Hayward Bissell and the Murder of Patricia Booher

On January 24, 2000, sheriff’s deputies in Mentone, Alabama stopped an older model Lincoln with Ohio plates that they suspected was involved in a hit-and-run accident earlier that day. The driver was thirty-seven-year-old Hayward Bissell of Norwalk, Ohio and strapped into the seat beside him was the remains of his twenty-four-year-old girlfriend, Patricia Booher. To the deputies’ horror, Booher’s hand and leg had been severed from her body, her eyes had been gouged out, and her heart and liver had been torn out, but were still in the car. Further investigation revealed that, in addition to Booher’s murder, Bissell had also attempted to kill two other couples on what appeared to be a rampage across two states.