Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
With his IQ of 155, Michael Bruce Ross, the Roadside Strangler, snatched girls off the road to murder and sexually assault them.
when michael bruce ross was just 10 years old one of his many chores was strangling the weak and deformed chickens on the family egg farm in connecticut as a young boy he cared little for the birds and was more concerned with pleasing his parents.
by the time he was 21 a man later dubbed the roadside strangler had progresssed to chocking the life out of human victims, the seeds of evil that would claim eight young women .
were swn in a violent household where ross’s mother who was later admitted to a pschiatric hospital dispensed erratic and frenzied punishment on he eldest child her violent tendencies and relationship with ross’s father that always seemed to be beyond repair ,dominated the farm life that was far from idelic.
you can see from m ross’s childhood how it set him on the path of being so bad he had a hrrendous childhood, he was the eldest of four children totally abused and beaten by his mother
he endend up leaving home an extremely angry young man and in addition to that he’d also been raped byaqn uncle as well, so he didnt’ like the world at all .
for some years and despite the abuse at home ,which ross late claimed not to remember he he developed a strong work ethic. he was also intelligent and his impressive high school grades
earned him a place at cornell university.
where he presented as an approachable allthough sometimes akward young man who had little trouble establishing relationships.
so when he went out into the big wide world at 22 he’s tried to sort of form relationship with girls and he didn’t have the human skills or technique or the empathy to have any sort of meaningful sort of juman relationship with other girls.
the explicit charm and good character was paper thin . it was only a matte of time before his sexually charged fantasies played out for real.
they don’t become a serial killer overnight,there’s a long incubatio period,they start off with petty offenses, stalking ,looking through windows , getting a kick out of it a rape, think ” i wont do it againt” then i go away with that , I’ll do it again and again they get hooked on it then sometimes it gets to a point where they kill because they have to the woman’s screaming , putting up a fight.
he found that as soon as a girl dumped him pissed him off ,get rid of him,that’s when he took his anger out on a victim .
didn’t matter who the victim was it just had to be another girl.
and he in fact raped and murders eight girls over 5 year period but he was alwas after something happened in his personal life and he wanted to thake this anger out on someone else. he saw them as a quite impersonal people .he never saw them as victims .
he said” if ouy’d have asked me to go on identity parade immediately after the murder , i couldn’t even pick out the face of the victm i ‘ve just killed” he said ” but i just needed to take it out on someone.
once you cross that threshold into murder and you don’t get caught i can get all too powerful and the event then the events get closer together until it imolodes for them . that’s basically what it is . but every serial killer is different.what makes aserila killer different to you and them? me and them ,some people are good, and some people extremely evil.
most of us live in the middle ground . if we say a deeply religious missionary man would be at the good end of the sky . god -fairy man . at the other end of the sky you have the devil and that’s where those people sit. we¨re in the middle they are extremes.
there would soon be no middle ground for michael ross who felt compelled to killed and his taste for power and control over the young women he came across would lead to the violent murder of eight victims.seven of them sexually assulted either before during or after their were killed
allthough fellow cornell university cstudent dzung ngoc tu was one of the last to be linked to ross she’d been the first to die the 25 -year old faced the killer’s evil in may 1981, shortly after the pair had been in the same evening class on campus.
police initially suspected suicide when dzung’s body found in a bottom of a creek near the fraternity house where ross lived. family and friends were furious with the initial assessment and refused to believe that dzung would take her own life.
even a subsequent examination revealed injuries not consistent with the theorty she had leapt to her death , police found no evidence to link the killer to the crime.it would be years before dsung’s shattered family would learn the truth of her death.but it wasn’t long before ross’s criminal intent landed him in jail
shortly after gtaduating from cornell where he’d studied economics he was convicted of an assult on a teenager that could have been far more serious.
police had no idea ross had already killed and that he would kill again when their intervention effectively saved the life of the 16 year old girl who ross had dragged into a local woods.a fine and a 2 years probation served as no deterrent and ross set about finding more victims killing seven more girls in just 3 years.intimidating them, raping them ,comforting them and then killing them.
