In the quiet community of Ladysmith, Virginia, Jeanette M. Griffin, a 49-year-old widow, lived a life that was horrifically cut short in the winter of 1958. Her murder on February 2nd of that year was not an isolated act of violence but the final, brutal chapter in a multi-state killing spree carried out by a man known as "The Itinerant Killer." The crime shocked the small Caroline County town and brought a violent end to a search for a predator who had eluded police across the American
South.
The night she was killed, Jeanette was the victim of a planned robbery. The scheme was devised by Jeremiah McCray, a 23-year-old itinerant farm laborer, and a younger co-worker, 20-year-old Rush Reager. The two men were living in a house just across the road from Jeanette's home. That evening, Reager went to the widow’s house, restrained her, and then summoned McCray. Inside her own home, the place that should have been her sanctuary, she was brutally assaulted by both men before McCray beat her to death with pieces of firewood.
The following morning, Jeanette’s 14-year-old son, Jimmy, made the traumatic discovery of his mother's body and immediately alerted the police. The investigation moved quickly. Suspicion fell upon McCray and Reager, partly because residents in the house where they lived noted that McCray had returned on the night of the murder with a new pair of pants, similar to a pair stolen from the Griffin home. The two were arrested the next day, Monday, February 3, 1958, and taken into custody.
During interrogation at the police barracks in Richmond, the case took a shocking turn. McCray, a man with a low IQ but deemed sane enough to stand trial, began to confess. To the investigators' surprise, he admitted not only to the murder of Jeanette Griffin but to a string of other violent crimes. His confession detailed a two-year reign of terror that spanned four states, including the killings of 74-year-old Virginia Maclin Stevens in Colonial Heights, Virginia, just a month prior; 86-year-old Sarah DeWitt in Ohio; and 73-year-old Daisy F. Gilbert in Alabama. He was a serial killer, rapist, and burglar who primarily targeted elderly women during robberies.
McCray's violent spree began in February 1956. Born to sharecropper parents in Georgia, he had little education and traveled for farm work, turning to crime when he needed money. He and various accomplices were responsible for at least five murders and a number of other brutal assaults and burglaries. His methods were consistently savage, involving beatings with sticks or other objects and stabbings.
Though he faced charges in multiple states, Jeremiah McCray's trial for the murder of Jeanette Griffin was held first in Virginia. The evidence against him was overwhelming, including bloodstains found on his clothing and shoes. He was found guilty of first-degree murder, burglary, and larceny. When asked if he had anything to say about the verdict, he simply replied that he hoped everyone was satisfied. On April 18, 1958, just a little over two months after he ended Jeanette Griffin's life, Jeremiah McCray was executed in the electric chair at the Virginia State Penitentiary.
His accomplice, Rush Reager, received a different fate. For his role in the horrific crime, he was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison. The swift justice for McCray brought an end to his murderous journey, but it could do nothing to erase the pain and loss he inflicted on the families of his victims, leaving a trail of devastation from Alabama to Virginia. Jeanette M. Griffin is remembered not just as the last victim of a serial killer, but as a woman whose life was stolen in an act of senseless brutality.
