Birmingham's Forgotten Serial Killer: Jack Harrison Trawick
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe
4.9 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
Jack Harrison Trawick murdered Stephanie Gach in Birmingham, Alabama in 1992 after abducting the 21-year-old college student from her apartment complex parking lot. The homicide investigation revealed Trawick had killed at least three women, including 17-year-old Betty Jo Richards in 1972 and 26-year-old Aileen Pruitt earlier in 1992. Forensic evidence from his white Toyota van, including fiber analysis and luminol-detected blood traces, led to his conviction and death sentence. Trawick had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal impulses in 1970, yet remained free to kill for decades.
This is the story of a killer who described murder as a physical addiction, a man who walked Birmingham's streets for twenty years between his first kill and his capture. Trawick didn't fade into obscurity after his arrest. From death row, he launched a psychological warfare campaign against his victims' families through a murderabilia website, forcing grieving mothers to relive their nightmares. The case exposed massive failures in the mental health system and sparked a legislative battle that changed how we think about criminals profiting from their crimes.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 1970, a psychiatrist in Birmingham, Alabama wrote down five words that should have changed everything. |
| 0:08.0 | Paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal impulses. |
| 0:13.0 | The patient was a 23-year-old man named Jack Harrison Trewick. |
| 0:17.0 | Those five words were a prediction, and for the next 22 years, nobody did anything to stop what was coming. I'm There's this moment in 1970 where someone actually writes it down. |
| 0:52.8 | A psychiatrist sits across from Jack Harrison-Treywick and puts it in his file, |
| 0:58.5 | paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal impulses. |
| 1:02.3 | And they let him go. |
| 1:04.8 | Two years later, Jack Treywick is driving through downtown Birmingham when he sees |
| 1:09.6 | 17-year-old Betty Joe Richards. He later said that |
| 1:13.2 | he decided he wanted to, quote, do something to her. That's how he phrases it, do something, |
| 1:19.9 | like she's a project. He forces her into his car with a knife. He drives her to Quentin, Alabama. |
| 1:26.9 | Witnesses report a white man chasing a screaming |
| 1:29.4 | lady into an alley. This is happening in public. This is frenzy playing out where people can watch. |
| 1:36.7 | He stabs Betty Joe Richards more than ten times in that alley. Then he walks away. It goes back to his |
| 1:43.6 | life in Birmingham. The case goes cold, |
| 1:46.4 | and Jack Treywick, the man diagnosed with homicidal impulses, remains free for 20 more years. |
| 1:53.6 | According to Treywick's later confessions, he travels. In 1978, he claims he strangled a woman |
| 2:00.0 | in Alaska, threw her body off a ferry between Prince |
| 2:03.4 | Rupert and Kachakan. That method of disposal almost guarantees you'll never find the body. That same year, |
| 2:11.1 | he says he strangled a female hitchhiker while visiting his sister in Oregon. Hitchhikers in the late |
| 2:16.8 | 70s were almost invisible to law enforcement. |
| 2:19.3 | Transient, almost nobody reported them missing for weeks. These confessions were never corroborated |
... |
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