True Crime Books (36)
Honor the victims, celebrate the heroes.
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<h1 class="element-title case-upper">ONE</h1>
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<h2 id="subhead-1" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">FINDING MY FOOTING</h2>
<p class="first first-in-chapter first-full-width first-after-subhead"><span class="first-phrase">I grew</span> up about two miles from Possum Trot, a rural community in Western Kentucky. I was a shy, awkward kid who was not particularly good at sports, nor was I a good student. I was average at best. I didn’t have a lot of friends in school. I just tried to blend in. It was 1970 when I graduated from North Marshall High School. Most of us were just hanging out waiting to see if we would be drafted. My first job out of high school was as a riverboat deckhand. It was good money, but it wasn’t for me. In fact, the job was not the adventure I thought it would be. It wasn’t long before I decided I needed to do something else with my life just in case I wasn’t drafted. I enrolled in a community college where I had to really study and apply myself just to make average grades. I guess this was because I had not learned much in high school.</p>
<p class="subsq">After two years in community college, I enrolled in Murray State University, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I attended one year of graduate school, but I was burned out. I was tired of being so poor and living on student loans. When I finally got my draft notice, I went for my physical and was turned down because I had flat feet.</p>
<p class="subsq">Probably the biggest influence in my life was my practice of Karate while I was in college. I had a knack for it. I would practice every day for hours. I became obsessed. When I earned my black belt in Wado Ryu–style Karate, I started entering tournaments. One of my instructors was Sensei Vic Milner. I became an instructor and taught Karate at the university. I also taught in several local Dojos. I had won tournaments in the black belt division in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. I only lost two times, once in a full-contact event in Alabama and once in a “Battle of Champions.” Some of my students were guards and supervisors from KSP. I had a standing offer as a guard if I ever needed a job.</p>
<p class="subsq">I graduated from college in the Jimmy Carter years while the economy was stalled. There were no jobs. Finally, I decided to give the prison a try. What did I have to lose? I didn’t have any other prospects for a job unless I wanted to go back on a riverboat or go back to graduate school. So I applied for the job and was hired as a correctional officer. I never looked back.</p>
<h2 id="subhead-2" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">THE BELLY OF THE BEAST</h2>
<p class="first first-after-subhead">My first day at KSP (Kentucky State Prison) was July 3, 1978. And I was nervous. As I rounded the curve and drove down the road from Pea Ridge, there it was, looming like a medieval fortress on the banks of Lake Barkley. The Castle on the Cumberland River. What had I gotten myself into? I could only imagine what convicted inmates might think when they see the Castle for the first time. The prison itself resembles something out of the Middle Ages, with its soaring walls, stone parapets, and heavily guarded watchtowers. An imposing place, with a reputation to match.</p>
<p class="subsq">As I started up the crumbling steps to the main entrance, I heard a grumpy voice say, “HALT! State your business.” I stopped dead in my tracks. The command to halt sounded threatening—as if I might be shot if I didn’t obey.</p>
<p class="subsq">I looked up and saw a middle-aged man peering down at me from the gun tower. I responded, “I am Philip Parker, and I am reporting to work.”</p>
<p class="subsq">“Go ahead,” was all he said. I didn’t know what to think about this first encounter, but I knew I was about to enter a strange, new world.</p>
<p class="subsq">As I approached the front gate, I stepped aside as several uniformed men with shotguns came running from the armory located at just off the top of the steps. Startled, I stepped aside and froze as they passed. I thought to myself, <i>What in the hell is this about?</i></p>
<p class="subsq">I learned later that there had been a mass escape from Four Cell House. My very first day. Three inmates, Joe Craig, James Hatfield, and Charles Murphy, had cut through their cell bars and made their way down the short distance from the opening to the ground using bedsheets fashioned into a braided rope. As with every prison escape, their luck was fleeting; the men were apprehended a few days later. As first impressions go, this was a lot to take in for a new corrections officer.</p>
<p class="subsq">I stood at the entrance, waiting to be ushered in. There was no control center at the time to automatically open prison doors. After the front gate officer keyed the lock, I crossed the threshold and entered the belly of the beast. One of the things I never quite became accustomed to after all my years in the Castle was the smell. The Castle has an odor unlike anything I have ever experienced: an ungodly combination of cigarette smoke, body odor, sewer gas, death, and history. It still smells that way to me. Some five decades later, I still notice that odor as I walk up to the prison gates. Half-jokingly, I always say it is the smell of the Castle Beast, the one that trolls the front entrance, taunting all those who sense its presence.</p>
