In the late summer of 1976, a chilling crime cut short the lives of two young people in Columbia, South Carolina, leaving a lasting scar on the community. Eighteen-year-old Dorothy Ann Rhodes, a white female, and her nineteen-year-old boyfriend, Greg Becknell, were abducted on September 18, 1976. Their disappearance marked the beginning of a terrifying ordeal that ended in a brutal double homicide.
The person responsible for their deaths was John Edward Swindler, a recently released
convict. Swindler had been freed from Leavenworth prison in Kansas just days before he crossed paths with the young couple. He abducted Rhodes and Becknell and took them to an isolated area near a bible college in Columbia. There, both teenagers were tied to trees and shot in the head. When their bodies were discovered, Becknell was found nude, while Rhodes was fully clothed. During his trial, Swindler admitted to sexually assaulting Becknell.
Swindler's violent spree did not end with the murders of Rhodes and Becknell. Two days after the killings, he stole a car from a former University of South Carolina student. His escape from South Carolina eventually led him to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he was recognized by a police officer, Randy Basnett, from a police bulletin. When Officer Basnett confronted Swindler at a service station, Swindler fatally shot him.
Following his capture in Arkansas, Swindler faced legal repercussions for his multi-state crime wave. In South Carolina, a jury convicted him of the kidnapping and murders of Dorothy Ann Rhodes and Greg Becknell. Due to the state's death penalty law at the time, which had been overturned, he could not be sentenced to death in South Carolina and instead received four life sentences. Swindler was also convicted of the murder of Officer Basnett in Arkansas, and he was executed by electric chair in that state in 1990.
