On a quiet Sunday morning, September 18, 1983, in Bellevue, Nebraska, 13-year-old Danny Joe Eberle, a Caucasian male, set out on his bicycle to deliver newspapers for the Omaha World-Herald. It was a routine he performed for seventy of his neighbors, but on this particular morning, he would not return home. When his parents were notified by the route supervisor that papers were not being delivered, a search began.
His bicycle was found abandoned partway through his route, but Danny was nowhere in sight.
A widespread search involving local law enforcement and the FBI ensued. Three days later, on September 21, the search came to a tragic end when his body was discovered in a rural area several miles from where he was last seen. The scene was horrific; he had been bound with rope, his mouth covered with tape, and he was wearing only his undershorts. An autopsy would later reveal that he had been tortured and stabbed multiple times. One of the few clues left behind was the unusual rope used to bind him, which investigators found was not of domestic manufacture.
The investigation into Danny's murder continued for months without a lead. Then, on December 2, 1983, another young boy, 12-year-old Christopher Walden, disappeared while walking to school in a nearby town. His body was found a few days later, also stabbed to death. Witnesses in the Walden case reported seeing a white man in a tan car, a detail that had also been mentioned by Danny Eberle's brother, who recalled being followed by a man in a similar vehicle.
A major break in the case came on January 11, 1984, when a schoolteacher reported a suspicious man in a car loitering near a school. She provided the license plate number to the police. The car was traced to 20-year-old John Joubert, an airman stationed at nearby Offutt Air Force Base. When police searched Joubert's belongings, they found a hunting knife and a length of the same distinctive rope that had been used to tie Danny Joe Eberle. The rope was found to have been specially made for the U.S. military in the Far East.
Faced with the evidence against him, John Joubert confessed to the murders of both Danny Joe Eberle and Christopher Walden. He provided a chilling account of abducting Danny at knifepoint while he was delivering papers and taking him to a remote location where he killed him. Joubert was convicted of the murders and sentenced to death. Further investigation revealed that Joubert was also responsible for the 1982 murder of 11-year-old Ricky Stetson in Maine. John Joubert was executed in Nebraska's electric chair on July 17, 1996.
