• Stephen Peter Morin Disguises
• Chameleon Serial Killer Stephen Peter Morin
• Chameleon Serial Killer On Id

Stephen Peter Morin (February 19, 1951 – March 13, 1985) was an American serial killer executed by lethal injection by the state of Texas. His last victim, Margaret Palm, 2. Stephen Peter Morin (February 19, 1951 – March 13, 1985) was an American serial killer executed by lethal injection by the state of Texas. His last victim, Margaret Palm, rode around with him in a car for 10 hours before taking him to a bus station and buying him a ticket to Austin. He let her go, boarded the bus and.

One morning 20 years ago this month, I opened the front section of the Washington Post and read that my friend Stephen Peter Morin had been executed by the state of Texas for capital murder. There are two reasons that that sentence, while accurate, felt awkward to write.

First reason: it has been a long time since I thought of Morin as a friend. He was a twisted, manipulative and malevolent person, and if I hate anyone in the world or out of it I hate him.

Second reason: I knew him as Ray Constantine. But Morin was his real name, and for a number of months in 1981 I spent just about every day with him, generally enjoying his company.

'Ray Constantine' rode up to the front porch of my mother's house on his bicycle one day to ask whether she knew of apartments he could rent. Her current partner is one of my favourite people in the world, but my mother had phenomenally, staggeringly bad judgment in men in those days: by that evening or the next, it seemed, he had moved in with her.

'Ray' was a smooth talker, and closer to my age than to my mother's. My mother had had a string of failed relationships with a string of increasingly sleazy men, the previous one ending just a week or two before. Full of the self-righteousness only a 21-year-old boy with a disintegrating mother truly knows, I exploded at her in mortified fury, telling her that she was being incredibly stupid and allowing herself to be set up for another romantic disaster.

She said he'd be moving in and that I'd better get used to the idea. So I did. 'Ray' decided to work his way into my good graces by getting me a job - always in short supply in 1981 Buffalo. He lied his way on to a union painting crew and then vouched for me. I joined the union and worked with him all summer.

Three things about that summer stand out in my mind, aside from the monotony of paint, hauling kegs of tar to roofs, and a story about a ladder that will come a bit later.

The first was heading to WashingtonDC to the giant march in support of the striking air traffic controllers.

The second was finding out that my mother had ordered a copy of my birth certificate to give to Ray so that he could get ID with a different name on it. I intercepted it in what was likely the luckiest moment of my life.

The third was just before Ray and my mother left for their trip across country in her van. I wandered by her house one humid night - I'd moved out to my own place, what with my union paycheck - and found Ray sweating, attaching carpet to the walls and ceiling of the van. He was struggling to hold the carpet up as he put rivets into metal; I stepped up and helped him.

My mother and Ray went from town to town, San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas, and into Texas. In each town Ray would disappear for a day or two and then show up again, a worried look in his eyes, insisting they leave town right away. She realised, eventually, that he was up to no good. He left her in Texas, and she called the police.

There was an uncomfortable period in Texas in December after he found out she'd turned him in but before they caught him. And then they did catch him, and he went to trial and pleaded guilty to capital murder and asked for the death penalty. On March 13 1985, after the executioner probed veins for 45 minutes looking for one that wasn't collapsed - raising the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union - Stephen Peter Morin was put to death by the state of Texas for the murder of Carrie Marie Scott, whose car he was attempting to steal.

There's a way in which Scott was lucky: Morin did not rape and torture her the way he did some of his other victims, some of them in the van I helped him soundproof.

In the van I helped him soundproof.

Morin's last words, as reported by the state of Texas, are a marvel of manipulative sociopathy: 'Heavenly Father, I give thanks for this time, for the time that we have been together, the fellowship in your world, the Christian family presented to me [He called the names of the personal witnesses]. Allow your holy spirit to flow as I know your love has been showered upon me. Forgive them for they know not what they do, as I know that you have forgiven me, as I have forgiven them. Lord Jesus, I commit my soul to you, I praise you, and I thank you.'

Covering up amoral, murderous violence with a coat of Jesus? Too bad for poor Ray. A little later, with better PR, he could have risen rather high in the Texas GOP [Grand Old Party].

I find myself unwilling to grant the possibility that the sick fuck said a single truthful thing in his miserable life. He sent me a letter from death row, calling me the closest thing he'd had to a brother. I destroyed it after one reading. Who tries to get ID with his 'brother's' name on it to use on his murder spree? He told his attorney he didn't remember killing anyone. Why the fake IDs, the soundproofing of vans, the sudden desires to leave town? He wanted to manipulate the cloying, puling conservative Christians in the Texas penal system: what better method than ostentatiously coming to Jesus?

If ever there was a person who deserved the death penalty - and still I do not believe there ever was - Stephen Peter Morin was that person. The world is far better off without him, and I find some consolation in the fact that his putative hopes of forgiveness in the hereafter dissolved into the permanent blackness of non-existence. I only wish he had died before he could have killed Janna Bruce, Sheila Whalen, Carrie Scott, and as many as 30 or more other young women. Twenty years later, and his memory still brings me to a shaking rage.

And yet.

A wooden 40ft ladder is a heavy thing. Set it against a house on ground saturated by a week of summer rain, and it will tend to slide. Climb that ladder with a two-gallon bucket of paint, and if the ladder is leaning against freshly-primed clapboard three stories up, it will tend to slide quickly. A quarter-century of exploring the precipitous landscapes of the west has thoroughly blunted my acrophobia, but that morning, 35ft up a heavy ladder that was sliding rightward at about half an inch a second, I froze. And watched myself slide.

