On August 22, 1982, 11-year-old Richard Stetson disappeared while jogging near his home, in Portland, Maine. A motorist found his body the next morning, lying beside a rural highway, and while he was initially believed to be the victim of a hit-and-run, autopsy results showed that Stetson was strangled, then stabbed several times in the chest. Bite marks on the body were inflicted by a set of human teeth.

Danny Joe Eberle, age 13, was delivering newspapers in Bellevue, Nebraska, when he vanished on the morning of September 18, 1983. His bicycle and papers were found inside a gate, at the fourth house on his route, but Eberle remained missing until September 21, when searchers pulled his body from some roadside weeds. Partially stripped, he had been stabbed repeatedly, then dumped where he was found. Detectives noticed bite marks on the body, and his ankles had been bound before he died.

On December 2, 12-year-old Christopher Walden disappeared while walking to school in Papillion, Nebraska, three miles from the scene of the Eberle murder. Stabbed repeatedly, his corpse was found by pheasant hunters two days later, hidden in a grove of trees outside of town.

Six weeks later, on January 11, 1984, a suspicious young man was seen loitering around a Bellevue preschool. Challenged by an adult attendant, he shoved her, threatened her with death, then ran to a nearby car and sped away. The attendant memorized his license number, and the rented vehicle was traced to 20-year-old John Joubert, who was an Air Force Radar Technician stationed at Offut. An unusual kind of rope, containing about 100 different fibers, was found among his belongings. It matched the rope that had been used to bind Danny’s hands and feet. The rope had been manufactured in Korea, and was rarely used in the United States. When detectives mentioned the rope to him, Joubert quickly confessed.

FBI psychological profiler Robert Ressler provided an analysis of the Woodford Slasher— white, young, and sexually ambivalent. John Joubert not only fit the profile directly, but the FBI suggested that the killer might be a male homosexual, but when he came out, was not accepted and possibly made to feel bad for his sexual orientation. When Joubert came out as homosexual in 1975, since he was born in 1963, he was just 12 years old and he was made fun of and harassed at school, which he later reported was after he began wondering what killing someone would feel like (1971). After he came out, he began to get violent towards his classmates, especially young girls, which police believe is because they would typically tease him the most, and he got sexual gratification from these actions. Since he was sexually attracted to boys, this led his main victim profile to be young boys, as he could over power them.

Another part of the profile included an uneasy, rough childhood, which would be found in Joubert’s past. Joubert’s parents had divorced when he was six years old, and he went to live with his mother in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was not allowed to visit his father and grew to hate his controlling mother.

After initially pleading not guilty, he changed his plea to guilty. There were several psychiatric evaluations performed on Joubert. One characterised him as having obsessive-compulsive disorder and sadistic tendencies, and suffering from schizoid personality disorder. He was found to be have not been psychotic at the time of the crimes, however. A panel of three judges sentenced him to death for both counts. Joubert was also sentenced to life imprisonment in Maine in 1990 for the murder of Ricky Stetson, after Joubert’s teeth were found to match the bite mark.

While being held in jail, John Joubert told interviewers and psychologists that he still fantasized about the killings, and knew that if he was let go, he would resume where he left off. He was aroused from killing the young boys, and would often masturbate over the bodies when he was finished killing them. He was executed on July 17, 1996 by the electric chair, shortly after turning just 33 years old.

Through his profile and convicted killings, the victims of John Joubert include: Richard Stetson, 11 / Danny Jo Eberle, 13, and Christopher Walden, 12, including a few more that were not able to be completely solved before Joubert was executed.