Charlie Chop-off

Charlie Chop-off is the pseudonym given to an unidentified American serial killer known to have killed three black children and one Puerto Rican child in Manhattan between 1972 and 1973. The assailant is also known to have attempted to murder one other child.

All the victims of Charlie Chop-off were male, and all but one of the attacks involved genital mutilation or attempted genital mutilation of the victims.

While the case is still considered an open one, Ernesto "Erno" Soto was held as a suspect and confessed to one of the murders, but was considered unfit for trial in December 1976 and returned to a mental institution.

Murders On March 9, 1972, eight-year-old Douglas Owens was found dead, stabbed 38 times. His penis had been cut but not severed from his body. On April 20, another black youth was repeatedly stabbed; his genitals were severed from his body, although he survived his injuries. On October 23, ten-year-old Wendell Hubbard was stabbed to death on the roof of an East Harlem tenement block. His penis had also been severed from his body.

On March 6, 1973, a nine-year-old Puerto Rican child named Luis Ortiz was stabbed 38 times and likewise mutilated. Finally, on August 17, 1973, eight-year-old Steven Cropper was repeatedly slashed with a razor on the roof of a tenement block. He bled to death from an injury to his arm, although his penis was left intact. Soto confessed to the 1973 slaying of Cropper. His only surviving victim did say that Soto looked like his attacker but refused to positively identify him. Manhattan State Hospital officials stated that Soto was in their custody at the time of the murder but also later confirmed that he might have escaped confinement, as it had happened before.

"Miguel Rivera" In 1975, Barbara Gelb published On the Track of Murder and used Miguel Rivera as a pseudonym for Soto. Since then, numerous authors, such as Peter Vronsky or Lane and Gregg, have erroneously cited the name as being that of the killer.