Samuel Legg

Samuel William Legg III (born August 1969) is an American serial killer and rapist responsible for the murders of at least five women in Ohio and Illinois during the 1990s. In 1990, he came to the attention of law enforcement on suspicion of killing his 14-year-old stepdaughter, but he was only exposed in 2019, thanks to DNA profiling. Legg has denied the crimes attributed to him.

Samuel Legg
Born	Samuel William Legg III August 1969 (age 50–51) Tucson, Arizona, U.S.
Criminal penalty	Involuntary commitment
Details
Victims	5+
Span of crimes	1989–1992 (known murders)
Country	United States
State(s)	Ohio, Illinois
Date apprehended	For the final time on January 28, 2019
Imprisoned at	Twin Valley Behavioral Health Center, Columbus, Ohio

Biography

Samuel Legg was born in August 1969, in Tucson, Arizona.[1] He came from a large family with several brothers and sisters. In the mid-1970s, his parents divorced, with Samuel being left with his father, who moved to Akron, Ohio. Legg's father and stepmother were very strict, subjecting him to a harsh, disciplinarion lifestyle that affected the young child's personality. In his youth, Samuel was known as an introverted boy with a short temper, because of which he was avoided by his peers. In 1988, his mother, along with her children from a second marriage, also moved to Ohio, as a result of which Legg began to spend a lot of time with her and his step-brother, Todd.[2]

During this period, he met Nancy Hicks in the city of Elyria, whom he soon married and adopted her daughter, 14-year-old Angela. After the wedding, Samuel began to demonstrate deviant behavior towards his stepdaughter and a tendency for pathlogical lying, due to which he frequently argued with his wife. In 1989, he was first arrested for theft in Lorain County, and a year later, he became the prime suspect in the murder of his stepdaughter, who had disappeared on July 21, 1990. During the investigation, Legg told the police that the girl was a dromomaniac and had run away from home, but his wife and friends questioned those claims, since all of Angela's clothes and shoes remained in the house. Her skeletal remains were found on August 30 of that year.[3] After the discovery of the corpse, Samuel Legg was detained and interrogated, during which he was put under a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive. He insisted on his innocence, and despite circumstantial evidence pointing towards his guilt, he was ultimately let go.[4]

However, his relationship with his wife and other relatives worsened after this incident, as a result of which he divorced in 1991. After the divorce, he left Elyria for Cleveland, where he found a job as a truck driver. For the next 10 years, he worked as a truck driver and automechanic, spending a lot of time among pimps and prostitutes and travelling to several states around the country.[5] In 1992, he was charged with theft for a second time and given a year of probation. During this period, he married for a second time and had a child, but he divorced again in 1994. In 1997, he was arrested in Cuyahoga County on another theft charge, but was again given probation due to cooperation with the investigators. In 2001, he left Ohio and returned to Tucson, where his father lived. There, Legg took up entrepreneurship in the field of landscape design and married for a third time, but soon began to show signs of mental illness and deviant behavior, as a result of which he quit his business and divorced his wife.[6]

In addition, he was charged with malicious evasion of alimony, in connection with which he was extradited back to Cuyahoga County, where he was convicted and received 6 months of community service. At the end of 2014, he committed several minor offences, after which he was arrested and charged in January 2015, but was released after posting bail and then fled. The trial was scheduled for April of that year, but Legg didn't appear. It wasn't possible to establish his location, and thus, he was put on a wanted list. A few days later, Samuel was discovered in a desert area, several tens of kilometers away from Tucson. He couldn't explain why he was there to the police officers, showing obvious signs of a mental illness, as well as severe dehydration and skin burns, caused by prolonged exposure to the sun's UV rays. Legg was taken to a nearby hospital, where he received medical care. He was to be detained for failing to appear in court for an indefinite period, but during the medical examination, he was diagnosed with neurosyphillis, an infection which caused schizophrenia. As a result of this exam, he was assigned to compulsory medical treatment in a psychiatric hospital, and the end of 2015, he was transferred to a nursing home in Chandler, Arizona. In March 2016, he escaped from the institution, but was discovered two days later skulking around a house, whose owner, taking notice of the fact that the man was probably mentally deranged, called the police. In February 2017, during a group visit to the nursing home, Legg escaped again. He was later found in Tempe, trying to hitchhike back home to Tucson. A month later, he made another two unsuccessful escape attempts. In mid-2017, his mental state deteriorated even further, with complaints about disorientation and auditory hallucinations. Due to the inadequate treatment of the security officers towards their duties and a high level of corruption in the institution, in October and December 2018, Samuel managed to escape twice more from the nursing home.[7][8]

Exposure

In January 2019, using a genealogy database of DNA samples left at the crime scenes,[9] Samuel Legg was connected with the murders of 4 women and the rape of a 17-year-old in Medina County, Ohio, for which he was arrested on January 28, 2019.[10] He was extradited from Chandler to Ohio, where he was charged with the rape, which had occurred in September 1997, near the I-71.[11] In addition, DNA testing showed that his profile corresponded with the profile with the killer of Sharon Lynn Kedzerski, who disappeared on October 25, 1989 from Miami Lakes, Florida.[12] Her body was found severely beaten and strangled at a truck parking and service station in Austintown, Ohio in April 1992, near the I-80. Legg was charged with Kedzerski's murder, as well as those of three other women, one of whom he had killed in Illinois.[13] In anticipation of his trial, his lawyers filed a petition for a psychiatric examination to establish whether their client was mentally fit, which was granted. The results ruled that Samuel Legg couldn't be tried for health reasons, and in June 2019, he was sent away to involuntary commitment at the Twin Valley Behavioral Health Center, a psychiatric clinic stationed in Columbus.[14] In July 2020 he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the case of Julie A. Konkol, whose body was discovered in 1997 in Lake County, Illinois.[15]

References

1. "Samuel W Legg 3rd Age 50 (Aug 1969)".
2. "Half brother of Legg says his mom thought Sam killed Angela Hicks.Feb. 20, 2019".
3. "Records: Possible serial killer on probation during '97 rape case. Feb 15, 2019".
4. "Arizona man accused of 1997 Ohio rape has now been charged with 1992 murder. Feb 14, 2019".
5. "Samuel W Legg 3rd Age 50 (Aug 1969)".
6. "Possible serial killer lived strange life here".
7. "Dazed and Delusional: Retracing the recent years of suspected serial killer Samuel Legg III. Feb 22, 2019".
8. "Records: Possible serial killer on probation during '97 rape case. Feb 15, 2019".
9. "How familial DNA led to 'a serial killer'. 5/16/2019".
10. "Arizona man extradited in 22-year-old Ohio rape case. Feb 13, 2019".
11. "Ohio Attorney General, Medina County officials announced arrest in 1997 rape case. Feb 13, 2019".
12. "Sharon Lynn Kedzierski. Missing Since. 10/25/1989".
13. "Man accused of 1997 Medina rape has now been charged with 1992 Austintown murder. Feb 14, 2019".
14. "Judge rules trucker incompetent for trial in Austintown cold murder case. June 27th 2019".
15. "Arrest of alleged serial killer in Ohio leads to murder charges in 1997 Lake County case. July 29, 2020".