William Dean Christensen

William Dean Christensen (September 24, 1945 – October 31, 1990) was a Canadian-American serial killer who killed and mutilated at least four people in Canada and the United States between 1982 and 1983. He became known as the American Jack the Ripper – an allusion to English serial killer Jack the Ripper – for the brutality of his crimes and the mystery surrounding his victim count. He was convicted of two murders in Pennsylvania and sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years in Maryland for rape.

Early life Christensen was born on September 24, 1945, in Bethesda, Maryland. His criminal pastimes began in 1969 when he picked up a 19-year-old hitchhiker in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. He drove her to an isolated area where he raped and stabbed her 19 times in her arms, hands, and face. She survived the attack and Christensen was arrested. He was sentenced to five years in prison for this crime but instead was transferred to a state facility for delinquents, then released the following year. In 1974, Christensen and another man abducted a go-go dancer in Georgetown and drove her to a secluded area. The two took turns raping and beating the woman. Christensen told her, "I will dismember you with an hacksaw". That same month, Christensen strangled 26-year-old Murielle Guay, again dismembering the body afterwards. Both of their remains were discovered on April 27. Trudel was determined to have been dead for about 20 to 30 hours and Guay was determined to have been dead for 10 days. Christensen was almost immediately identified as a suspect because he owned the apartment Trudel was found in; witnesses identified him as the last person seen with Guay. Christensen soon fled to the United States, while Canadian arrest warrants were issued. The following month, Canadian detectives interviewed Christensen's parents at the family home in Maryland. The two admitted that they had met with their son and smuggled him $5,000. On June 29, 1983, Christensen shot two men at an Amtrak railroad station in Trenton. The men survived. A few days after his conviction, Shrader was identified as Christensen. US and Canadian authorities suspected Christensen had killed more than a dozen people during his two years on the run. In early 1985, Pennsylvania investigators linked Angiers' murder to Christensen after finding a bloody knife and hacksaw in his home. Christensen was convicted of Angiers' murder in 1990, for which he was sentenced to serve 10 to 20 years in prison. In 1990 a cellmate of Christensen said that he had allegedly confessed to killing 24 people: two in England, four in Canada, and 16 in the United States.