George doesn't kidnap another prostitute Thursday night as he promised himself he would. Nor does he get one Friday night or Saturday night. The main reason is because he gets involved in his personal studies. Besides, he just doesn't have it in him; Linda hasn't pressured him for a date. Although she reminds him that there is a piece of King Cake waiting for him upstairs on both days; he takes the two flights up and dutifully eats his piece of cake, glad that he doesn't get the baby. He spends Friday evening and Saturday morning at the Jefferson Parish Library main branch on West Napoleon Avenue researching and checking out books on the Louisiana Purchase. He loves to go to the second floor Louisiana room and read the books there on Louisiana. He spends Saturday afternoon reading the books he checks out. But by Sunday he wants a break. So he decides to indulge himself and gets himself a yogurt.

By a sheer coincidence he meets Linda at the yogurt shop. They sit and talk for over an hour. George is uncomfortable the entire time. Linda uses the opportunity and asks him about his personal life which only increases George's discomfort. She tries to be subtle but George is able to evade her intrusive questions. Still, he feels the pressure. He hates her for intruding into his life and he silently curses his misfortune in meeting her here. He wants her to leave him alone but he does not know how to tell her this. He is frustrated. When night falls he goes to the French Quarter and gets himself another prostitute. He beats her and tortures her for three days before killing her. He dumps her body in a vacant lot on Old Gentilly Road near the Industrial Canal. She is found three days later by a homeless man searching for empty aluminum cans.

For the next six months Linda is constantly bringing desserts to George. She brings him chocolate and pastries of all kinds. Mostly they are treats she picks up at a bakery, but occasionally she bakes something herself. George watches for her coming and tries to look busy so that he does not have to talk to her much. He is very circumspect in accepting the gifts, but tries to evade her as much a possible while at the same time trying not to let it look like he is avoiding her.

When she cannot find him in the physical therapy department, she just leaves the treat on his desk. She frequently leaves a note asking that he meet her for lunch in the hospital cafeteria or at a fast food restaurant or some place. Either way, George is under tremendous pressure to acquiesce to her.

He tries to relieve himself by masturbating but this only exacerbates the problem. He is still plagued by his mother's warnings that masturbating will cause him to go blind. He tries to retreat further into his studies and his driving around the city in order to find relief. Frequently this helps him but it also just as often fails him and he ends up kidnapping and killing another prostitute.

The failures usually come after he loses at chess. Where he used to lose maybe one game in the three games they play on Wednesday evenings, now he loses two and sometimes all three games. Dave believes that it is because he has finally learned George's style. George silently blames his mother and then goes and gets another victim.

Each Wednesday evening while they are playing chess, George subtly queries Dave for information about the serial rapist plaguing New Orleans. Although Dave is careful in divulging classified information, George is able to use what information he receives to his own advantage. Casey believes that the rapist is closely following the news reports and is altering his style based upon what he hears in the news media. She suggests that they become more closed lipped with information that is given to the press. Dave agrees. She is unaware that Dave plays chess every Wednesday evening and talks about the series of killings with his neighbor. Obtaining information becomes his new competition with Dave. He begins to pride himself in the fact that he can outwit the New Orleans police lieutenant in his own game.

From Dave he learns how to dispose of the body while leaving as little evidence as possible, to use a different kind of knot when strangling his victims, and to wear gloves when punching them, which he does more often. He makes sure to knock out some teeth and break the nose of each victim while punching them. He learns that the police examined two of his victims under an ultraviolet light, looking for possible fingerprints or other identifying marks.

After this George only handles the dead bodies with gloves on. He makes sure to dispose of their clothes as soon as he rips them from their bodies. Hence, there is never any found at the spot where he dumps them. George further learns that the police believe that there is only one whip involved, so he buys a second whip and alternates their use on the prostitutes. He makes sure to pay cash for the whip. He also begins to beat his victims with a one by two piece of wood. But he still rapes them with the same broom stick as Dave does not tell him about the matching paint found inside the vaginas and anuses of them. He also continues to brand them with the same letters. He is not aware that the leg of the H is slightly bent.

