Most people dial 911 because they need rescuing. Paul Stephani used the emergency line for something far more chilling: to confess.
“I can’t stop myself,” Stephani cried in one haunting call featured on Oxygen’s Unknown Serial Killers of America. “I keep killing somebody.”
Stephani, who would become infamous as the Weepy Voiced Killer because of his trembling, high-pitched calls to police, confessed to murdering three women and violently attacking two others during a terrifying crime spree that gripped the Twin Cities in the early 1980s.
In the end, the same compulsion that made him call 911 after his crimes helped bring him down. After his final attack, Stephani phoned authorities seeking help for his own injuries — and investigators recognized the unmistakable voice they had been hearing for years.
“I’m never gonna forget that voice,” former St. Paul Police Det. Sgt. Bob Paskett said. “That’s going to stay with me forever.”
Karen Potack Attacked Behind Manufacturing Plant
The case began in the first hours of 1981, when a disturbing emergency call sent police racing to a crime scene just after New Year’s celebrations had faded.
“Yes, please, this is an emergency,” a man told the dispatcher. “Please send a squad to Malmberg Manufacturing Company and Machine Shop. Please send an ambulance too. There’s a girl hurt there.”
The caller said the young woman was “lying on the ground in the back” near the railroad tracks, but he ended the call before giving police his name or any details that could identify him.
“It’s a strange voice,” former Hennepin County District Attorney John Ryan recalled. “High-pitched, frantic, squealy.”
When they arrived at the scene, they discovered 20-year-old Karen Potack, unconscious, severely beaten and still clinging to life. The only clue left at the scene was her torn blouse, found about 60 yards away from the attack site.
Potack was rushed to the hospital and miraculously survived, but she had no memory of the attack due to the severity of her injuries.
“Through her family, we learned that Karen had been out that evening with friends,” Paskett explained. “She was at a bar about two miles from where she was assaulted and beaten nearly to death.”
According to those with her that night, Potack had left the bar by herself sometime after midnight and planned to head home.
Police theorized that someone may have offered her a ride home on the cold night, then drove her to the remote attack site. Yet, no obvious suspect emerged.
As Paskett noted, “We believed the suspect could well have been the caller.”
Teen Kimberly Compton Killed Just Hours After Getting Off Bus to City
Months later, investigators had an eerie sense of deja vu when another disturbing phone call came into the 911 dispatch center the night of June 3, 1981.
“Will you find me?” the same high-pitched caller asked. “I just stabbed somebody with an ice pick. I can’t stop myself.”
This time the caller hung up without providing any details on where to find the victim. However, about 30 minutes later, three boys playing in the woods stumbled upon the body of a woman and called 911.
“The police immediately go out there,” former Ramsey County prosecutor Tom Foley said, “and they find a young woman laying in the bushes.”
Though the victim—who was already dead—had no identification on her, she had a key to a locker at the St. Paul bus depot, located about two miles from the crime scene.
At the locker, investigators found two bags and identification belonging to Kimberly Compton, an 18-year-old from Wisconsin who’d only been in St. Paul for mere hours before her death.
“Kim was very loving, very caring,” her aunt Sherrie Covert remembered. “I mean, everywhere she went she made friends.”
According to Covert, Compton—a recent high school graduate—went to St. Paul to find work and go to college. Yet, the teen never got the chance to realize her dreams.
“Losing Kim really was devastating,” Covert said through tears. “At that point, all I wanted to do was die.”
The medical examiner determined that Compton had been stabbed 61 times.
“That amount of rage in a person when they kill somebody,” Paskett said, “it’s not something that we’re used to dealing with.”
Kimberly Compton Seen With Mysterious Stranger Before Her Death
Knowing Compton was killed just hours after she got off the bus, investigators went to Mickey’s Diner across the street from the depot and learned that Compton had been eating when she was approached by a white man, around 50 years old, who struck up a conversation with her. The restaurant staff reported seeing her leave with him.
As investigators were still trying to piece together the crime, they got another 911 call on June 11, 1981.
