Thomas Eugene Creech (born September 9, 1950) is an American serial killer who was convicted of two murders committed in 1974 and sentenced to death in Idaho. The sentence was reduced two years later on appeal to life imprisonment. He was sent back to Idaho's death row for a 1981 murder committed while imprisoned. Creech personally confessed to a total of 42 murders in various states, some of which allegedly involved an unnamed biker gang running drugs and the Church of Satan. Most of his additional confessions are uncorroborated, but police believe strong evidence links Creech to seven additional murder victims (in two of which he was convicted). In January 2024, an investigation by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department concluded that Creech murdered Daniel A. Walker (in what was a cold case).
As of 2024, Creech was the longest-serving death row inmate in the state. His execution, scheduled for February 28, 2024, resulted in a failed attempt and was cancelled. He remains on death row. His most recent execution date of November 13, 2024 was stayed by a federal judge to allow for legal challenges. He remains on death row at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, Idaho.
Early life Creech was born on September 9, 1950, in Dayton, Ohio. He grew up in an unstable household where his parents frequently argued with one another, eventually leading to a divorce (which happened in 1969 or 1970, according to Creech's testimony on the stand in his October 1974 trial). Creech was left to live with his father, who years later would die from unclear causes right in front of him on May 31, 1970, while visiting his son in Thomas was housed in the psychiatric unit in Chillicothe, Ohio at the time. Creech claimed to have attacked the inmate nurse who had tended to his father.
The next few years of Creech's life are difficult to verify, as they are interwoven with hearsay and his own uncorroborated claims. From what little can be definitively confirmed, he ran away from his hometown and became a drifter, travelling frequently cross-country. He was arrested July 27, 1969, for armed robbery. He took a plea deal, reducing the charge to unarmed robbery, and on December 11, 1969, he was sentenced to a 2-to-5-year prison term. He was paroled on December 2, 1971. In March 1973, he married 16-year-old Thomasine Loren White of Portland, Oregon, who allegedly was with Creech in Arizona on October 22, 1973, when Paul Schrader was murdered in a Tucson motel. Starting in early 1974, Thomasine was in and out of a psychiatric hospital in Salem, Oregon, where she eventually killed herself in November 1979. In a letter that Creech sent to KIVI-TV decades after the fact, he claimed that his wife had been raped by a gang of men and then thrown out a window, causing her debilitating physical and mental injuries that were the primary contributors for her decision to end her life.
On August 22, 1973, he broke the conditions of his parole by allegedly stealing 13 cartons of cigarettes in Portland. Creech was arrested in Portland Oregon in late March 1974 on that theft and another charge of breaking and entering. He also was wanted in Ohio for jumping parole. The charges were dropped after he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital on April 9, 1974, for a mental evaluation. Creech was released only 10 days later on April 19, 1974, after it was determined that he did not suffer from any mental illnesses.
Five weeks later, after a suicide attempt, on May 24, 1974, Creech was re-admitted to the Oregon State Hospital, this time under civil commitment. He quickly was moved out of maximum security and by May 30, he was in an open ward and qualified for 3-day weekend passes. He was released on June 20, 1974. In early August 1974, Creech was back in Portland, where he found a job as a sexton at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. He later quit his job after the body of a man was found in his living quarters on August 17, 1974. Creech departed Portland, heading south on a bus to San Francisco.
Idaho murders and arrest On November 3, 1974, Creech and his girlfriend Carol Spaulding were hitchhiking in Idaho from Lewiston south to Donnelly when a 1956-model Buick Century, operated by two house painters, 34-year-old Edward Thomas Arnold and 30-year-old John Wayne Bradford, picked them up. Along the way, in the early morning hours of Monday, November 4, Creech pulled out a pistol and shot both of them in the head, then hid their bodies in a barrow pit along Highway 55 in Valley County near Donnelly, north of Cascade. Their bodies and blood-spattered car were found the next day, on Tuesday, November 5, 1974.
Two days after the murders, after Creech was proposed as a suspect in two additional murders in Oregon and for allegedly sending death threats to the newly elected Colorado senator Gary Hart, he and Spaulding were arrested in Glenns Ferry (in Elmore County) by police officer Bill Hill, who had been notified that they were fugitives wanted for murder. While both of them were arraigned on murder charges, Creech was cleared of his supposed involvement with the death threats, as it was determined that it was just rumors that spread from a police officer, one of Hart's campaign managers and a prosecutor. Briefly held at the Valley County jail in Cascade, Creech was transferred south to the more secure Ada County jail in Boise.
Trial and imprisonment About a week after his arrest, Creech attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a broken piece of mirror, but managed only a minor injury before being restrained by prison guards and moved to another cell. In January 1975, it was decided that the now-18-year-old Spaulding would be tried as an adult for the two counts of first-degree murder.
On February 25, 1975, Carol Spaulding plead guilty to abetting (harboring a fugitive, specifically) and was sentenced to 2 years in prison. She began serving her sentence in Idaho, but was transferred to Carson City, Nevada in early May 1975 along with all the other women held in the prison in Boise. A week later, Spaulding was brought back to Idaho to testify at Creech's trial scheduled for May 20, which was subsequently postponed and relocated.
