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Background

Maury Travis was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 25th, 1965. His childhood is a mystery, with most people he went to school with having no recollection of him because he was not very social.

He spent a couple of years in the Army Reserve, but his life started going downhill in 1987 when he got hooked on cocaine. In 1988, he used a toy gun to rob a bunch of stores so he could earn money to support his habit.

He was arrested and pleaded guilty to the robberies and got a 15-year sentence. He was released on parole after 3 years and 5 months, but he didn’t learn his lesson and did a couple more prison stints for drug offenses.

When he wasn’t incarcerated, he worked as a waiter.

Murders

Between 2000 and 2002, Travis kidnapped, tortured, violated, and killed at least 12 women, dumping their remains near public roads and wooded areas in Missouri and Illinois.

The media started reporting that a serial killer was on the loose, and St. Louis Police-Dispatch writer, Bill Smith, did a profile on one of the victims, Teresa Wilson.

Travis was loving the media attention and sent a map that he printed from Expedia.com to Smith with the location of one of the women he had killed.

Travis told Smith he would confess to more murders only if Smith kept writing about the victims.

The FBI contacted Expedia.com. They relayed investigators to Microsoft, who linked the map to Travis’s IP address.

Travis was arrested on June 7th, 2002, and when authorities searched his home, they found a torture chamber, bondage items, a stun gun, newspaper clippings about the murders, and videotapes of his crimes.

He was placed on suicide watch at the St. Louis County jail. Guards were supposed to check on him every 15 minutes, but they left him unattended for 45 minutes, and he hanged himself.