Harvey Louis Carignan (born May 18, 1927) is an American serial killer currently serving a life sentence at the Minnesota Correctional Facility – Stillwater for the murders of two women. He had been previously convicted for a 1949 rape and murder he committed while stationed in the U.S. Army, in Anchorage, Alaska. He was paroled for that crime in 1960.

By all rights, Harvey Carignan should never have become a serial killer. Sentenced in Alaska to be hanged for murdering a woman during 1949, the hulking killer might have been eliminated early on had not the system intervened. An over-zealous sheriff had elicited confessions from the suspect with assurances that Carignan would not be executed, a condition that appeals courts found disturbing.

Carignan's death sentence was reversed in 1951, and after serving nine more years on a conviction for attempted rape, he was paroled in 1960. There would be more arrests, for burglary, assault, and other crimes; in 1965, Carignan was sentenced to a term of fifteen years in Washington, but with time off for good behavior, he would hit the streets again in 1969, consumed with an abiding rage against society in general and women in particular.

Harvey married a Seattle widow shortly after his parole, but their relationship was doomed from the beginning. Sullen, uncommunicative, Carignan would frequently get up at night and drive long distances, "to be alone and think." When he refused to share his thoughts or name his destinations on the long nocturnal drives, the marriage fell apart.

Remarrying another widow in 1972, Carignan showed no improvement. His lascivious attentions to a teenaged step-daughter finally forced the girl to run away from home, and he was faced with yet another failing marriage in the spring of 1973.

That May, young Kathy Miller answered Harvey's advertisement for employees at a service station that he leased. The girl was missing for a month before two boys discovered her remains while hiking on an Indian reservation north of Everett, Washington. Nude and bundled in a sheet of plastic, Kathy had been bludgeoned with a hammer, knocking holes the size of nickels in her skull.

Detectives in Seattle were aware of Harvey's record, and they hounded him with such intensity that he departed from their city shortly after Kathy Miller's body was retrieved.

A speeding ticket from Solano County, California, on June 20 placed Carignan in the vicinity where half a dozen women had been murdered in the past two years, but there was nothing solid to connect him with the crimes, and he was on his way cross-country, seeking sanctuary in his old, familiar haunts of Minneapolis.

On June 28, Marlys Townsend was assaulted at a bus stop in that city, clubbed unconscious from behind. She woke in Harvey's car, still groggy from the blow, but when he tried to make her masturbate him, she found strength enough to save herself by leaping from the speeding vehicle.

Police made no connection with the human time-bomb ticking in their midst. September 9, Jewry Billings, age thirteen, was hitching rides in Minneapolis to reach her boyfriend's house, when Carignan pulled up and offered her a ride.

Inside the car, he threatened Jewry with a hammer, forced her to fellate him while he rammed the hammer's handle in and out of her vagina. When he finished with her, Carignan released his battered captive, but the incident was so humiliating that the girl maintained it as a closely-guarded secret for a period of several months.

A year would pass before detectives witnessed Harvey's handiwork again.

On September 8, 1974, he picked up Lisa King and June Lynch, both sixteen, while they were hitching rides in Minneapolis. He offered money if the girls would help him fetch another car that had been stranded in a rural area.

Once out of town, however, Harvey stopped the car and started beating June about the head and face. When Lisa ran for help, he sped away and left his latest victim bleeding on the roadside.

A month before, on August 10, another romance had collapsed for Harvey, ending no less tragically for his intended. Eileen Hunley was a woman of the church, who looked for good in others. She had looked for good in Harvey Carignan, when they began to date, but there was nothing to be found. She had informed her friends of her intent to terminate the sour relationship, but Eileen Hunley disappeared on August 10. When she was found in Sherbourne County five weeks later, she would be a rotting corpse, her skull imploded by the force of savage hammer blows.

An engine failure on September 14 almost cost Gwen Burton her life. When Harvey Carignan appeared to offer her a ride, she had no inkling that the trip would turn into an endless nightmare. Once alone, he ripped her clothing, choked her into semi-consciousness, and raped her with the handle of his hammer, finally slamming her across the skull with brutal force before he dumped her in a field to die. Miraculously, she survived and crawled until she reached a local highway, where a passing motorist arrived in time to save her life.

