Earle Nelson was hanged in Winnipeg on January 13, 1928, for the murder of Emily Patterson, a 27-year-old Winnipeg housewife. That conviction is the only one in his record. Yet by the time the rope was ready, police in the United States and Canada had linked him to a long series of stranglings that began in San Francisco in February 1926 and ran east across the continent to Manitoba. The Canadian Press, looking back in 1967, wrote that police in both countries closed the files on 22 murder cases when he died. Most of the dead were women who rented out rooms or showed houses to prospective tenants or buyers.
He never confessed. The Manitoba Historical Society notes that the link between Nelson and the American deaths was purely circumstantial. Alvin Esau, a retired University of Manitoba law professor who has written two books on the case, believes the conventional count of 22 falls at least ten short. The record that a court actually tested is narrower: one Winnipeg jury, one victim, and a defense of insanity that the jury rejected.
Nelson was born in San Francisco. The Manitoba Historical Society gives his years as 1898 to 1928; the Canadian Press described him as 30 at the time of his arrest. The Society's short entry, based on John Bumsted's Dictionary of Manitoba Biography, says little is known of his early life. It records that he was expelled from school in grade two, could not keep a job and spent time in a mental institution.
The San Francisco crime historian Paul Drexler, writing in the San Francisco Examiner in 2015, gave a fuller account. In his telling, both of Nelson's parents died before he was two, and he was raised by a strict, deeply religious grandmother. A streetcar accident left him with a severe concussion and five days in a coma. He was expelled from primary school at seven, left school at 14 and worked at manual jobs. By the age of 19, Drexler wrote, he had been through San Quentin State Prison, the Navy and the state mental hospital at Napa. After his discharge from Napa he married a woman much older than himself and soon left her. The Oregon historian Finn J.D. John, writing in 2013, likewise described a troubled childhood, expulsion from elementary school at seven, a term in San Quentin at 18 and later stays in mental hospitals.
Parts of this story are disputed. Esau, who obtained the Manitoba Attorney General's files on the case through a freedom of information request and later worked through Winnipeg police files and American archives, has said that Nelson was indeed very interested in religion and often quoted the Bible. But he told the University of Manitoba's news service in 2022 that there is no evidence for the familiar stories about a fanatically religious upbringing, and he called such accounts myths endlessly repeated in the literature. Esau and other recent writers agree that Nelson had escaped from a California mental institution.
The deaths attributed to Nelson followed a pattern. A polite young man answered a sign or a notice for a room to let or a house for sale. A woman, often a landlady or a widow who earned her living from lodgers, showed him the property. Later she was found strangled. Drexler wrote that all but two of the women attributed to him were landladies. In almost every case, the Canadian Press summarized in 1967, a woman was found dead after showing a property that was advertised for rent or had rooms to let.
The press called the unknown killer the "Dark Strangler," and later the "Gorilla Man" or "Gorilla Strangler." The Canadian Press described a trail of stranglings some 7,000 miles long over 17 months. A Portland woman who refused to follow him into a house she was showing described a small man with black hair and a dark complexion. People who shared a lodging house with him there found him polite, soft-spoken and intelligent, though something of a religious fanatic, Finn J.D. John wrote.
The series attributed to Nelson began in San Francisco in February 1926. Drexler named the first woman as Clara Newman, 60, a landlady, who was found dead the day after she was last seen. He named a second San Francisco landlady, Lillian St. Mary, among the women attributed to the same man. The Manitoba Historical Society states only that police linked Nelson to a series of strangulations beginning in San Francisco in 1926 and that the same method was repeated more than 20 times across the United States.
No court ever heard evidence about the San Francisco deaths. They are attributed to Nelson by police and by later historians, not by any verdict.
Portland, Oregon, saw a cluster of deaths in one week in the autumn of 1926. Finn J.D. John, drawing on the Portland Morning Oregonian of late October 1926 and on J.D. Chandler's history Murder and Mayhem in Portland, Oregon, described them in a 2013 newspaper column.
Beata Withers, 35, had been showing a room for rent. Police at first suspected suicide. Virginia Grant, 59, had a house for rent; at first her death looked like heart failure. Mabel Fluke, 37, a widow, had been showing a house. Her father went looking for her the next day, and police found her two days later. She had been strangled, and her jewelry was gone. By the time investigators looked more closely at these deaths, John wrote, the man responsible had moved on to San Francisco.
