Donald Moeller became a rare death row inmate in South Dakota when he was found guilty of the brutal rape and stabbing of a 3rd grader in 1990. Given his upbringing, it's more surprising that she was his only victim. Moeller was born in Sioux Falls on August 5, 1952 to a 30 year old father and a teenage mother. His father abandoned his mother as soon as he found out that she was pregnant. Melvina Nelson began dating a man named Glen Becker who worked as a traveling carnie and she usually accompanied him, leaving Donald to be babysat by a neighbor. When he was a little older, they took him with them on their carnival trips, leaving him tied to a bus with a rope while they were off partying.

Melvina had no particular use for her son and often made it clear that he was unwanted and accidental. She beat him frequently, at least once knocking him unconscious with a cast iron frying pan, and called him demeaning names. It appeared that Melvina had preferred to have a girl and she often dressed Donald in girls' clothing. She would walk around the house naked in front of Donald and his siblings and bring other men over for sex when Glen was not home, admonishing them not to tell anyone, and she also had sex with these gentleman callers in front of the children. Moeller claimed at least three women performed sexual acts on him when he was a child.

The family never celebrated Christmas. The boys had few possessions and only a couple sets of clothes which they had to wash themselves. They shared a single room, sleeping on soiled mattresses on the floor with no sheets or pillows, not even during the frigid South Dakota winters. Moeller began consuming alcohol when he was 8 by helping himself to leftover liquor and wine his mother and stepfather would leave behind while passed out drunk. He started smoking marijuana by the age of 11 and then took to huffing gasoline and solvents. Eventually Melvina dumped Glen Becker and married a third husband; the two of them would break into farmhouses and steal things while the owners were away while instructing Donald to stand guard outside and make sure no one was coming. At least once Donald stole a color TV for his mother, who complained that he'd scratched the case. "Next time get someone to help you," she told him.

We see occasional a few glimpses of Donald as a functional human being. His stepgrandmother Agnes Becker recalled that he mowed her lawn for her and his stepsister said he often babysat her daughter and was very reliable. Moeller married a 16 year old when he was 19. They had a daughter a year later, but his wife left him after he got arrested. He never met his daughter until his trial in 1997, when she was 24 and a mother herself; the defense wanted her to testify but Moeller opposed that idea without giving a specific reason for it (likely he did not want her identified and known as the daughter of a heinous child killer). He remarried in 1976 but split from his second wife in a few weeks.

Moeller committed his first assault on January 3, 1973, four months before he got married to his first wife, when he carjacked a 21 year old Sioux Falls woman named Carolyn Beshaw on her way to work at a car wash, drove her to a frozen cornfield, and ordered her at knifepoint to undress. She refused, telling Moeller "No I won't do it." When he held the knife to her throat and repeated his demand that she undress, she merely said "I don't care. You're gonna have to kill me first. I ain't gonna do that for you or anybody else." At this point, Moeller blinked, put his knife away, and said she could drive to work and to tell her boss she was late because of a flat tire. They drove to the car wash and Moeller got out of her car and departed. Beshaw told her boss the flat tire story and did not report what had actually happened to her.

The next assault Moeller committed happened six years later, when he was living with his stepsister in Wright, Wyoming. He befriended a 13 year old neighbor boy named Ken Moore and Moore's father let the two hang out together--they had bonded over their interest in cars and Moeller reportedly told the elder Moore that he was planning to take his son on a trip to Gilette, Wyoming to help him learn how to be a car mechanic. On February 10, 1979, they were in Moeller's trailer. It was a bitterly cold day, the mercury topping out at 15F--frigid winters are typical of the Plains states, but the late 1970s was a period of exceptionally cold winter weather across North America. Despite the Arctic temperatures outside that day, Ken Moore complained that Moeller's trailer was too stuffy and warm. Moeller let Ken use his bathrobe. Ken stripped down to his underwear and donned the robe.

