Executive Summary: Frank Timmons/Serial Killer
Ramona Maldonado
Southern New Hampshire University
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: FRANK TIMMONS/SERIAL KILLER
2
Summary
Frank Timmons was born in 1964 as the second-youngest of 13 children. His parents
were of modest means as father Billy was a car lot attendant and mother Lorretta was a maid. At
age 12 Frank's mother died and she was described as a non-attentive parent to the youngest
children and left the child rearing to the oldest siblings, Margret in particular. Margret was
known to be unstable and followed in her father's footsteps as verbally abusive and an alcoholic.
She could not maintain stable relationships or employment. Margret was reported as attempting
suicide on several occasions. The family's main source of support was through DES subsidies
and food stamps, which place them in a below poverty line socioeconomic status
In high school, Frank was known to be good at sports, played football for the school team
and while he was well liked by his teammates, he did have a reputation for excessive roughness
with opposing teams. Frank did not complete high school due to not earning enough credits to
graduate and according to his siblings it was because of an effort to earn money in order to help
support the family. During Frank's senior year, Frank and a brother were arrested for raping a
young woman, but charges were not pursued. He was charged with trespassing a few years later
and with driving under the influence a year after that.
In his late twenties, Frank was charged with abducting a woman, brutally raping her, and
bludgeoning her. He claimed that she willingly had oral sex with him, but the rape and assault
were the work of two other individuals. Frank was sentenced to 15 years for the abduction and
21 years for robbery. After serving 13 years as a model inmate, he was paroled and went to live
in a house with his wife Jenny Nelson. The house was not far from the four-mile crime area.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: FRANK TIMMONS/SERIAL KILLER
In the first crime attributed to the serial murder in which Frank is implicated, the
perpetrator forced three teenage girls behind a church and molested two of them. It is believed
that he committed his first murder a month later. Over the next 11 months, he committed several
robberies, sexual assaults, and eight additional murders.
Frank in fact had adverse childhood experiences, and while the backgrounds of serial
killers are varied, "some dysfunction within their immediate families as they were growing up
seems common-similar to violent offenders in general, serial killers have frequently
experienced considerable abuse and deprivation" (Bartol & Bartol, 2016, p. 304). In a study by
McKenzie (1995) she discovered that of "20 serial killer in her study, 80% were reared in homes
characterized by family violence and severe abuse and parental alcoholism; and that 93% had
been exposed to inconsistent and chaotic parenting (Bartol & Bartol, 2016, p. 304). Frank.
although reared by his older sister Margret