<p class="subsq">After filling out employment paperwork with two other new hires, we were told to go to the receiver’s basement to get our uniforms. I thought to myself, <i>What the hell is the receiver’s basement?</i> Turns out it was a warehouse in the basement of Five Cell House with an outside entrance. I learned my first lesson on the job: prison workers have their own language to describe the Castle’s twisty, cavernous interior. I knew we had to learn fast or we would not find our way around. KSP is enormous, with five large cell blocks that housed 1,200 inmates in 1978. In subsequent years, two new cell blocks were added, even as the overall population decreased to around 980, because inmates no longer shared cells.</p>
<p class="subsq">With uniforms in hand, the new hires were directed to report to the hospital for a physical. The hospital, I later learned, was a state-licensed facility complete with infirmary beds, a surgical wing, a pharmacy, and an emergency room. But we had no idea how to get there. After wandering around the sprawling prison yard for what seemed like an eternity, one of the older guards took pity on us and pointed to where we had to go.</p>
<p class="subsq">A man in a lab coat with a stethoscope led me into an exam room and asked some standard questions about my health. I filled out a medical history as he listened to my heart and lungs, took my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. I thought he was a doctor. Several weeks later, I saw him in the canteen line and realized the man I mistook for a doctor was actually a convict.</p>
<h2 id="subhead-3" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">SOMETHING FISHY</h2>
<p class="first first-after-subhead">A “fish” is a term used to describe a newly hired officer or a new inmate who just got off the bus. Why, I don’t know. It is just prison slang. The “fish tank” was a row of cells in One Cell House used to house inmates until they had been given an orientation and a list of the rules. They would also meet the Classification Committee to be assigned a job and a cell.</p>
<p class="subsq">A fish <i>officer</i> is a new hire who has not attended the academy or learned the ropes. These rookie officers are basically useless and treated accordingly. You remained a fish officer until you became familiar with all the ins-and-outs of daily prison operations and earned a small degree of respect. You had to prove yourself, meaning you would not run from trouble and you would back up your fellow officers. You also had to follow orders to the letter.</p>
<p class="subsq">I was hired in with two middle-aged female employees, Betty Blackwell and Rosy Mitchell. In the late 1970s, only a handful of females were hired as correctional officers. It was still a man’s world, but that was rapidly changing for the better. Nora Aldridge was the first female hired as a correctional officer sometime around 1976. Soon after, Judy Groves was hired and had already made sergeant by the time I came aboard. I try to imagine how they must have felt entering such a hostile, male-dominated environment, where danger and violence were the norm. These were courageous and brave women.</p>
<p class="subsq">As the three of us made our way out to the receiver’s basement, we had to traverse a sidewalk just below Four Cell House then Five Cell House. Inmates could stand at the barred windows in the hallways of Five Cell House and look down at the walkway we were on, the cars in the parking lot, and the boat traffic on Lake Barkley. We were about to learn our next lesson.</p>
<p class="subsq">Betty Blackwell, walking next to me on the winding sidewalk, was a middle-aged blond with an attractive figure, and Rosie Mitchell, a middle-aged person of color, strode alongside Betty as we made our way to the receiver’s basement. As we passed under Five Cell House, we could hear a whistle and catcall from somewhere above us on one of the four floors of Five Cell House. “Shake it, baby, shake it!” I was street smart and did not look toward the direction of the voice. Betty reflexively glanced up, however, and that same voice yelled, “Not you, Bitch. HIM.” I thought, <i>Oh my God, they are talking to me!</i> Another lesson for a fish guard.</p>
<h2 id="subhead-4" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">TRAINING</h2>
<p class="first first-after-subhead">Training consisted of a two-week academy at Eastern Kentucky University, the training center for all correctional officers and police officers in Kentucky. After the academy, we endured a week of firearms training at KSP, followed by on-the-job training. Before could be scheduled for the academy, I had to shadow more experienced officers. I was not allowed to work by myself until I graduated from the academy.</p>
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Philip W. Parker
Guard (Hardcover)
$32.95
Guard: A True Story of Duty, Sacrifice, and Leadership in Kentucky's Maximum Security Penitentiary
In 1978, Philip Parker started his decades-long career as a prison guard at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, a place known as "The Castle" for its medieval look. On his first day, a mass escape set the tone for the dangerous and intense journey ahead. Over the years, Parker faced numerous challenges, from federal court allegations to life-threatening situations, including a dramatic hostage crisis with a notorious inmate.
