James Meyer, a 29-year-old man, was traveling through the Southeast on November 16, 1974, when he was drawn into the final hours of a violent interstate crime spree. Meyer, a businessman from Delaware who had been in Florida for work, encountered Paul John Knowles after Knowles had already abducted Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Charles Eugene Campbell near Perry, Florida.
Campbell had stopped a stolen automobile that Knowles was driving. During the confrontation, Knowles overpowered the trooper, seized his service weapon and forced him into the patrol car. With Campbell held hostage, Knowles drove north and used the patrol vehicle's lights or siren to stop Meyer on the highway. To Meyer, the scene may have initially appeared to be an ordinary police stop. Instead, Knowles took control of Meyer and his vehicle, placing both men at his mercy.
Knowles drove Campbell and Meyer across the state line into Georgia. In a secluded wooded area of Pulaski County, he forced the two captives from the vehicle and restrained them by handcuffing them to a tree. He then shot each man in the head at close range, leaving their bodies behind before continuing north in Meyer's automobile. Their deaths were not the result of a personal dispute or a targeted grievance; Meyer appears to have been selected simply because Knowles needed another vehicle and encountered him while fleeing with the kidnapped trooper.
The killings triggered the last stage of the search for Knowles. Soon afterward, he became involved in a pursuit in Henry County, Georgia. He drove through a roadblock, crashed into a patrol vehicle and fled on foot while armed. Law-enforcement officers searched the surrounding countryside, but the confrontation that ended his escape came after local resident and Vietnam veteran David Clark encountered him near his property. Clark recognized that the armed and disheveled stranger was likely connected to the nearby manhunt, retrieved a shotgun and ordered Knowles to surrender his weapon. Police then arrived and took Knowles into custody on November 17, the day after Meyer and Campbell were killed.
Investigators connected Knowles to the Pulaski County murders and to a succession of killings committed across several states during the summer and autumn of 1974. Authorities learned that he had described numerous crimes in recorded conversations intended to become the basis of a book. He was formally accused in connection with several killings and was widely identified as the person responsible for the deaths of Meyer and Campbell. However, the cases never proceeded through a completed murder trial.
On December 18, 1974, approximately one month after his capture, Knowles was being transported by law-enforcement officers in Georgia when authorities said he attempted to seize an officer's firearm. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent shot and killed him during the struggle. Because Knowles died before he could be tried, there was no conviction or sentence for James Meyer's murder. Nevertheless, the circumstances of the abduction, the recovery of the victims and vehicles, Knowles's apprehension immediately after the killings, and the evidence gathered during the broader investigation left authorities with little doubt that he was responsible.
