On the evening of April 26, 1976, a young woman named Jerry Black was at home in Omaha, Nebraska, talking with a friend on the telephone. At 24 years old, Jerry worked as a clerk for the Northwestern Bell telephone company. That sense of ordinary, peaceful routine was shattered when her neighbor, Clarence Victor, broke into her residence and attacked her.
The friend on the other end of the line was left to hear the horrifying sounds of a life being brutally cut short.
The following day, police arrested Victor, a 43-year-old foundry worker, and his girlfriend, Iona Chase. Investigators determined that Victor had entered his neighbor's home and, when confronted, used a pocket knife to slash Jerry's throat, inflicting a deep four-inch gash. After the attack, he discarded the weapon in a nearby yard and enlisted Chase to help him try and conceal the crime. The couple was taken into custody, and several children living in their apartment were placed into foster care.
The murder of Jerry Black was not Clarence Victor's first violent crime. In 1964, he had been convicted of manslaughter for strangling a 40-year-old woman named Hilda Marian Williams and dumping her body in a park. For that crime, he was sentenced to eight years in prison but was paroled in 1967 after serving just over three years. For the next nine years, he lived in Omaha, largely unnoticed by his neighbors, until the day he forced his way into Jerry Black's home.
Initially charged with first-degree murder for Jerry's death, Victor was held without bond. However, the case did not go to a full trial. On November 18, 1976, prosecutors accepted a plea agreement, and Victor pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder. District Judge Donald Hamilton sentenced him to 20 years in prison. This outcome meant that Victor would once again be eligible for release after serving only a portion of his sentence.
After serving approximately 10 and a half years for the murder of Jerry Black, Clarence Victor was paroled for a second time in September 1986. He returned to Omaha, where he found occasional work as a gardener. Just over a year later, on December 26, 1987, he broke into the home of another woman, 82-year-old Alyce Singleton, for whom he had done yard work. He bludgeoned her with a metal pipe before slashing her throat, killing her.
For the murder of Alyce Singleton, Victor was finally held to greater account. He was convicted of first-degree murder and use of a firearm to commit a felony. A three-judge panel sentenced him to death, making him, at age 56, the oldest inmate on Nebraska's death row at the time. His death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in 1999 after a state law passed prohibiting the execution of individuals with an IQ below 70; Victor's had been measured at 65.
Clarence Victor was a serial killer whose violent acts spanned more than two decades, marked by a justice system that repeatedly released him back into the community. He died of natural causes in the Nebraska State Penitentiary on May 5, 2015, at the age of 82. The life of Jerry Black, a young woman with her future ahead of her, was tragically ended by a neighbor who should have still been in prison.