Dave comments to George after several victims have been found about how the bodies are positioned, telling him that the women seem to be just thrown on the ground. He has always made sure that the prostitutes were laid on their backs so that the word WHORE is plainly visible. But he wants to degrade the women as much as possible. So he then begins to spread their legs wide apart so that everyone can see their sex. After positioning one of his victims he sees a broom stick handle nearby and rams it into her vagina. He props it up with a rock so that it is sticking up in the air. This prostitute is found as soon as daylight dawns the next morning.

He is more careful when he dumps the victims always picking his spot a day before he murders them. He tries to place his victims where he will not be seen when dropping their bodies but where the corpse can be easily found. The areas he picks are not necessarily secluded. Franklin Avenue is used where it crosses the railroad tracks near I-10. One victim is dumped in City Park in the grass along the side of Robert E. Lee Boulevard and a third is dropped off along the side of Zachary Taylor Drive near where Golf Drive goes under the interstate. He also places a second victim in Audubon Park behind some bushes across the street from Loyola and Tulane Universities.

George gets really bold with one of the victims and places her corpse in the cemeteries at the end of Canal Street; she is not found for almost a week. He also gets bold in placing a victim in Palmer Park on Carrollton Avenue, just down the street from Notre Dame Seminary. He sits one of his victims on a park bench along Lakeshore Drive looking out toward Lake Pontchartrain, her legs spread wide open and her arms draped over the back of the bench. He is particularly joyous over this victim as the Times Picayune mentions that he must be getting brave in placing his victims.

He contemplates about dumping a victim under the Huey P. Long Bridge on the river side of the levee but after talking with Dave and discovering that he would not be the lead investigator for any bodies found in other parishes he rejects that idea. George does not dump his victims in any other parish because he wants Dave to be the only one investigating the murders. Nor does he place any bodies in the Garden District. He believes that neighborhood is second only to the Vieux Carre' in historic importance to his beloved city and he does not wish to desecrate it. Other neighborhoods such as Faubourg Marigny, Midcity, and the central business district he does not use only because he cannot find a suitable dumping area. Although he does try to dump a body near the Xavier University Campus he is unsuccessful. He chooses instead a vacant lot on Orleans Avenue near Louis Armstrong Park. He does not dump any bodies in Algiers because he does not wish to cross the Crescent City Connection over the Mississippi River with a body in his trunk. He is afraid that someone might want to search his trunk at the toll booth. But Carrollton, Gentilly, Lakeview, the Irish Channel and the Lower Garden District are not so lucky. Each of these neighborhoods receives at least one victim. Gentilly and the Lower Ninth Ward receive the most bodies.

In the months since the rapist has started, he has killed 21 prostitutes so far. The police are baffled in their pursuit of him. The police are unaware that the rapist captures his victims by placing a rag soaked in ether over their mouths. They believe that he just picks them up from the streets and then takes them somewhere to torture and kill them. Vice squads are constantly warning the ladies of the night to be very careful when picking up tricks from strangers. They further advise the women to stay with their regular customers. In their attempt to save them the mayor demands a crack down on prostitution. Arrests of women on prostitution charges are up. The mayor also wants to put a two a.m. curfew in place in the French Quarter but the tourist industry and the business establishments in the area all balk at this. The mayor rescinds his idea.

A local conservative minister praises the rapist for ridding the city of prostitutes; he is immediately denounced by the rest of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic community.

The police tell the news media that they believe that they are closing in on the rapist but cannot tell them why as it is classified information. Dave tells George that it is only public relations that they are no closer to finding him now than they were when the killings started. George tells him that is what the WDSU-TV reporter surmised when the district attorney's office originally made the announcement.