On January 12, 1975, Thomas Creech's trial was set for May 20, 1975 at the Valley County Courthouse in Cascade, Idaho. All the pretrial work was done (motions, discovery, psychiatric exams, subpoenas) when jury selection began on May 20. After 2 full days of jury selection, Judge J. Ray Durtschi called a mistrial. He cited that several articles had appeared immediately before trial. These articles referred to information and evidence that would probably be inadmissible at trial but would probably be prejudicial to the defense. This – combined with the small size of Valley County (≈3,400 in 1975), and the rarity of murder there (last murder was in 1947) – meant that a change of venue was necessary.
On May 29, 1975, Judge Durtschi issued a gag order. In early June, public defender Ward Hower asked to be recused and Creech's new private attorney Bruce O. Robinson was approved by the court in a hearing held June 9, with the switch formally approved on June 14, 1975. By August 6, the venue, schedule, and new trial date had all been worked out – the trial would commence on Oct. 6, 1975 in Wallace, Idaho in Shoshone County, which is in Idaho's 4th Judicial District, with Judge Durtschi still presiding. On August 7, Creech was transferred 400+ miles north to the jail in Wallace.
Creech continued to cause trouble even after his arrest; on June 16, he attacked and injured his cellmate William O. Fischer during an altercation. Fischer had to be driven to hospital to treat his facial injuries, but no further information is available about the incident itself due to a gag order being placed on the case. A month later, Creech attempted to sue the Idaho Statesman for supposedly violating his right to a fair trial by publishing information on other crimes he was either convicted or suspected of, thus possibly prejudicing the public against him.
In August, shortly after a change of venue from Cascade to Wallace (in Shoshone County) was accepted, Creech was sent to the hospital for stitches after suffering injuries caused from falling out of his bunk bed in his cell and hitting his head. In October, it was ruled that an alleged confession, in which Creech, who initially had claimed he was not near the murder site, says that he had shot and killed the two men after they pulled a knife on them and threatened to rape Spaulding, could be admitted as evidence in the upcoming trial.
Confessions and other victims After his taking the stand at his trial in October 1975, Creech shocked the entire nation when he readily admitted his responsibility in at least 42 murders in nearly a dozen states. He alleged the first murder occurred when he was 15 (in August 1966) when he drowned a friend in New Miami, Ohio. In his confession, Creech claimed he had killed a gay man in San Francisco in the fall of 1966, after running away from home, and later killed five people in Ohio in contract murders while he was with the Outlaws, and later began killing people in Satanic rituals involving human sacrifices. In total, he claimed to know of such killings that had occurred in Burien, Washington; San Diego, San Francisco and Malibu, California; Beaver, Ogden and Salt Lake City, Utah; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Missoula, Montana; Wichita, Kansas, and another city in Colorado. He also directed the authorities to two alleged burial grounds in Los Angeles County, where he claimed they could locate 100 victims, but the searches only turned up a cow bone.
While his confessions were shocking, authorities considered most of them to be bogus, with one officer saying that his recitation of the 'Satanic rites' had been copied word-for-word from an issue of Playboy. Nonetheless, they were able to link him to the murders of nine victims in total, none of whom were killed in supposed "Satanic sacrifices": Vivian Grant Robinson (50) in Sacramento, California; William Joseph Dean (22), the man whose body was found in Creech's church living quarters in Portland, Oregon; store clerk Sandra Jan Ramsamoog (21) in Salem, Oregon, who was killed not long after Dean; Gordon Lee Stanton (44) and Charles Thomas Miller near Las Vegas, Nevada; and Riogley Stewart McKenzie (22) near Baggs, Wyoming. Among his credible victims was 70-year-old retiree Paul C. Schrader, who was stabbed to death in an apparent robbery at the Downtown Motor Hotel in Tucson, Arizona, on October 22, 1973. Creech was working as a fry cook in the El Bambi Cafe in Beaver, Utah, when he was arrested on December 29, 1973, for disorderly conduct and identified as the suspect after a routine police check revealed that he was wanted for Schrader's murder. Creech was charged with the murder, and his trial began February 28, 1974, but he was acquitted on March 6, 1974, after only hours of deliberation. Creech pleaded guilty to the 1974 murder of William Joseph Dean in Portland, Oregon. Creech was also convicted in the murder of Vivian Grant Robinson in Sacramento, California. He has five murder convictions in total. Just days before the rejection of his clemency plea in 2024, Creech was found to be the true perpetrator behind the unsolved murder of Daniel Walker in San Bernardino, California in October 1974.
While he was now considered a self-admitted serial killer, Creech continued to profess his innocence in the Arnold-Bradford murders. The jury deliberated overnight before returning a guilty verdict to the case due to the confusing circumstances. His attorney, with the assistance of private investigator John Wickersham, sought to interview additional witnesses in order to have the conviction overturned. Five months later on March 25, 1976, Creech was sentenced to death by hanging for the two murders.