"Angel Face": the story of a maniac and a mama's boy by Sean Gillis

As a child, his mother called Sean Vincent Gillis "a baby with an angelic face" and did not even suspect that her child would turn into a monster killer and rapist. In ten years, from 1994 to 2004, this inhuman killed and raped eight women in the state of Louisiana. The maniac was very careful and got caught only thanks to the achievements of modern science.

Sean Vincent Gillis was born in 1962 in the second largest city of the state of Louisiana, Baton Rouge. His father ran away from the family immediately after the birth of his son and the boy was raised by his mother – Yvonne, as well as his grandparents. Although Sean's family was incomplete, it was quite respectable and prosperous – his mother worked in television and fully provided for her son.

Young Gillis did not show any special criminal tendencies, limiting himself to fairly harmless and typical offenses for American teenagers. Sean's account included fines for speeding, one arrest for possession of marijuana and an administrative case for contempt of court.

Sean Gillis easily found a common language with his peers, studied well at school and did not cause much trouble to his mother, grandmother and grandfather. Having grown up, he remained to live in the house of his mother, in whom the passion of guardianship was awakened. Only at the age of 32, Gillis was able to escape from his mother's influence. In 1994, the man began living with a girl named Terry Lemoane, with whom he would be inseparable until his arrest in 2004.

Just two months after leaving home, Sean Gillis committed his first murder. The series of deaths began with 81-year-old Ann Bryan, who was cut by a maniac Gordo and inflicted 50 stab wounds with a knife. Later, he told investigators that he did not want to kill the old woman, but only planned to rape her, but she began to call for help and violently fight back, which forced Sean to resort to drastic measures.

Ann became the oldest victim of a serial killer – after her, he dealt with seven more women, aged from 29 to 52 years. Until now, it has not been possible to find out why the guy with the" angelic face " turned into a ruthless maniac. Police psychologists believe that the breakup with his mother was the impetus.

Until the age of 30, Yvonne paid all Sean's bills, fed and clothed her son, provided him with money for expenses. Rare and sluggish attempts of a man to start earning money on his own ended in failures, but this only pleased the mother, who wanted her beloved offspring to be in her sight.

But in 1992, Yvonne Gillis received a lucrative offer from a major TV and radio company from Atlanta and left 700 km from Baton Rouge. Shona categorically refused to leave his native home and was left to himself, if you can say so about an adult physically healthy man.

Apparently, in the empty mother's house, Gillis finally went crazy and he fiercely hated women who looked like his mother. All the victims of the maniac were older than him or looked older, and they were also distinguished by an active nature, like Yvonne's. Like, for example, the third victim of a maniac – Hardy Schmidt, who was 52 years old.

Gillis noticed this woman because she went for a run every morning and looked energetic and domineering. Sean watched Hardy for three weeks until he attacked a woman on May 30, 1999. On that day, Schmidt was raped and killed, after which the maniac hid for five years.

A psychopath who raped and hacked his victims with a knife after terrible crimes came home and his common-law wife Terri did not even suspect with whom she had been sharing a shelter and a bed for ten years. After a five-year break, Gillis, feeling elusive, continued the murders and did not stop until the very exposure.

Officially, Sean Gillis has eight victims on his account, but this figure is still in doubt. Since 2004, the investigation has been ongoing and the maniac, who is serving a life sentence for eight deaths, constantly hints that there were much more attacks. This is a common tactic of "lifers" who diversify their meaningless and monotonous life with interrogations, identifications and visits to crime scenes. Nevertheless, the Louisiana police does not exclude that the investigation does not know everything.

When committing the attacks, Sean Gillis was extremely careful and tried not to leave any evidence. But one day he still made a mistake and the police found his hair near the next victim. In the 90s, this finding would not have made special weather, but in the 2000s, when experts were able to do DNA analysis, everything was different.

Near the brutally murdered 43-year-old Donna Johnston, the police found not only hair, but also tire tracks. It turned out that this is a very rare series of Goodyear tires in the United States, discontinued just three years after it appeared on the market. It was not difficult to find the owners of this rubber in the 300-thousandth Baton Rouge-the car shops had the data of all buyers.

Thus, in the hands of law enforcement officers there was a list of several hundred citizens of both sexes, from which women and black citizens were immediately excluded. It remained to find the owner of the hair among the remaining 200 white guys with the help of DNA analysis and the crime was solved.

Sean Gillis was arrested in the presence of a stunned girlfriend right at his mother's house, where he had lived since birth. In the basement, the police found a hiding place in which the maniac carefully kept things taken "as a souvenir" from his victims, newspaper clippings and even photos of the dead taken by him. This discovery allowed us to immediately obtain irrefutable evidence of three of the eight murders in which Gillis was suspected.

This was quite enough for a Louisiana court to sentence Sean Gillis to life in prison. Later, seeing that he had nothing to lose, the maniac confessed to five more murders. Now the guy with the "angelic face" is almost 60 years old and he is still a "guest" of the state prison of the strict regime of Louisiana. Investigators believe that it is too early to put an end to the Gillis case, and he himself is not averse to talking and asking the next police job.

It remains to add that appearance is often deceptive. A good example is the story of another American maniac-Adolf Laudenberg, nicknamed "Santa the Strangler".