True Crime Friday: Maury Troy Travis - The Bi-State Strangler

Maury Troy Travis was a serial killer. He was active from May to October 2001. Maury was born October 25, 1965. He hanged himself while in custody on June 10 2002. Travis was named in a federal criminal complaint for the murders of two women. While working as a waiter at a hotel, he was know to be very aggressive with the female staff. In fact, he sexually harassed the women he worked with and several complaints were received by the hotel regarding his behavior.

Not much is known about Maury Troy Travis’s childhood and his relationship with his parents. Although, later in the article you will find a reference to his mother. When he was working as a waiter he was actually on parole for robbery. He claimed to have murdered 17 women but police were able to confirm 12 at the time of his arrest. Travis was thought to have killed up to 20 women. He was a resident of Ferguson, a subdivision of St. Louis, Missouri. Like the serial killer BTK, Dennis Raider, Maury Travis wanted recognition for his crimes. His downfall was sending a map of the body of one of his victims to a local newspaper. Travis recorded himself terrorizing the victims, tying them up and eventually killing them. The police found tape recording of his torturing the victims.

The Victims of Maury Travis

• Alysia Greenwade, whose body was discovered April 1, 2001, in Illinois.
• Betty James, whose body was discovered about two months later in Missouri. She was last seen in Illinois.
• Teresa Wilson, lost her life between the months of May-October 2001.
• Verona Thompson, lost her life between the months of May-October 2001.
• Yvonne Crues, lost her life between the months of May-October 2001.
• Brenda Beasley, lost her life between the months of May-October 2001.
• Mary Shields, found sometime between 2000 and 2001
• Cassandra Walker, found sometime between 2000 and 2001
• Victim female #1 unidentified 2002
• Victim female #2 unidentified 2002
• Victim female #3 unidentified 2002
• Victim female #4 unidentified 2002

The St. Louis Post Dispatch

The St. Louis Post Dispatch ran a sympathy profile piece on Teresa Wilson. Travis was so enraged that he wrote a letter to the paper to show his disdain for the sympathy coverage. Travis responded by sending an anonymous letter and a computer-generated map. The letter had a return address of I THRALLDOM, which was a bondage website where he met his victims.

The letter and map was turned over to the police by the newspaper. The local police asked for assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI.) The FBI in turn discovered the map IP address from Expedia, thereby locating the IP address belonging to Maury Travis.

In his letter to the newspaper Maury Travis stated that “I'll tell you where many others are." He then went on to say "To prove I'm real, here's directions to number seventeen. Travis was arrested on a federal criminal complaint and, while in the custody of the United States Marshall Service at the St. Louis County Jail in Clayton. The investigators discovered a torture chamber at Travis residence located in his basement. He had a stun gun, newspaper clippings of some of his crimes, and videotapes of him killing and/or abusing victims.

Lady Justice

Maury Troy Travis hanged himself while in police custody. Taking his secrets to the grave. He was an evil man through and through with no sympathy for his victims or their families.

A Dream House Turns Into a Nightmare

A woman had recently moved into her dream home rental. While she was at home watching television her phone ranged. It was a friend of her advising that the home she had rented once belonged to a serial killer and he had tortured women in the basement. The friend saw the house on the show Cold Case Files which aired on the A&E Network. The tenant had no idea of the history of the house. It was revealed that the landlord was the serial killer’s mother. The tenant tried to get her money back but Maury Travis mother would not return the renters money and break the lease. The tenant reported this to the local housing authority, the landlord then agreed to rescind the lease. At that time there were no laws in Missouri that required the landlord to report murders that had happened on their properties before selling or renting to tenants or buyers. In this case the right thing was done because what woman would want to live in a house where a serial killer lured his victims and tortured them while recording the mayhem.

References

From the archives: St. Louis serial killer victims were 'less than human' to him, police say (stltoday.com)

Maury Troy Travis | Photos | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers

Maury Travis - Wikipedia