John Fautenberry

From there, Fautenberry drove to the Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, abandoning Daron's car at the parking lot. He bought a one-way ticket to Juneau, Alaska, arriving there on March 2 or 3rd, finding work on a fishing boat and moving into the downtown Bergman Hotel. On March 14, he was hanging out at a rural bar, having been fired from his job at the fishing boat, when he came across 39-year-old Jefferson "Jeff" Diffee, a miner who worked at the Greens Creek silver mine. The two struck up a conversation, and Diffee, feeling sorry for the newcomer who wasn't accustomed to the Alaskan wilderness, invited Fautenberry to his condominium. There, Fautenberry proceeded to beat and stab him 17–18 times, before stealing Diffee's wallet, automatic teller machine card and 9mm handgun. The following day, he withdrew $400 from Diffee's account, a move noted by authorities. In the meantime, co-workers had filed a missing persons report for Diffee, who hadn't gone to work in two days.

On July 14, 2009, he was executed by lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, about two hours after the Supreme Court denied a final request to delay the procedure.

Following his death sentence, as per Ohio law, Fautenberry automatically filed for appeal on several occasions, but every time, he was unsuccessful. By 2008, when Fautenberry had exhausted all of his state and federal appeals, prosecutor Joe Deters formally requested his execution. His bids for parole were also denied, as a result of protest from family members of his victims.

Fautenberry's first confirmed victim was 47-year-old Donald 'Don' Nutley, from Waco, Texas. The pair crossed paths in November 1990 at a truck stop in Troutdale, Oregon, and upon learning that Nutley was going to Mount Hood for target practice, Fautenberry offered to accompany him. Don agreed, and the two men traveled to the area, where Nutley promptly vanished. His disappearance remained a mystery until April 21, 1991, when his teeth and skull, complete with a bullet hole, were found in a wooded area northeast of rural Zigzag.

On February 1, 1991, Fautenberry encountered 27-year-old fellow trucker Gary Farmer, from Springfield, Tennessee, at the Pilot Truck Stop in Bloomsbury, New Jersey, not far from the I-78. According to Fautenberry, Farmer supposedly made unwanted sexual advances on him, because of which he killed him in retaliation, robbing Farmer of a knife, watch and $40, before leaving his body in the truck's sleeping compartment. Farmer's body was found on February 5 and remained unidentified for a few days, and after his identity was recovered, authorities released a sketch of a man wanted for questioning in his death. According to his employers, CPA America, Farmer was on a cross-country route bound for Hunterdon County at the time of his death. At the time of the murder, Fautenberry was travelling towards Zion, Illinois, and had stopped at the truck stop to have breakfast.

Sixteen days later, 45-year-old Joseph Daron, Jr., a divorced father and data supervisor at the Community Mutual Blue Cross & Shield, went missing from his Miami Township home in Ohio, after dropping off his two daughters at their mothers' home in Union Township. Two days after, a co-worker filed a missing persons report. After some time passed, Daron still hadn't been located, but, strangely enough, his white 1988 Subaru had been spotted in Portland, Oregon and Idaho, in addition to that his credit cards had been used a total of 25 times by none other than Fautenberry himself. On March 20, a motorist pulled off the road near River Downs in Anderson Township, finding the body of a man. Judging by the man's clothing and physical description, it was quickly concluded that the deceased was Joseph Daron. Posing as a hitchhiker, Fautenberry was picked up by the good-natured Daron, proceeding to kill and rob him afterwards.

In 1985, his mother died of cancer, leading Fautenberry to become even more disillusioned and untrustworthy of people, with him developing a growing addiction to drugs and alcohol. In order to support himself, he held several short-term jobs as a long-haul trucker, travelling all across the United States, but was often fired for poor performance and negligence. By the time his murders began, he acquired several more convictions for minor offenses, including carrying a concealed weapon in Ohio and a public disturbance charge in Ledyard, Connecticut.

Three days after killing Diffee, Fautenberry, who had been under surveillance since his linkage to Joseph Daron's stolen car, was arrested at his hotel room in Juneau. Jeff's bank card was found in his hotel room as well. During the course of his interrogations, Fautenberry confessed a total of six murders, including the 1984 stabbing death of 25-year-old homeless man Richard F. Combs in Roseburg, Oregon. According to Fautenberry, the two met in a park and began drinking, and as John drank more, he got angrier at the fact that he had recently been fired from his job. In a fit of rage, he supposedly stabbed Combs in the throat and dumped his body on the freeway. However, another man was already serving a sentence for that crime: 28-year-old Michael T. Collier had confessed and pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Combs case, but had since recanted. The lead concerning Fautenberry was investigated, but in the end, it was abandoned. He was also briefly considered a suspect in the Dr. No murders due to his job as a long-haul trucker, and even questioned about the slaying of a fellow truck driver in New York, but was eventually cleared of suspicion. After a tape-recorded telephone interview with WKRC-TV, in which he confessed to four of his murders, Fautenberry attempted suicide by cutting his wrist with a razor, but was found in time and saved.

John Joseph Fautenberry (July 4, 1963 – July 14, 2009) was an American serial killer. A long-haul trucker, Fautenberry befriended and subsequently murdered five people across four states between 1990 and 1991, and after his arrest, confessed to an additional 1984 murder for which another man was convicted. He was sentenced to death for one of his killings, and subsequently executed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in 2009.

Born on July 4, 1963 in New London, Connecticut, Fautenberry was the illegitimate son of a Navy seaman. Rejected by his father and grandparents, young John was placed in the care of his mother, who went on to marry twice more. He was ignored by his stepfathers, suffering beatings for the smallest of mistakes, once for confusing a potato salad with tomato salad. According to Fautenberry, he would use an imaginary hammer to nail his and his sister's blankets to the beds, in an effort to not get taken away by malicious forces. The family often changed residences, shifting between Ohio and Hawaii before moving to North Kingstown, Rhode Island in 1983. By that time, Fautenberry had already had run-ins with the law: he had stolen a 1968 Chrysler in Atlanta, but was later captured in Heflin, Alabama after leaving a gas station without paying for gas.