Larry Eyler

Journalist and author Gera-Lind Kolarik, reflecting on Eyler's abduction and stabbing of Craig Long (2015)

The two regularly socialized within Indianapolis's gay community, although Little—a socially awkward, taciturn and unattractive individual—typically struggled to form friendships or obtain sexual partners during these excursions, resulting in Eyler frequently bringing young men to Little's home to engage in sex with the two.

On October 18, the partially decomposed bodies of four further victims were discovered alongside an oak tree close to an abandoned farmhouse in Lake Village, Indiana. Each victim had been deceased for several months, and all four decedents had been partially buried, with sections of the body of each victim remaining exposed above ground, suggesting the murderer had made only rudimentary efforts to bury each victim. Three of these victims—all Caucasian—were buried at one side of the tree, three feet apart, with their heads facing north. A fourth victim—an unidentified African-American estimated to be aged between 15 and 18—was buried at the other side of the tree. All four victims had been stabbed more than two dozen times with a blade at least eight inches in length, and the trousers of each victim were discovered around their ankles.

On September 30, Eyler was arrested in Lowell, Indiana for a routine traffic violation. He had been in the company of a young hitchhiker at the time of his apprehension and both men were arrested and detained for questioning at a Lowell state police post, with Eyler initially being detained upon charges of soliciting a young male for sexual purposes after a sergeant named William Cothran—without Eyler's consent and before informing him he was under arrest—had searched his Ford F-Series pickup at the roadside and discovered two sections of nylon rope. His vehicle was impounded.

Upon completion of the forensic examination of Eyler's pickup, Indiana investigators informed Eyler he was free to leave custody and retain possession of his vehicle. Due to concerns regarding Eyler's knowledge he was now a murder suspect may lead to his disposing of any potential evidence, in the early hours of October 1, investigators from the Central Indiana Multi-Agency Investigation Team obtained a search warrant authorizing their search of the Terre Haute home of Robert Little. This search was conducted at dawn on October 2 and revealed further circumstantial evidence such as credit card receipts indicating Eyler's presence in jurisdictions within both Illinois and Indiana on dates identified victims linked to the Highway Murderer had been killed. An examination of phone bills retrieved from the property revealed Eyler had regularly placed collect calls to Little's home at antisocial hours shortly after identified victims were believed to have been murdered. One of these calls to Little's home had been placed from a payphone near the Cook County Hospital on April 8—the murder date of victim Gustavo Herrera. Hospitalization records revealed Eyler had received treatment for a deep cut to his hand on this date, which he claimed had been caused in a fall from his truck in which he had landed upon a glass beer bottle; receipts recovered from the property revealed he had purchased handcuffs and a knife the following day. These revelations led a member of the Indiana task force named Cathy Berner to remark to her colleagues that if Eyler were not the murderer they were seeking, he was following the actual killer on a daily basis.

On October 6, the boot and tire imprints recovered at the murder scene of Ralph Calise were sent to the headquarters of the FBI in Washington, D.C. for further analysis and comparison with all physical evidence recovered by Indiana investigators in the task force's efforts to forensically link Eyler to this particular murder. Several days later, the FBI reported to investigators the boot impressions were a precise match, including four distinctive areas of wearing and damage upon the soles. Extensive bloodstains—determined to be type A-positive—were also discovered inside this footwear. Furthermore, the tires upon Eyler's vehicle were from two separate manufacturers, and the physical impressions recovered at the murder scene were determined to be from these two separate manufacturers. The tire impressions themselves were a perfect match in terms of grip depth.

On October 27, investigators from the Central Indiana Multi-Agency Investigation Team and Lake County held a meeting to determine whether sufficient evidence existed to charge Eyler with murder. The outcome of this meeting convinced officers from the two jurisdictions sufficient evidence existed to charge Eyler with the murder of Ralph Calise. The following day, investigators obtained a warrant permitting their retrieval of Eyler's hair and blood samples for further comparison with evidence earlier retrieved from Eyler's vehicle, to be served the following day—the date of Ditkowsky's civil suit.

Ditkowsky's civil suit was heard at the Dirksen Federal Building on October 29, with Ditkowsky requesting permission to access the affidavit investigators had used to request a search warrant for Eyler's vehicle. Although Ditkowsky argued before Judge Paul Plunkett that "not a scintilla of evidence" existed against his client, Judge Plunkett—having reviewed the investigators' collective affidavit—ruled Ditkowsky could not obtain access to the documents at the present date. As Eyler walked from this hearing, two Lake County investigators presented Ditkowsky with warrants authorizing their retrieval of Eyler's blood and hair samples. A sample of Eyler's blood revealed his blood type to be O-positive.

