Deep Dive: Robert Elmer Kleasen

Robert Elmer Kleasen was reported to be the inspiration for the film "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". While this was not the truth, his tale is just as strange.

Photo by Jon Tyson / Unsplash

Born September 20th, 1934 in Buffalo, New York, Robert Elmer Kleasen was an only child. His parents were poor, as were most families in the Great Depression era of the United States. There was strong evidence that his father was abusive and mentally ill, and would hit Kleasen and his mother. His father was later institutionalized when Kleasen was an adult. His parents were also known to be avid gun enthusiasts who kept many guns in their house.

In 1950, when Kleasen was sixteen years old, he stepped on a rusty nail while hunting in the woods, prompting his mother to take him to the hospital. Once there, they waited impatiently for a doctor to see them. It took too long. Suddenly, Kleasen got up, hit his mother, and went out to her car where he grabbed a gun. He came back in shooting. Luckily, no one inside was injured. The police ended up searching his home, and seized a quite a number of swords, knives, and firearms. Kleasen was then institutionalized at Gowanda State Hospital in Gowanda, New York, where he stayed for two years.

From 1952 to the early 1960's, Kleasen worked random jobs in New York, Arkansas, and Texas, specifically Austin and the area west of Austin, in the hill country. Kleasen took a mail-order taxidermy course during this time. It was reported by friends and acquaintances that he often made odd claims as to his profession, which included that he was a Korean War Veteran, Olympic Athlete, and a former CIA Operative. He was also known to use several different names, and some speculate that he had DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, or maybe a similar dissociative disorder. Despite these peculiarities, he was hired as a deputy sheriff in upstate New York in 1962, and was assigned the jail guard position. He resigned in 1964 after many public complaints.

Kleasen was married three times; his first wife was from Mexico, his second from Ecuador, and the third from Sweden. The marriages all ended because they said he was unstable and violent, and that he was also abusive to his own mother. In 1971, he shot a man in the foot during an argument. Kleasen was arrested and eventually prosecuted for armed assault. His home was raided by ATF agents while he was in jail awaiting trial. 150 firearms were seized, reportedly worth $300,000. The agents also found his third wife in the house, who was virtually being held captive. Once freed, she was able to write the Swedish Embassy and leave the country. When it finally became clear he would be going to prison for the assault charge, he jumped bail and fled to Europe.

He ended up in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he introduced himself as a baptized Mormon named John T. Williamson. Williamson was one of his favorite aliases, when in reality it was the name of one of his cousins, who died in 1951. He even carried a fake passport with Williamson's name on it. Eventually, the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (abbreviated "LDS") in Copenhagen figured out that Kleasen was not who he claimed to be, and during that time, he was arrested for violently beating a young LDS woman. Once arrested for the assault, the authorities found that his passport was fake. They began the process to prosecute him for the assault, as well as for forgery and two bicycle thefts.

November of 1972 saw Kleasen expelled from the country of Denmark. He ended up not back in the US, but in Lebanon. He had convinced a fellow prisoner in Copenhagen that he could get him and his friends guns. Once the Lebanese found out he was a fraud, they dropped him off at a United States Embassy in Beirut. He was quickly sent back to the US, partially because of his "emotionally disturbed" and "uncooperative" behavior. He then moved to Western Canada, where he was later expelled from.

Kleasen landed in Austin, Texas in January of 1973, after being kicked out of Canada. A Mormon family back in Copenhagen, who had been writing letters to Kleasen during his time in jail and after, sent him a final letter on February 2nd, 1973. It bluntly stated "We are not supposed to have contact with Apostates. Please don't ever contact us again."

This did not go over well with Kleasen. He became obsessive about convincing the family, and others, that he was still a faithful Mormon. He was baptized into the local chapter of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and gained an Aaronic priesthood. He sent a copy of the his certificate of ordination as a priest, along with his own letter, to the family. He never received a response.

While in Texas, he also found a job with Lem Rathbone at his Taxidermy studio in Oak Hill Texas, located just outside of Austin. Rathbone had developed a relationship with Kleasen in 1957, when Kleasen was working odd jobs in and around Austin. Months later, Kleasen set up a stolen trailer behind the shop to live in with Rathbone's permission.

Unfortunately, the family in Copenhagen was not convinced of Kleasen's character by his letter, nor the copy of the ordination certificate. They sent all the letters they had ever received from him to the Danish mission office, where mission President Ispen then sent them to the Presiding Bishop in Salt Lake City, Utah. He warned them about Kleasen in his attached letter, saying "I know we are supposed to forgive people and that they are forgiven their transgressions when they are baptized, but I believe that this is something that the Church should be aware of and I feel that you will know where it should go if it needs to [be] followed up further." The Danish mission President went on to describe Kleasen's less than favorable actions in Denmark.

