William Dale Archerd drank highballs, married frequently and despised 9-to-5 employment. He was Arkansas-born, slender, with pale blue eyes and wavy silver hair. He inspired romantic devotion in women and trust in criminal confederates. For decades, his wives and acquaintances were fatally stricken with sudden, convulsion-inducing illness that coroners did not grasp as murder.
His motive was greed, though he never made much. He was a frail 55 when police finally arrested him at his Alhambra home in 1967. “Well, it took you long enough!” he quipped. A prosecutor called him “the greatest cold-blooded killer since Bluebeard,” and a judge called him the most evil defendant he’d ever seen. There rarely seemed to be a dent in Archerd’s cool. Even on death row, he retained his aura of blithe unconcern.