And 'Ray' saw, and got from the yard to the third-floor window in about five seconds. Speaking calmly while he hung out the window, he persuaded me that I was unafraid. His words filled me with an odd strength. He persuaded me that I could take the ends of the ladder I was on - which I could barely lift in the best of conditions - and jump it back to the left and verticality.

And I did it: I pulled back violently on the ladder and slammed it back into place. In reach of the window now, I helped Ray tie the ladder securely to the window frame as I sobbed in relief, then descended on increasingly shaky legs. Ray met me as I reached the bottom, grabbed me in a bear hug, kept me from slumping to the ground.

Breaking News Emails

A 'chameleon' who died in prison while serving time for murdering his wife has now been tied to the 1981 disappearance of a New Hampshire woman and the bodies of a woman and three children — one of them his own daughter — who were found in barrels in the woods.

'We believe we have our killer,' said New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Strelzin. 'Now we need to identify and try to find all of his victims.'

He said the suspect, known as Bob Evans and a slew of other aliases, 'certainly fits the profile of a serial killer' and that investigators are concerned he may have murdered others they don't know about.

Investigators said they followed a convoluted forensic trail to tie the cases to Evans, a hard-drinking drifter who allegedly beat his victims to death and dismembered some of them:

• They believe he murdered girlfriend Denise Beaudin, a 23-year-old Manchester, New Hampshire, woman last seen in 1981. They suspect he killed her somewhere between New Hampshire and California and kept her infant daughter, named Dawn at birth, for several years before abandoning her in a California RV park in 1986. The girl, whom he renamed Lisa, was later adopted and is alive and well.

• They believe that as early as 1980, he killed four victims whose bodies were found in industrial drums in Allenstown, New Hampshire. The remains of a woman in her mid-20s and a girl about age 11 were not found until 1985, and the bodies of two girls, one about 4 and one about 3, were found in another container in 2000. He is the father of the middle child, and police believe her mother, who has not been identified, may have been killed as well.

• He admitted killing and dismembering California chemist Eunsoon Jun, 45, soon after marrying her in a backyard ceremony in California in 2002 and was serving a 15-year sentence when he died in prison in 2010.

Stephen Peter Morin Disguises

While much about Evans' identity and activities was murky, authorities knew one thing: His DNA showed he was not the biological father of the little girl he abandoned in the RV park, but he would not say where he got the child.

In 2014, California police enlisted DNA and genetics experts to figure out Lisa's real identity. And last year, they came up with a hit, finding a cousin in Hampshire and then determining that she was the daughter of long-missing Denise Baudin.

Police had long wondered if the Baudin case might be linked to the other big unsolved mystery in the area from the era. They compared Evans' DNA to the genetic profiles of the victims in the barrels and found he is the father of one of the dead girls. (The woman and the other two children are related to each other, possibly mother and child, but are not related to Evans).

Police also amassed circumstantial evidence linking Evans to the bodies. While employed as an electrician at a local mill, he had worked under the man who owned the property where the remains were dumped, and the barrels were likely from the mill.

Even though police believe they have figured out who is responsible for Beaudin's disappearance and the bodies in the barrels, they have many unanswered questions and asked that anyone with information about Evans contact them.

Because he changed his name and birth date so often, they are not even certain of his true identity, though they think he may have a military background. And they fear he may have more blood on his hands.

They noted that when he was arrested on drunken-driving charges in February and June 1980, he told police he had a wife named Elizabeth. When he was arrested again in October 1980, he did not list a wife. Police later found certified mail signed for by an Elizabeth Evans at his Manchester home, but they have not been able to find any trace of her.

There is also a worryingly long gap in their timeline of his travels in California. After serving 18 months in a drunken-driving hit-and-run case, he absconded from parole in 1990 and was a fugitive until he resurfaced in Richmond, California, where he met and married Jun.

'Given what we know about him, we are concerned about his activities in California for those 12 years,' Strelzin said.

'This is somebody who targets females, and children as well. We know he is an abuser,' Strelzin said, adding that Evans may have used Lisa and potentially other children as bait to meet women.

'This is a guy who was a chameleon.'

Beaudin's body has not been found and investigators are not sure where she may have been killed.

Her daughter, who doesn't have any strong memories of Beaudin, said in a statement that she is grateful for the work police have done but pleaded for privacy for her, her husband and three children.

'Please turn your focus toward the unidentified victims, and other potentially unknown victims in this case, and hopefully their families will also be offered some closure as this investigation continues,' she wrote.

Officials said that while it's a relief that they know more about what happened to the New Hampshire victims, it's disappointing the suspect is not alive to fill in the blanks — and be prosecuted.

'He will never face true justice for what he did,' Strelzin said.

Tracy Connor is a senior writer for NBC News. She started this role in December, 2012. Connor is responsible for reporting and writing breaking news, features and enterprise stories for NBCNews.com. Connor joined NBC News from the New York Daily News, where she was a senior writer covering a broad range of news and supervising the health and immigration beats. Prior to that she was an assistant city editor who oversaw breaking news and the courts and entertainment beats.

Earlier, Connor was a staff writer at the New York Post, United Press International and Brooklyn Paper Publications.

Chameleon Serial Killer Stephen Peter Morin

Connor has won numerous awards from journalism organizations including the Deadline Club and the New York Press Club.

Chameleon Serial Killer On Id

She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.