POLICE have revealed a 60-year mystery of an alleged serial killer who killed his fifth wife after she caught his crimes.
His grandchildren believed that Monte R. Merz of Mount Pleasant, Utah had died in a 1965 car accident at age 54.
2
2
However, Merz’s true cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Police say Merz shot and killed his fifth wife, Ina, in California in 1965, then shot himself.
His criminal record from 1956 to 1965 includes the murder of two other women, a teenage girl and a fetus.
Monte Merz was “an avid gambler, prolific child molester, violent towards animals, a womanizer, (and) an irate alcoholic,” LA Detective Rachel Evans told me. KSL.
“He would marry these young women who had these young girls, and then he would abuse those girls,” she said.
The murder of 1956
This year, the oldest unsolved murder in the San Fernando Valley was discovered by Evans and linked to Merz.
Evans gathered enough evidence to suspect Merz was responsible for the 1956 murder of a pregnant 18-year-old woman in Van Nuys, California.
The pregnant woman was identified as Barbara Jean Jepson. She was married at the time and four months pregnant.
Interestingly, Jepson was the daughter of Merz’s common-law wife, Fern Spiva, whom he lived with for six years from 1948.
Evans suspects that Merz “groomed and molested Barbara along the way.”
There were no signs of break-in, which made it appear as if the suspect knew Jepson.
On the day of her murder, her husband, Joe Jepson, found his wife’s naked body on their bed with a knife still in her chest.
She was believed to have been raped and fatally stabbed in her home.
Although much evidence was collected, no DNA evidence was used during this period in history.
Even with the lack of DNA evidence recovered in 1956 and subsequently recalled using current technology, Evans used a very strict judging process to say with 99% certainty that Merz was Jepson’s killer.
The 1960 Murder
Police only discovered Merz as a suspect in the fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old girl in 1960, after a key witness came forward in 2017.
The victim, Mary Ann Perdrotta, had a horse stable next to Merz’s and they often rode horses together.
Her body was later found with nine stab wounds in the nearby Foothills area.
After 52 years, a former stepdaughter of Merz finally stepped forward after being too scared to alert the police earlier.
She told police that on the day the 15-year-old was murdered, she saw Merz enter the house with a bloodied knife and blood on his hands and clothing.
The stepdaughter was 10 years old at the time. “[She] the suspect stated [Merz] repeatedly [abused] and threatened her.
“According to [the stepdaughter], the suspect molested many young neighborhood girls. She stated that if she ever told anyone, she would be killed by the suspect.”
The 1965 Murder Suicide
About two to three years after he allegedly killed Perdrotta, Merz married Ina.
Then in 1964 he was arrested for molesting a 14-year-old girl. However, he died before his case went to trial.
A year later, when Merz was released from prison, Ina found a young girl’s underwear in a drawer in their California home.
She decided to confront Merz about whether he had abused that girl.
Then things turned violent when Merz grabbed a gun and chased Ina into the street.
He shot her several times and after killing her, he went back to the house and killed himself.
Merz’s hold on his victims
Merz had a lot of control over his victims. “He would never let them out of his life. He would never let them go,” Evans said.
One victim told police that Merz “constantly kept them in his pocket. He would still harass them, rape them, until he died,” Evans said.
“So he was kind of a womanizer. He had all these women that he interacted with and liked a little bit,” she said.
“There are many stories around him about these young girls being abused by him.”