He returned. After Thanksgiving, by John's account, Blanche Myers, 48, a landlady, was found dead, and Portland police went on high alert. At another Portland lodging house the same man had taken a room under the name Adrian Harris. The landlady there found him pleasant, and John wrote that jewelry he gave to her and to one of her lodgers had been taken from the dead women. John identified the "Dark Strangler" of Portland as Earle Leonard Nelson.
These Portland deaths, too, were never tried. They are attributed to Nelson by John and by the other historians who have studied the case.
From the West Coast, the deaths attributed to Nelson moved east. Drexler and John list Council Bluffs, Iowa; Kansas City, Missouri; Philadelphia; Buffalo, New York; Detroit; and Chicago, in the winter of 1926 and the spring of 1927. John wrote that one of the dead was an eight-month-old baby; the Canadian Press, too, noted in 1967 that one victim was a baby. The Winnipeg Police Museum's history of the department says he travelled across the northern United States in 1926 and 1927 and was linked to 24 American murders, while other similar killings could not be attributed to him.
The names, dates and circumstances of these deaths were not reported in detail, and none was ever tested in court. Esau's second book on the case, 31 Murders: Following the Trail of Serial Sex Killer Earle Nelson, published by McFarland in 2024, re-examines the American cases one by one, including unsolved landlady killings that earlier writers did not attribute to him.
In early June 1927 Nelson crossed from the United States into Canada. No one knows why, Kirkus Reviews observed in its notice of Esau's first book. According to Drexler, he arrived in Winnipeg on June 8 and took lodgings in a rooming house.
Within a few days two people were dead in Winnipeg. The first was Lola Cowan, a girl whom the Manitoba Historical Society describes as a 14-year-old "flower girl," and whom Kirkus gives as 13. The second was Emily Patterson, a 27-year-old housewife. The Winnipeg Police Museum's history records the girl's death first and the woman's second.
Lola Cowan's death was never tried. It was attributed to Nelson by the Winnipeg police, as the department's museum history records, and by the historians who have written about the case; but he was tried for one death only.
Emily Patterson's death was the one that went to court. The Canadian Press later wrote that police traced Nelson through clothing and jewelry taken from one of the Winnipeg victims. Nelson had left the city, gone briefly to Regina, Saskatchewan, and then turned back into Manitoba, heading south toward the United States border, according to the Winnipeg Police Museum and the Killarney local-history accounts.
The search for the Winnipeg killer spread across three provinces, according to the account preserved by the Killarney heritage project on the Manitoba Historical Society's Virtual Manitoba site. The Society's biographical entry calls it Canada's largest manhunt. Drexler wrote that police circulated a description after the Winnipeg killings.
Nelson was seen near Boissevain, in southwestern Manitoba, the day before his capture. He was hitchhiking south and then walking along an old railway line toward the border, according to the Killarney historian Lawrence Smith, whose recollections the heritage project recorded. On June 15, 1927, he stopped at a general store in the hamlet of Wakopa. The storekeeper's wife felt uneasy about him and asked her husband and a local grain buyer to keep watch while she telephoned the provincial police at Killarney. The grain buyer later said it was the stranger's boots that first made him suspicious. The two men followed him, and a local man driving a team and wagon gave the stranger a lift toward Bannerman.
Sergeant W.B. Gray and Constable Sewell of the Manitoba Provincial Police's Killarney detachment made the arrest. The heritage accounts place it at or near Wakopa; Smith remembered it as Bannerman, and the Winnipeg Police Museum puts it south of Killarney. The prisoner gave his name as Virgil Wilson, according to the Manitoba Historical Society and Drexler. Another constable, who had traced the man from Boissevain, reached Wakopa a few minutes after Gray.
The officers lodged their prisoner in the Killarney lockup in the town hall. The town constable in charge of the cells stepped out for a few minutes to buy tobacco, the Killarney account says, and when he came back the prisoner was gone. Drexler wrote that he slipped out while the constables were telephoning Winnipeg.
A night-long search followed. Drexler described a posse of some 500 men. The Killarney account says that Nelson hid in a barn, where he found a pair of boots and put them on, since he had been in his stocking feet. Early the next morning a local man told Sergeant Gray that a stranger had asked him for the makings of a cigarette. Gray and Constable Renton of the Crystal City detachment went to the spot.
