Craigslist killer

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In his long hunt for work, Ron Sanson has rarely been so grateful to be turned down for a job.

"I didn't have any suspicions," he said. "He looked like a farmer. He had a baseball cap. A flannel shirt. Scraggly looking beard … Then they started finding the bodies. If I had gone up there, they would have had a grave dug for me."

Sanson, 58, replied to a job advert on Craigslist in October looking for a watchman on an Ohio farm. The position paid just $300 a week but came with a trailer home to live in free. The applications flooded in from desperate men across the country willing to work for low pay just to have a little income.

Except there was no farm and no job.

A self-styled preacher with convictions for burglary, Richard Beasley, is alleged to have posted the advert to lure men to an isolated wood and shoot them.

The latest census data shows that nearly one in two of the US's 300 million citizens are now officially classified as having a low income or living in poverty. One in five families earns less than $15,000 (£9,600) a year.

The situation is only going to get worse in January when 70,000 people in Ohio will have drawn the maximum three years of unemployment benefit and will not be eligible for more assistance other than food stamps.

'Craigslist killer' case highlights the plight of America's jobless | World news | The Guardian