“Clay the Serial Killer”

On the morning of 13 August 1997, a mysterious man called into the syndicated radio program of popular shock-jock Howard Stern. This caller, who identified himself as "Clay," claimed to be an unidentified serial killer from the New Orleans area…

Shortly after 2 AM on the morning of October 22, 1969, a man claiming to be the Zodiac Killer called the Oakland, California Police Department, demanding to speak with famed attorney F. Lee Bailey. The caller told the operator that he wanted Bailey to appear on a local television talk show so that he could call in and chat with Bailey. Before hanging up, the self-professed “Zodiac” said he would settle for Melvin Belli if Bailey could not be reached.

Acting fast, the police arranged for Jim Dunbar, the host of KGO-TV’s, AM San Francisco, to have Melvin Belli join him on the air that morning, as Bailey was 3,000 miles away in Boston at the time. While they were somewhat skeptical that this caller was indeed the Zodiac Killer, the San Francisco Police were eager to set up this unconventional television broadcast in the hopes that a call could be traced to rule out or confirm this individual as a legitimate suspect, as the Zodiac had struck in their city only two weeks prior, murdering cab driver Paul Stine in cold blood before fleeing into the night.

Shortly after 7 AM, the man claiming to be Zodiac called in, and asked to called “Sam.”

The man’s threat was a clear reference to Zodiac’s letter sent to the San Francisco Chronicle on October 13, 1969—less than two days after his murder of Paul Stine—in which he writes, “School children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out…”

However, two months later, police officials traced a series of phone calls made to Melvin Belli’s home by the supposed Zodiac. It was revealed that these phone calls were coming from Napa State Hospital and had been made by a young man named Eric Philips Weill. Weill, a California photographer suffering from severe Bipolar Disorder, was known to be fixated on celebrities. In December 1965, Weill attended a San Francisco press conference for legendary singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, asking him a series of bizarre questions…

Weill had also photographed The Beatles’ final live performance before a paying audience—their famous August 1966 Candlestick Park concert—and was now apparently obsessed with the Zodiac Killer, along with lawyer to the stars, attorney Melvin Belli, who was working with the Rolling Stones at the time.

Luckily, neither Eric Weill nor the Zodiac ever made good on their shared threat to murder school children. The Zodiac vanished into quiet oblivion sometime in the mid-1970s and Weill committed suicide in 2006. A death record for Weill notes that he was the son of a man named Sam Weill—you’ll recall “Sam” as being the name Eric asked to be called while masquerading as the Zodiac on Jim Dunbar’s television show. And while the Zodiac Killer case is still unresolved, at least this small, bizarre chapter eventually reached a tangible conclusion.

But what if that wasn’t the case? Imagine you’re driving to work one morning, or you’re at home making breakfast, and you turn on the radio for some background noise. Suddenly, you hear a man call in and calmly explain to the host over the course of several minutes that he is an un-apprehended serial killer. Except this time, no police trace reveals the caller to be a hoaxer in a mental institution. In fact, you never hear about this incident again until nearly a quarter century later, when the internet digs up an old recording of the broadcast.

Well, that’s exactly what happened on the morning of Wednesday, August 13, 1997, during a live broadcast of WXRK’s landmark radio program, The Howard Stern Show.

(1:00 mark in audio) You might notice a pattern emerging here. In a manner strikingly wise for a shock-jock morning radio host, Stern begins asking a series of seemingly mundane questions regarding Clay’s modus operandi. To some, these questions might seem like the kinds of things all of us might ask if given the opportunity to interview a serial killer, but Stern makes some key maneuvers less than a minute into this conversation. He immediately asks if Clay has sex with his victims before killing them. When Clay answers in the affirmative, this now gives investigators motivation for look for biological evidence that might link a series of cold cases together, in this instance, semen or body hairs left behind by the killer.

 When he takes control of the conversation by asking Clay if he strangles his victims, Stern then opens the door for this supposed killer to impulsively divulge his true method of killing, should he be incorrect in his initial assumption. Clay hesitates for a few seconds before saying he actually used a hammer during most of his murders. On one hand, Clay’s hesitation before correcting Stern seems to hint at him telling the truth. After all, my listeners who took drama club classes in high school will remember that the first rule of improv is to always say yes. If Clay was just some random radio troll calling in for attention with very little thought put into his story, he might have simply gone along with Stern’s suggestion of strangulation. But instead, he hesitated – possibly debating in his own mind whether he should divulge more details – before finally admitting he used a hammer. Of course, this also leaves the door open for the possibility of Clay taking a few moments to craft the next portion of his fake story, but let’s listen more before we jump to any further conclusions.

