INDIANAPOLIS -- Days before he was executed in Indiana's electric chair Steven T. Judy confessed to his foster mother he left a 'string of bodies' across five states, raping and killing more women than he could recall.
Mary Carr told a news conference Tuesday that in the week before his March 9 electrocution, Judy confessed to at least three other murders and several rapes.
She said her foster son wasn't sure how many women he had raped and killed during his lifetime, but he said he knew 'a string of bodies' was scattered across five states -- Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Illinois and Indiana.
Indianapolis Homicide Detective Donald W. Patton said he was investigating Judy's statements and attempting to trace the Louisiana murders to which he confessed.
Police also were investigating whether Judy committed murders in the other states he mentioned. Patton said he expected to have a report within a few days.
Mrs. Carr said Judy had 'frequent urges to attack women' because he 'considered them stupid and gullible.'
'He said every woman he attacked he raped. Every woman he ever bothered, he either tricked them into pulling off the road or he started to help them as they were stopped on the road,' she said.
Judy admitted to 13 to 15 rapes while on the witness stand during his trial in the April 1979 rape-strangulation of Terry Lee Chasteen, 21, of Indianapolis, and the drownings of her three small children. He confessed to those slayings and was sentenced to death in the electric chair.
Mary Carr said she wanted the world to know about Judy's confession because she was afraid other men might wrongly be executed for murders he might have committed.
'I'm so afraid that there's someone waiting on death row in one of those other states and they didn't do it, that they're there for something Steven did,' she said.
'It would really make me feel good if someone who is innocent is freed because of his confession. It would really help.'
Mrs. Carr said Judy told her he murdered disco dance instructor Linda Unverzagt, 28, in Indianapolis in November 1978.
'I was in Texas, Florida, Illinois and Louisiana and I left a string of bodies,' he also told her. But he never told her the names of the other women.
Judy, she said, admitted killing two women in Louisiana. Mrs. Carr and Judy's lawyer, Steven Harris, said they believed the Louisiana killings were in 1973, while Judy was in New Orleans.
Mrs. Carr said there may also have been a third slaying in Louisiana. 'There was one that he snatched and threw in the swamp after he raped her and he didn't know if she lived or died,' she said.
She said there was a possibility he murdered two other Indianapolis women after raping them in separate incidents. After raping one woman in 1978, he left his victim tied to a tree in a heavily wooded area. 'He didn't know whether she died or not,' Mrs. Carr said.
Mrs. Carr said she related Judy's pre-execution confession to Indianapolis and state police and Marion County prosecutors Tuesday.
She waited nearly two weeks after Judy's funeral because 'I wanted to get him buried first and last week was so bad for our family,' she said. 'I just started to deal with it recently.'
Mrs. Carr has said she is considering filing suit against the state because her family was not informed Judy was dangerous when they took him in as a foster son.