Parker's memoir takes readers through the emotions and realities of prison life. From handling daily violence and suicides to witnessing murders caused by racial tension and other conflicts, Parker describes the harsh environment of the prison. Guard includes detailed accounts of harrowing events, like the highway crime spree where two of his colleagues were shot.
The book also covers the evolution of the prison itself, from its early days with medieval punishments to modern-day improvements. Parker shares his experiences as a warden, dealing with staff corruption, inmate violence, and the heavy responsibility of carrying out court-ordered executions.
Guard is a vivid and honest account of a life spent managing the worst in human behavior while finding moments of compassion and redemption. It highlights the dedication and resilience required to maintain order in such a challenging environment, and offers a unique perspective on the sacrifices made by those who work in the prison system.
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<p class="alignment-block-content-center"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0301/3604/1571/files/OBSESSED-Kindle.jpg?v=1726845910" alt="" /></p>
<div id="chapter-1" class="element element-bodymatter element-container-single element-type-chapter element-with-heading" role="doc-chapter" epub:type="chapter">
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<h1 class="element-title case-upper"><span class="element-number-term">CHAPTER</span> <span class="element-number-number">1</span></h1>
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<h2 class="element-subtitle case-upper">ENCOUNTERING THE ZODIAC</h2>
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<div class="text" id="chapter-1-text">
<p class="first first-in-chapter first-full-width first-with-first-letter-i"><span class="first-letter first-letter-i first-letter-without-punctuation">I</span>f my family tree were an actual living plant, it might appear as an unbalanced tangle of weird-shaped limbs. It’s not that my ancestors suffered from an excessively high rate of mental illnesses, or represented innumerable unstable families, though those are certainly present. For the most part, the people who make up my ancestry are simply unique individuals with their own idiosyncrasies. I am the product of an odd assortment: champions and charlatans, community pillars and misfits. I have often wished I had an average relative. Just one, single ancestor who could provide a role model to inspire me to some level of normality. Instead, my genealogy expresses itself as a stunted bonsai in sections, and wild, runaway overgrowth in others. Whimsy and eccentricity are everywhere in this obscure corner of the gene pool, such that no standard piece of lumber could be milled from any single branch. Throughout my childhood, I gained valuable lessons as a result of the people who came before me, and who would become my parents, grandparents, and beyond.</p>
<p class="subsq">My own family of origin was unique in its favored topics of conversation. Many families discuss politics and current events. Others talk about friends and neighbors, or whatever is happening in the lives of its members. In my family, while I was growing up, my parents shared interesting tales that have been passed down from generation to generation. They engaged in their fair share of gossip, and even ranted about the government at times. They more often related stories of ancestors they knew, and others about whom they had only heard. I eagerly enjoyed connecting with my roots and discovering my ancient past as I listened carefully to everything that was shared with me.</p>
<p class="subsq">I am, and always have been, an avid collector of interesting and compelling tales. Especially when it does not contain a complete ending, or in which a conclusion is not forthcoming, it will have my undivided attention. The open gestalt tantalizes me.</p>
<p class="subsq">One night at Bark Lake Summer Leadership Camp when I was a teenager, for instance, a fellow camper began to tell a shaggy dog tale, a genre consisting in a long, complex story that ends with a disappointingly dull pun. So great was my joy in listening, that at the end of my fellow camper’s lengthy recitation, I was the only other camper still awake, possibly emblematic of obsessiveness in my personality. Brian, the storyteller, called out to the darkened cabin once his pun had been delivered. It was about 1 a.m., and he had been talking for more than an hour. All the other teenagers were fast asleep, some quietly snoring. I, however, was wide awake. It didn’t even seem to matter to me that the tale went nowhere in the end. It was a story, and even told by a 15-year-old it captivated my imagination enough to put off much-needed sleep and restoration from a long day in the sun.</p>
