Kimberly Compton was 18 when she was found murdered in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 3, 1981, hours after arriving from Pepin, Wisconsin to look for work. Her body was discovered in woods near Interstate 35E. She had been stabbed 61 times with an ice pick and strangled with a shoelace; investigators described the excessive wounds as indicative of extreme rage.

Shortly after the killing, police received anonymous phone calls from a man with a high-pitched, remorseful voice who said he couldn’t stop killing; the caller was nicknamed the Weepy-Voiced Killer. A false confession by Alan Lopez two months later was discounted. In 1982 a survivor, Denise Williams, identified her attacker as 38-year-old Paul Michael Stephani; his voice on a 911 call matched the earlier calls. Stephani was later convicted of multiple murders and, after a 1997 confession while terminally ill, admitted to Kimberly Compton’s killing before dying in prison in 1998.