Gary Hirte

The Perfect Murder

The killing of Glenn Kopitske, Hirte allegedly confided to friends, was the perfect crime.

Hirte had always seen himself as the perfect kid from the perfect town. Now, authorities would later say, in his mind, he had committed the perfect slaying. He had selected the perfect victim and he killed him without leaving a clue. Authorities would later tell Stuff Magazine that when they combed the crime scene they found virtually nothing. Not a fingerprint, not a footprint, not a stray hair that could be genetically linked to the killer.

Loeb (left) & Leopold

Just like Leopold and Loeb, the two University of Chicago students who committed an almost-perfect murder in the 1920s, Hirte, authorities allege, would later tell close friends that he had committed the crime "just to see if I could get away with it."

In fact, he almost had. But there was some evidence that would later link Hirte to the crime. Before he left Kopitske's house the night of the slaying, Hirte ambled into the kitchen, authorities said. On the table he spotted a set of keys, a tag from a local chainsaw dealer dangling from the ring, and he pocketed them.

Authorities now suspect that Hirte took the keys as a trophy. Though there is no evidence linking him to any other homicides, authorities say they believe that Hirte's act was far more than petty theft. Instead, it was a textbook example of trophy-taking, the kind of thing a budding young serial killer might do. In fact, Verwiel and others say they suspect that that if left to his own devices, Gary Hirte, the golden boy who allegedly killed for thrills, might actually have blossomed into a serial killer.