Life Without Mercy: Jake Beard, Joseph Paul Franklin and the Rainbow Murders
On June 25, 1980, Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were hitchhiking in West Virginia, headed to the Rainbow Family Gathering in the Monongahela National Forest. They accepted a ride from a soft spoken young man driving a Chevy Nova. They never made it to the Rainbow festival.
The young women made the mistake of admitting to Joseph Paul Franklin that they did not disapprove of interracial dating. Franklin, a racist serial killer, murdered Nancy and Vicki and left their bodies on a remote mountainside in Pocahontas County. He had committed 18 other murders before that, all of them racially motivated.
Twelve years later, despite repeated confessions from Franklin, a local man, Jacob Wilson Beard, was charged with the killings, which had come to be known as "The Rainbow Murders."
Beard was convicted of those killings and sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. "Life Without Mercy," as they call it in West Virginia.
Written with the cooperation of Jake Beard and Joseph Paul Franklin, Life Without Mercy is the story of the Rainbow murders, the perversion of justice and one man's five and a half year struggle to get out of prison and clear his name.
If it could happen to Jake Beard, it could happen to anyone.