In the quiet community of Fairplain, Michigan, residents were left reeling from a gruesome discovery on October 17, 1976. Norma Maxham, a 75-year-old White / Caucasian female, had been living as a landlady, renting out a room in her home to a man named Gregory Teron. The arrangement took a tragic turn when Maxham confronted her tenant regarding the filthy condition of his living quarters. She asked him to vacate the premises, a request that triggered a violent rage in Teron. The confrontation quickly escalated into a brutal physical assault that left the elderly woman unconscious.
After beating his landlady into submission, Teron proceeded to tear off her clothes and bind her using an electrical cord. He then hanged her by the neck from a bedpost, ensuring she was dead before he exited the residence. In a display of chilling callousness, Teron left the scene only to purchase pizza and beer. He returned to the room where Maxham’s body remained hanging, and proceeded to eat his meal, drink the beer, take a shower, and watch a football game on television in the presence of his victim. Following these events, he stole money from the deceased and fled the state, eventually making his way to Florida where he was later apprehended by authorities.
The legal proceedings revealed a disturbing pattern of violence and a complete lack of remorse from the accused. While incarcerated in Michigan awaiting trial for Maxham's death, Teron committed another murder behind bars. He attempted to pressure his cellmate, Earnie Crane, into committing suicide. When Crane refused, Teron strangled him with a bedsheet. Teron later described his memory of the killings with detachment, comparing the act of taking a human life to drinking a cup of coffee—something one consumes and forgets shortly after.
Teron was ultimately held accountable for his crimes in Michigan. He was convicted of first-degree murder for the death of Norma Maxham and received a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. His criminal history extended beyond the borders of Michigan, as he was also linked to a murder in California involving a man named Earl Reed, whom he had smothered for a petty amount of cash a year prior to the events in Fairplain. Despite his claims of other victims in different states, it was the brutal killing of his landlady and his cellmate that cemented his status as a convicted murderer in the Michigan judicial system.