On September 18 -- the day Eileen Hunley's body was recovered -- Harvey picked up Sally Versoi and Diane Flynn. He used the old ruse about fetching a car, then began to make lewd propositions, assaulting both girls when they failed to respond on command. They escaped when he ran short of fuel and was forced to stop at a rural service station. Two days later, eighteen-year-old Kathy Schultz did not return on schedule from her college classes, and a missing persons bulletin was issued by police. Her corpse was found next day, by hunters, in a corn field forty miles from Minneapolis. As in the other cases, Kathy's skull had been destroyed by crushing hammer blows.

Police in Minneapolis were talking to their counterparts in Washington by now, and within days, survivors started picking Harvey out of lineups as the man who had abducted and assaulted them throughout the past two years.

A search of his possessions turned up maps with some 181 red circles drawn in isolated areas of the United States and Canada. Some of the circles yielded nothing, indicating points where Harvey had applied for jobs or purchased vehicles, but others seemed to link him with a string of unsolved homicides and other crimes involving women. One such cryptic circle marked the point where Laura Brock had disappeared, near Coupeville, Washington. Another, at Medora, North Dakota, coincided with discovery of a murdered girl in April 1973. Yet another had been drawn around the very intersection in Vancouver where a woman, waiting for the city bus, had been assaulted from behind and beaten with a hammer. An ill-conceived insanity defense involving messages from God did not impress the jury at Carignan's trial for attempted murder (of Gwen Burton) in March 1975.

He was convicted and received the maximum of forty years in prison. Since no criminal in Minnesota may be sentenced to a term exceeding forty years, the other trials and sentences were merely window dressing: 30 years for the assault on Jewry Billings; 40 years for Eileen Hunley's murder; 40 years for killing Kathy Schultz. One hundred fifty years in all, of which the killer may be forced to serve no more than forty, with the usual time off for "good behavior."

Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans

The Want-Ad Killer:
Harvey Carignan (1983)

Ann Rule
(as Andy Stack)

The Want-Ad Killer is the second book in Ann Rule's Andy Stack trilogy of serial killers. After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death using want ads to lure his young female victims. His weapon of choice was a claw hammer which he used to rape and bludgeon his victims earning him the nickname of "Harv the Hammer." He described himself as: "An instrument of God, one who was acting under His personal instructions. Murder, rape and mutilation are all part of a Grand Plan. God is a figure with a large hood and you can't see his face." Under so-called orders from God, he killed at least 5 and maybe as many as 18 women.

Harvey Louis Carignan was born on May 18, 1927, in Fargo, North Dakota. His twenty-year-old mother was not married. When he was three or four his mother married and had a second son. At the age of six he was undersized and had a twitch in his face. He was also a chronic bed wetter and had an imaginary friend, Paul.

When Carignan was eight, he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Cavalier, ND, which lasted a short time and he was sent back home. When he turned ten he was sent to live with his grandmother in Williams, ND, then sent to live with another aunt before going back home to his mother. He was still suffering from bedwetting and started stealing. At age eleven, he was sent to reform school in Mandan, ND for seven years. During this time he was diagnosed with childhood Chorea, a nervous disorder marked by muscular twitching of arms, legs and face and Carignan claimed female employees sexually abused him. When he left the reform school at age eighteen he enlisted in the U.S. Army.

On July 31, 1949 while stationed at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Carignan raped and killed 57-year-old Laura Showatler. She died from several blows to the head.  Less than two months later, Carignan attempted to rape Dorcas Callen but she escaped. She told the police she had been approached by an intoxicated soldier at around 7 a.m. Callen and another eyewitness, John Keith, identified Carignan in a line-up. On September 17, 1949, Carignan was brought to the U.S. Marshal for the murder of Laura Showatler where he provided officials with a written confession, but there was no mention of a murder. His confession to the murder was oral. In 1950 he was charged and convicted of first degree murder. He was sentenced to death by hanging. His lawyers, however, filled an appeal with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that Carignan’s confession was unlawfully elicited by an overzealous police officer who assured Carignan that he would not be executed if he confessed. In 1951 the Supreme Court overruled his death sentence due the officers’ violations of the McNabb rule. In 1952 he was transferred to Alcatraz where he served eight more years and on April 2, 1960, he was paroled.

Four months later he was arrested in Minnesota for burglary, assault, and attempted rape. He was convicted and sentenced to two and one half years in a Minnesota State prison and another 2,086 days in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. On March 2, 1964, he was released on parole and move to Seattle where he was arrested on November 22, 1964, for second-degree burglary and sentenced to fifteen years in the Washington State prison in Walla Walla. During his stay there he obtained in his high school diploma (GED) and took some college courses. In 1968 he was paroled.