Inside Eyler's closet, investigators discovered the decedent's jeans, saturated with rivulets of bloodstains. Bridges' distinctive Duke University T-shirt—also extensively bloodstained—was discovered in a hamper, and a leather vest belonging to Eyler had evidently been recently washed. Moreover, investigators discovered a hacksaw within the property. Blades for this tool, plus an awl, were also recovered from a drawer within the utility room. Receipts recovered from the property revealed Eyler had recently purchased several hacksaw blades.

Testimony from Eyler asserted that on the date of the murder, Little had suggested the two "do a scene", which he had understood to mean commit a murder for sexual pleasure as Little photographed the event with a Polaroid camera. He and Little had lured Agan—whom Eyler had vaguely known though his frequenting a car wash at which Agan had worked—into Little's vehicle in Terre Haute; initially with the promise of Agan simply drinking with the two. Although Agan was heterosexual, he agreed to participate in a bondage and photography session for money.

Two days after Eyler's death, Kathleen Zellner called a press conference in which she revealed the names and/or descriptions of seventeen individuals whom her client confessed to having personally murdered, and naming four other individuals—Steven Crockett, Steven Agan, an unidentified Caucasian murdered in late-May 1983, and a further unidentified Caucasian male murdered in April 1984—whom Eyler claimed had been murdered with the assistance of Robert Little (who Zellner referred to in this press conference as "an unnamed individual still living in Indiana"). Zellner emphasized her client's insistence Little had been the individual who had actually murdered Daniel Bridges.

In his posthumous confession, Eyler stated he had typically lured his victims—who had been both heterosexual and homosexual—with promises of drugs, alcohol, money, or transport and that, immediately prior to stabbing several of his victims, he had pressed the blade of his knife against their abdomen before informing his victim to "make peace with God". Furthermore, Eyler claimed he had never engaged in sex with any of his victims, and he had frequently given his victims' T-shirts to Robert Little to use in mastubatory fantasies.

Of these twenty further victims to which Eyler posthumously confessed, ten had been committed in Indiana, and ten in Illinois. Furthermore, according to Eyler, the body of one of these victims—an Uptown male prostitute known as "Cowboy" killed in his Rogers Park apartment in April 1984—had never been found.

Eyler died of AIDS-related complications in 1994 while incarcerated on death row. Shortly before his death, he confessed to the murders of twenty further young men and boys to his defense attorney, Kathleen Zellner, although he denied being physically responsible for the actual murder of Daniel Bridges, which he insisted had been committed by an alleged accomplice in five of his homicides, Robert David Little.

Larry Eyler died in the infirmary of the Pontiac Correctional Center on March 6, 1994. His death was due to AIDS-related complications, and he had been seriously ill for approximately ten days prior to his death.

Attorney Kathleen Zellner, addressing family members of Eyler's victims. March 8, 1994

Robert Little was brought to trial on April 11, 1991. He was tried in Vermillion County before Judge Don Darnell, and entered a formal plea of not guilty on this date.

Emphasizing her belief in Eyler's confessions, Zellner elaborated that her client had been formally diagnosed with AIDS in March 1991 and therefore "knew when he testified at [Little's] trial in the Steven Agan murder that he was dying. I believe Larry was truthful. Larry had no incentive to lie to anyone."

Shortly after his 1991 acquittal of the murder of Steven Agan, Robert Little returned to the teaching position he had held at the Indiana State University since 1971, and continued to maintain his lack of knowledge of and innocence in any murders Eyler had committed.

On November 5, 1990, an attorney named Kathleen Zellner was appointed by the Illinois Appellate Defender's office to represent Eyler in his ongoing appeals against his conviction.

In November 1990, a Vermillion County prosecutor named Larry Thomas obtained the physical evidence obtained against Eyler in relation to the murder of Ralph Calise and ordered suppressed by Judge William Block with view to presenting the evidence before an Indiana grand jury to determine whether sufficient evidence existed to charge Eyler with the December 1982 murder of Steven Agan.

Zellner stated Eyler had begun compiling a list of his victims shortly after she had been appointed as his legal representative in November 1990 in an effort to obtain a plea bargain whereby his sentence would be commuted to one of life imprisonment. With his health in gradual decline, Eyler had authorized his attorney to publicly release his confessions after his death, with his explanation being that the families of his victims would know he had confessed to the murders of their sons and brothers.

