Comedy
On a summer evening on June 11, 2001, EIU student and member of the Zeta Alpha chapter of Alpha Phi ,Shannon McNamara, enjoyed hanging out with friends for a few drinks. After everyone left and she was sleeping, a stranger entered her apartment and killed her in a brutal manner. Murder was rare in this community, yet the year prior another woman was murdered. Amy Warner was murdered in her home where her two children were present. Shannon fought the murderer and his organized method of approaching violence became disorganized when he was surprised and found himself being attacked in return. He made mistakes that would uncover this merging serial killer and stop him in his path . While there was not enough evidence for Amy, yet, Shannon's murder had exposed him and a long history of violent sexual assaults, battery, trespassing, and other traits of a budding serial killer. There was also pornography of women, children, and even animals on his computer. He was brazen and hid in plain sight and watched chaos erupt from his apartment while people searched for a malicious killer in the college town. The defense attempted to pull on the heartstrings of the public and jury by telling about his childhood of abuse and neglect. A drug given to the military to prevent malaria, Larium, was also questioned due to a discovery that military personnel who killed others and themselves seemed to be impacted by this drug. They also tried to use his alcoholism and black outs to explain his actions. At the end of the day he was found to be culpable of these horrific crimes. He was purely evil. These murders brought two inspiring families who supported one another to accomplish putting the killer, Anthony Mertz, away so he could not continue his rampage of assaulting young women.