On Saturday, March 14, 1992, 49-year-old Claude Hawkins decided to do some early morning fishing after finishing up his midnight shift at Pittsburgh Plate and Glass Company.  Married and the father of four, Hawkins loved fishing and had a favorite spot just below Will’s Creek Dam northwest of Belmont, Ohio, in Coshocton County.  He was found dead a short while later, shot in the back at close range.

Will's Creek, just below the dam (David Lohr)

Since the Hawkins murder occurred on federal land, the FBI was called in.  Special Agent Harry Trumbitis, from the Columbus field office was one of the officers assigned to the case.  “Usually you would find some type of shell casing in the area.  I remember looking very hard, metal detectors, hands and knees, for any shell casings and that.  None were ever found, and so that was something that you know if, in fact, we had somebody who was evidence conscience enough to pick up the shell casing after they shot and killed somebody, we were dealing with a different brand of person here.”

New Philadelphia, the County Seat (David Lohr)

The FBI was convinced that Hawkins’ murder was not a solitary event. On March 26, 1992, in New Philadelphia, just south of Canton, officers from four counties, the Ohio Division of Wildlife, and the FBI gathered to compare notes.  As the meeting progressed, the assembled officers discovered that the earliest of possibly related homicides occurred on April 1, 1989.  At about 9:30 a.m., on a back road in Tuscarawas County, about 100 miles north of Belmont County, 35-year-old truck driver Donald Welling had been out jogging near his home when someone put a .30-caliber rifle bullet through his heart from approximately 10 feet away.  At the time, local authorities could not find a motive or any evidence to help them solve the murder. 

Police investigate the site of Donald Welling's murder

Jamie Paxton’s murder was also brought up, and a link seemed apparent.  Investigators concluded that the killer had been inactive for 19 months before Paxton’s murder in Belmont.  They also discovered that 18 days after Jamie’s murder, on November 28, 1990, there had been another murder in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Resident Kevin Loring, a 30-year-old refrigerator technician who was married and the father of three children, had been murdered by a single gunshot wound to the face. He had been hunting deer in a strip mine area in Muskingun County, west of Belmont County and south of Coshocton County.  The murder of Loring had been deemed a hunting accident, but there was little question now as to what had actually happened.  It did not take long for investigators to realize that a serial killer was roaming the back roads of southern Ohio.