Claudine Eggers

In the summer of 1979, the quiet community of Wassaic, New York, was shaken by the violent death of a 78-year-old woman, Claudine Eggers Fischer. Her life came to a brutal end when she was repeatedly stabbed inside the trailer she shared with her husband. The events following her death would unravel a story of a confessed killer and a cross-country crime spree.

The day after the murder, on June 27, 1979, a 50-year-old man named Joseph Fischer walked into the West 100th Street police precinct in New York City and made a startling confession. He admitted to killing his wife, Claudine, in their Wassaic home. Fischer, an ex-convict who had recently been released from Rahway State Prison in New Jersey for a prior murder, told the desk sergeant that he had stabbed his wife numerous times and left her body on the bedroom floor. He attributed the motive to the significant age difference between them, stating that at 78, she was 'too old' for him. The couple had married after exchanging letters while he was incarcerated.

Following his confession, authorities in New York City notified the police in Poughkeepsie, who then took Fischer into custody and transported him back to Dutchess County. Upon investigating the trailer in Wassaic, they discovered Claudine's body, confirming Fischer's account. The case against Joseph Fischer for the murder of his wife was set in motion in Dutchess County. However, the investigation took on a much larger scope as Fischer began to claim responsibility for a string of other unsolved homicides, estimating he had killed 30 to 40 people across the United States. While awaiting trial for his wife's murder, Fischer sat in his Poughkeepsie jail cell, his claims of being a mass murderer under investigation by law enforcement agencies from coast to coast.