The blade of my knife
Faced away from your heart
Those last few nights
It turned and sliced you apart
This love that I tell
Now feels lonely as hell
From this padded prison cell…
“You’re All I Need”
From Girls, Girls, Girls by Motley Crüe. (Lyrics by Nikki Sixx)

For weeks before he sadistically murdered 20-year-old Abigail Vandiver, Richard E. Gellner III would listen to Motley Crüe’s “You’re All I Need” over and over. Then the 15-year-old honor student and former Boy Scout would grab a butcher knife and prowl his neighborhood looking for some place to break in and cause some mayhem.
“He never did, apparently because he was afraid of getting caught,” DeKalb County (Georgia) Assistant Prosecutor Steven Roberts told the press
Blaming Motley Crüe for Abigail’s murder makes as much sense as saying the Beatles were responsible for the Manson family’s crimes because Manson and his followers listened to “Helter Skelter” from the White Album. Those who believe violent media promote crime are mistaking correlation for causation. However, in the late 1980s, when Gellner committed his crime, music warning labels were a topic of popular discussion, and the media never failed to note that “You’re All I Need” was written by Nikki Sixx after he learned that his girlfriend was cheating on him. The narrator of the song proceeds to take his revenge by stabbing his lover to death.
“He said he listened to this on his earphones every night before he went to bed,” Roberts said. “It started dwelling on him.”
There was little else to blame for Gellner’s sadistic attack on Abigail.
The worst the court-appointed psychiatrists could say about Gellner was that he might have had Borderline Personality Disorder coupled with “low self-esteem and difficulties with his sexual identity.”
The prosecutor added that there was physical abuse present in the Gellner household.
In reality, there is little chance of anyone ever really knowing what made Richard Gellner III kill.
In July 1987, Abigail, who had been a competitive figure skater in upstate New York, was working part-time at an Italian restaurant in Dunwoody, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. Gellner was working as a dishwasher in the same restaurant.
In addition to knowing Abigail through work, Gellner was friends with a son of Hope Taratoot, Abigail’s older sister, with whom she lived. Gellner occasionally mowed Taratoot’s lawn.
The crime occurred in the early evening of July 18, 1987 (Girls, Girls, Girls was released in June of that year, clearly demonstrating the remarkable power rock music has to warp impressionable minds in a short period of time) on a Saturday when Gellner was mowing the Taratoot yard. He knocked on the door and Abigail answered. She had just taken a shower and was in her bathrobe, authorities said. She let Gellner in to use the phone and he followed her upstairs where he attacked her.
“It was one of the most vicious killings I’ve seen in the last eight years that I’ve been here,” Roberts said. “I think there have been only one or two that compare to this.”
Although Gellner later admitted that he attacked and murdered Abigail, he has never explained what prompted the crime. The best investigators and psychiatrists could do was make assumptions that Abigail’s rejection of his sexual advances prompted it.
“He said he knew he was going to do something when he went into the house,” Roberts told the press. “I think all of these things just came together at that moment.”
Gellner said before he attacked Abigail he removed his wristwatch so that it wouldn’t get bloody. Then he used a telephone cord to strangle her. Abigail fought back desperately; she bit off the tip of his right-hand little finger — an act that would help police nail her killer.
After she slipped into unconsciousness, Gellner went berserk and engaged in what criminalists call “overkill:” excessive trauma beyond that necessary to cause death. He stabbed Abigail 57 times with three different knives, hit her in the head with a drinking glass, and attempted to cut off her head using hedge trimmers.
Then he took a shower and went home, wearing his bloody clothes.
Exhibiting no remorse and apparently no fear of getting caught (or perhaps resigned to his fate) Gellner told his parents that the blood came from the fact that he lost part of his finger in the lawn mower. They rushed him to the emergency room, where doctors said the tip could be reattached if it could be located.
The Gellner family took him back to the Taratoot home to find the missing fingertip.
In the meantime, Hope Taratoot had returned home to find Abigail lying dead in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. She summoned police.
About 15 minutes after police arrived, the Gellner family came by. Police asked what they were doing there. Gellner told authorities that he was “looking for his finger” and claimed that he had lost it in the garage. However, there was no blood in the garage.
Gellner’s fingertip was found about six feet from Abigail’s body, police said. He was taken into custody at that point.
In February 1988, just before his trial was set to begin, Gellner pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison, and was eligible to apply for parole in 1995.
Prosecutor Roberts pointed out the most alarming aspect of the case: the unpredictability of the violent killer.
“It scares me to think that there are people out there like him,” he said after Gellner pleaded guilty. “He was a very good student, a school athlete, came from a good family and was about seven merit badges away from being an Eagle Scout.”
As of June 2007, Gellner remains in prison.