A year later he married Sheila Moran and moved in with her and her daughter. That same year he was arrested for parole violation and suspicion of robbery. He was sent back to Walla Walla for a year and his wife divorced him due to physical abuse.

On April 14, 1972, Carignan married Alice Johnson and moved in with her and her two children, Billy (11) and Georgia (14). Two months later Billy moved out to live with his real father due to the beatings he had been receiving from Carignan.

On July 27, 1972, Virginia Piper disappeared. It is speculated that Carignan had kidnapped her. On October 15, 1972, ninteen-year-old Leslie Laura Brock of Bellingham, Washington was found dead. She died from several blows to the head. Witnesses claimed that they saw her get into Carignan's silver truck.

On May 1, 1973, Kathy Sue Miller, age fifteen, answered Carignan's want ad for employees at a service station that he was leasing. When the girl showed up in response to the ad, he sexually assaulted and killed her. Her body was found months later by two boys hiking on the Indian reservation north of Everett, Washington. She was naked, bundled in a sheet of plastic, and had been beaten with a hammer which left nickel-size holes in her skull.

On June 28, 1973, forty-seven-year-old Mary Townsend was attacked by Carignan at a bus stop. He attacked her from behind knocking her unconscious. When she awoke, she was in his vehicle and he began to command sexual favors, but she managed to leap from the vehicle and escape. A few days later, he was arrested for assaulting of his wife, Alice, who decided to leave him.

On September 9, 1973, he picked up Jerri Billings, a thirteen-year-old hitchhiker. He forced her to perform sexual acts on him while he assaulted her with a hammer. After the assault, he released her. She did not mention the event until several months later.

By May of 1974, Carignan had given up on Alice, and started dating and living with Eileen Hunley, whom he picked up hitchhiking, after moving to Minnesota. In August Eileen broke off her relationship with him. She disappeared on August 10, 1974. Her rotting corpse was found five weeks later in Shelbourne County.  Her skull was imploded by the force of savage hammer blows and she had been raped with a tree branch.

On September 8, 1974, Carignan picked up seventeen-year-old June Lynch and sixteen-year-old Lisa King who were hitching rides in Minneapolis. Once they reach the outskirts of town he stopped the car and started beating June in the head and face with a hammer. Lisa escaped. While she was running for help, Carignan sped off leaving June on the road side for dead.

On September 14, 1974, Carignan picked up Gwen Burton from a Sears parking lot. He ripped her clothing, choked her into semi-consciousness and sexually assaulted her with a hammer. He dumped her body in a near by field but she survived and was able to craw to the road side for help. Four days later, he picked up Versoi and Diane Flynn. He forced them to perform oral sex and would beat them if they didn’t follow his commands. The two girls were able to escape when Carignan stopped for fuel. Two days later, Kathy Shultz did not show up at her classes. Her body was found the next day by hunters in a cornfield forty miles form Minneapolis. As in the other cases, Kathy's skull had been destroyed by crushing hammer blows.

By this time, police in Minneapolis were talking to their counterparts in Washington, and within days, survivors started picking Carignan out of lineups as the man who had abducted and assaulted them throughout the past two years. A search of his possessions turned up some maps with 181 red circles drawn in isolated areas of the United States and Canada. Some of the circles indicated places where he had applied for jobs or purchased vehicles, but others seemed to link him with a string of unsolved homicides and other crimes involving women. One circle marked the place where Laura Brock had disappeared, near Coupeville, Washington. Another, at Medora, North Dakota, coincided with discovery of a murdered girl in April 1973. Yet another had been drawn around the very intersection in Vancouver where Mary Townsend had been waiting for the city bus and had been assaulted from behind and beaten with a hammer.

In February of 1975, Carignan was tried on the attempted murder and aggravated sodomy in Gwen Burton's case. He pled not guilty by reason of insanity claiming that God told him to kill those women. The jury was not convinced by the insanity plea and found him guilty. He was sentenced to a maximum of forty years in prison. Since no criminal in Minnesota may be sentenced to a term exceeding forty years, the other trials and sentences, 30 years for the assault on Jewry Billings; 40 years for Eileen Hunley's murder; and 40 years for killing Kathy Schultz, were mere formalities.  Out of the one hundred fifty years, the convicted killer will have to serve no more than forty, with the usual time off for "good behavior."

Carignan turned eighty-one May 18, 2008 and is still serving time at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater in Bayport, Minnesota. His inmate records at this prison show the spelling of his first name as Harvy (no E) not Harvey as in information provided elsewhere.

Mysterycrimescene.com

Harvey Carignan