveiled a complex psyche fueled by a sinister thirst for power and control. The chilling acts of binding, strangling, mutilating, and necrophilia painted a portrait of a sadistic personality, underscored by a history of torturing animals.

Locked away with a life sentence and no possibility of parole, Larry Dewayne Hall stands as a haunting figure—a man propelled by a troubled past and a twisted psyche, leaving behind a legacy of unspeakable horror, unanswered questions, and a yearning for closure among those touched by his malevolence. For many the labyrinth of Hall's mind, blurs the lines between victim and perpetrator, and the quest for understanding becomes a relentless pursuit of the chilling truths that linger in the shadows.

CONCLUSION
We draw startling parallels between Larry Dewayne Hall and alleged serial killers like Israel Keyes – an unsettling reminder that darkness can lurk beneath a seemingly unsuspecting facade. Through extensive research into the profiles of captured serial killers, we challenge preconceptions about the correlation between low IQ and the capacity for sadistic acts, revealing that the most unsuspecting individuals can harbor the darkest tendencies. Hall's chilling recipe for violence began before his entrance into the world, shaped by medical circumstances beyond his and his mother's control, inviting listeners to grapple with conflicting emotions—sympathy for a troubled past or skepticism towards a potential act.

As we close this particular case, listeners are left to ponder the paradox that is Larry Dewayne Hall and his twin brother. Is Hall a mere serial confessor, weaving a web of deceit, or does he truly embody the chilling profile of a serial murderer? Is he a wrongly accused serial killer, or a cunning manipulator.

The echoes of this haunting narrative linger, challenging our understanding of the thin line between facade and malevolence. What lies beneath the surface, and what remains unsaid, leaves us with a sense of intrigue, urging listeners to contemplate the complexities of a case that blurs the boundaries between truth and deception.