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Cecil Henry Floyd

American serial killer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ128996317 ↗
Source-derived summary

Cecil Henry Floyd (1945 – June 17, 2011) was an American serial killer who, together with his wife, murdered at least six people during robberies across four states between 1973 and 1974. Convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the cases in Indiana and Nebraska, Floyd later confessed to killing eleven people in total, but these claims were never verified.

Floyd remained behind bars until his death in an Indiana prison in 2011.

Early life

Cecil Henry Floyd was born in 1945 in Indianapolis, Indiana, the only child of Cecil Moses Floyd and Sarah Pearl Farlow. Little is known about his early life, but his first known run-in with the law was in 1959, when he was fined $55 for careless driving and driving without a license.

In 1971, Floyd married 23-year-old Lorna Jean Kern, who would go on to aid him in his crime spree. According to later interviews, Lorna claimed that she met Floyd at a motel in Macon, Georgia, and was essentially forced into marrying him because he threatened to hurt her children from a previous marriage. She claimed that he was very paranoid about the police arresting him and often mistreated the children by washing their mouths with soap, putting hot peppers in their mouths or punching them until their noses were bloodied.

Murders

Floyd's first known murder occurred on July 23, 1973. On that date, he was traveling with two other people near the Boone County Fair in Lebanon, Indiana when he came across 15-year-old Henry Michael Maser.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cecil Henry Floyd” as american serial killer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1945, 2011, 1973, 1974—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1945-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Cecil, Henry and Floyd can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american serial killer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q128996317. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1945, 2011, 1973 and 1974.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cecil Henry Floyd”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cecil Henry Floyd primary sources, Cecil Henry Floyd archive and Cecil research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cecil Henry Floyd” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.