A DETECTIVE has revealed a 60-year mystery of an alleged serial killer who murdered his fifth wife after she was catching on to his crimes.
Monte R. Merz from Mount Pleasant, Utah was believed by his grandchildren to have died in a car crash in 1965 at the age of 54.
LA Detective Rachel Evans (pictured) solved a cold case of a pregnant 18-year-old woman who was raped and then stabbed to death[/caption]
This case opened up the horrific criminal past of a Utah man, Monte. R. Merz[/caption]
However, Merz’s true cause of death was from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Police say that in 1965 Merz fatally shot his fifth wife, Ina, in California and then shot himself afterwards.
His rap sheet from 1956 to 1965 includes the murder of two other woman, a teenage girl, and a fetus.
Monte Merz was “an avid gambler, prolific child molester, violent to animals, a womanizer, (and) a raging alcoholic,” LA Detective Rachel Evans told KSL.
“He’d marry these young women that had these young girls, and then he would abuse those girls,” she said.
The 1956 Murder
This year, the oldest unsolved murder in San Fernando Valley was uncovered by Evans and linked to Merz.
Evans gathered enough evidence to suspect that 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 and four months pregnant at the time.
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Interestingly enough, Jepson was the daughter of Merz’s common-law-wife, Fern Spiva, who he lived for six years starting in 1948.
Evans has suspected that Merz “groomed and molested Barbara along the way.”
There was no signs of forced entry which made it seem like 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 had been believed to be raped and fatally stabbed in her home.
Although a lot of evidence had been collected, DNA evidence wasn’t used during this time in history.
Even with the lack of DNA evidence recovered back in 1956 and then recollected using today’s technology, Evans used a very strict review process to say that with 99% certainty, Merz was Jepson’s killer.
The 1960 Murder
Police only discovered Merz as the suspect in the 1960 fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old girl after a prime 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 fearful to alert the police before.
She told police that the day the 15-year-old was killed, she saw Merz come into the house with a bloody knife and blood on his hands and clothing.
The stepdaughter was 10 years old at the time. “[She] stated the suspect [Merz] repeatedly [abused] and threatened her.
“According to [the stepdaughter], the suspect molested many young neighborhood girls. She stated if she ever told anyone, she would be killed by the suspect.”
The 1965 Murder-Suicide
About two to three years after he allegedly murdered 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 out of jail, Ina found underwear from a young girl in a drawer in their California home.
She decided to confront Merz about whether he had been abusing that girl.
Things then turned violent when Merz grabbed a gun and chased Ina into the street.
He shot her multiple times and then after he killed her, he went back into 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 molest them, rape them, until he died,” Evans said.
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“So he was kind of a womanizer. He had all of these women that he connected with and kind of kept,” she said.
“There’s a lot of stories around him of these young girls that were abused by him.”
