Danny Joe Eberle

John Joseph Joubert IV (July 2, 1963 – July 17, 1996) was an American serial killer executed in Nebraska.

He was convicted of murdering three boys: one in Maine, and two in Nebraska.

Joubert was born on July 2, 1963, in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

He had one sister.

In 1969, at the age of six, his parents divorced; in 1974, he and his sister moved with their mother to an unkempt, dilapidated apartment in Portland, Maine, to start a new chapter.

Despite wanting to do so, Joubert was not allowed to visit his father, and grew to despise his controlling mother.

"My impression was that the mother was cold and extremely manipulative", said Rich Pitre, Joubert’s high school band teacher, friend, and mentor.

"He was under a very, very tight leash".

Though he was, by all accounts, an honor roll student and very driven academically, Joubert was targeted negatively by some of his peers; he would be bullied by bigger boys for seeming meek, shy, or otherwise helpless.

According to his former Spanish teacher, Francesca Bergan, Joubert was "a 'little boy' all through his high school years", adding that "a lot of kids are picked on, but they seem to defend themselves... I think, because [John] did not defend himself... I wonder if he thought he deserved that kind of abuse that he would get... the shoving, the names, you know; the teasing.”

Joubert sought to compensate for these feelings of isolation by becoming more involved, playing clarinet in the marching band, running on the school track team, as well as joining the Cub Scouts.

It was around this time that his sadistic and homicidal fantasies progressed, to the point where he imagined murdering complete strangers on the streets, or of restraining and gagging those who resisted him.

In one later psychiatric report, he was described as saying that he derived pleasure from the despair of his victims, saying that "if you are going to do it, get it over with".

When he was 13, he stabbed a young girl with a pencil and felt sexually stimulated when she cried out in pain.

The next day, armed with a razor blade, he slashed another girl as he biked past.

He was never identified or charged in either offense.

In another incident, he beat-up another boy and nearly strangled him to the point of unconsciousness.

Having been bullied throughout his youth, Joubert relished the physical and mental power of this dominance, and began to consider casually stabbing or slashing others.

He ultimately graduated from Cheverus High School, a Catholic secondary school in Portland, in 1981.

On August 22, 1982, 11-year-old Richard "Ricky" Stetson left home to go jogging on the 3.5 mile long Back Cove Trail in Portland, Maine.

When he did not return by dark, his parents called the police.

The next day, a motorist discovered the boy's body on the side of Interstate 295.

The attacker had attempted to undress him, then stabbed, strangled, and bit him.

A suspect was arrested for the murder but his teeth did not match the bite mark on Stetson's body, so he was released after a year and a half in custody.

Danny Joe Eberle, 13 years old, disappeared while delivering copies of the Omaha World-Herald on Sunday, September 18, 1983, in Bellevue, Nebraska.

His brother, who also delivered papers, had not seen him, but he did remember being followed by a white man in a tan car on previous days.

It was ascertained that Eberle had delivered only three of the 70 newspapers on his route.

At the address of his fourth delivery, his bicycle was discovered along with the rest of the newspapers.

There appeared to be no sign of a struggle.

Joubert would later describe how he had approached Eberle, drawn a knife and covered the boy's mouth with his hand.

He instructed Eberle to follow him to his car and drove him to a gravel road outside the town.

After a three-day search, Eberle's body was discovered in a patch of high grass alongside a gravel road some 4 mi from his bicycle.

He had been stripped to his undershorts, his feet and hands had been bound, and his mouth had been sealed with surgical tape.

Knife wounds across his body suggested he had been tortured before death.

In addition, Joubert had stabbed him nine times.

As a kidnapping, the crime came under the jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States, so the FBI was called in.

The investigation followed several leads, including a young man who was arrested for molesting two young boys approximately a week after the crime.

He failed a polygraph test and had a false alibi, but did not fit the profile the FBI had created for the murderer.

He was released due to a lack of evidence.

No additional leads presented themselves in the case until January 1984.