<p class="subsq">For better and for worse, each of my family stories and each ancestor has played a part in shaping me. They poured content into my character, for as I grew, I learned what was important to my parents—and their parents—what professions were worthy of pursuit, and what lifestyles were unacceptable. My values were therefore forged in part by the light of those who went before me, and the lessons my ancestors learned through their own life experiences helped create the man I am today.</p>
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<p class="ornamental-break-as-text">* * *</p>
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<p class="first first-in-section first-full-width">My beginnings in the Zodiac serial killing case can be traced back to 1987, directly, as well as indirectly to times and places many years earlier with events that even predated my life. In 1987, an innocuous gathering of a few college students—possibly only two—began to discuss the topic of true crime. The words would conspire to shape my future in ways I could never have fathomed. In that interaction, I learned about a serial killer who called himself the Zodiac. In time—and many years would pass before I became fully engaged—I would become obsessed with this one, cruel criminal, ultimately dedicating 11 years of my life in the pursuit of answers to lingering questions. The case became a compelling story that eventually wrapped its tentacles around me, and, at some point, removed my ability to separate myself from it. After initially dipping my toe in the water a few times, one day I took the irreversible plunge, and would not look back.</p>
<p class="subsq">Obsession—the correct word to describe my participation in the Zodiac case—can be described as the state in which someone is overtaken or overwhelmed by another person, idea, or activity in such a way that there is a loss of control over future choices. It can also refer to the object of the obsession—the person, idea, or activity over which someone has lost all control; the word can define an obsessiveness or the target of such obsessiveness. Since no degrees are assigned, there is no clear line drawn to tell us when a hobby has grown into a passion or a passion has devolved to an obsession. How many drinks does it take to move a social drinker into the category of an alcoholic? What is the exact dosage that marks the dividing line between a dabbler in narcotics and a full-fledged drug addict? In actuality, it’s many shades of gray along the descent.</p>
<p class="subsq">Obsession traces a familiar line in my life. I acquired the addictive personality honestly through the example of my family, whether by genetics or behavior. My mother was an alcoholic and died of it in her 70s. Her brother was similarly given to drink, and passed away in his early 50s, alcohol contributing to the early demise of both of the siblings.</p>
<p class="subsq">I am not an alcoholic, as some of my ancestors were. I have never been held hostage to drugs or to drink, and I know my personality too well to allow myself to venture too far down the rabbit hole of casino gambling. I have instead become addicted to a variety of people, hobbies, and activities over the past decades. My overwhelming passion for 11 years, from 2007 to 2018, was the criminal case of the Zodiac serial killer, though this was not my first love.</p>
<p class="subsq">Chess was my passion as a teenager, possibly initiating me into my first bout of obsessive behavior. I was 7 or 8 when I learned the rules from my dad as he instructed my older brother, Andrew. As the second born child, I was shielded from some of the ridicule, criticism, and steep demands that my father expressed in my early years. I incorporated the ancient game into my life as an enthusiastic spectator, without the expectations that were heaped on my brother.</p>
<p class="subsq">I remember asking my dad to play chess one evening when he was home from work. Despite the fact that my mother urged me to approach him, or maybe because of it, my dad yelled at me. He raged that the set was incomplete, a red checkers masquerading as the missing bishop. I didn’t play him that day. I also recall one childhood chess game loss to an adult at a community center in Moosonee, Ontario, one summer during a family vacation. I was around 10 years of age when I boldly asked my opponent for some pointers to improve my game, following my speedy defeat. It may have been the four-move checkmate, the “scholar’s mate,” or some variation of it, to which I had succumbed.</p>
<p class="subsq">In elementary school, I made some friends who were similarly drawn to the game. Classmate Andrew Smith in grade five taught me some strategy that he had learned from a relative or family friend. We often lingered after school to challenge our teacher, Mr. Hikola. We competed in a bicycle-decorating competition for which we taped a chess board and a handful of pieces to the frame of his three-speed. We did not win, but the experience cemented our friendship over the shared hobby.</p>