Sandra Poche does not know where she is going to get the money to pay her rent. It is due in two days and she is flat broke; she barely has enough cash to buy a hamburger and a drink. As a salesclerk in Lakeside Shopping Center she isn't paid much, just barely enough to pay her share of the expenses. She knows what happened to her money. That snake of a boss she works for stole it from her purse. He pays her in cash every week. This week half an hour after he pays her, the money is gone. She wonders if that is why he always paid her in cash. He told her that a customer must have stolen it, and that she shouldn't leave her purse where it can be gotten to easily. But customers are not allowed in the storeroom and he is the only other person who knew where she kept her purse. True, there is only a curtain separating the sales floor from the storeroom, but she has never seen a customer enter the storeroom in the two years she's been working at the gift shop.

As she sits on the edge of her bed in the small apartment she shares in Fat City she knows that she'll have to start looking for another job. She cannot work for someone she cannot trust. She contemplates on whether to hock her wide screen television or to follow the advice of her roommate and turn again to prostitution.

She knows better than to ask her roommate for the money. She knows exactly what Janice will say. 'Do as I do honey. Turn a couple of tricks. I don't need to tell you that if you're good at it you can earn enough money in one weekend to pay your bills for a whole month.' It's not that she has anything against prostitution; she did it for several years in her late teens and early twenties. It wasn't a bad profession and it saved her from having to sell drugs to earn a living. It saved her from starving to death too. She also has to consider the fact that Janice makes enough money to pay her share of the bills plus pay her college expenses at the University of New Orleans and only works a couple of nights a week. But that is also a part of her life she wishes she could forget.

At sixteen she ran away from home to get away from her stepfather. Her mother had taken a second part-time job to help out with the bills. It only required her to be away from home for a couple of hours on Monday and Wednesday evenings. But that was all it took. She had been working for about two months when he first approached her. At first he only wanted her to sit with him while he watched a movie. After a while he started to watch pornographic movies. Then he started to masturbate while the movies were on. Eventually he demanded that she have sex with him. It wasn't just sexual intercourse either; it was all kinds of sex that he demanded of her. He told her that if she ever said anything to anyone, he would kill both her and her mother.

She took it for two years then she ran away after he tied her up one night and beat her before raping her. She waited until the next night and then got him drunk. While he was asleep, she stole 150 dollars from his wallet and headed for the bus depot, but not before she left her mother a note explaining why she was running away and giving her mother a full description of the wart just above his pubic hair to prove her story. She's been on her own ever since. Growing up in Jackson, Mississippi she had heard stories about Bourbon Street and how the prostitutes earn money turning tricks. So she came to New Orleans in hopes of making enough money to live on. It didn't take her long to learn just how to please a man; her stepfather trained her well. In a couple of months she earned enough to get herself a small efficiency apartment just off Oak Street in Carrollton. She told the landlady that she was a college student at Tulane University studying marine biology. The apartment wasn't much but it was a thousand times better than the flophouses she had been living in since she arrived in New Orleans.

Tall and mature for her age, she demanded that her johns always use a condom. She did not want to get pregnant or catch some kind of sexually transmitted disease, so she always kept a couple stuffed into her brazier. She told the men who objected that she had genital warts and, although she had gone to a clinic to have the disease taken care of, she was only looking out for their interest. If they questioned her concern for their health, she told them that she was trying to build up a clientele. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, whenever it didn't she'd just let the john go and find herself another who was more understanding.

She had been working for about six months when she met a guy who helped her obtain a fake identification. She paid the man 100 dollars and instantly she added two years and four months to her age. Then instead of being sixteen and ten months, she was nineteen and two months. There's a lot that a nineteen-year-old can do that a minor at sixteen can't. She was able to put her money in a bank savings account and when she had enough saved she bought a used Mustang.

The air conditioner didn't work too well and it needed a muffler. But it only cost 800 dollars and it got her where she needed to go. She celebrated her seventeenth birthday driving around the city of New Orleans looking at the sights, glad that she had a place to live, food in the refrigerator, and a set of wheels to get from place to place. Her life was finally looking up. She thought about going back to night school and finishing her education, but somehow just never found the time to register.

