grounds that Nelson was insane and that his personal history had been unfairly presented to the jury via the press. The "eloquent, even moving" document consisted of twenty affidavits from persons who had known Nelson throughout his life who swore they were "in a position to know full well the character and mentality of the said Earle Nelson that [they] verily believed without exaggeration or mental reservation [had] been for a long period of time a person of unsound mind." In one of the affidavits, Mrs. L. J. Casey, who had employed Nelson as a groundskeeper in 1926, attested to this, noting that she "hear[d] him laughing and talking to himself all the time. One day while I happened to be there, he sat right outside in the drenching rain, looking at the sky, without a coat, until he was soaked through." Despite the abundance of affidavits, the appeal was denied, and Nelson's execution was scheduled for the second Friday of January. Nelson was executed by hanging at 7:30 a.m. on January 13, 1928 at the Vaughan Street Jail in Winnipeg. His final words were: "I forgive those who have wronged me." Modus operandi When his identity was still unknown, law enforcement surmised that Nelson was a predator who "possessed a dual personality," likening him to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, his modus operandi was clear even to investigators at the time of the crimes' occurrences. Nelson's victims were mostly landladies, whom he would approach on the pretext of renting a room. Many of these victims were targeted after having placed "room for rent" advertisements in local newspapers. Nelson, well-versed in Christian theology, often studied his worn Bible, using it to keep his victim at ease and off-guard. Once he had gained their trust and was able to access their homes, he would kill them (almost always by strangling) and sometimes engage in necrophilia with the corpse. Nelson would often hide the body, leaving it under the nearest bed. In several of his murders committed in Portland, he went to additional lengths to conceal the body, hiding it in the attic or in a steamer trunk within the house. Other victims were concealed in closets or behind furnaces in the house. At the peak of his killing spree, Nelson was killing once every three weeks on average. His killings sometimes occurred in spurts. His last victim, Emily Patterson, had