Earl Kenneth Shriner - Criminal Career

Criminal Career

Shriner, who was described as “a slightly retarded man with a bizarre physical appearance” and tested to have an IQ of 67 had a long history of sadistic sexual assaults but only one conviction. “Shriner was in the community without supervision because his sentence had expired and a judge had ruled that he did not meet the stringent ‘imminent danger’ criteria necessary for commitment under the State's mental health laws.”

In 1966, when Shriner, at that time sixteen, was detained for choking a seven-year-old girl, he led the police officers to the body of a retarded fifteen year old girl instead, whom he had strangled. He was confined to ten years, but committed as a ‘defective delinquent’ to a hospital, but not convicted of a crime. Between 1977 and 1987, while serving a ten year sentence for abducting and assaulting two sixteen year old girls, Shriner had repeatedly disclosed not just fantasies but detailed plans how he would kidnap, confine, and torture his victims.