Arthur Frederick Goode III was born on March 28, 1954. Accounts of his background describe him as developmentally limited — the supplied material identifies him as borderline intellectually disabled — and his behavior reportedly showed early signs of sexual attraction to children. By his teenage years Goode had begun acting on those impulses and repeatedly came into contact with the criminal-justice system for child‑abuse offenses. 

Despite multiple early run‑ins with the law, his parents were repeatedly able to post bail, and episodes of abuse did not initially result in long periods of confinement. In mid‑1975, following several documented incidents (including the molestation of a nine‑year‑old and an eleven‑year‑old, per the supplied account), a court placed Goode on five years’ probation and ordered psychological treatment at Spring Grove Hospital Center in Baltimore. He briefly admitted himself for treatment but left the facility after only a few days. 

His parents had moved to Cape Coral, Florida; Goode followed them there. Those close to him and later observers described him as having severe cognitive and behavioral problems; his father is recorded as saying bluntly that his son was “crazier than hell and dumber than a box of rocks.” Throughout the period leading up to the murders, Goode sought out contact with children — he wrote letters to schoolteachers and sought pen pals among schoolchildren — and held a fixation on child celebrities (the supplied material mentions an obsession with child actor Ricky Schroder).

On March 5, 1976, in Cape Coral, Florida, Arthur Goode encountered 9‑year‑old Jason VerDow. According to the supplied account, Goode lured Jason into the woods, sexually abused him and then strangled him; this killing is the Florida murder for which he was ultimately executed. After that homicide, Goode returned to the Baltimore area; while there he abducted 10‑year‑old Billy Arthes. Billy was reported missing, but was later found physically unharmed when police arrested Goode after a woman recognized the boy and reported him. At the time of Goode’s arrest it was discovered that he had also taken 11‑year‑old Kenneth Dawson to Washington, D.C., and then on a bus trip to Falls Church, Virginia, where Kenneth Dawson was murdered in Goode’s presence with Billy Arthes also present. The supplied material identifies two confirmed murder victims: Jason VerDow (age 9) and Kenneth Dawson (age 11); Billy Arthes (age 10) survived and his recognition by a witness led to Goode’s capture.

When officers arrested Goode he reportedly told them, “You can't do nothing to me. I'm sick.” He was subsequently prosecuted in Maryland; a jury there found him sane and guilty of murder and imposed a life sentence. For the Florida murder (Jason VerDow), Goode was permitted to represent himself at trial. The Florida proceedings concluded in March 1977 and the court pronounced a death sentence on March 21, 1977. While incarcerated on death row in Florida, Goode attracted intense public hostility; he wrote letters to schoolteachers and to the families of the boys he had killed, at times boasting of his crimes. In interviews he admitted to being a pedophile and to the killings, at one point framing his actions as a “protest against society” and arguing that harsher—but less direct—punishment of pedophiles would reduce the need to “hide by murdering their victims.” He was the subject of public and press attention in the months preceding his execution, including an interview by John Waters for the Baltimore City Paper.

On April 5, 1984, Arthur Frederick Goode III was executed by electrocution in Florida. Reports from the time record that his final words included: “I have remorse for the two boys I murdered. But it's hard for me to show it.” His last meal was steak, corn, broccoli and cookies; contemporary accounts also reported that he made an indecent request for sexual intercourse with a child before his execution (this detail is part of the supplied material). The execution left a deep impression on corrections officials overseeing capital punishment; in later reflections Warden Richard Dugger described Goode as “the hardest” execution he had been involved with and said, “Let's face it — he was a nut.”