 (Resume Stern audio at 1:00 mark)

 (1:41 mark)

Here we see Stern seemingly referencing the Macdonald Triad, named after psychiatrist J.M. Macdonald, who proposed in a 1963 American Journal of Psychiatry article that future serial violence and even murder can often be predicted in children who simultaneous engage in chronic bedwetting, compulsive arson, and cruelty toward animals. The Macdonald Triad has been criticized in recent years as an urban legend, as the three key factors cited in Macdonald’s theory are more often linked to childhood abuse and neglect rather than some serial killer crystal ball, but nonetheless, but the time of this late-90s radio broadcast, the triad had become cemented as a key element of serial killer culture.

(Resume Stern audio at 1:41 mark)

(3:09 mark)

A serial killer sending clues to baffle people and supposedly calling a media personality’s live show to confess his evil deeds? Where have we heard this before?

(Resume at 3:09 mark)

(3:23 mark)

A lot happens right here. First, you’ll notice Stern is continuing his line of questioning by leading the conversation with suggestions in the hopes that Clay will impulsively give in to correcting him with accurate information due to his narcissistic desire to control the narrative. But then, just as he is answering, Clay suddenly leads the conversation by volunteering a piece of information that had not been previously discussed – the fact that he knows some of his victims have not been found yet. This further shows a pattern of narcissism inherent in many serial killers like the Zodiac – obsessively following your own press. Zodiac was able to consistently lead the police of wild goose chases with his many letters, cryptograms, and phone calls due to his compulsion for following every detail about the police investigation into his crimes and potential identity printed about him in the press. Assuming this wasn’t some radio prank, how else would Clay know that some of his victims were never found, unless he took special notice of their identities and the locations where he left their bodies so that he could scour media reports for their discovery later? This, along with his mention of wanting to leave clues in the wake of his crimes seems to definitely hint at some obsessive inspiration taken from Zodiac, or a similar killer like BTK or Jack the Ripper.

(5:08 mark)

This off-hand remark would later become one of the most interesting and controversial aspects of this story. More on that after we finish listening to the call.

(Resume at 5:08 mark)

(6:44 mark)

Here, Clay makes reference to Jimmy Swaggart, the famous Pentecostal Televangelist. At the time, Swaggart’s ministries were located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana—a city whose population is still today over 50% black. Could Baton Rouge be the “Jimmy Swaggart Town” mentioned by Clay?

(Resume at 6:44 mark)

(12:12 mark)

Again, we hear Stern trying to casually ascertain personal details about Clay that might aid in eventually identifying him.

(Resume 12:12 mark)

(15:15 mark)

Again, the Macdonald triad rears its head.

(Resume at 15:15 mark)

(Recording ends at 17:00 mark)

Once the call ended, the saga of “Clay the Serial Killer” faded into relative obscurity. According to some online reports, the FBI paid Stern a visit at his studio the following day to obtain copies of the recorded call, and Stern never publicly mentioned the incident again. The call remained virtually absent from public discourse—and even the internet—until 2019, when fans of Stern began posting about the segment on Reddit, reigniting interest in the incident. The Howard Stern best-of show, Sternthology, had recently re-aired the segment for the first time during the modern internet era, inspiring the Reddit posts. True crime aficionados quickly picked up on the similarities between Clay’s story and an unsolved cluster of homicides that had made headlines and hit TV screens all around America nearly three decades prior.

On October 21, 1992, Unsolved Mysteries aired a profile of the unidentified New Orleans serial murders while the killer—or killers—were still active. While this propelled the case to a national audience, the case remained unsolved.

Users on the Websleuths message board began compiling data on these killings in November 2016, which Stern fans took notice of three years later.

The similarities between Clay’s phone call and the New Orleans murders of the early 1990s were listed as follows –

-          The victims were mostly African Americans.

-          One victim, Delores Mack, was transgender and another, George Williams, was a transvestite. As we heard, Clay made reference to killing a “black transvestite” during his call.

-          The majority of known victims were sex workers.

-          The known victims were killed between 1991-1995, with a gap lasting almost exactly one year in between February 1993 and February 1994. “Clay” told Stern he took a break for a year.

-          During the call, Clay claimed he was white, and that the only suspect at the time was a “black cop” who was romantically involved with one of the victims.

This clue became one of the most significant in this entire saga.

On April 30, 1995, the body of 28-year-old Sharon Robinson was found face-down in a shallow body of water next to an I-55 off ramp in LaPlace, Louisiana, 25 miles west of New Orleans. Her cause of death was later determined to be homicidal drowning. Robinson was almost immediately identified due to her body being found still wearing Sharon’s Hurrah’s Hotel & Casino uniform, complete with her identification badge. Another item found on Sharon’s body—her shoes—led to another shocking revelation. The treads on her shoes definitively matched a shoeprint found next to a dead body that had been discovered only three hours earlier and only a mile away—and the victim had been Sharon’s best friend. 30-year-old Karen Ivester had been strangled and her nude body was left in a swamp under I-55. Unlike Sharon, Karen supported herself through sex work. Next to the print matching Sharon’s shoe was a spit out wad of chewing tobacco.