Eyler's lover, John Dobrovolskis, relocated to California shortly after his arrest. He later returned to live with his wife, Sally, in Chicago. Dobrovolskis died of AIDS in January 1990 at the age of 29.

Kathleen Zellner continues to practise law in Downers Grove, Illinois. Her firm specialzes in the overturning of wrongful convictions. Shortly after Eyler had confessed his guilt in twenty-one homicides to Zellner in 1990, Zellner resolved she would never again knowingly defend another guilty individual.

This appeal was heard on May 10, 1989, although it was dismissed on October 25. An initial execution date was set for March 14, 1990.

In May 1988, Eyler filed a formal appeal against his conviction, contending that although he had dismembered Bridges' body and disposed of the remains, the actual murder itself had been committed by Robert Little in his absence, and this contention had not been rebutted by the prosecution at his trial. This appeal further contended Bridges had been driven to Eyler's apartment by Robert Little (whose vehicle had not been subjected to a forensic examination), and that his alibi had never been corroborated.

Eyler was brought to trial for the aggravated kidnapping, unlawful restraint, murder, and concealment of the body of Daniel Bridges on July 1, 1986. He was tried in Cook County, Illinois, before Judge Joseph Urso, and chose to enter a formal plea of not guilty to the charges against him. As Eyler was financially insolvent, he was defended by two public defenders named Claire Hilliard and Tom Allen, with David Schippers also informing Judge Urso of his intention to offer his legal services pro bono. Eyler's attorneys instructed their client not to testify on his own behalf.

On December 30, a 22-year-old Yale University graduate named David Block disappeared from the Illinois suburb of Highland Park, having told his family of his intentions to visit a friend in the nearby city of Highwood. His body was not discovered until May 7, 1984.

Following a lengthy evidentiary hearing in December 1983, a Lake County Circuit Judge named William Block ruled that although Eyler's initial arrest for the traffic violation had been legally valid, his subsequent detainment during which the evidence recovered by Indiana police and now presented before him had been obtained without probable cause and that as such, Eyler's detention had been illegal. A further hearing to determine whether defense motions to suppress the physical and circumstantial evidence retrieved by investigators between September 30 and November 22 and to quash and nullify various warrants authorizing these searches and the seizure of property was scheduled for January 23, 1984.

At the subsequent January 1984 hearing to determine whether the physical evidence recovered following Eyler's arrest should be suppressed, a police sergeant named John Pavlakovic conceded the primary reason Lowell police had prolonged Eyler's detainment on September 30 was to await the arrival in Lowell of members of the task force assembled to investigate the series of murders, and that Eyler had never formally been under arrest in relation to any offense other than soliciting a male for sexual purposes. Further testimony pertaining to the Lake County and Chicago officers' search of the Dobrovolski residence on October 3 revealed this search had been conducted without a search warrant.

Lake County investigator Dan Colin, conversing with Eyler's attorney, David Schippers, following Judge Block's ruling to suppress much of the evidence against his client. February 1, 1984

As a result of this ruling, Eyler was freed from custody on February 6, 1984; his family and Robert Little having paid the reduced bond fee. Terms imposed upon Eyler's bond stipulated he was unable to leave Illinois.

At approximately 10:30 p.m. on August 19, 1984, Eyler lured a 16-year-old Uptown youth named Daniel Bridges to his apartment. The youngest of thirteen children, Bridges was a neglected child and habitual runaway who, although heterosexual, had been a male prostitute since the age of twelve. Bridges had been a close acquaintance of victim Ervin Gibson, and is known to have been wary of Eyler, whom he had described to an NBC reporter commissioned to film a documentary focusing on child exploitation in America two months before his murder as a "real freak" who was well known to the male prostitutes of Uptown.

The dismembered body of Daniel Bridges was discovered by a janitor named Joseph Balla on the morning of August 21, 1984. His remains had been placed inside a garbage dumpster close to Eyler's apartment and within a unit not intended for usage by tenants within Eyler's apartment complex. Believing the bags to have been fly tipped, Balla chose to remove the bags from the garbage receptacle to inspect the contents. Removing the first bag from the disposal unit caused the bag to split open and reveal the contents to be a severed human leg.

Six of Eyler's victims still remain unidentified, the body of one of whom has never been found. The bodies of four of these unidentified decedents were discovered in Indiana, with one further victim discovered in Illinois. Each unidentified decedent is listed below in order of body discovery, with the final entry being an entry within Eyler's posthumous confession to one further murder he claimed to have committed with the assistance of Robert Little in 1984.