The accounts of the final capture differ in detail. The Killarney heritage text says that Nelson came out of hiding when he heard a train whistle, apparently hoping for a freight train, and was taken. It also says that he was caught at about 9 a.m., just as a special train from Winnipeg arrived carrying police and bloodhounds, and that he was put aboard it. Drexler wrote that Nelson walked to the station and boarded a train for the United States, and that armed detectives led by the Winnipeg police chief, George Smith, arrested him there. The Manitoba Historical Society states simply that he escaped from the Killarney town hall lockup and was recaptured.
The people who helped were rewarded. The storekeeper and the grain buyer each received $300, and two other local men $150 each, according to the Killarney accounts.
Once Nelson was in custody, American police connected him with the stranglings in their own cities. The Canadian Press wrote in 1967 that Nelson's description matched that of the man sought in the American killings. The Manitoba Historical Society says police linked him to the series of strangulations that had begun in San Francisco in 1926. Esau's research, as described by the University of Manitoba in 2022, set out how the circumstantial evidence pointed to Nelson as the man the press had called the "gorilla man strangler." Esau has said plainly that the case is not a wrongful conviction story.
Nelson appeared in Winnipeg police court for a preliminary hearing on June 23, 1927, according to the Killarney heritage account. The charge was the murder of Emily Patterson. His trial was set for November 1, 1927.
The months between were not quiet. Esau's 2022 book examines the political and professional issues that arose before and during the trial, and the University of Manitoba's summary of his work says that pretrial publicity and the prejudging of the accused raised serious questions about the fairness of the trial. Kirkus quoted a newspaper of the time that called him the most vicious killer ever run to earth in Canadian criminal history.
The trial took place in Winnipeg before a jury. The Crown prosecutor was R.B. Graham. The court appointed James Stitt, a Winnipeg lawyer, to defend Nelson.
No scientific evidence linked Nelson to the killing, Kirkus noted in summarizing Esau's book; the case was circumstantial. One piece of evidence Esau discusses came from a barber, who testified that Nelson had a fresh sore on his head, which the prosecution tied to the killing.
The real contest was over his sanity. The only issue at trial, Kirkus wrote, was whether Nelson was legally insane. He was described as a "constitutional psychopath" who had spent time in a California mental hospital. The psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Mathers testified on the question of his sanity, and the clash between Mathers and the defense is one of the threads of Esau's book. The judge left little doubt about his own view. He told the jury, as Kirkus quoted, that a man "may be insane for a period at some time in his life and get over it."
The jury found Nelson guilty of the murder of Emily Patterson. He was sentenced to be hanged on Friday, January 13, 1928, at the Vaughan Street Jail in Winnipeg, according to the Killarney heritage account. Esau has suggested that the jurors may have believed Nelson was insane but thought he should hang anyway. He has also argued that Nelson might properly have been found legally insane, or that his death sentence should have been commuted on that ground.
Nelson continued to deny the killings. The Canadian Press reported in 1967 that he maintained his innocence until his execution, and that he spoke of recurring headaches and of having spent a short time in a mental institution in his youth. The Manitoba Historical Society states that he never confessed.
No appeal court decision on his conviction and no commutation were reported.
Nelson was hanged in Winnipeg on January 13, 1928. The hangman was Arthur Ellis. Esau, in a 2025 study of Canada's hangmen published by the Manitoba Law Journal, traced Ellis's travels that month: from Montreal to Vancouver, then to Winnipeg for the Nelson execution, and on to Halifax for another hanging on January 19, 1928. Esau records that Ellis spoke enthusiastically about hanging Nelson, and writes in his introduction to the study that in the Nelson case "one serial killer hanged another serial killer."
Lawrence Smith, the Killarney historian, recalled that the Vaughan Street Jail stood across from a women's residence of the University of Manitoba, and that people rented rooms there to watch the execution.
With the execution, the Canadian Press wrote, police in Canada and the United States closed the files on 22 murder cases.
Kirkus noted that Harold Schechter had covered it in his 1998 book Bestial. Alvin Esau's work rests on the official files. A law professor at the University of Manitoba from 1977 to 2010, he obtained the Attorney General's files through a freedom of information request, was later given access to Winnipeg police files, and drew on material from Detective Sergeant John Burchill and on earlier research by Ken Kehler at the national archives in Ottawa. He also worked in American archives and libraries, and he has described keeping about 100 binders of newspaper clippings.