<p class="subsq">I joined the Scarborough Chess Club, a gathering of young and old men who stared at plastic pieces in a rickety, wooden community hall, and later competed in a few area tournaments during my middle and high school years. I entered an Ontario Open Chess Tournament and a Canadian Open Chess Tournament. In the public competitions, I generally won as many games as I lost. In the final round of one event, my opponent paid me $5.00 to concede an obviously drawn game so he could earn an age-related prize for which I did not qualify.</p>
<p class="subsq">One snowy day in January, when my high school classes were cancelled due to the inclement weather, I took advantage of my freedom and worked through the chess moves recorded in one of the many books I had acquired. (My schoolmates thought it strange that I played the game by myself.) Over time, I built a chess library of more than 50 volumes. I soon began to collect chess sets, specifically one from each country or region of a country I visited, eventually amassing more than 60, including ones made of onyx, ivory, and many different textures and shades of wood.</p>
<p class="subsq">With concerted effort over a decade, I learned to play at an advanced level, nearly achieving the status of Chess Master. I was listed as a top 10 Canadian junior player before I turned 16. When I played a bearded street hustler who wore shabby clothes and loudly broadcast the strength of his “kill-as-you-go gambit” one evening under the watchful eye of my father who had put up $2 for the game, I nearly won. Joe Smolij, a colorful character and fixture of Toronto nightlife, looked me straight in the eye at the end of our open-air match and proclaimed in his thick, Russian accent, “You play like master!” “You play like master!” I was 14 or 15. Later, my father took me to the Café Montmartre, an urban meeting place of chess players. My opponent for the evening, a man who must have been 25 years my senior, forced a draw by a repetition of moves. The game should have been an easy win for me, as I had battled to a large lead. After the game, I exclaimed to my dad, “I’ve never played against the Sicilian Defense in a serious game!”</p>
<p class="subsq">A move to Michigan for college pulled me away from the chess club, and the game I had grown to adore. By that time, I had graduated to another passion that also would grow to another obsession. I would continue to play chess socially, eventually buying an early chess computer and competing with other players online, but never would I pursue the game with the same fierceness and determination. By the time I graduated high school, I was focusing on my spirituality.</p>
<p class="subsq">A series of summer camp positions during my teen years introduced me to Christians who arranged their lives around their faith in Jesus Christ. At the time, I considered church attendance and my Christian school enrollment an important component of my identity, but not something that particularly aroused any passion. I did not question or attempt to understand my inherited beliefs with any depth, but that was about to change for me in the late 1970s.</p>
<p class="subsq">It was the melting pot of Camp Ke-Mon-Oya, a summer scrum of a hundred energetic children and a mixed-aged staff of 30 that challenged any assumptions I had previously held about church. On the scenic property at Lake Chandos, north of Peterborough, Ontario, during long, bright summer days for ten summers in the late 1970s, and 1980s, I rubbed shoulders with, and lived among, Christians from a wide variety of denominations and faiths, including Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, and a few smaller denominations. I feared any disagreement—eager to please everyone at that stage in my life—so I accepted most of what I heard regardless of its source.</p>
<p class="subsq">In addition to scurrying from one area of the lush 260-acre camp property to another as we barked orders at distracted children, we swam, played soccer, and assembled masterpieces in the arts and crafts building. I balanced the challenges of being obedient to the camp rules with the hijinks of raids to the girls’ cabins after dark. It was exciting to develop crushes, begin lifelong friendships, and test the physical and emotional limits of my developing body. The entire process was magnified by the long, sunny days, and the close quarters that foster intense relationships. Throughout the experience, I also learned many ideas about which I had never heard.</p>
<p class="subsq">I witnessed staff members who were excited about spiritual things. They enjoyed reading the Bible, and seemed to want to talk about its stories at all hours of the day or night. As a teenager, I was soaking up new concepts like a dry sponge thrown into dishwater. One autumn, upon my return from the camp’s property, I covenanted to read through the entire Bible because I wanted to know its contents for myself. I also began to read books about the Bible.</p>
