Topic: Westley Allan Dodd

Westley Allan Dodd (July 3, 1961 – January 5, 1993) was a convicted American serial killer and child molester from Richland, Washington. His execution on January 5, 1993, was the first legal hanging (at his own request) in the United States since 1965.

Dodd grew up in what has been described as a loveless home and was often neglected by his parents in favor of his two younger brothers in Richland, WA. He has stated that he was also ostracized in his school environment and deprived of or denied any emotional growth.

Dodd began sexually abusing children when he was 14 years old; his first victims were his own cousins. All his victims (over 50 in all) were children below the age of 12, some of them as young as two. Dodd's fantasies became increasingly violent over the years (he wrote about wanting to eat the genitals of his victims). He eventually progressed from molesting his victims to murdering them, when he killed brothers Cole and William Neer, and eventually into torturing them before raping and murdering them, as he did to Lee Iseli. After he was arrested for trying to abduct a boy from a movie theater, the police found a homemade torture rack in his home, as yet unused. He was arrested by local police in Camas, Washington and interviewed by task force detectives. Portland Police Bureau Detective C. W. Jensen and Clark County Detective Sergeant Dave Trimble obtained Dodd's confession and served the search warrant on his home.