Randall Woodfield: American Footballer Turned Serial Killer
Behind every crime or criminal lies a story of distressing childhood and toxic parenting. Well not in every case is this statement true! One such classic example is the case study of Randall Woodfield.
Woodfield was born on 26th December 1950 in Oregon, USA. Being born to a socially well-respected rich family, he was the third eldest child. He grew up to become a very prominent football player and he played for the college as well as further on for Green Bay Packers. Among his peers and teachers, he was known to be the most obedient and well-behaved child.
Sexually Dysfunctional Behaviours Leading To Crime
During his teens, Woodfield started portraying sexually dysfunctional behaviors such as exposing himself in front of a group of teenage girls. He was arrested for the same but was released soon considering it as a petty crime of indecency. However, this incident was kept hidden by his coaches to get him on the football team.
After graduating in 1969, he went on to attend college in Ontario. This is where his behavior started to escalate into violence. In a few months, Woodfield was arrested for ransacking his ex-girlfriend’s apartment.
However, as there was no big evidence found against him he was let free. Later on, he went to Portland University, where he played for the Vikings. He joined a Christian community association of which he was a very active member, but none of his peers there liked him. One week after this he was arrested again for indecent exposure.
His football teams could not stand him as he was allegedly involved in ten cases of indecent exposure simultaneously across the state, due to which he was thrown out of the teams.
He was left with no choice rather than to return to his hometown. From there started the journey of Woodland where he started sexually victimizing women, becoming a perpetual sex offender.
Randall Woodfield- The Serial Rapist
On returning to Oregon, Woodfield met his mother’s associate’s daughter Charlotte. They soon started dating, a month after which Charlotte was brutally raped by him.
According to her statement, Woodfield did not appreciate her job which was her first passion. She had told him that she respects women being independent and she wishes to go in the same line, for which he stated that a man always will have the power over a woman and raped her.
He left the state after this incident escaping from the police and went on to commit around fifteen sexual assaults, after which he was arrested by the police. In 1975 he was sentenced to ten years behind the bars.
Journey From Serial Sex Offender to Serial Killer
Randall Woodfield was released in 1979. It was right before his ten-year high school reunion. He met his former classmate Cherie Ayer during the reunion and his friends found them leaving the campus.
After this incident no crime or misbehavior as such was reported being committed by Woodfield. Nobody had any information on his whereabouts either, but Cherie Ayer was alive and she was safe at her home.
However, in 1980 Cherie was found brutally raped and stabbed to death in her apartment. It was indeed done by Woodfield as a paper delivery boy had witnessed the crime. It was his first murder. Till then he used to commit sexual abuse which now had taken a different toll altogether.
From then onwards Woodfield was known as the serial sex offender and serial killer. Five months, seven women at up and down interstate five all along. Due to this, he was also called the 1-5 killer by the media.
One prominent point in his modus operandi was that he always left a witness for his crime. Be it rape, murder, or even a robbery, he wanted people and the police force to consider him as a very challenging culprit with a unique style of his own.
Along the interstate, he was also reported to be robbing convenience stores and ice cream parlors. Even though the crimes he committed were pretty transparent and pointed at him, police could not catch him.
In November 1980, he entered a convenience store late at night. Two sales girls were shutting up the store. He attacked them and kept them at gunpoint until he assaulted both of them, followed by which both of them were shot.
However the second girl Shari Lynn Hull was not dead as the bullet struck her neck and not the head. The moment Woodfield left Shari informed the police. She was subjected to medical examinations which helped them to find body fluids including semen and blood.
With the advancement in Forensic technology, the fluids were subjected to DNA typing and were proved to be Woodfield’s. However, the trial went long, and finally, in 1981 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Conclusion
Randall Woodfield is considered the most interesting criminal by criminal psychologists after Ted Bundy. Numerous documentaries and programs were made on Woodfield. In 2011, Woodfield was the subject of a Lifetime television film Hunt for the I-5 Killer. The film was based on the book “The I-5 Killer by Ann Rule.”
