Adirondack Serial Killer Robert F. Garrow In the summer of 1973, a serial killer’s rampage in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State changed the region forever. Innocent visitors and campers were brutally knifed to death, terrifying thousands of residents and vacationers. John Thomas Jamelske (born May 9, 1935, in Fayetteville, New York) is an American serial rapist-kidnapper who, from 1988 to his apprehension in 2003, kidnapped a series of girls and women and held them captive in a concrete bunker beneath the yard of his home in DeWitt, a suburb of Syracuse, New York, United States.

Mug shot of Jamelske following his arrest
Born	May 9, 1935 (age 85)
Other names	Syracuse Dungeon Master
Occupation	Retired as of arrest, previously a real estate investor, handyman, and carpenter
Criminal status	In custody at Clinton Correctional Facility
Spouse(s)	Dorothy Richmond (deceased 1999)
Children	3
Conviction(s)	Pleaded guilty to 5 counts of first-degree kidnapping
Criminal penalty	18 years to life (eligible for parole on 2021-04-07)

'The Poughkeepsie Tapes' is a found footage horror movie about a fictional serial killer from Upstate New York.

John Thomas^[1] Jamelske (born May 9, 1935, in Fayetteville, New York) is an Americanserial rapist-kidnapper who, from 1988 to his apprehension in 2003, kidnapped a series of girls and women and held them captive in a concrete bunker beneath the yard of his home in DeWitt, a suburb of Syracuse, New York, United States.

Early life[edit]

Jamelske was born and raised in the DeWitt area. He graduated from Fayetteville High School in 1953. In September 1959, he married Dorothy Richmond, a schoolteacher with whom he had three sons. At this time, he worked at Acme Market and other grocery stores. Later he started working in a series of blue-collar jobs, as a handyman and carpenter.

Later years[edit]

Over the years, Jamelske amassed over $1 million,^[2] which he invested in real estate in California.

Jamelske's wife Dorothy became bedridden from disease in 1988 and died in 1999.

Abductions[edit]

In October 1988, Jamelske abducted his first victim, a 14-year-old Native American girl. He held her captive for over two years, and she had turned 17 by the time he released her. Jamelske compelled her to his will by threatening violence against her younger brother. She made no attempt to report to authorities after Jamelske released her.

In either 1995 or 1996, Jamelske abducted a 14-year-old Latina runaway whom he lured under the premise of paying her to deliver a secret package. The girl willingly walked into his bunker (which he called 'the dungeon') and Jamelske closed the door behind her. Eventually Jamelske put a blindfold on her and drove her to her mother's apartment and dropped her off. Although he also threatened her family, she went to the police with a description. Because of her previous drug use, they questioned the credibility of her story and dropped the investigation shortly after.^{[citation needed]}

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On August 31, 1997, Jamelske kidnapped a 53-year-old Vietnamese woman off the street. She was a foreign refugee who spoke little English. He forced her into his car and took her to an abandoned house, where he raped her. Then he tied her to a stack of flattened cardboard boxes and drove her to his house. He raped her daily while holding her captive, and also forced her to fulfill various menial tasks for him. He released her on May 23, 1998 at a Greyhound bus station with $50. She reported to the police that day, but nothing came of it. She claimed that the police did not believe her, but Syracuse Police spokesman Sgt. Thomas Connellan stated that they investigated all leads, none of which panned out.

On May 11, 2001, Jamelske offered a ride home to a 26-year-old white woman walking in downtown Syracuse while on LSD, which the woman accepted due to the poor weather. Jamelske took her back to his bunker, where he raped her daily. When she resisted, Jamelske inflicted cigar burns on her, from which she developed an abscess on her lower back. Jamelske also manipulated her with claims that he was actually part of an underground slavery syndicate, of which the police were a part.

The victim wanted to write home to her parents letting them know she was alive, and while Jamelske did agree she could only do so in stating that she was in a drug rehabilitation clinic.

Controversy over investigation[edit]

After the previous victims' release, police investigations were complicated by the letter she had been forced by Jamelske to write. Further complicating the case was the rape kit test showing no evidence of sexual assault—Jamelske had no sexual contact with the victim for several days prior to releasing her.

The victim also told police that he drove a tan^[3] 1974 Mercury Comet. Police searched for registered vehicles matching this description in the New York area and came up with a single hit. However the lead didn't pan out due to the victim's description of the vehicle not matching with the one discovered.^[4] Due to this inconsistency, the investigating officers closed the case. It is noted that, despite that body style being available from 1971 to 1977, police failed to search any other year, as the car Jamelske drove was a 1975 Mercury Comet of the same color.^[5]

Representatives from the Syracuse police appeared on Dateline NBC and criticized the woman for providing insufficient information.^{[citation needed]}

In another interview on the program Cold Case Files, an Onondaga Sheriff's Department detective stated:

Well, at the time, it was difficult: I've had a couple of missing adults who were missing because they wanted to be missing.^[6]

The victim claimed during the same program:

.. they [the police] didn't believe me, all because of the letter I wrote about the drug rehab. They thought I was making up some story or something.^[7]

Concerning the letter written by the victim to her family, the detective again stated:

[The letter was] read and examined by the family members [of the missing woman], and the family all said it was her handwriting, it was her vocabulary, and they weren't suspicious at all that it was anything other than her writing .. So from a standpoint of us investigating a missing person case, the case was closed.^[8]

Discovery[edit]

In October 2002, Jamelske picked up his final abductee, a 16-year-old African American runaway from Syracuse.

On April 3, 2003, Jamelske felt confident enough to take the girl out to karaoke at a local bar. Emboldened by this success, he then took her on another public outing, where she slipped away from him long enough to phone her sister. The girl's sister checked the caller ID and dialed the number back, which turned out to be a bottle return center located in Manlius. The older sister persuaded the employee who answered the phone to call 9-1-1. The employee in turn called her boss, who was working at a local pet store several blocks away, telling him that Jamelske—who was scheduled to visit him at the store shortly—had apparently kidnapped a young girl and had been raping her. After Jamelske and the girl had made their visit and left, the boss immediately called the police; Jamelske was tracked down and arrested shortly thereafter.

After discovery[edit]

Jamelske pleaded guilty^[9] to five counts of first degree kidnapping, and is curren

Upstate Ny Serial Killers