Eleven days later, on October 23, Eyler abducted and murdered a 19-year-old named Steven Crockett. His body was discovered in a cornfield in Kankakee County approximately twelve hours after his murder. An autopsy revealed Crockett had been beaten, then stabbed to death, suffering thirty-two knife wounds, including four to his head. One week later, on October 30, a 26-year-old named Edgar Underkofler disappeared from Rantoul, Illinois. His body was not discovered until March 4, 1983 in a field close to Danville, Illinois. The following month, Eyler murdered a 25-year-old barman named John Johnson. His body was discovered one month later in Lowell, Indiana.

On January 24, 1983, Eyler abducted and murdered a 16-year-old named Ervin Gibson in Lake County. His body was not discovered until April 15, discarded atop the body of a dog which had also been stabbed to death. Between March and April 1983, Eyler is believed to have killed a minimum of five further victims between the ages of 17 and 29. On May 9, the body of 21-year-old Daniel Scott McNeive was discovered in a field close to Indiana State Road 39 in Hendricks County. The wounds inflicted to McNeive immediately linked his murder to other victims tentatively linked to the same perpetrator. He had suffered eleven knife wounds to his neck; five to his back; and eleven to his abdomen, with one wound causing sections of his small intestine to protrude through his abdomen. Furthermore, welt marks were discovered on McNeive's wrists and ankles, and his jeans had been pulled down to his ankles. As with other victims, McNeive's body bore no signs of his being subjected to a sexual assault. Nine days later, Eyler murdered a 25-year-old named Richard Bruce in Effingham, Illinois. His body was thrown from a bridge into a creek, and remained undiscovered until December 5.

Many advocates within Indiana's gay community had speculated the sudden increase in the number of disappearances and murders of young males within Indiana and Illinois may be the work of a single perpetrator by early 1983. Although police had routinely raided gay bars and bookstores in addition to continually overtly filming patrons of these premises in their efforts to identify the movements of suspects, that month, a gay newspaper, The Works, in their own efforts to assist police, created an anonymous telephone hotline and published an article speculating as to the both the identity and motive of the perpetrator, whom they speculated struggled to accept his sexuality. With assistance from members of the gay community and the family of one murder victim, the editors of this magazine offered a reward of $1,500 for any information obtained leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator.

By the early spring of 1983, police in Indiana had tentatively linked several murders of young males committed in the state to the same perpetrator. Six days after the discovery of McNeive's body, the Indiana State Police conducted a meeting attended by thirty-five detectives from each of the four jurisdictions where bodies of young males bearing wounds suggesting the same perpetrator had been discovered. The conclusion of this meeting was that the same individual had murdered in each jurisdiction, and that all involved in the investigation should form a unified task force dedicated to the apprehension of the suspect. The four separate murder investigations within Indiana were amalgamated into one, with investigators agreeing that this task force would comprise two detectives from the state police, two from the Indianapolis police, and two from each county involved in the manhunt. This task force—named the Central Indiana Multi-Agency Investigation Team—was commanded by Lieutenant Jerry Campbell of the Indianapolis police. All information obtained was entered into a computerized database linked to the statewide police system.

On August 31, a tree-trimming crew discovered the body of a further victim in a field close to a tollway near Illinois Route 60. Lake County investigators quickly linked this murder to the stabbing deaths of two other young men whose bodies had been discovered close to this decedent earlier in 1983 (Ervin Gibson and Gustavo Herrera). The victim was a 28-year-old named Ralph Calise. He had been stabbed seventeen times with a butcher or hunting knife, with several wounds inflicted to his abdomen causing sections of his small intestine to protrude through his body.

Further questioned as to why no photographs had been found depicting Agan's restraint and murder in police searches of Little's home in either 1983 or 1990, Eyler stated Little had disposed of the photographs following the 1983 search of his home, adding the pictures had been inside a closet in Little's bedroom, which had not been searched.

Between 1982 and 1984, Eyler is known to have committed a minimum of twenty-one murders and one attempted murder. All his murders involved the restraining of his victim, and several victims were subjected to varying degrees of sadomasochism before being stabbed and/or slashed to death, with the majority of the wounds being inflicted to the victim's chest and abdomen. His victims were typically plied with alcohol and sedatives such as ethchlorvynol before their restraint and murder. Several victims were disemboweled after death, and Eyler is known to have dismembered the bodies of four of his victims. His victims were typically discarded in fields close to major Interstate highways with their trousers and underwear frequently discovered around their knees or ankles and their shirts and wallets missing from the crime scene.

