Larry Fisher
 |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page Larry Fisher contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
|
.jpg){kind=link}
Larry Earl Fisher (21 August 1949 - 10 June 2015) was a Canadian murderer and serial rapist responsible for the 1969 rape and murder of 20-year-old Gail Miller. An innocent man, David Milgaard, was convicted of the crime and imprisoned for 23 years before he was exonerated.
Biography edit
Fisher was born in 1949, a product of his mother's rape by her husband. His father was run out of town by the police when Fisher was three. As a child, Fisher was sexually abused by his aunt and grew to hate women as a result.
Fisher married his wife Linda when she was 17 after raping her in 1968. According to Linda, Fisher was controlling and abusive and wanted her to be completely passive, especially during sex. They moved to Saskatoon soon after their marriage, and soon after a then-unknown perpetrator began attacking, raping and robbing women at knifepoint.
In January 1969, David Milgaard and his friends Ron Wilson and Nichol Jon were travelling through Saskatoon and visited their friend Albert Cadrain, whose basement apartment Larry and Linda Fisher lived in. On 31 January, Fisher's neighbour Gail Miller was found raped and murdered in a snowdrift. Her throat had been slit with a knife and her purse had been emptied. Police, convinced that Milgaard was the killer, forced Wilson, John and Cadrain to implicate him in the murder by threatening them with prosecution if they did not testify. Milgaard was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, Linda Fisher believed her husband was responsible. He had been acting strangely and one of her knives had gone missing from the kitchen; when Linda accused Larry of stealing it and using it to kill Miller during an argument, he reportedly turned white and had no response.
In 1970, shortly after Milgaard's conviction, Fisher moved to Winnipeg. There, he was arrested for raping a women at knifepoint. After his arrest he was linked to the rapes that occurred in Saskatoon and pled guilty to multiple counts of rape, indecent assault and robbery. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison. During the proceedings, police officer Edwin Rasmussen submitted a report to the Attorney General's office suggesting that Gail Miller's murder was linked to the rapes, citing similarities between Fisher's M.O. and the circumstances of Miller's death. However, the Attorney General didn't even read the report and no action was taken. Linda Fisher divorced her husband in 1978 and reported to the police that she suspected he was Gail Miller's killer, but this too was ignored. Fisher, meanwhile, was released in 1980. Almost immediately afterwards he raped a woman in North Battleford, slashed her throat, stole her purse and left her for dead. She survived and Fisher was arrested after being found wiping blood off his knife, receiving another 14-year sentence.
In 1991 the Supreme Court of Canada reviewed David Milgaard's conviction. They concluded that the witness statements implicating him were unreliable and recommended his conviction be overturned. Minister of Justice Kim Campbell demanded he be tried again, but the provincial government refused, stayed the proceedings against Milgaard and released him from prison. Semen samples from Gail Miller's body were tested and their DNA was confirmed not to match Milgaard. Further testing implicated Fisher, who had since been released from prison, in the murder. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. An appeal against his conviction was rejected and Fisher was imprisoned until his death in 2015.