Douglas Gretzler

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Douglas Edward Gretzler (May 21, 1951 – June 3, 1998) was an American serial killer who, together with accomplice Willie Luther Steelman, committed seventeen murders in the states of Arizona and California in late 1973. All the victims were shot, strangled, or stabbed to death, and the majority of the murders were committed in the commission of robberies or for the purpose of eyewitness elimination. Gretzler and Steelman were tried separately and convicted for eleven of these murders in 1974 and 1975. Both were sentenced to death for two murders committed in Arizona; each received sentences of life imprisonment relating to nine murders committed in Victor, California, in November 1973. Gretzler was executed by lethal injection at Florence State Prison in June 1998, while Steelman died of cirrhosis in August 1986 while incarcerated on death row at this facility. The saga of the murders committed by Gretzler and Steelman have been referred to by contemporary reporters and a documentary director...

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