On October 12, 1982, Eyler lured a 21-year-old named Craig Townsend into his vehicle in Crown Point, Indiana. Although drugged, extensively beaten and later abandoned naked and comatose in a rural field (causing Townsend to also suffer from exposure), the young man survived this assault.

In early September, a Chicago-based reporter for WLS-TV named Gera-Lind Kolarik noted similarities between the August 31 murder of Calise and the two earlier deaths of young males within Lake County. Kolarik had also been familiar with other murders of young males committed in Indiana bearing similar signature knife mutilations and speculated the perpetrator of these earlier Indiana murders had begun to murder and/or dispose of his victims' bodies in Lake County. Conversing with Cook County investigators, Kolarik discovered that two further young male murder victims who had lived in or disappeared from Uptown in 1982 had also been discovered with multiple stab wounds to their body and their trousers and underwear pulled down to their ankles in Kankakee County, Illinois and Lowell, Indiana.

On November 1, Lake County investigators obtained a search warrant to conduct a second search of Robert Little's home. The primary purpose of this search warrant was to determine whether the victims' missing T-shirts and wallets had been retained as keepsakes. Although investigators retrieved 221 items of clothing, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, and Polaroid photographs, none of the items recovered depicted or belonged to any of the murder victims. However, a key recovered in this search was a precise match to a key found beneath the body of Steven Agan. This key was later determined to fit the door of an office where Eyler had worked in 1982.

Eyler testified against his alleged accomplice at this trial; claiming he and Little had both committed the murder of Agan on December 19, 1982. According to Eyler, the two had regularly socialized within Indianapolis's gay community; occasionally bringing young men to Little's home to engage in sex, with Little frequently photographing the sexual acts.

On April 12, Dr. John Pless recounted the autopsy he had performed upon Agan's body on December 28, 1982. Dr. Pless testified as to having viewed several eviscerated bodies in his career, before stating: "This is the [most extensively mutilated body] I've seen without the body being cut into pieces." Pless testified many of the beating, stabbing, and slashing injuries had been inflicted after Agan was already deceased, although numerous deep wounds to the neck and groin had been inflicted while the young man was still alive. He further testified that he could not conclusively pinpoint the actual time of Agan's death, but stated his belief the young man had been killed prior to December 21.

Defense attorney James Voyles claimed his client had not been in Indiana in the week before Christmas on any year between 1958 and 1989. To support this contention, Little's mother testified she had relocated from Indiana to Florida in 1958; that her son had first visited her home approximately a week before Christmas that year; and that he had "never missed a Christmas" at her home on any year since. Furthermore, he had invariably stayed at her home until New Year's Day. However, this claim had earlier been discredited by prosecutor Mark Greenwell, who had introduced into evidence ledger records proving Little's vehicle had been brought to a Terre Haute garage for minor repair work on December 21, 1982, and a phone bill proving a call had been made from Little's home on the same day before the prosecutors had rested their case on April 15.

Eyler's posthumous confession revealed he had murdered twenty-one teenage boys and young men between 1982 and 1984, being assisted by his alleged accomplice Robert Little in four of these murders. He denied any culpability in the physical murder of Daniel Bridges, although he admitted to the dismemberment and disposal of the teenager's body. Investigators strongly believe Eyler is also responsible for two further homicides committed in Wisconsin and Kentucky in 1983.

In August 1981, Eyler formed a long-term relationship with a 20-year-old married man named John Dobrovolskis. Dobrovolskis lived with his wife, two children, and three foster children on North Greenview Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. His wife, Sally, was tolerant of her husband's sexual preference and of the fact her husband's lover often lodged with them on weekdays, paying a third of the rent.

On August 3, 1978, Larry Eyler picked up a 19-year-old hitchhiker named Craig Long on 7th Street, Terre Haute. Shortly after Long entered the pickup truck, Eyler propositioned the youth, resulting in Long attempting to leave the vehicle. In response, Eyler pressed a knife against the youth's chest as Long stated, "I don't have any money." Eyler then drove towards a rural field, stating: "It's not your money I want. I'm not after your money." Eyler then ordered Long to undress before he handcuffed the youth, bound his ankles, then ordered him to climb into the back of the pickup. When Long attempted to flee from the pickup as Eyler undressed, Eyler chased after him as Long shouted, "You queer!" In response, Eyler stabbed the youth once in the chest, penetrating his lung. Long slumped to the ground, feigning death. He later stumbled to a nearby house, where the occupants summoned paramedics.

