Neal Falls

Neal Martin Falls (September 24, 1969 – July 18, 2015)^[4] was an American suspected serial killer who was shot and killed in self-defense by Heather Saul, a sex worker in Charleston, West Virginia. Falls had been stopped by police in over twenty states during his life but did not incur any serious criminal charges.^[2] Only after his death did police discover evidence possibly tying Falls to other crimes.

Biography[]

Little is known about Neal Falls' early life. He was born on September 24, 1969 in Eugene, Oregon, into an impoverished family with nine other children. His father was aggressive to his wife and children, resulting in young Falls growing up in a socially disadvantageous environment that negatively affected the well-being of the entire family.

During his school years, Falls began to show an interest in firearms and subsequently became obsessed with military paraphernalia. After leaving school, he did not continue his education and was forced to engage in low-skilled labor. Despite this, Falls led a law-abiding lifestyle, refrained from abusing alcohol or drugs, and was keen on collecting weapons and ammunition, with most of his friends and acquaintances speaking very positively of him.^[5]

From 1969 to 1992, Falls lived in various cities around Oregon. In early 1992, he moved to Greensburg, Kansas, where he lived with his father until his death in 1995, after which Falls returned to Oregon and found a job as a private security guard. After finishing his training, Falls' fingerprints were entered in a national database in 1998. In 2000, Neal moved to the city of Henderson, Nevada, where for the next eight years he worked as a security guard at Hoover Dam. During this period, he began to exhibit deviant behavior, including abusing animals in the desert regions of Arizona, due to which he was subjected to disciplinary action. At the same time, Falls began to spend most of his free time in the company of various sex workers and pimps. In the mid-2000s, he visited the Philippines for the purpose of sex tourism.

In 2008, Falls was charged with sexually harassing a colleague, after which he was forced to quit. After this dismissal, he began to show signs of dromomania, frequently changing his place of residence from 2009 to 2015, living in Oregon, Indiana, Kentucky, and Texas, where he was detained by police on several occasions for traffic violations.

In January 2015, Neal found out that a woman with whom he was intimately related was married, after which, in the same month, his mother passed away. These two events greatly affected his emotional state, making him become internally conflicted and disorganized. In April 2015, Falls underwent retraining courses to continue working as a security guard in the private sector in Oregon, but by that summer he went to Texas, from where he moved to West Virginia.^[6]

Death and discovery[]

Shortly after moving to West Virginia, Falls met a sex worker named Heather Saul online and tracked down her address. After entering Saul's residence, he held her at gunpoint. Saul describes the struggle that ensued as follows: "When he strangled me, I grabbed my rake, and when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him ... I grabbed the gun and shot behind me."^[2] Falls died at the scene, ^[6] shot by Saul in the head, killing him instantly.

Four sets of handcuffs were retrieved from Falls' body.^[7] When police officers searched the inside of his car, they allegedly found a machete, axes, knives, a shovel, a sledgehammer, bleach, plastic trash bags, bulletproof vests, clean white socks, and underwear.^[2]

Police linked the objects found, Falls' modus operandi and his previous known locations to the murders and disappearances of nine women in three states. During the eight years he lived in Henderson, Nevada, from 2003 to 2007, four sex workers disappeared, three of whom were later found dismembered in California, Illinois, and Nevada. All the missing women, like Saul, advertised their activities on the Internet.^[8] Six more vanished from Chillicothe, Ohio, a two-hour drive from Charleston. Despite the fact that no evidence was found of Falls' presence in Chillicothe, he is still considered a suspect. Since 1995, Falls had been detained by the police for violating traffic rules in sixteen states, and his true scale of movement and activity remains unknown.^[9][10]

A list containing the names of six women involved in sex work and their contacts on social networks was found in Falls' pocket, which, according to the prosecutor's office, may have been intended victims. However, police investigations determined that all of them were alive and well; five of them were located across West Virginia and the sixth worked in San Diego.^[11] In 2018, Falls was tested for involvement in the I-70 Killer murders, a series of killings in the Midwestern United States in the spring of 1992. At that time he lived in Kansas, where one of the murders had occurred, and corresponded very closely to the suspect's image, but no physical evidence was located to corroborate these speculations.^[6][12]

Possible victims[]

Possible victims of Neal Falls include:^[13]

• Jodi Brewer
• Lindsay Marie Harris
• Misty Marie Saens
• Tiffany Sayre
• Shasta Himelrick
• Charlotte Trego
• Tameka Lynch
• Wanda Lemons (missing)

Victims ruled out in Falls case[]

• Timberly Claytor^[14]
• Jessica Edith Foster (missing)^[15]
• Loretta Joe Gates^[16]
• Terri Lynn Bills^[16]
• I-70 Killer victims

See also[]

• List of serial killers in the United States

References[]

External links[]

• Neal Falls: Prostitute Serial Killer? at About.com