Maury Travis' house

Serial Killer House in St. Louis, Missouri

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Maury Travis' house

This is Maury Travis' former house.

It is situated at 1001 Ford Drive in St. Louis, Missouri.

Travis was a serial killer who is believed to have murdered 12–20 women during the early 2000s.

Nicknamed the Bi-State Strangler, he targeted sex workers and drug addicts, many of whom were tortured and then murdered at this address.

Basement
Investigators found blood belonging to six individuals in Travis' basement.

At the time of the killings, Travis was still on parole for a spate of shoe store robberies that he had committed back in 1988.

The detective who arrested him for those crimes stated that he wasn't your "typical criminal." Instead, he was quiet, respectful, and reserved.

Former neighbors and teachers remembered him as being "incredibly quiet" and "withdrawn."

During his robbery trial, Travis pleaded guilty and claimed that he held up the shoe stores with a toy gun to fund his worsening cocaine habit.

After being sentenced to 15 years in prison, he wrote a letter to the judge and pleaded with him to reduce his sentence. In his letter, he said, "This whole situation is horrid and phantasmic." He then begged the judge to give him another chance in society.

However, his pleas for leniency fell on deaf ears, and he was forced to serve another five years in prison before he was eventually released on parole.

During the 1990s, he worked at several restaurants. He also served small stints in prison on drug-related charges.

It appears as though Travis started targeting sex workers in the early 2000s.

However, killing these women wasn't enough for him, as he was also eager to see his crimes covered by the media.

During one conversation with a news intern that he personally knew, he asked if her TV station had run any stories on the murdered sex workers. He also specifically mentioned the term serial killer, even though no connection between the slayings had been made public.

Travis' luck ran out after he anonymously contacted the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper.

At the time, it had recently published a piece on one of his victims, Teresa Wilson.

After reading the profile about Wilson, Travis printed a map from the Internet, marked the location of one of his victims' remains, and then mailed it to the journalist who wrote the article.

Maury Travis
Travis pinpointed one of his victims on a map and sent it to a local newspaper.

The police started focusing on the origins of the map after they discovered a skeleton at the site.

Upon learning that it had been printed from a map on a website called Expedia, they sent a subpoena that requested a list of IP addresses that had zoomed in on the area.

A few days later, Expedia responded with the type of news that every investigator likes to hear: Only one IP address had looked at that specific spot.

When the police showed up at Travis' house on Ford Drive, he didn't seem to wonder why they were there. Instead, he was more interested in finding out how they had tracked him down.

After being told that they had traced his IP address, he reportedly said, "F*cking computer. Damn Internet."

During a search of the basement, investigators found a makeshift torture chamber, ligatures that were stained with blood, and a hidden videotape of Travis torturing multiple women.

Following his arrest, Travis remained adamant that he wasn't going back to prison.

Although officials at the St. Louis County Jail were told that he should be put on suicide watch, few precautions were taken.

On June 10th, 2002, Travis hanged himself in his cell.

Maury Travis house address

The address and the GPS coordinates for this location are as follows:

Address

1001 Ford Drive, St. Louis, Missouri, MO 63135, USA

Map

To view directions on how to get there, you can use the Google Maps shortcut below:

Google Maps

GPS coordinates

The latitude and longitude coordinates for the house are:

38.759207, -90.318671

Directions

The house is about 450 feet south of the intersection between Frost Avenue and Ford Drive. It sits to the northeast of Berkeley.

Photos

Photos of the house and other related images.


1001 Ford Drive

1001 Ford Drive St Louis

This Google Street View image of 1001 Ford Drive in St. Louis was taken in June 2022.

The house was built in 1954 and is 1,107 square feet in size.

The property has been rented out multiple times in the past. In one of the ads, the description states that it has a "spacious basement for entertaining!"

In 2014, a tenant named Catrina McGhaw discovered that she was living in Travis' former house while she was watching a documentary about his crimes. McGhaw was understandably shocked when photographs of her home suddenly appeared on her television screen.

She claimed that the killer's mother, Sandra Travis, had rented the property to her without disclosing its history.

When Catrina asked to be let out of the lease, Sandra refused, telling her she had to stay until it expired.

Fortunately, the St. Louis Housing Authority intervened in the matter, and Catrina was allowed to leave. The property listing website Zillow indicates that the house was sold for an undisclosed price one month later.

Video tapes

Maury Travis tapes

Travis was a sadist who recorded many of his crimes on videotape.

The footage was so cruel and shocking that the officers who watched it had to undergo counseling.

The killer didn't just physically torture his victims. He also psychologically abused them.

In one clip, he taunts one of the women by asking her if she wants to say something to her kids:

"You want to say something to your kids? Who is raising your kids? You ain't raising sh*t. You're over here on your back, smoking crack. You ain't going home at all. I'm going to keep you for about a week."

After murdering his victims, Travis typically dumped their bodies on the eastern outskirts of St. Louis.

"Nice sob story about Teresa Wilson."

Letter

On May 21st, 2002, he mailed this anonymous letter to Bill Smith at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper.

His opening sentence made it extremely clear that he did not feel any remorse for his victims. Instead, he was so proud of his crimes that he actively courted notoriety.

This is a common trait among sadistic serial killers, as many of them get an "added kick" out of instilling fear in the community and seeing their "work" in the media.

During a search of Travis' residence, the police also found newspaper clippings about his murders.

Travis' former house

Maury Travis house

Image source: Google Maps

This Google Street View image of Travis' former house was captured in August 2012.

This was his childhood home. His family moved to this address when he was 10 years old.

This location belongs to the following categories:

Crime ScenesSerial KillersNotorious Figures

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