GAFFNEY, S.C. – A terrified rural South Carolina community hunkered down over the Fourth of July after the sheriff said a serial killer was on the loose, and longtime residents were reminded of a murderer who terrorized the town in the 1960s.The town of Gaffney, about 50 miles south of Charlotte, N.C., is located in a county that had just six homicides in all of 2008, and half that the year before. The last time the town was this threatened like this was when the "Gaffney Strangler" killed four women over 10 days in 1968 and vowed to kill more. The town banded together, despite racial prejudice, to find the man who was killing both white and black women.
Memories of the "Gaffney Strangler" were reignited this week after authorities said a new serial killer gunned down four people during three separate incidents over several days.
The strangler, Lee Roy Martin, called the editor of a local newspaper on Feb. 8, 1968, and told him where to find the bodies of two women he'd dumped in the woods. He threatened to kill even more women until he was "shot down like the dog I am."
"If he killed once, he'll kill again," she said sitting on the front porch with her friends. "Tonight, I'm going to stay inside and pray, pray a little harder that he gets caught."
The latest shootings happened less than a half-mile from the sheriff's office, where at least 30 investigators were already working on the case. Blanton said a profiler has suggested Tyler and his daughter might have been shot to taunt investigators, but he said his only concern is solving the case.
"We had a 15-year-old girl shot; he killed an 83-year-old woman," Blanton said. "The good people of this community don't deserve that."
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