Title: Flat Tire Serial Murders

Dates: 1975

Overview: Someone deflated tires, then lured his victims on the premise of helping them

Status: Cold Case.

Flat Tire Serial Murders

On August 29, 1975 Dade Countys assistant medical examiner announced his belief that one man was responsible for five recent murders of women in southern Florida. Homicide investigators were convinced of a connection in the July slayings of 27 year old Ronnie Gorlin and 21 year old Elyse Napp, while the pathologists report named three other victims. Barbara Stephens, age 23, had been kidnapped from a South Dade shopping mall and stabbed to death in February 1975, while a pair of 14 year old high school classmates, Barbara Scheiber and Belinda Zeterower, had been killed at Hollywood in June 1975.

On hearing the Florida announcements, Sgt. Erwin Carlstedt of Sonoma County, California Sherriffs Department chimed in with his theory of a single killer, moving coast to coast with more than 30 murders to his credit, probably a reference to serial slayer Ted Bundy, before he was publicly identified as a suspect in murders spanning the United States. Florida detectives offered no comment on Carlstedts hypotheses, concentrating on their search for an elusive killer who deflated his victims tires in commercial parking lots, then lured them to their deaths with an offer of assistance. None of the flat tire victims were included in Bundys 1989 confession of 30 murders, and the case remains open today, with no further victims publicly listed.

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