Author mulls taking serial killer John Joubert’s ‘graphic drawings’ public

Joe Jordan | Nebraska Watchdog

While a Lincoln judge decides if a serial killer’s “graphic drawings” should be turned over to author-former Omaha news anchor Mark Pettit, Pettit tells Nebraska Watchdog he’s not sure he’d make them public.

Pettit, who believes the crazed handiwork of child murderer John Joubert could help authorities solve similar cases, does plan to turn the artwork over to the FBI.

Joubert died in Nebraska’s electric chair in 1996 after confessing to the 1983 slayings of 12-year-old Christopher Walden and 13-year-old Danny Joe Eberle—murders that found Omahans terrorized for weeks until Joubert’s arrest. Following his arrest Joubert also admitted killing 11-year-old Richard Stetson of Portland, Maine in 1982.

Both Pettit and Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov, the number two man in the Sarpy County Sheriff’s office when Joubert was on the loose, insist the drawings hold historical and educational value.

“Some people are going to be offended by it but that’s the importance of facts,” Polikov has told Nebraska Watchdog.

Christopher Walden

During a hearing before District Court Judge Steven Burns last Friday, the Nebraska Department of Corrections fought the release of Joubert’s illustrations arguing, among other things, that Pettit has no legal claim to the drawings.

In 1990 Pettit wrote”A Need to Kill” a book about the Joubert case which he updated last year telling Nebraska Watchdog that Joubert’s pictures,”leave no doubt he was fantasizing about killing more children and would have done so if ever released from prison.”

Critics contend Pettit only wants the drawings to sell more books.

“Whether I make the drawings public remains to be seen,” says Pettit. “I have literally reviewed thousands of pieces of evidence in the case and some was just too graphic to put in my book. So I need to see the drawings, have them analyzed and then decide on if/when to make them public.”

The judge is expected to issue his ruling in the next 3-4 weeks.

Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org.

Joe can be heard on Omaha’s KFAB radio every Monday at 7:40 a.m. and KHAS-AM in Hastings every Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.

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