She worked as a prostitute for four years, all the while keeping her eye focused on getting a job that didn't require her to go to bed with someone. Then one day one of her clients told her about a job opening at a gift shop in Lakeside Shopping Center that did not require a lot of references. She and Janice had just moved into an apartment in Fat City and it was within walking distance from her new home. The owner sold gifts from South and Central America and needed another salesclerk, one having up and quit on him. He needed someone who could start immediately and one who would not mind working for someone whom she would rarely see. The owner was there only during the weekly deliveries they received and he frequently took some of the boxes away with him, causing Sandra to wonder if the store gifts were the only thing he imported. What did she care what he imported. The job paid higher than normal for a salesclerk; it was easy work; and she usually worked alone, the other two salesclerks worked overlapping hours with her, one worked at night. But best of all, she did not have to provide sex with anyone to earn her money.

But now with the theft of her money she has no future. Janice is due to come in the front door any minute and ask for her portion of the rent and she hasn't got it. They've been good friends ever since they met on the streets five years ago. They looked out for each other, helped each other in times of need. But the one thing that kept them together is that they didn't share money. Sure they lent each other ten or twenty dollars every now and then. Once she even lent Janice 100 dollars so she could pay a cell phone bill. But that is a far cry from 287.50. She has about 150 in a savings account but that's no good. She can't get to it until Monday morning. She gets angry with herself for keeping her extra money in a savings account instead of a checking account.

Suddenly Janice is at the door.

"Hey San, what's up?"

Sandra doesn't answer her. She's sitting on her bed and holding her savings account book in her hand. She stares at her roommate and frowns, shaking her head.

"Don't tell me. Let me guess. You haven't got the rent."

"Jan, what am I going to do? Don't tell me to start turning tricks again because I'm through with that."

"Hey you," Janice says as she sits on the bed next to her friend, "I'm always the one with money problems, not you. Don't worry about it. We'll make it somehow. We always have in the past. So, tell me what happened to your pay?"

"You know how my boss always pays me in cash?"

"Yeah." "Well today I found out why. He paid me and I put my money in my purse like I always do. Then thirty minutes later I check my purse and the money is gone, all 390 of it. I'm sure he took it, but he claimed that it must have been a customer. Anyway, I'm not going to work there any more. But I don't know where I can go to get that kind of money."

"Oh! You'll find something. You always do. Remember I'm the one with the money problems all the time."

"But Janice what are we going to do for the rent? I've only got about 150 in my savings account."

"Will you quit worrying? We'll make it."

"No we're not. That miser of a landlord isn't . . . OK, what's that grin on your face for?"

"I turned a trick last night and netted 1200 dollars! Ahhh!" Janice screams in joy and shows her a handful of 100 dollar bills.

"No!" Sandra yells back at Janice and hits her with a pillow. "How'd you do that? You didn't steal it did you?"

"No, some guy from Houston, Texas wanted me to spend the night with him. We go up to his hotel room. He snorts some coke and then spends the rest of the night banging me. San, this guy never stopped. He fucked me in every hole I got. Then around seven this morning, he gives me the twelve hundred and tells me to get my ass out of there."

"Jan, you're something else," she says shaking her head.

"So, I'll get the rent this month; you get it next month, on one condition."

"Sure, what do you need?"

"Give me a lift to the Quarter. It's Sunday and I got to meet Phil. He's a regular."

"Sure. Come on. I'll drop you off and then get myself some coffee and donuts at the Caf du Monde."

"Mind if I join you?"

"No, of course not. But you'll have to pay for your own this time. I only got enough money to pay for mine."

"Keep your money. I'm the rich one today," she says flashing the wad of bills in the air. "I'll pay for it."

"You're a doll, Jan. I love you," Sandra says as she throws her arms around her friend and gives her a hug.

"I love you to, San."