The Presiding Bishop in Salt Lake City then wrote to the Austin First Ward bishop on November 12th, 1973. He included a copy of President Ispen's letter and told the bishop to find out if Kleasen had fully confessed and been forgiven for his actions. Of course, the Austin First Ward bishop knew nothing of it.

On December 7th, 1973, only a month later, Kleasen was arrested poaching bison. He sat in jail for several months, during which he wrote many letters to the LDS Church. He demanded that they post his bail and send an LDS affiliated attorney to represent him. Kleasen was visited in jail by his bishop many times, and eventually had an attorney appointed for him. While he was in jail, New York authorities heard about his arrest and demanded that he be extradited back to New York for the trial of the assault charge in 1971. The Texas authorities refused, believing that he was simply a prosecuted gun enthusiast and not a danger to society. Eventually, his attorney resolved the issue of the poaching, and Kleasen was released.

In 1974, the bishop who had visited Kleasen in jail was replaced by a man named Frank McCullough. Bishop McCullough was not as lenient as the former bishop, and sought to expel Kleasen from the ward. After thoroughly investigating Kleasen, bishop McCullough concluded that Kleasen was "a dishonest, unrepentant, troublemaker who had divided the ward...". Upon hearing about the bishop's opinion of him, Kleasen wrote many threatening letters, including one to the bishop that demanded that he come to Kleasen's trailer behind the taxidermy shop. The bishop declined.

Not everyone was convinced that Kleasen was a danger. Several of the younger missionaries, including two named Gary Darley and Mark Fischer, ages 20 and 19 respectively, believed his stories about being ex-CIA and a Korean War Veteran. They wanted to reach out to Kleasen, rather than push him out of the ward. Bishop McCullough warned his members not to engage with Kleasen, but Darley and Fischer did not listen. They felt as if they owed him a final meeting and explanation for why they could no longer visit. Kleasen invited them to dinner at his trailer behind the taxidermy shop in Oak Hill, Texas, on October 28th, 1974. They accepted.

That day, October 28th, 1974, the two missionaries disappeared. The police's investigation immediately led them to Kleasen and his trailer. The police found evidence of Elder Darley's hair, blood, and tissue on a mechanical saw inside the taxidermy shop, as well as the missionaries' name tags inside his trailer, complete with bullet holes. While the bodies were never found, police believed that Kleasen had used the saw inside the shop to cut up the bodies and then disposed of the pieces. Kleasen was arrested, charged, and found guilty for the murders.

In 1977, three years after the murders, Kleasen was released. His conviction was overturned because the evidence that lead to him was determined to be inadmissible. The search warrant that was carried out during the investigation, that brought about the discovery of the name tags, was deemed illegal. Upon his release, Kleasen was extradited back to New York to serve time for the assault in 1971. He served his sentence there until 1990.

During his time in the New York prison, Kleasen struck up a pen-pal relationship with a woman in Barton-upon-Humber, England.Her name was Marie Longley. He told her that he was a prison teacher, not an inmate, and also that he was a Korean War Vet and CIA operative. She, unfortunately, believed him and their correspondence lasted years. When Kleasen was released, he was understandably sought after intensely by the American media. In order to get away, he fled to the UK in 1990, where he planned to stay with Marie. They were married four months after his arrival. Kleasen had a new life. He was married again, and no one in his circle knew of his past crimes and convictions.

Kleasen was a gun fanatic. He joined several gun and hunting clubs when he decided to stay in Barton-upon-Humber. He got a gun license and started collecting guns in his and Marie's house.

Everything then started falling apart for Kleasen. Following an argument where he threatened a local man with his shotgun, one of the gun dealers Kleasen associated with looked into his background and found that Kleasen had been lying about serving in the US military and being a CIA Operative. This was reported to police, and a more thorough investigation of Kleasen's past began.

Around that time, his wife Marie tipped the police off to the fact that Kleasen had amassed a number of firearms in their house. After the police searched the property, they confiscated all 44 guns, including a sub-machine gun, from the house.

The police finally got the information they needed on Kleasen. With the help of Marie's friend, Liz Butterfield, they discovered Kleasen's previous murder convictions. He was arrested and jailed in 2000, kept there for three years. During this time, Kleasen's wife Marie escaped. He had threatened many times to shoot her if she ever tried to leave him, so the ongoing police investigation was the perfect time for her to disappear. The police considered her a missing person for a while, even wondering if Kleasen had killed her, until they discovered that she had run away with a friend of hers and was safe.

Texas began the extradition process in 2001. DNA analysis and other forensic tools were used to find new evidence in the case of Darley and Fischer's deaths. They were able to match Darley's DNA to blood found near Kleasen's trailer. In August of 2002, the extradition order was officially granted.

Unfortunately, before he could be extradited, Kleasen was transported to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he died of heart failure on April 21, 2003.

Because Robert Elmer Kleasen was never extradited or tried for the murders a second time, there is no real finality to the case. He was never found guilty under the new evidence. He is still the prime suspect, but he will never serve time for the murders.

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