“I’m sorry what I did to Compton,” the caller said. “I couldn’t help it. Don’t know why I had to stab her. I’m so upset about it.”
He added, “I’ll try not to kill anybody else,” before hanging up.
“He’s confessing to us, but not giving us who he was,” Paskett explained. “It’s almost as if he was taunting the investigators.”
In an effort to track down the killer, authorities released some of the recordings of the Weepy-Voiced Killer to the media.
“There was a lot of fear, particularly for young women,” former WCCO-TV reporter Caroline Lowe said. “Just the fear of whose he going to pick next.”
Nurse Barbara Simons Found Dead After Meeting Man at Bar
For more than a year, there were were no updates in the case, until a Minneapolis paperboy discovered a young woman murdered by the river on Aug. 6, 1982.
“I arrived at the scene, the victim was lying against the brush face up in a laid back position,” Minneapolis Police Det. Sgt. Donnie Brown Jr. recalled. “She was a white female. It was quite obvious that she was just recently murdered.”
The victim—later identified as 40-year-old nurse Barbara Simons—had been stabbed 106 times by what authorities believed was a screwdriver or ice pick.
Friends told police that Simons was known to frequent the Hexagon bar, located about two miles from where the body was discovered. She was last seen by the bar staff the night before her body was found chatting with a man.
‘“Around 11:30 p.m., Barbara spoke with one of the waitresses,” Brown said, “and she mentioned that, ‘I hope this is a nice guy, because he’s gonna give me a ride home.’”
It was the last time she was seen alive.
The waitress described the man as a white male in his 40s, balding, with black hair and a mustache.
About 48 hours after Simon’s body was found, a telltale phone call came into the police department from the Weepy Voiced Killer.
“I stabbed her, I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” the hysterical caller said. “I killed those people. I’ll never make it to heaven.”
FBI Profile, Witness Accounts Led Police to Paul Stephani
Fearing he could strike again, investigators brought in the FBI, who provided a profile of the killer. The profile suggested he was likely someone who struggled with his guilt and had a criminal record, according to the episode.
Using that, police went back through their records looking for anyone with a history of an assault or violence, who matched the physical description provided by the witnesses.
They showed about 20 mug shots to employees at the Hexagon bar, who recognized Stephani, a man once convicted of aggravated assaulted who had worked at the Malmberg Manufacturing Company and Machine Shop.
Detectives spoke with the manufacturing company’s owner, who recalled Stephani having a squealy voice whenever he got upset.
Believing they may have their suspect, police set up surveillance of Stephani as they worked to build the case, but he managed to slip his police tail on Aug. 21, 1982.
Not long after, police got a 911 call from a Good Samaritan who witnessed an unknown male violently attacking a woman. The victim, Denise Williams, survived and was able to tell investigators that she had been working as a sex worker when a man picked her up, then drove to an isolated area and stabbed her in the stomach with a screwdriver.
She managed to break a bottle over his head and escape, but he tackled her outside the car and continued to stab her. She identified Stephani as her attacker through a photo lineup.
“Now we can arrest him for the assault on Denise Williams,” Foley said. “If only we can find this guy.”
Paul Stephani Arrested, Admits to Another Murder
It turned out, that wouldn’t be that hard. Stephani called 911 a short time later, claiming he’d been beat up during a fight. He was brought to a local St. Paul hospital in an ambulance, where he was treated and apprehended.
Once in custody, Minneapolis authorities believed they had the strongest evidence against him and he was charged with the attack on Williams and Simons’ murder.
He went on trial in February 1984 and was found guilty. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for Simons’ murder and 18 years for the aggravated assault of Williams.
He was never prosecuted for the murder of Compton or the attack on Potack.
In 1997, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Stephani admitted to attacking Potack, Compton, Simmons and Williams. He also confessed to the murder of teacher Kathleen Greening, telling police he had been on a date with her in 1982, when he went back to her home and drowned her in the bathtub.
“Evil is evil,” Foley said, “and you can’t candy coat it because he said he’s sorry and admitted to killing people.”
Stephani died behind bars in 1998, six months after confessing to the crimes.