On June 6, a former lover of Eyler's named Thomas Henderson phoned the investigation team's confidential hotline to voice his suspicions Eyler may be the killer they were seeking; explaining that his former lover had been charged with "some sort of stabbing" of a young hitchhiker in 1978, possessed a violent temper, and had a penchant for bondage. Henderson added that Eyler worked in a liqor store in Greencastle on Saturdays and lived in Terre Haute with an older male at weekends. He also informed investigators that in 1981, Eyler had drugged a 14-year-old boy, later abandoning the unconscious youth in woodland close to Greencastle. The boy had not been molested, and investigators theorized the reason Eyler had given the boy these pills was as a means to test the effectiveness of the sedative.

Conducting a background check on Eyler, investigators discovered he had been arrested in 1978 for attempting to sexually assault a teenage hitchhiker whom he had stabbed and left for dead. The handcuffing of the youth's wrists and binding of his ankles matched the modus operandi of the Highway Murderer, whose victims had also been discovered with welt marks upon their wrists and ankles. Furthermore, Eyler was known to regularly travel between Indianapolis and Chicago. This information was considered sufficient to keep an informal track of Eyler's whereabouts, but not to place him under full surveillance.

Prosecutor Richard Stock introduced four individuals who each testified to instances in which they had been assaulted and, in one case, left for dead by Eyler between 1978 and 1981. Outlining the similarities in Eyler's restraining or immobilizing these individuals to the restraint and torture Bridges had endured before he was "finally put out of his misery", Stock added: "There is nothing, Your Honor, that can mitigate the tears and the agony that Larry Eyler has caused in his entire life, thirty-three years, and he has caused more tears than anyone [...] a sentence other than death will be giving him his freedom."

Eyler primarily worked as a house painter, and although never having served in the military, he was fond of wearing Marine Corps T-shirts. He resided in a condominium in Terre Haute with a 38-year-old library science professor named Robert David Little, whom he had first met in 1974 while studying at the Indiana State University. The relationship between the two men was a platonic one, with Eyler viewing Little as something of a father figure.

By the mid-1970s, Eyler was well known within the gay community of Indianapolis—particularly among those with a leather fetish. Several acquaintances within this community described Eyler as a good-looking, "laid-back guy" and avid bodybuilder who was close to his mother and sister, although others who had engaged in sexual activity with him described him as an individual with a sadistic streak and violent temper which would only surface within their sexual encounters, often involving Eyler extensively bludgeoning, then inflicting light knife wounds upon unwilling partners—particularly to their torsos.

In 1957, Eyler's mother remarried. This marriage lasted one year before the couple divorced. His mother married for a third time in 1960, although the couple divorced four years later. She married for the fourth time in 1972. Eyler's father and his first two stepfathers drank heavily, and he and his siblings were subjected to frequent physical and emotional abuse, with one of his stepfathers frequently holding Eyler's head beneath scalding water as a form of discipline.

Larry William Eyler (December 21, 1952 – March 6, 1994) was an American serial killer who is believed to have murdered a minimum of twenty-one teenage boys and young men in a series of killings committed between 1982 and 1984 in the Midwestern States. Convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1984 kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Daniel Bridges, Eyler later voluntarily confessed to the 1982 murder of 23-year-old Steven Ray Agan, offering to also confess to his culpability in twenty further unsolved homicides if the state of Illinois would commute his sentence to one of life imprisonment without parole.

Larry William Eyler was born on December 21, 1952, in Crawfordsville, Indiana, the youngest of four children born to George Howard Eyler (September 19, 1924 – September 25, 1971) and Shirley Phyllis Kennedy (April 22, 1928 – June 8, 2016). His father was an alcoholic who is known to have physically and emotionally abused his wife and children. Eyler's parents separated when he was two years old, and he and his sister were regularly placed in the care of babysitters, foster families, or simply left in the care of their two older siblings (the oldest of whom was just ten years old) as their mother struggled to both financially support and provide adequate care for four children as she worked two jobs as a waitress and in a factory on weekdays and occasionally in a bar at weekends. Nonetheless, when Eyler and his sister were in the care of foster families, their mother would frequently visit her two youngest children, and Eyler would claim these separations and reunions brought the family closer.