[2] Born in Gaffney, South Carolina in 1929, not much is known about Lipscomb's upbringing, but according to his later confessions, he was known to be a persistent voyeur who had been jailed in his hometown for spying on a woman undressing herself.

The murder weapon was supposedly a knife, with either a gap in the blade or a dull end, as there were notable irregularities in the victim's wounds.

[1] While the killer had left little in the way of physical evidence, witnesses recalled seeing a black man walking towards the Maxwell household, and later fleeing after the killing.

To prove his guilt, he offered to take them to his family home, where he presented them with a pearl-handled knife, hidden in a box stored in the garage, claiming that it was the murder weapon.

[1] He was sent for a second round of evaluations at the Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro, where doctors determined that while he had a low IQ (a total of 51), he didn't suffer from any visual disorders and was capable of distinguishing right from wrong.

[4] Between December 1958 and April 1959, Baltimore was struck by a series of mysterious killings, always aimed at older women who lived within several blocks of one another.

Since all of them showed signs of being committed by the same offender, the killer was nicknamed "The Dawn Strangler", as his crimes always happened in the early morning.

[5] The first victim was 38-year-old black woman Mae Hall, whose body was found in a neighbor's yard on 1300 East Eager Street on December 9, 1958.

[3] Five days later, 57-year-old Lottie Kight, a white practical nurse, left in the early morning to sweep the sidewalk in front of her house.

Authorities started questioning various suspects about the killing, making several undergo lie detector tests, but all were eventually released, with the murders halting at a standstill.

[5] Eventually, Lipscomb wrote a written confession in which he professed his guilt for the murder of Lottie Kight, with other statements in it appearing convincing enough to put him as the killer of both Hall and Weiss.