Moeller then told Ken to take out a jar of Vaseline from a drawer, explaining that they would need it shortly. He casually asked the boy if he'd ejaculated yet. Ken said he had not, so Moeller offered him $50 to find out. Ken refused the bet, so Moeller then bet $50 he could tie him up and he wouldn't be able to escape. He tied Ken's hands behind his back and placed a dog chain around his neck. Then he told Ken he wanted sex. When Ken refused, Moore took out a knife and said "Look, you can either give me oral sex or let me fuck your rear end or I'll kill you." Ken begged him to take the dog collar off since he couldn't breath. Moeller obliged, whereupon Ken promptly dashed for the door of the trailer. Moeller chased him and slashed his leg with the knife. Ken managed to get away, run through the snow outside, and make it to safety at home, where he told his father "That SOB tried to kill me."

Neither of these victims saw fit to report Moeller, possibly out of embarrassment. Around the same time as the attack on Carolyn Beshaw, Moeller was arrested on an unrelated theft charge. Other scrapes with the law included escaping police custody in 1974, theft and burglary charges in 1976, a 1979 arrest for aggravated assault, and a 1983 theft conviction.

He apparently stayed out of trouble for the next several years but returned to his old bad ways in 1990 when he attacked 25 year old Tracy Warner in Sioux Falls. Moeller had given a friend of hers a ride to her place around Thanksgiving 1989, which was when she first encountered him. Ms. Warner did not see him again until January 20, 1990. It was another typically freezing South Dakota winter afternoon, although this winter was quite mild across the region and had many days of temperatures getting into the 40s and even 50s, when Tracy heard a knock on her trailer door. It was Donald Moeller and he asked if he could come in. Tracy told him yes. Having only met him once before, she initially struggled to recognize the man standing before her. Moeller asked if she wanted to go out with him and get some drinks. Tracy declined the offer. Moeller said he had to go and could he please come back later? Tracy told him only if he was going to watch TV.

Around 11:00 PM that night, Moeller returned to Tracy's trailer and asked if he could watch TV. She said it would be fine. A few minutes later, Moeller took out a 3-1/2" folding knife and ran it up and down her chest, ordering her to show him her breasts or else. Tracy refused, so Moeller ran the blunt side of the blade up and down her arm. "You sure you want to feel the sharp side?" he asked. "Look, if my baby wakes up because of this shit I'm gonna be pissed," she replied. "Who's gonna get cut first, you or her?" said Moeller. Tracy slipped from his grasp and he poked her arm with the knife, making a small laceration. She went out the back door and flagged down a passing motorist. But then she saw Moeller leaving and went back to her trailer. Her infant daughter was still asleep in her crib, safe and sound. Still, apparently, Tracy Warner did not report Moeller to police. He had not yet killed, but tragically, that was about to change.

On May 8, almost five months after the incident with Ms. Warner, nine year old Becky O'Connell disappeared while walking to the S&A Convenience Store on North Drive and Main Avenue to buy some candy. The next day, two men driving ATVs found her battered body along the Big Sioux River near Lake Alvin in Lincoln County. Becky had been vaginally and anally raped and stabbed multiple times. The ultimate cause of death was a throat wound that punctured her jugular vein. Witnesses had reported seeing a light blue Chevrolet truck near the area where Becky's body was found, and they gave a description of the driver to police.

Since Moeller owned just such a truck, he was quickly taken in for questioning by Sioux Falls police. He offered blood and hair samples, but denied having anything to do with Becky's death. However, the next day he skipped town, leaving his truck behind. Police obtained search warrants for the truck and his trailer. Mud collected from under the truck was found to be similar to the natural area near where Becky's body was found and had some unusual soil not commonly encountered in many locations. Semen found on the victim would be DNA matched to Moeller. He was charged with the rape and murder of Becky O'Connell but it would be eight months before he was spotted in Tacoma, Washington, some 1,200 miles away, arrested, and extradicted to South Dakota to stand trial.

Lincoln County Sheriff Ken Albers had the unfortunate task of participating in the collection and processing of Becky's body. He said "It was laying out there and it just looked like a doll. I wondered if I wasn't being made a fool of, if someone hadn't been playing a prank on us. I had to reach out and touch the body before I knew it was real." It had rained the day of the murder and it was speculated that Moeller had offered Becky a ride in his truck to give her some shelter from the rain.

