Paul Ezra Rhoades

For the remainder of his life, Rhoades and his legal team filed appeal after appeal in an attempt to have his sentence commuted, citing reasons such as various legal technicalities, his abusive childhood and the supposed cruelty of capital punishment as mitigating factors. All of these appeals were rejected, and he was subsequently executed via lethal injection at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna on November 18, 2011.

On January 18, 1988, Rhoades' first trial began, after his attorneys' bid for an insanity defense was rejected by the Idaho Supreme Court. Among the possible choices for jurors was then-Governor Cecil Andrus, who was later excused from the panel due to his familiarity with the case due to signing the extradition documents from Nevada. Among the prosecution's witnesses was Nevada detective Victor Rodriguez, who claimed that he and five other officers had heard the defendant admit to Michelbacher's murder while in their custody, but had failed to file the statement in a report due to "an oversight". This claim was later contested by defense attorney John Radin, as Rodriguez later claimed that this had never occurred while being questioned by him. By January 26, the defense team had rested their case, with the proceedings being delayed for two hours as court officials had to wait for Rhoades' suit to be returned from a dry cleaning store. On the following day, after less than five hours of deliberations, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts against Rhoades, with his sentencing phase set for March 16.

On the morning of March 1, 1987, the body of 21-year-old Stacy Dawn Baldwin, a Red Mini Barn clerk who was working the night shift, was found in an archery range about five miles northwest of Blackfoot. She had been shot three times, and it was quickly determined that her killing was likely linked to a robbery gone wrong that occurred the night before.

On March 27, 1987, an arrest warrant for grand larceny was put out for Rhoades, who was promptly arrested in Wells, Nevada. While he was detained at the Nevada Highway Patrol Office, his items, including a handgun, were confiscated and handed over to authorities in Idaho. Shortly after, the handgun's bullets were proven to be an exact match to the ones used in the recent slayings in Blackfoot and Idaho Falls. As a result, Rhoades was first charged with Michelbacher's murder, in addition to first-degree kidnapping, robbery, rape, desecration of a corpse and five counts of firearm violations. It was decided that the two other murder charges would be tried in separate trials.

According to the task force established to investigate these murders, all of which had been linked via the copper-jacketed, hollow pointed bullets used, they had received information that placed Rhoades in the area at the time of the killings. In addition, they had located another handgun which linked him to numerous burglaries and thefts committed at the Wasatch Front. Around the same time, he was proposed as a possible suspect in the June 21, 1984 murder of 25-year-old Lisa Ehlers, who was found shot to death at a roadside in the Jackson Hole valley, near Bondurant, Wyoming. The main investigator for the task force, Jim Bell, later revealed in an interview with the Jackson Hole Guide that he was able to place Rhoades in the area at the time after conducting an interview with him. However, despite appeals for information to the public, no evidence connecting Rhoades to the killings ever surfaced, and he was never charged.

Paul Ezra Rhoades (January 18, 1957 – November 18, 2011) was an American spree killer and suspected serial killer convicted of three murders committed in Idaho during a three-week crime spree in 1987. He is the prime suspect in at least four additional killings in Utah and Wyoming dating back to 1984, however, he was never conclusively linked to these murders. He was executed for two of his confirmed murders in 2011, becoming the first person to be executed in Idaho in over seventeen years.

Paul Ezra Rhoades was born on January 18, 1957, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, the first of four children born to Augustus and Teresa Rhoades. His early life proved turbulent, as Rhoades was struck with polio since the age of 4, for which he constantly had to be hospitalized, and at home, his parents constantly argued. At the age of 10, he began drinking and soon dropped out of high school, after which he started using various drugs. Because of this, Rhoades developed an addiction to methamphetamines which would persist up until his arrest. To provide for his family, he took on various odd jobs both in Idaho and the surrounding states, specializing in sheetrocking. At the same time, however, he started breaking into various homes and stole any valuables he could find.