The Eagle Scout

John Joubert grew up in Portland, Maine, and had been an Eagle Scout. By 1983 he was an enlisted radar technician at Offutt Air Force Base, just south of Omaha, Nebraska, and helped out with a local Scout troop.

On September 18, 1983, thirteen-year-old Danny Joe Eberle disappeared while delivering newspapers in Bellevue. He was found bound and stabbed a few days later. On December 2, twelve-year-old Christopher Walden was taken as he walked to school in Papillion and was found stabbed to death two days afterward. The break came in January 1984, when a preschool worker grew suspicious of a man hanging around near her building and memorized his license plate. It led investigators to Joubert, and rope found among his belongings matched the unusual cord used to tie Danny.

Joubert was arrested on January 12, 1984, and pleaded guilty to both murders. He was sentenced to death in Nebraska. He also admitted to killing eleven-year-old Ricky Stetson, who was stabbed while jogging in Portland in August 1982, and a Maine jury convicted him of that murder in 1990, adding a life sentence. Nebraska executed Joubert in the electric chair on July 17, 1996.