Sharon’s boyfriend—33-year-old Victor Gant—was a known user of chewing tobacco. Gant was a 15-year veteran of the New Orleans Police Department, and also the last person seen with Sharon Robinson before she went missing during the early hours of April 30. Gant also had a violent history of abusing Sharon, sometimes beating her so bad that she required hospitalization.

On May 1, 1995, less than 24 hours after Karen Ivester’s body was found, various New Orleans police agencies formed a task force with the FBI, intent on finding the killer—or killers—responsible for these horrific murders. Almost immediately, the FBI became aware of a dirty open secret within the New Orleans Police Department—several officers were involved with or straight-up leading prostitution rings while on duty. While conducting various intervews, FBI agents learned that Victor Gant had apparently openly spoke of his dislike of Karen Ivester prior to her murder, supposedly because she had talked a friend of hers out of becoming a prostitute, cutting into Gant’s bottom line. FBI agent John Fleming told the press in November 1995, "A common thread in the victims was their membership of prostitution rings that seem to have been connected with a group of NOPD officers. Victor Gant has been associated with that group."

On May 4, 1995, less than a week after the formation of this task force, Gant was formally called in for questioning at the New Orleans Sheriff’s Office. Gant was cooperative with the investigator’s’ questions but refused a lie detector test. With no confession or hard evidence to charge him with, detectives had no choice but to let Gant go. After attempting to corroborate Gant’s alibis provided during questioning, the investigators found that Gant had lied in nearly every answer given to them during that session.

In another blow to Gant’s credibility, the serial murders of female prostitutes in the Treme and Algiers came to an abrupt stop in the wake of his questioning by police. A few more bodies were found, but these victims were all determined to have been killed years prior to their discovery.

One month later, in June 1995, investigators obtained a warrant asking for hair and saliva samples from Victor Gant. Gant complied, and the samples were sent to a police lab for testing against the wad of chewing tobacco found near Karen Ivester’s body. It took nearly four months for the results to come back, and when they did, detectives were disappointed to learn that the results were inconclusive. The case against Victor Gant was now at a virtual standstill.

By August 1995, word had leaked to the press that Gant was a suspect in the murders of Sharon Robinson and Karen Ivester, and possibly as many as 22 other murders in the area. Internal investigations were launched, and Gant was taken off his patrol beat and place on desk duty. One year later, on August 26, 1996, Gant was fired from the police force as result of the four internal investigations opened against him, with his beating of Sharon Robinson in the months before her murder being a major contributing cause. After his disciplinary hearing, Gant complained to the press, saying, “A lot of other people who have been charged worse than that are still on the job.” When Sharon’s sister, Teri, and a group of supporters arrived at the scene to confront Gant, he spit tobacco juice at them before walking off.

Victor Gant, however, did not stop himself from getting into trouble. Three months later, in November 1996, Gant was arrested for battery after choking and threatening his new girlfriend, Karen Thibodeaux, inside her home. The charges were only dropped after a series of behind-closed-doors meetings with lawyers.

Sometime in the early 2000s, Gant left Louisiana and moved to Georgia. At some point prior to 2016, Gant found employment as an officer with the Carver College Police Department in Atlanta. When confronted by reporters from Huffington Post in 2016 regarding their hiring of a suspect in a series of serial killings as an officer assigned to protect college students, Carver College Police Chief R.J. Collins tried denying Gant had ever worked there—despite Gant appearing in full uniform on the Police Department’s website and in photos shared on Facebook. When reporters called Carver College President Robert Crummie for comment on the situation, Crummie defended Chief Collins, telling them “Nobody’s broken a law or committed a sin—people are just uncomfortable about talking to strangers.” When confronted with the information about Gant, Crummie finally said that he was no longer working for the Carver College Police and that he had no obligation to discuss it further.

Carver College has a long, troubled history of hiring disgraced police officers to patrol the Christian School. This policy was apparently the work of Carver College PD's first chief, Joseph L. Woods, who had been fired from five different police departments before finding work at the school in 2006. Woods retired less than a year later while facing the suspension of his police license, and was eventually replaced by R.J. Collins, who apparently later hired Victor Gant. Collins himself had been previously fired by two separate police departments before working at Carver, and had once been put on probation for an entire year by the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council.

Collins brushed off criticism of his hiring practices during a 2017 interview by stating, “I’ll give people a second chance sometimes. Sometimes, it’s not a good fit for a particular department. It doesn’t mean they are bad officer.”

One of the people Collins gave a “second chance” to was Steven Wayne Turner, a Georgia police officer who had been fired for exposing his penis to a woman he had pulled over while working for the Lithonia Police Department. Less than a year after being hired by Collins to patrol the school, Turner exposed his penis to three more women while on duty. Instead of firing Turner, Collins allowed him to quietly resign.

