Robert Liberty

Robert Willard Liberty (May 15, 1947 – January 20, 1971), known as The Candlelight Killer, was an American serial killer who murdered two men in Southern California from March to June 1970 in ritualistic style, and left taunting messages behind for authorities to find. Liberty had spent three years in a mental hospital prior to the murders for killing his girlfriend in 1966. In 1971, while awaiting trial for the new killings, Liberty was murdered by a fellow inmate.

Murder of Marcella Landis In 1966, while housed at Orange County Medical Center, Liberty, then 19, met 31-year-old Marcella Landis. Like Liberty, Landis was being treated after a suicide attempt. On June 4, 1966, Liberty strangled Landis to death with a silk stocking. After the murder, he dressed up the body and applied makeup to it, before laying it on a couch and lit candles from her head to her feet and placing a Bible on her chest. Liberty was charged with the murder, but later took off to avoid the charge. A warrant was issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for flight to avoid prosecution. He displayed the body on the bedroom floor and lit candles on the head. He then brandished a grease pencil, and wrote on the bedroom door "The Candlelight Killer Strikes Again", and nearby also wrote "Catch Me If You Can".

Capture Investigators in various cities in Orange County checked bars and other placing Liberty was known to frequent. By that time, Liberty fled out of state. On June 9, Liberty along with Bierly and Glenn Alan Fawcett, 17, robbed a motel in Colorado Springs, Colorado of $109, and kidnapped the owner's wife. Before he could be brought to trial, on January 20, 1971, Liberty, along with his cellmate Paul Eugene Rankin, were strangled to death by another cellmate Timothy Earl Dudley, 24. Dudley was sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty in April.