Unknown: The Gold Sock Killer
Overview
In the oppressive heat of the South Florida summer of 1973, a swift and terrifying series of crimes gripped Broward County. Over a six-week period between July and August, an unidentified predator attacked four women, killing three of them. His weapon of choice was a man's stretch sock, used as a ligature to strangle his victims. The press, seizing on a detail from the first attacks, dubbed him the "Gold Sock Killer," a name that would become synonymous with one of the region's most disturbing unsolved serial murder cases.
The killer targeted women in Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood, leaving a trail of fear in the rapidly growing coastal communities. He was an opportunistic hunter, attacking a woman in her car, another in her apartment, and abducting two teenage girls. The attacks were brutal and sexually motivated. Despite a massive investigation that involved hundreds of interviews and dozens of lie detector tests, the identity of the Gold Sock Killer remains a mystery. The crimes abruptly stopped as suddenly as they began, leaving behind only questions and a community forever scarred by the violence.
The First Murder: Jonina Kelpien
The killer's reign of terror began on July 15, 1973. The first victim was Jonina Gudjonsdottir Kelpien, a 42-year-old native of Iceland who had made a life for herself in Fort Lauderdale. In the early morning hours, Kelpien was attacked after a night out. She was beaten and strangled with a gold-colored men's stretch sock.
Her body was discovered at approximately 7:00 a.m. in the yard of a home on the 200 block of Northeast 12th Avenue, about a mile from her own residence. Her car, a white Cadillac, was found parked in her own driveway. Inside the vehicle, her cocker spaniel was found alive and unharmed, but her purse was missing. An autopsy later confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted shortly before her death.
A strange incident occurred around 3:30 a.m. that same morning, hours before Jonina's body was found. A man entered a convenience store where Jonina had been seen earlier and told the clerk that police had just questioned him about a woman's murder. At that point, law enforcement was not yet aware of the crime, making the man's statement deeply suspicious. However, this lead, like many others, never resulted in an arrest.
The Survivor
Ten days after the murder of Jonina Kelpien, the killer struck again, this time in a residential neighborhood just blocks from the first crime scene. On the evening of July 25, a 25-year-old secretary returned to her first-floor apartment on Northeast 16th Avenue in Fort Lauderdale around 9:15 p.m.
An intruder, who had gained entry by prying open a window, was lying in wait. He had already rifled through her purse, which he found in her closet. As the woman entered her dark apartment, the man ambushed her from behind, wrapping another gold-colored sock around her neck. The woman fought back ferociously, kicking and screaming. The struggle overturned a coffee table as they fell onto a couch. Her fierce resistance and screams apparently startled the attacker, who fled the apartment into the night.
The survivor was able to provide police with the only eyewitness description of the man believed to be the Gold Sock Killer: a slender, white male with blonde hair, likely in his late teens or early twenties. Investigators took plaster casts of footprints and fingerprints from the scene, but forensic analysis determined that the gold sock used in this attack was not from the same pair as the one used to kill Jonina Kelpien.
The Murders Continue: Teresa Ann Williams
The terror escalated in August. On August 8, the body of 17-year-old Teresa Ann Williams was discovered by two men who were hunting for land crabs in a remote, marshy area off Sheridan Street in Hollywood. She had last been seen on August 3, and her car had been found with a flat tire.
Teresa's body was partially clothed, wearing only a bra and top. A men's maroon-colored stretch sock was knotted tightly around her neck. A pile of what was believed to be her other clothing was found nearby. Due to the advanced state of decomposition from being left in the subtropical heat and marshland, the medical examiner could not definitively determine if she had been sexually assaulted. The discovery confirmed that a serial killer was at work, and the moniker "Gold Sock Killer" became a misnomer, as the killer was clearly using socks of various colors.
The Final Victim: Marisue Curtis
The final murder attributed to the Gold Sock Killer occurred less than three weeks later. On the evening of August 28, 16-year-old Marisue Curtis was at her family's apartment on Surf Road in Hollywood. Around 8:00 p.m., she went downstairs, telling her family she would be back in about thirty minutes. She was last seen by a friend at 8:30 p.m., when she said she was heading back upstairs.
Marisue never made it back to her apartment. The next morning, a construction worker discovered her nude body submerged in the Intracoastal Waterway, about six miles from her home. The killer had taken steps to conceal her, weighing her body down with two concrete blocks. Tied around her neck was a black men's sock. An autopsy confirmed she had been raped and strangled.
The Victims
- Jonina Gudjonsdottir Kelpien, 42 — A native of Iceland and mother of three, she was attacked and killed in Fort Lauderdale on July 15, 1973. She was remembered as part of the local Icelandic expatriate community.
- Teresa Ann Williams, 17 — A resident of Hollywood, her body was found on August 8, 1973, five days after she was last seen. Her car was found with a flat tire, suggesting the killer may have orchestrated a ruse to approach her.
- Marisue Curtis, 16 — A high school student who had recently moved to Hollywood from New York, she was abducted from outside her apartment building on August 28, 1973. Her sister later recalled her as a "good kid" who was not a "tramp," expressing the family's shock that such a thing could happen to them.
Investigation and Primary Suspect
The series of brutal stranglings sparked panic across Broward County. Law enforcement launched a massive investigation, questioning over 200 people, including known sex offenders in the area. They conducted surveillance at the crime scenes and administered 35 lie detector tests, all of which were passed or proved inconclusive. Despite the extensive effort, no arrests were made, and the trail went cold after the murder of Marisue Curtis.
The sudden end to the killings puzzled investigators until February 1974. In a crime that bore striking similarities to the sock stranglings, a 32-year-old office manager named Ann Raub Newman was found raped and strangled with a scarf in her Fort Lauderdale apartment. Investigators lifted a crucial piece of evidence from the scene: a fingerprint from a pried-open window screen.
The print was traced to Gary Jay Matus, a 19-year-old construction worker. Matus matched the physical description provided by the survivor of the July 25 attack: he was young, slender, and white. During police questioning, Matus gave conflicting and evasive stories. He was ultimately convicted for the rape and murder of Ann Newman and sentenced to 165 years in prison.
Law enforcement and the local press heavily suspected Matus was the Gold Sock Killer. The timeline fit: the sock murders stopped, and a few months later, Matus committed an almost identical crime using a different ligature. Furthermore, Matus was a construction worker, and Marisue Curtis's body was found at a construction site, concealed in a manner that suggested the killer was familiar with the location and had time to act without being seen. However, prosecutors never had the physical evidence needed to definitively link Matus to the 1973 murders. No fingerprints from the earlier crime scenes matched his, and the forensic technology of the era was not advanced enough to provide DNA evidence. Gary Jay Matus was never charged in the Gold Sock killings.
Aftermath and Legacy
The Gold Sock Killer was never identified, and the murders of Jonina Kelpien, Teresa Ann Williams, and Marisue Curtis remain officially unsolved. The case stands as a chilling reminder of a violent summer in South Florida's history. The 1970s were a turbulent time for the region, which saw a population boom and a corresponding rise in crime. The Gold Sock killings occurred concurrently with other high-profile murder sprees in Florida, including the "Flat-Tire Murders" that began in 1975, creating a climate of fear and the sense that predators could strike with impunity.
Over the decades, cold case units have periodically revisited the evidence. However, the passage of time and the limitations of 1970s evidence collection have made progress difficult. Evidence from the scenes, particularly items submerged in water or left in the humid marshland, suffered from significant degradation, complicating efforts to extract modern DNA profiles. Without a confession or a future forensic breakthrough, the identity of the man who terrorized Broward County with a handful of men's socks will likely remain unknown.
