Richard Delage committed his first murder 2 weeks before his 15 birthday. His victim 29 year old schoolteacher had been shot at close range with a .32 caliber pistol while she sat in her car. The most unusual thing about the crime scene was that the casing from the spent cartridges came from a very unusual Swedish ammunition.

The case was still open when 9 years later when, as a student sitting in her car was shot on November 15, 1969. She had been shot 3 times in the chest with same weapon and ammo. Though the cases were connected, there were no suspects or strong evidence. Six years later, it happened again, but she managed to get away. Delange took himself to mental hospital where very interested policeman came to talk to him.

He was arrested and charged and convicted of manslaughter on only two of the deaths and was sentenced to 14-15 years in prison and 10 to 20 years in prison to be served consecutively.

Richard Tobias Delage

Described by defense attorneys as a man at war with himself, Richard Delage committed his first murder in 1960, two weeks shy of his fifteenth birthday.

His victim, slain on July 29 of that year, was Carole Segretta, a 23-year-old schoolteacher from Poughkeepsie, New York, found shot to death in her car, in Westchester County.

Her killer used rare Swedish ammunition in his .32-caliber pistol, but police had no other leads, and the case was still open when Delage claimed his second victim nine years later.

On November 15, 1969, the corpse of 23-year-old Paget Weatherley, a recent graduate from the University of Connecticut, was found in a wooded culvert near Bolton. She had been shot three times in the chest, with the same pistol and rare ammunition used to kill Carole Segretta in 1960.

The cases were obviously connected, but police still had no suspects, nothing in the way of solid evidence. Delage may have waited six years for his next victim, selecting a female hitchhiker near Mansfield, Connecticut, on October 3, 1975.

In that case, however, the young woman talked her way out of the trap and was set free, unharmed, while Delage drove to Norwich and signed himself into a mental hospital. He was still at the admission desk, held up by paperwork, when officers arrived and took him into custody on kidnapping charges.

Two months later, on December 10, he was formally charged with the murders of Carole Segretta and Paget Weatherly, while police in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania compared his technique to their own unsolved cases. One likely "possible" involved two student nurses, dumped beside a lonely road in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, in November 1970, but no charges were filed in that case.

Delage initially pled innocent to killing Paget Weatherly, but changed his mind on September 9, 1976, entering a negotiated guilty plea to manslaughter, receiving a sentence of 14 to 15 years in prison. A second guilty plea, on charges of kidnapping the hitchhiker, earned him a concurrent term of 10 to 20 years.

Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers

SEX: M RACE: W TYPE: N MOTIVE: PC-nonspecific

MO: Shot women in random, motiveless attacks.

DISPOSITION: Plea bargained for 20-year maximum, Sept. 1976.