claims of satanic ritual murder in 1950’s vegas

claims of satanic murder in a growing gambling metropolis

Las Vegas was established as the nation’s gambling resort by the mid-1950’s.  And with this notoriety, the still-small city of 100,000 people saw an influx of tourists, creating more opportunities for criminal behavior among an already transient community. 

On a night in the fall of 1958 the growing town was the scene of a crime involving an off-duty hospital orderly that traveled from California to Las Vegas for one purpose – to perform a human sacrifice.

random murder

Twenty-three-year old Erline Folker, a divorced secretary and mother of a young child, exited the stationary store she worked at in Las Vegas the night of November 3, 1958, got into her car, and was never seen alive again. 

Another twenty-three-year old, Jack Rainsberger, was waiting in his car at the other end of the parking lot.  He had spotted Folker through the window of the store she worked at and decided she would be his next victim. 

As Folker made her way to the door of the stationary store, Rainsberger exited his vehicle and made his approach toward the secretary as she reached for her keys.  He met Folker feet from her car and pulled a knife from his pocket.  “Get in your car.”  Once the two were in Folker’s vehicle, Rainsberger ordered her to drive out into the desert.

Folker brought her car to a halt, the wheels grinding against the desert sands seven miles south of the city.  “Take off your stockings,” Rainsberger demanded.  Folker did as she was told and her captor tied her hands behind her back with the stockings. 

But as he did so, Folker started struggling against her restraints, breaking one of her hands free.  She threw Rainsberger off-balance and he fell to the side of his intended victim, the knife also falling from his hands.  Folker climbed over Rainsberger and stumbled out of the car, one of her hands still partially restrained with her stocking.

Rainsberger told officers during his later confession that he was in a fog at this point.  His main concern was Folker escaping – or worse in Rainsberger’s mind – getting the knife and turning it against him.  The young hospital orderly from California grabbed the knife from the floor of the car and leapt on top of Folker, driving the blade into her back and neck multiple times until she stopped moving.

Rainsberger returned to the car, his hands covered in blood, and found Folker’s purse.He thumbed through it and recovered $10 (about $100 today).Then he drove off back to Las Vegas, leaving Erline Folker’s body in the cold desert night.

demonic possession or just plain old robbery gone awry?

Rainsberger was arrested the day after the murder by Las Vegas police.  Detectives working the case developed a rapport with the young man in their custody, even describing him to the press as “something of a genius,” and he eventually told the officers what happened – or at least a version of what happened.

Rainsberger got off work from his job as a hospital orderly in the Los Angles area – that’s when the voices began to speak to him.  And not just any voices, these were demonic voices.  The voices demanded a human sacrifice to be made in Sin City.  And so Jack Rainsberger set off on the four hour drive east to Las Vegas. 

The suspect told police that while driving through Vegas, the demonic voices told him to choose Folker for the required sacrifice.  And so he abducted the young woman, forced her out to the desert, raped her, and then slit her throat.

A psychiatrist commenced an evaluation of Rainsberger within days of his arrest after the suspect started talking about demonic possession and hearing voices.  But the doctor returned a determination that Rainsberger was sane. 

Even after police had their initial confession, they had doubts about all of the facts in Rainsberger’s story not quite adding up.  Most glaringly, the medical examiner had found no signs of sexual assault against Folker despite the suspect’s claims of sexual assault.  Next Rainsberger had recently served time in the California prison system for robbing two women at knife-point in northern California, and he had used the women’s garments to restrain them in order to get away with the robbery, but there had been no evidence of sexual assault in either case.

After it was clear that Rainsberger had no shot at mounting a successful insanity defense, he then told the detectives on his case a different version of the murder of Erline Folker.He told a story of a robbery gone wrong, and of stabbing Folker seven times in the neck and back in a frenzied panic over the thought of his victim escaping.

nevada’s second-longest serving prisoner

Even after his revised confession, the Clark County District Attorney Foley still sought the death penalty for Rainsberger, and he obtained it.  But in 1972, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling resulted in Rainsberger’s sentence being commuted to a life sentence. 

Rainsberger then pursued a decades-long quest to obtain parole.  Every recent request was opposed by Erline Folker’s only son. But on his 20th application in the year 2000, the then sixty-five-year old murderer was granted parole and released to a halfway house in Ohio, the same State where Rainsberger had been born and raised in poverty by a single mother during the Great Depression.