Daniel Siebert (53) death row inmate, awaiting execution for 21 years for strangling four people. Siebert was challenging Alabama's method of lethal injection on the grounds that his cancer medication would counteract with the lethal injection drugs and inflict unnecessary pain.

His death from pancreatic cancer came less than a week after the US Supreme Court approved the most widely used method of lethal injection, prompting states to move forward with executions after a nearly seven-month halt. Siebert died at Holman Prison near Atmore, Alabama on April 22, 2008.

Daniel Lee Siebert

Sherri Weathers, a hearing-impaired student at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, in Talladega, had missed a week of classes without explanation when her counselor phoned the manager of her apartment building for help on February 24, 1986. 

Weathers did not answer her phone, and the school was concerned that something might be wrong. The manager used her pass key and found Sherri dead in her room, along with her two small sons - five-year-old Chad and four-year-old Joseph. 

The bodies were piled together on Sherri's bed and loosely covered with a blanket. When police arrived, the manager directed them to another apartment, occupied by 33-year-old Linda Jarman, another student lately missing from the Institute. Inside, patrolmen found her nude and lifeless on the bed, a television set and the woman's car apparently stolen by her assailant. 

Investigation revealed that an Institute art teacher, one "Daniel Spence," had expressed a romantic interest in Sherri Weathers. Missing from class since February 20, "Spence" had turned up at the school several months earlier, offering to teach for free in hopes of gaining a permanent job later on.

Fingerprints from the Talladega murder scenes identified "Spence" as Daniel Siebert, convicted of a Las Vegas manslaughter in 1979, presently sought in San Francisco on charges of first-degree assault.

Detectives also learned that Siebert had been dating Linda Odum, a 32-year-old cocktail waitress reported missing on February 24. (Her naked, decomposed remains were found outside of Talladega on March 30.) 

Independent evidence also linked Siebert with the strangulation of a prostitute in Calhoun County, found around the time he disappeared from Talladega. Highway patrol officers found Linda Odum's car abandoned near Elizabethtown, Kentucky, on March 3, 1986, and Siebert's fingerprints were lifted from the vehicle.

Over the next six months, sightings of the fugitive were reported from Ohio, New Jersey, Nevada, Southern California, and Montreal, Canada. The first solid lead was delivered on September 3, when a Las Vegas friend of Siebert's reported a telephone call from the fugitive. 

Police were ready when the next call came, and it was traced to a pay phone in Nashville, Tennessee. Employees at a nearby restaurant identified Siebert's mug shots, and he was arrested next morning, when he arrived to complete some work on the restaurant's sign.

In custody, Siebert readily confessed to five murders in Alabama and various others spanning the continent. How many? "Maybe a dozen," he said. "Maybe more. I try to put those things out of my mind." He killed for purposes of sex and robbery, being careful to murder his victims after a San Francisco hooker survived a throttling and filed charges against him. 

In addition to the Alabama cases, Siebert was charged with the 1985 murders of 28-year-old Gidget Castro and 23-year-old Nesia McElrath in Los Angeles, both previously attributed to the elusive "South Side Slayer." 

He was also charged in the 1986 strangulation of 57-year-old Beatrice McDougall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and authorities announced that they were checking other unsolved homicides in Arizona, California, Nevada and Florida. 

On March 21, 1987, Siebert was convicted of Linda Jarman's murder in Talladega, receiving a sentence of death. 

Prosecution in other cases was held in abeyance, pending the outcome of his automatic appeal on the capital verdict.

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

Daniel Siebert

Sherri Weathers was a hearing-impaired student at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind and had not shown up for classes for a full week.

Her guidance counselor called the manager of her apartments and asked her to check on Sherri's welfare. Using a passkey, the manager found Sherri and her two small children, Chad, 5 and Joseph, 4, dead in the apartment.

Their bodies had all been placed on Sherri's bed and covered with a blanket. When police arrived, the manager asked them to check another apartment which was occupied by another student of the Institute who had also been missing.

Police found the naked body of Linda Jarman, 33, on her bed. Daniel Siebert had been teaching art at the Institute under the assumed name of Daniel Spence and investigators soon learned that he had expressed a romantic interest in Sherri Weathers.

A fingerprint match from the murder scenes led to the discover that Spence was instead Daniel Siebert, who had been convicted of manslaughter in Las Vegas in 1979. 

Police also discovered that Siebert had been dating another woman who had been missing since around the same time as the other women.  Linda Odom, a cocktail waitress, was found dead outside of Talladega a short time later. Siebert was finally arrested in Nashville Tennessee several months later.

Siebert confessed to the five murders in Alabama and said there were at least a dozen murders in total, "maybe more."

Victim name:

Sherri Weathers
Chad Weathers, 5
Joseph Weathers, 4
Linda Odom, 32
Linda Jarman, 33
Gidget Castro, 28
Nesia McElrath, 23
Beatrice McDougall, 57
unnamed victim
unnamed woman