[3] Described by prosecutor Robert Stone as "the most sexually deviant person" he had ever encountered,[4] Schaefer was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment at his 1973 trial, to be served at Florida State Prison.

[14] Upon completion of his sophomore year at Broward, he applied for and was accepted for scholarship at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton, where he began his studies in 1968 with aspirations to obtain a Bachelor of Arts in education.

[15] In December 1968, Schaefer married his fiancée, Martha "Marti" Louise Fogg, a fellow FAU student two years his junior whom he had met at Broward, and with whom he had briefly toured in her patriotic singing troupe Sing-Out 66, which offered an alternative to the contemporary hippie movement.

The couple rented a property on SW 22nd Street in Fort Lauderdale, although their relationship soon soured both due to Schaefer's incessant demands for sex and his spending much of his free time hunting.

However, he was fired on November 7 for refusing to accept advice from his superiors and for continuously attempting to impose his own moral and/or political opinions upon his students,[19] which had led to the school receiving numerous complaints from parents.

He was dismissed from his position when his superiors discovered his habit of stopping cars driven by female motorists who had committed minor traffic infractions, then entering their license plate numbers into a database to obtain further personal details about them before contacting them to request dates.

[30] Crowder and Lieutenant Melvin Waldron immediately proceeded to Florida State Road A1A, where—close by the highway—they discovered a desperate, partially-gagged teenage girl with her hands pinioned behind her back swimming via a flutter kick in a subtropical river.

To Trotter's relief, she was informed that a truck driver had discovered Wells staggering through the woodland in the direction towards the highway approximately forty-five minutes earlier, and that her friend was already at the police station.

[38] Although Schaefer repeated his insistence that he had simply overreacted in his efforts to demonstrate the dangers of hitchhiking to the two young women, his story was not believed; he was dismissed from the force and placed under arrest, with Crowder instructing his officers to file charges of false imprisonment and aggravated assault against him.

[32] Mary Alice Briscolina (14) and Elsie Lina Farmer (13) vanished while hitchhiking to a Commercial Boulevard restaurant from a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea motel on October 26, 1972,[45] less than one month after Place and Jessup were last seen alive.

[58] On the afternoon of April 1,[59] a father and son searching for discarded aluminum cans discovered the extensively decomposed remains of two individuals scattered within and around a hole dug among trees in Oak Hammock Park, Port Saint Lucie, Florida.

One victim wore the remnants of blue jeans emblazoned with a circular emblem of the Road Runner,[61] whereas the other was completely nude, and a pile of clothing belonging to the decedents was discovered in nearby undergrowth.

[62] The bodies were taken to the Dade County Medical Examiner's Department, where Dr. Richard Souviron formally identified the victims via dental records and healed bone fractures as Place and Jessup on April 5.

He had frequently returned to his crime scenes weeks or months after the actual murders in order to commit acts of necrophilia with buried and dismembered bodies, or to extract teeth from the skull.

[68] His writings also revealed his fascination with historical methods of torture and execution, and the pleasure he derived from observing acutely distressed females urinate and/or defecate prior to and at the time of their hanging.

[81] On May 18, Schaefer was formally charged with first-degree murder for the killings of Place and Jessup; he was held without bond pending trial[6][j] and transferred to Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee to undergo thirty days of psychiatric examinations before being returned to St. Lucie County jail on June 20.

The results of these examinations revealed Schaefer to be an individual suffering from paranoia, psychosis and acute sexual deviation who viewed himself as "an eliminator of women he deemed immoral", but nonetheless mentally competent to stand trial.

[83][k] At a circuit court hearing on June 21, District Attorney Robert Stone successfully argued before Judge Cyrus Pfeiffer Trowbridge that Schaefer was sane, and thus competent to stand trial.

[89] As the murders of Place and Jessup had been committed at a time when the Supreme Court of Florida had declared capital punishment unconstitutional in the state, prosecutors sought life imprisonment for Schaefer.

[94] The first witnesses to testify on behalf of the state were the two individuals who had discovered the dismembered bodies of Place and Jessup in Oak Hammock Park; both men recounted their discoveries, observations, and contacting of authorities.

Also to testify on Schaefer's behalf was a hunting companion named Edward Harris, who stated he always carried a purse similar to that identified by Jessup's parents and sister when the two went target shooting.

He finished his closing argument by referencing the Constitution; outlining the fact Schaefer had received a fair trial, with legal representation, and the burden of proof upon the prosecution to prove his guilt.

Holding aloft and pointing toward one of Schaefer's handwritten manuscripts introduced into evidence titled "How to Get Away with Murder", Stone stated: "I submit to you ... you will never find that Saturday-night Special, because it is in a canal with [the victims'] skulls.

One of these lawsuits was filed in 1993 against true crime writer Patrick Kendrick, who responded to a letter from Schaefer—masquerading via an outside contact as a college student—purporting to seek advice as to how to overcome his intimidation when meeting the "deadliest killer ever" who was believed to be "worse than Ted Bundy".

In response to this letter, Kendrick had tersely responded there was little reason to be intimidated by Schaefer, whom he described as "a middle-aged, pale and doughy wimp, who preyed on victims that were physically and psychologically weaker than him."

[112] He also sued true crime authors Sondra London, Colin Wilson, and Michael Newton and former FBI agent Robert Ressler for describing him as a serial killer in printed works.

When you have a pair of lively teenage bimbolinas bound hand and foot and ready for a session with the skinning knife, neither one of the little devils wants to be the one to go first, and they don't mind telling you quickly why their best friend should be the one to die."

[119] According to prison officials and prosecutors, a 32-year-old fellow inmate named Vincent Faustino Rivera had killed Schaefer following an argument over who received the final cup of hot water from a dispenser days prior to his murder.

"[119] At the time of Schaefer's death, Broward County investigators were in the process of preparing to bring further murder charges pertaining to three unsolved murders—in part to ensure he would never be freed from prison.

[122] The initial list of twenty-eight potential victims was first published in a Florida periodical in the spring of 1973, although this list—which also includes seven males whose personal artifacts were recovered from his mother's home—contains the names of several individuals later discovered to have still been alive at the time of his arrest, or to have died at a later date.