in january 1982 ross killed again, this time 17 year old tammy williams who lived just a mile from the ross family farm was raped and murdered.
her body wasn’t found for more than 2 years leaving he devastating parents to wonder what happened to their only child.
less then 2 months after tammy williams went missing paula perpera’s body was found by the road side in wallkill north of new york city .
the 16 years old high school sstudent had been mising for to weeks after hitching a ride to vocational cooking class. it wasn’t unusual for perrera to hitch rides with strangers against the advice of her friends but this ride with michael ross would be last .
in june 1982 deborah smith taylor disappeared after an argument with her husband ,their car h ad run out fuel and rather than stay togetheter as they set out to find a service station, they went in different directions. it was a decisison that would cost smith taylor her her life as ross took his fourth victim.
mishchievous teenager robin stavinsky was the next to die at the killer’s hand a successful track and field athlete at school the 19 year old was said to be strong and muscular
she went missing in nobember.1983 allthough family and friends found it hard to believe,ross had overpowered raped and murdered stavinsky on thanksgiving day 1983 stavinsky mother joan had the heartbreaking task of identifiying he rdaughter at a morgue.
the depths of depravity that ross had trolled in killing his first five victims would be surpassed
by the murder of april brune and leslie shelly as closest sisters the best friends had been to the movies and were hitchhiking home when ross offered them a ride.
instead of taking them t to their parents ,ross drove them to a deserted roaded at preston and began his assault he forced shely into the boot of his car so she couldn’t escape before turning his attention to brune
in his confession ross claimed brune used a small knife as she desperately tried to defend herself while shelly shouted words of comforts to her friend.brune was brutally raped and then strangled to death before ross returned to the car for shelly ,ross later said he conssidered shel to have been brave so he decided not to rape her but instead ….
killing her chokng her to death that way he could avoid the possiblity of shelly identifying him. it was april 1984 and april brune and leslie shelly were just 14 years old
he wasn’t haunted by any of his victims other then the youngest one the 14 year old one , for some reason that one he said played on his mind but the rest of them he had no effect on him whatsoever.
so he killed these innocent girls raped them grotted them and had no impact on his mind at all.
wendy baribault become michael ross’s final victim , the 17 year old’s body found under a pile of rocks on the side of the road in griswald connecticut in june 1984.
she had left a note to her parents to tell them she was walking to a local shop but never returned. this time during their investigation a police received a tip off that a man had been sitting in a blue toyota car close the baribeault had been found.
ross owned the car matching the description since his house was in the vicinity of the murders he was one of the first suspects police visited the game was up .
some serial killers deny their guilt leaving the detail of their murders to be unpicked by police and their forensic.
teams others can’t wait to tell more , driven by ego and and the same power that had compelled them to kill michael ross’s immediate to serveral murders was only a part of his story.
prompted by criminologist christopher barry D he spilled the final chapters with alarming cander allowing police to uncover the extent of his serial killing.
he was boasting about his murders ,how long it took to stangle a girl that sometimes there were multiple bruises around their neck because they wriggle around on the floor then he lets off cuz he can’t come and he needs to build his sexual pressure up again.
armed with confession and with the transcripst and the film tapes he was subsequently charged with another two charged with another two homicides, letters of commendation from new york state police and crystal run police and letters fof thanks from the parents for putting their minds in rest. that what happens when you get involved with somebody like michael ross .
in july 1987 michael ross received six seperate death sentences for killing wendy baribault,robin stavensky ,leslie shelly , and april brune.
in juluy 1994 following years of legal arguments the death sentences were overturned because a judge had incorrectly excluded a letter from a psychiatric report.4 years later ross gave up his fight against his death sentences
he claimed to have felt guilt and in prison found god and worked as a braal translator in the hope of redemption, some saw him as a reformed character including susan powers who was engaged to the killer but broke up with him 2 years before he was put to death.
on may 13th 2005 michael ross a sadistik rapist who killed his victims to cover his tracks was administered a lethal injection at osborne correctional institution in summers connecticut.
watched by the family of some of those he had murdered the roadside strangler was dead.