Killer rapist Harvey 'The Hammer' Carignan dies in prison aged 95

© Provided by Toronto Sun Harvey The Hammer Carignan. MINNESOTA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS

The end came quietly for 95-year-old suspected serial killer Harvey Carignan — better known as the ‘Want-Ad Killer’ and ‘Harvey the Hammer’.

He reportedly died earlier this month of natural causes in a Minnesota prison where he’s been housed for decades, TMZ reports.

Carignan used the popular want ads section of the newspaper to lure women into his sickening traps. Once they bit, he would rape them before bludgeoning his victims to death with a hammer.

During his long criminal career, the serial killer managed to escape the hangman’s rope. While stationed with the U.S. Army in Anchorage, Alaska, he was arrested and charged for the attempted rape and murder of a woman in 1949.

But the conviction was overturned in 1951.

Victim Eileen Hunley. SEATTLE POLICE

The justice system wasn’t through with Carignan, though. He was jailed for another nine years for raping another woman and sentenced to the notorious Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay with the country’s most dangerous criminals.

Carignan was finally sprung in 1960.

And then he unleashed his sickening bloodlust.

Harvey The Hammer had been sentenced to hang in 1949. SEATTLE PD/ MINN. DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS

Claiming in court that he was ordered by God to “kill whores and harlots” he was convicted in the sex slayings of Eileen Hunley and Katherine Schultz. His legal eagles used the insanity defence but he was found guilty of murder.

Hunley disappeared in August 1974. Her body was found five weeks later. Cops said her skull had been pulverized with several hits from a hammer and she had been sexually assaulted with a tree branch.

SCHULTZ: Body dumped in a cornfield. MINN. PD

The killer confessed to murdering Schultz, admitting that he picked her up in September 1974 and drove her to a desolate area where she was later found in a cornfield. She had been battered beyond recognition. Again a hammer was used.

But detectives believed there were more victims for a total of five.

Among the unsolved murders police attribute to Harvey the Hammer are those of Leslie Laura Block and Kathy Sue Miller.

Brock was found deceased in Washington state on Oct. 15, 1972. She had been struck in the head numerous times. At least one witness spotted Brock climbing into Carignan’s pickup truck.

The murder of Kathy Sue Miller is officially unsolved. WASH. STATE POLICE

Miller was just 15 when she answered a help wanted ad from the killer for a job at his gas station. She disappeared in May 1973.

Carignan allegedly raped the teen before pounding her to death with a hammer. Her remains were discovered two months later on a Native reservation near Everett, Wash. Her body was covered in plastic and she had hammer holes in her skull.

However, citing a lack of evidence, there were never any charges laid in the Brock and Miller homicides. Carignan remains the primary suspect.

Minnesota does not have the death penalty and Carignan was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun