A wedding couple was enjoying their road trip when another vehicle began to harass them, forcing them to stop on the shoulder. Seconds later, the reckless driver got out of his car and headed toward them. At first, the stranger asked them to roll down the window because he only wanted a cigarette and some money, but when the young woman refused, the aforementioned man took out a revolver and shot her at point-blank range in the face.
Quickly, the boyfriend got out of the car and fled across the country to ask for help: he had the description of the murderer. Shortly after, a patrol came across another even more horrendous scene: the murderer had brutally raped the young woman. Who was that rather ordinary looking man with dark hair? Years later they would discover that he was an elusive serial killer nicknamed the Sexual Beast.
Melvin David Rees was born in 1928 in Maryland (United States) and, from then until his adolescence, nothing is known for sure about him. The only thing confirmed about his childhood and adolescence is his education: he attended the Edwards Military Institute in Salemsburg (North Carolina), the Woodward School for Boys in Washington DC, and, finally, the Hyattsville High School. , in Maryland.
In October 1946 he entered the United States Army, where he served as a military musician until his discharge in 1953. In fact, his talent with the saxophone, piano and clarinet led Melvin to be one of the most successful jazz musicians. highlights of the panorama of the time.
In fact, his classmates at the University of Maryland, where he studied after leaving the army, spoke highly of him in this regard. And Melvin traveled through some states to play in the most important local jazz clubs. So much so, that he never graduated: his passion was always music.
In July 1954, Melvin married a college classmate, Elaine Rachmaninoff, and they were the parents of a son, Philip. However, the divorce came five years later, shortly after his first murder. Although he already had problems with the law before.
His first arrest was in 1955 when he tried to kidnap a woman, whom he hit to force her to get into his car. The victim escaped, but when he came to trial he decided to drop the charges and Melvin was released. Two years later, the spiral of violence arrived.
On June 26, 1957, Melvin ran Margaret Harold and her boyfriend, a US Army sergeant, off the road while they were on weekend leave. After shooting the woman at point-blank range in the face, the soldier managed to flee and ask for help.
A patrol arrived shortly after in search of a man with the detailed description that the sergeant had given: a man of normal build, somewhat tall, dark hair, clean shaven and quite average looking, with a thin face. However, there was no trace of the murderer. On the other hand, Margaret, apart from having a bullet in her face, had been brutally raped by the aforementioned.
Investigators cordoned off the area and proceeded to search the surrounding area. Very close by, the agents located an abandoned building, built with concrete blocks, and saw that a basement window had been forced open.
Inside, they discovered a collection of violent pornographic images of women and autopsy photographs of female corpses taped all over the walls. That discovery would be of vital importance later.
In the absence of clues and evidence on the ground, and only with the description of the surviving sergeant, Margaret’s case joined the long list of unsolved cases in the area. There was no thread to pull. Then, on January 11, 1959, a horrendous carnage changed everything.
At that time, Melvin had already divorced his first wife and was dating an actress and striptease dancer, Pat Barrington, with whom he lived in West Memphis (Arkansas). In addition, the musician got a new job in a piano store, which he could combine with jazz. However, that was a mere disguise, which allowed him to carry out what he truly wanted, kill. Hence he chose the Jackson family.
That afternoon, the Jacksons – the father, Carroll; mother, Mildred; five-year-old Susan; and 18-month-old baby Janet – were heading back to Virginia on a dirt road when a man forced them to stop at gunpoint. It was Melvin.
The first to die was Carroll, whose hands were tied behind his back and he was shot in the back of the head. Afterwards, he dug a trench, threw the baby in alive, and placed the body of his father on top of it. Janet died from suffocation due to the weight. She then took her mother and the girl to the aforementioned abandoned concrete building and, there, she brutally tortured and raped them. After hanging them, their bodies were thrown into a shallow grave on the outskirts of the compound.
For the next two months, no one heard from the Jacksons. It was as if the earth had swallowed them, since they only found the car. Then, their relatives carried out searches to look for them, filed missing persons reports with the authorities… Everything was extremely disconcerting. Until almost two months later, the bodies of the father and the baby were found and, shortly after, those of the mother and the girl.
The latter were so close to the abandoned building, investigated during Margaret’s crime, that they inspected it again. Inside, they found a red button from Mildred’s dress, which is why they had taken her there before killing her, and in the surrounding area, they detected recent tire marks. It seemed that both cases were related.
This new carnage made headlines in the country’s most important newspapers. And that media attention also led to new leads. One of them, the story of a family who had experienced a similar terrifying experience at the hands of a tall, dark-haired stranger driving an older model blue Chevrolet, who forced them off the road. Fortunately, they reacted quickly and were able to flee with their lives.
In between, psychic Peter Hurkos also had a field day visiting the Jacksons’ grave and trying to help investigators by pointing them to the real culprit. But his predictions never came true and his bizarre story made him look ridiculous.
The person who did provide a crucial clue about the perpetrator of the crimes was a friend of Melvin. A fellow musician, Glenn Moser, claimed in a letter to have had philosophical conversations with the saxophonist about the experience of killing. In fact, one of these talks took place the day before the Jackson crime and, when he found out about the massacre, Glenn remembered the following phrase from his friend: “You can’t say that killing is wrong. Only individual standards make something right or wrong.”
In this same letter, Glenn also expressed his suspicions about Melvin regarding Margaret’s murder two years earlier. And they both worked as salespeople in the Annapolis area, where they murdered and raped the young woman.
With nothing to lose, investigators decided to question Melvin, but were unable to find him. No one had seen him at his usual jazz clubs and he had just moved house. Again, Glenn was the one who found his friend and gave them the address of the piano store where the saxophonist worked.
On June 24, 1960, the police arrested him for interrogation. They had three irrefutable pieces of evidence against him: first, Margaret Harold’s boyfriend clearly pointed him out in a lineup; The second, during the search of his home, they found a .38 caliber pistol, the same one with which he had murdered the victims. And the third, a newspaper clipping that described the Jackson crime. Next to Mildred’s name, Melvin wrote: “Now the mother and daughter were all mine. I was his master.”
Additionally, investigators found evidence linking the saxophonist to the murders of four other women in the University of Maryland area, although the investigation was unsuccessful and he was never convicted of said crimes. However, when the press learned of the facts, they did not hesitate to dub him the Sexual Beast.
In February 1961, Melvin Rees was tried for the murder of Margaret Harold and, in September of that same year, for the Jackson family murders. In both cases, the court found him guilty of all charges and he was sentenced to death. However, the United States Supreme Court commuted it to life in prison in 1972. Twenty years later, the saxophonist died of heart failure in prison. He was on January 11, 1995 and was 66 years old.
