Robert Neal Rodriguez

Born as the son of a 22-year United States Air Force veteran, Rodriguez attended several different schools while growing up in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. He graduated high school in Fort Walton Beach, later attending the Okaloosa-Walton Junior College before enrolling at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he became a Mormon.[2]

After spending two years in Guatemala as a Mormon missionary, Rodriguez earned a law enforcement degree from Brigham Young University and was later hired by the Portland Police Bureau in March 1975, but resigned only two years later. Rodriguez then moved to Tallahassee, Florida with his mother and attended the Florida State University, working as a sign-painter and janitor. He was also an active member of the Unity Church, occasionally delivering sermons there.[2]

In June 1984, 22-year-old Valerie Hunt, a student from the Tallahassee Community College, disappeared from a shopping center. No trace was found of her until three months later, when her skeletized remains were located at a sinkhole in Wakulla County.[1][2]

On March 27, 1992, two 16-year-old girls from Thomasville, Georgia named Megan Carr and Cherish DeSantis, were found dead at a secluded Alligator Point beach by a police officer and his wife. The girls, who had travelled for a simple day on the beach and were still in their swimsuits, had been shot twice in the head.[2] The bodies showed no signs of a struggle, as well as neither of them being sexually assaulted or robbed, as their purses and valuables had been left untouched.[1]