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Crocodile Tears: The Horrific Crimes of “Weepy-Voiced Killer” Paul Michael Stephani
At 3:00 a.m. on December 31, 1980, a dispatcher manning the phones in Saint Paul, Minnesota, received a call from a man who was so emotional, she could barely understand what he was trying to say. Through his tears, he managed to convey that a girl had been badly injured on a road near the Malberg Manufacturing Company. The caller hadn’t given his name, nor had he mentioned that he knew she needed help because he was the one who had beaten her within an inch of her life.
When officers and paramedics arrived on the scene, they found the girl lying at the side of the road, just where the caller said she’d be. Discarded in the snow like a ragdoll, she had been stripped of her clothing and left to freeze to death. She had sustained such a savage beating that her brain was visible through the cracks in her skull.
The victim, who was later identified as twenty-year-old college student Karen Potack, was rushed to the nearest hospital in critical condition. Though she miraculously survived, she had suffered irreversible brain damage. As a result, she had no memory of the attack or the person responsible.
Detectives determined that Karen had been struck multiple times in the head with a tire iron. Her state of undress suggested that the attack may have been…
