Gaynor among 'most prolific' serial killers

MASSACHUSETTS, Springfield (AP):

A serial killer added an eighth murder to his record yesterday, admitting that a woman he strangled in 1995 was his first killing. Alfred Gaynor's guilty plea yesterday to another murder places the 43-year-old among the most prolific serial killers in recent Massachusetts history, according to prosecutors.

Vera Hallums, a 34-year-old mother of four, was tied with electrical cords, beaten and strangled in her Springfield apartment in April 1995. She was the first of several women killed in Springfield over the next few years, many of whom met Gaynor in their mutual quest for crack cocaine.

Prosecutors and police say he robbed other women for drug money, raped most of his victims and often posed their bodies grotesquely to shock whoever found them. In several cases, they were discovered by the victims' young children.