Murl Daniels

Murl Daniels and John West One could easily get away with calling Murl Daniels and John Coulter West as „The Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole of Ohio.“ In a way they were much like Lucas and Toole, two partners in crime who decided to go on a pointless rampage of murder and mayhem. The hunt for Daniels and West in 1948 was described by one newspaper as the „largest manhunt in the history of Ohio. Daniels and West met while serving time together at the Mansfield Reformatory. Daniels who in for a robbery conviction, West for auto theft. While inside the big house, the two men formed a pact between them to kill all of the prison guards who had mistreated them during their prison terms. However, once they were released they temporarily forgot about their agreement and instead decided to rob convient stores and restaurants. Their robbery quickly came to a hault once the pair murdered a tavern owner during a job and remembered their pact. Daniels, a vicious psychopath, led his until then harmless partner West on the most appalling and senseless murder spree in the state of Ohio. The pair made their way back to Mansfield in an attempt to search for a prison guard named Harris. Their search was unsuccessful. They decided to make things easier by getting Harris‘ address from his superior, John Elmer Niebel. They entered Niebel’s home late one night and awoke him, his wife, and their daughter. They decided to hold the family hostage until after they had disposed of Harris (which they never did). Armed with handguns, they took the family out to an open cornfield on the outskirts of Mansfield and ordered the three of them to take off their clothes. They then planned to tie them up with rope and keep them their until they located Harris. However, their was one small problem with their plan. No rope. Realizing their mistake, Daniels and West shot and killed the family and fled to Cleveland. From this point on they were wanted men, since the police had been able to secure an identity of the murderers of the Niebel family. They kept on the move constantly throughtout the state. They murdered a farmer for his car. When they had decided that they had traveled too much in one vehicle, the pair murdered a truckdriver for his truck and continued on the move. However, their time of alluding the law was running short. Daniels and West were almost out of the state, when they were stopped by a police roadblock. Out of sheer panic (and stupidity) West began firing at the police. He wounded one officer before turning his gun on himself. Daniels surrendered without much of a fight and placed under arrest for the Niebel killings. He was tried and convicted shortly thereafter and died in the electric chair on January 3, 1949 at age 24.