Another of Collins’ hires, Carver College Police Captain Michael F. Nemard, had previously been forced out of his job as a lieutenant with the College Park Police Department after being arrested for beating his wife, and a subsequent investigation revealed that he had once shoved his gun into another ex-wife’s mouth and cocked the hammer. While reviewing Nemard’s record as an officer—including his arrest record—Collins wrote to officials at the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, stating, “It is my belief that Mr. Nemard is a man of strong moral character and has a deep faith in God. He also brings with him many years of law enforcement experience, training and talent that would be invaluable to Carver College Police Department.” In response, the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council reinstated Nemard’s police certification so that Collins could hire him.

In the wake of incidents like these, it’s no surprise that Chief R.J. Collins seemingly had little issue with hiring a potential serial killer who ran a prostitution ring like Victor Gant to the Carver College Police Force.

It is currently unknown whether Gant is still employed by any law enforcement agency, but investigators within the New Orleans Police Department are hopeful that future advancements in DNA technology will bring conclusive answers regarding his possible involvement in the slayings of these young women.

Some modern articles about Clay the Serial Killer claim that his comment about a black police officer being the main suspect is what piqued the interest of the FBI, as this information was supposedly not released to the public, but this isn’t the case. Numerous articles from several national publications name Gant—a black police officer—as a suspect in the New Orleans serial murders a full two years before Clay’s phone call, and television news segments chronicling Gant’s activities were aired on CBS and ABC in late 1995. Of course, this does not immediately eliminate Clay as a legitimate suspect, but it does prove that he could have learned about Gant being under suspicion merely from picking up a newspaper or watching TV.

Most present-day articles about Clay insist the caller was actually convicted killer Russell Ellwood, who was arrested in March 1998 for the murder of Cheryl Lewis, whose nude body was found in February 1993 floating face-down in a Hahnville swamp, about 25 miles away from where the bodies Sharon Robinson and Karen Ivester were later found. Ellwood, a cab driver original from Ohio, had been seen with Lewis several times prior to her death, and had aroused the suspicion of local police when he was found wandering in a state of undress near the crime scene about a year after Lewis’ body had been found. When questioned by investigators, Ellwood claimed he was changing the oil on his taxi and had chosen the remote location to dump the used oil without being seen. Despite the fact that no oil changing supplies were found in his vehicle, the police let Ellwood go, but not without keeping an eye on him.

In time, Ellwood also became a suspect in the killing of Delores Mack, a transgender woman whose body was found a day after Lewis’ and in the same swamp. Ellwood, however, was eventually cleared in Mack’s murder after his attorney’s proved he had been in Ohio at the time of her death. Ellwood’s attorneys also attempted to convince the jury that he had also been in Ohio when Lewis was killed, and that a receipt proving so had been deliberately destroyed by Lt. Sue Rushing, the former leader of the New Orleans task force. While the accusations had some merit—the FBI having actually ended their involvement with the task force so that they could investigate Rushing’s misconduct—the jury was unconvinced, and in August 1999, Ellwood was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Cheryl Lewis.

All things considered, these facts make Russell Ellwood a compelling suspect for Clay the Serial Killer, and it is easy to why so many articles name him as such. However, the truth of the matter is more complicated. On August 4, 1997, Ellwood was arrested and jailed on drug charges, with his prison sentence lasting nearly three months. If you’ll recall from earlier in this episode, Clay the Serial Killer called into Stern’s show on August 13, 1997—over one week after Ellwood was jailed. While prisoners in the United States do retain some telephone privileges, it is highly unlikely that Ellwood would have been able to call the Howard Stern Show from prison and remain on the line for that long. Other true crime sleuths who have heard recordings of Ellwood’s voice insist there are no sonic similarities between him and Clay.

Another complication is this—Baton Rouge, the possible “Jimmy Swaggart town” referenced by Clay, is over 80 miles away from New Orleans, where nearly all the bodies were found. Of course, Clay never explicitly mentions Baton Rouge as being Jimmy Swaggart town, but this is an issue worth questioning.

The single biggest issue, however, is this—Clay’s self-professed favorite mode of murder was bludgeoning his victims to death with a hammer. None of the dozens of New Orleans prostitute victims in question were killed in this manner. Most were forcibly drowned or strangled. Russell Ellwood’s preferred MO was drugging his victims to the point of overdose and then dumping them in shallow bodies of water to drown.

Even if Clay the Serial Killer was not, in fact, Russell Ellwood, there is still a strong possibility that this caller was telling the truth. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee told the press in 1998 that the New Orleans task force never considered the serial killings to be the work of one man. Three other sheriffs from the now-disbanded task force told the same reporter that at least four other suspects were on their radar.

Could “Clay” have been one of them?

For now, the answer to this question remains… unresolved.