It didn't take long to find Moeller guilty of murdering Becky and the three victims he'd attacked in 1973, 1979, and 1990 appeared at his 1992 trial to testify. This led to him also being charged with the assault on Tracy Warner, but not the two 1970s incidents as the statute of limitations on them had run out. He was sentenced to death but in 1996 a judge threw out the murder conviction on the grounds that the testimony of his earlier victims was irrelevant to what had happened to Becky O'Connell and served no purpose except to "prejudice and inflame" the jury. The case had to be re-tried and ended with Moeller's conviction and death sentence being upheld.

Although Moeller had only gone to school to the 8th grade, he was described as having above-average intelligence and he read quite a bit while incarcerated in addition to being a devoted Minnesota Twins fan. Ken Albers said Moeller liked talking about history and wars and he believed he might have gone places in life if he'd had more opportunity and a better upbringing.

Moeller exhausted his state and Federal appeals and was executed by lethal injection on October 30, 2012. He wasn't overly upset about dying; child killers are not popular in prison and he was often heckled and threatened by other inmates. Prison staff had to put a covering over his cell door so inmates wouldn’t throw things in at him. Becky O'Connell's mother Tina Curl and her husband drove all the way from New York to witness the execution. Mrs. Curl expressed her dismay that it had taken two decades for this to finally happen. South Dakota has executed just 17 people in 137 years of statehood and Moeller's was only the fourth execution since 1913. The others were George Sitts, executed in 1947 for murdering two police officers during an escape from prison (the only person the state executed via electric chair), Elijah Page, executed in 2007 for torturing and murdering a 19 year old man in 2000, and Eric Robert, executed in 2012 for murdering a correctional officer in the state penitentary the previous year (he waived his appeals, thus the extremely rapid execution).

>>17811437
>>17811434
>>17811445
>when grown women tell me no I'm like "Ok, sorry ma'am i'll be going now."
>so instead I'll fuck up a 9 year old
Fuck this guy, if I was the other inmates I'd have thrown shit at him too.

>>17811423
>>17811420 (OP)
Le heckin based wholesomearino 1950s family just like my based trad Pepsi ads XD

I still don't see the point of these AI bot threads.

>>17811459
>a couple of transient carnies invalidates an entire decade

>>17811423
>>17811420 (OP)
i feel kind of bad for him, he's not the only person to have had "that" kind of a mom (if you can even call her that). we can also fault his dad for being a loser who abandoned him and didn't want any responsibility for being a dad.

>>17811583
Not an excuse to kill people lots of people have had terrible upbringings and they didn't waste a 9 year old.

>>17811425
>>17811434
>>17811454
This was South Dakota, these women were probably mean, tough farm stock they weren't any pansy Legally Blonde pushovers.

SD sucks please don't ever go there.

>nothing but a giant farm field with 95F summer temperatures and 10F winter temperatures
>literally nothing to do but drink

>>17811508
crimeanon posts the best and most heinous boomer murder and rape stories from the 70s-90s

>>17811583
That's between you and your therapist, anon.

>>17811583
i mean when his mom decided to call him Donald she basically guaranteed that he would be a murdering, raping, thieving, lying waste of life

>>17811641
no one cares, troon

>>17811604
What about Sioux Falls?

>>17811604
Aiyyy...

>>17811697
yes that too is reason to hate that state

>>17811420 (OP)
>born in Sioux Falls on August 5, 1952 to a 30 year old father and a teenage mother.
>Moeller married a 16 year old when he was 19. They had a daughter a year later
>his daughter until his trial in 1997, when she was 24 and a mother herself
Grim, this is some third world shit

>>17811877
SD is indeed not part of the First World.

>>17811420 (OP)
>>17811437
he's white, don't care

>>17811576
Correct
You fags think propaganda is reality and don't imagine that normal people aren't upper middle class. It's a minority.

>>17811429
That Dad should have ended it right then and there when his boy came home and told him. Could have gotten a decent hunting rifle and plinked that bastard from a football field away.

>>17812470
Read the text below, he never told anyone.

>>17811420 (OP)
>She would walk around the house naked in front of Donald and his siblings and bring other men over for sex when Glen was not home, admonishing them not to tell anyone, and she also had sex with these gentleman callers in front of the children.
Grim. What kind of degenerate even thinks of getting it on in front of a kid?

Hmm..