By: Langston McCatty

WINCHESTER – Serial killers have captivated people since Jack the Ripper and the curiosity seems to be growing larger as time goes on.

With more documentaries, podcasts, and movies coming out about these disturbed individuals, they are somewhat of a modern-day anomaly. 

Our campus Mailroom Manager here at Shenandoah, Zoe Vaughan recalls her experience knowing and being in close quarters with just that kind of individual.

Vaughan was around the age of 17 and living in Silver Spring Maryland when she dated Paul Kalomeris, the younger brother of now-deceased serial killer George Kalomeris. 

Vaughan described her boyfriend as being cheap and rarely went on dates. “We would go to McDonald’s and I’d have to beg him to buy me a Big Mac and we’d go back to his house to watch tv.” It was a series of these instances that lead to her meeting George.

She explained that Paul’s father was a police officer and his brother George was very odd. “He was just weird, you knew he was.” She described him as being a heavy-set individual with glasses, black hair and patchy facial hair when she first met him.

“He always stayed in his room in the dark and rarely ever came out. It was just weird. He was weird.” She said that her boyfriend at the time Paul would instruct her to never go anywhere without him and that if she needed anything that he would go with her.

She remembered one time that she was able to slip away into the kitchen without her boyfriend Paul with her. “I went into the kitchen for something and I opened the refrigerator and when I closed it George was standing right there staring at me. He didn’t say a word and it freaked me out and I told Paul about it.” After that occurrence, Paul told her to never speak to George or even look at him.

While this occurrence, among others bothered her, she continued dating Paul for 3 or 4 years.  While still in the relationship with Paul, she and her friends heard that George Kalomeris killed two people and was serving a sentence of nearly 400 years because of it.

The first murder Kalomeris committed involved a man he befriended. George Kalomeris did not have a job and wanted money from the trust fund he knew his friend had. Zoe Vaughan said – “George never worked a day in his life and decided to kill the poor man for his trust fund.”

Kalomeris’ second murder involved an elderly man confined to a wheelchair. This murder is what eventually lead to his arrest.

Kalomeris was friends with the elderly man for years and used to help him around the house. Kalomeris wanted the coin collection the man had and shot him, drove the body out into the woods, proceeded to strip him naked and left him for dead in the woods.

Still shocked about the news she heard years ago, Vaughan stated, – “We couldn’t believe it. The old man never thought George would do something like that to him.”

However, the elderly man survived the ordeal and was able to tell the police what happened when they found him. The man succumbed to his injuries a few weeks later but his story lead to George Kalmeris’ arrest for two cases of murder.

Zoe Vaughan considers herself lucky to have not been a friend of George. “If he does that to someone, he considers a friend, then I’m glad I never spoke to him. He was disgusting.”