The result was The Gorilla Man Strangler Case: Serial Killer Earle Nelson, published by FriesenPress in 2022. It concentrates on the two Winnipeg killings and the legal process that followed: the manhunt, the pretrial period, the insanity defense, the conduct of the trial and the role of the hangman. A second book, 31 Murders, followed in 2024 and turned to the American cases. In 2025 the Manitoba Law Journal published Esau's study of Canada's hangmen, which places the Nelson execution in the career of Arthur Ellis.
Kirkus found the first book overly detailed for general readers but praised the clarity with which it guided readers through the legal issues. BC BookLook described it as drawing on unpublished material and highlighted its account of the clash between the defense and the psychiatrist Dr. Mathers over the reach of the insanity defense.
The case left a mark on Winnipeg as well. The Winnipeg Police Museum's history of the 1920s says newspapers and magazines across North America covered the manhunt and trial, putting the city on the map, and that the Winnipeg police investigation led to the conviction and the execution.
How many people he killed. Only one killing, that of Emily Patterson, was proved in court. Every other figure is an attribution. The Canadian Press in 1967 gave 22 cases closed on his execution. The Winnipeg Police Museum gives 24 American deaths plus the two in Winnipeg. Finn J.D. John wrote of at least 21 women and a baby, and possibly more than 30. Drexler wrote of at least 22 women. Esau has called the conventional figure of 22 at least ten short and has examined 32 American deaths that he thinks might be attributed to Nelson, describing 34 possible victims in all. The Manitoba Historical Society describes the link to the American deaths as purely circumstantial.
Lola Cowan's age. The Manitoba Historical Society and Drexler give 14; Kirkus gives 13.
His birth year. The Manitoba Historical Society gives 1898. Other dates in circulation were not confirmed in the reporting.
His upbringing. Accounts of a strict or fanatically religious grandmother appear in popular writing, including Drexler's and John's. Esau, after working through the official files, has called these stories myths, while agreeing that Nelson was very interested in religion and often quoted the Bible.
Where and how he was caught. The heritage accounts place the first arrest at or near Wakopa on June 15, 1927; one local recollection places it at Bannerman; the Winnipeg Police Museum says south of Killarney; Drexler wrote of Killarney. Accounts of the recapture the next morning differ on whether he was taken near a lumberyard, as he came out of hiding at the sound of a train, or at the railway station as a special train arrived from Winnipeg.
Whether he was sane. The jury rejected the insanity defense. Esau, the legal historian who has studied the trial record most closely, has argued that Nelson might have been found legally insane and that his sentence could have been commuted on that ground.
1898: born in San Francisco, by the year the Manitoba Historical Society gives.
Before 1926: expelled from school as a young child; time in San Quentin State Prison, the Navy and the state mental hospital at Napa, by Drexler's account; escapes from a California mental institution.
February 1926: Clara Newman, 60, a San Francisco landlady, is found dead; Drexler names her as the first death attributed to Nelson.
1926: Lillian St. Mary, a San Francisco landlady, is killed; attributed to Nelson.
Autumn 1926: Beata Withers, Virginia Grant and Mabel Fluke die in Portland, Oregon, in one week; attributed to the same man.
After Thanksgiving 1926: Blanche Myers, 48, a Portland landlady, is found dead; attributed to Nelson.
Winter 1926 to spring 1927: further deaths attributed to him in Council Bluffs, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit and Chicago.
June 1927: crosses into Canada; Drexler dates his arrival in Winnipeg to June 8.
June 1927: Lola Cowan and Emily Patterson are killed in Winnipeg.
June 15, 1927: arrested near Wakopa, Manitoba, by the Manitoba Provincial Police; escapes from the Killarney lockup.
The next morning: recaptured near Killarney and taken to Winnipeg.
June 23, 1927: preliminary hearing in Winnipeg police court.
November 1, 1927: trial date set for the murder of Emily Patterson; prosecutor R.B. Graham, defense counsel James Stitt.
November 1927: the jury finds him guilty; he is sentenced to hang.
January 13, 1928: hanged at the Vaughan Street Jail, Winnipeg, by Arthur Ellis.
1967: the Canadian Press recalls the case in its review of a century of Canadian capital cases.
2022: Alvin Esau publishes The Gorilla Man Strangler Case.
2024: Esau publishes 31 Murders.
2025: the Manitoba Law Journal publishes Esau's study of Canada's hangmen.