<p class="subsq">When I moved to Michigan, I matriculated into the engineering program of Calvin College (now Calvin University) on the strength of my math and science ability. By contrast to my father who had earned his bachelor’s in engineering, I did not last long in the department.</p>
<p class="subsq">I was soon feeling unhappy with my provisional career choice. The loneliness I felt for being a great distance from my family was compounded by a seasonal depression brought on by the cloudy, gray Michigan weather. I recall crying in bed one evening, then wandering about the darkened campus in complete despair. I repeated a mantra to myself, “I am nothing; I have nothing.” I felt desolate and empty. In an attempt to assuage the pain, I carefully memorized the words to Psalm 84. Late one Friday afternoon in drafting class, a group of young people gazed in upon me and my peers from the back of the classroom. They apparently spotted their friend who they had traveled to visit, and began to wave their arms wildly. I noticed them and assumed with a deep longing that their attention was directed at me; they were facing me as they eagerly gestured. It was a sad realization for me that they were looking toward a classmate of mine, beyond me, and likely perplexed by the strange student who was waving back at them. I became keenly aware of how little enjoyment I derived from the solo activity of huddling over a drafting table, or working my way through problem sets in mathematics and physics.</p>
<p class="subsq">When asked what type of engineering I intended to pursue, such as chemical or electrical, on more than one occasion, I answered, “theological engineering,” with tongue firmly planted in my cheek. I was less interested in the subjects taught in my classes, and was drawn instead to dorm bible studies and campus fellowship gatherings. Soon, my passion for theology thrust my academic career in a new direction.</p>
<p class="subsq">I signed up for a four-week interim course in eschatology, the study of “the last things” or “the end times.” In preparation, I gathered and read a pile of library books on the subject before the first class even commenced. The lectures and assignments turned out to be weak and uninspiring, because I had covered far more material in my personal reading than the professor even attempted. Additional, after-class discussions were not much more enlightening. While he taught from a decidedly a-millennial perspective, I had become well versed in numerous theological positions, including pre-millennial and post-millennial.</p>
<p class="subsq">After some soul searching, I switched my major to theology. I was now studying in the classroom the passion I had contracted at summer camp.</p>
<p class="subsq">Upon graduation from Calvin with a B.A. in theology in 1983, I had no specific, long-range plans. I considered teaching at the high school level, or engaging in mission work, but the prospect of both of these left me rather cold. I wrestled with an education class where the professor reminded the class that most teenaged students were not grateful for teachers and their assistance, and made it apparent that teaching in high school would never provide me a meaningful and rewarding career. I meandered for about six months weighing my life options. Writing was already on my mind by this time because I was captivated with films and plays. I wanted to create my own screenplay, but at the time I was not equal to the challenge.</p>
<p class="subsq">In the fall of 1983, I returned to Grand Rapids, Michigan from my parent’s home in Toronto to pursue a relationship, and to write the great American screenplay. Unfortunately, neither went as planned. While biking home from campus one fall evening as darkness enveloped the autumn-tinted trees, a plastic bag containing my written material flew from my hands. Dozens of 3 X 5 treatment cards fluttered away from me and covered an intersection in East Grand Rapids like snowflakes on an open field. It was late enough, and absent of traffic, so that I was able to collect most of the cards without incident. The streaks of dirt across my labor bore witness to me of the poor quality of my writing, and my complete dearth of understanding of what I was attempting.</p>
<p class="subsq">That same fall, I made a decision, and received a “call” from God. I enrolled in seminary to embark on a career as a protestant minister in the Christian Reformed Church, the denomination of my college, and the church of my upbringing since 6<sup>th</sup> grade. I now had the certainty I sought—or so I thought. The rigors of seminary spared me from continued effort on the screenplay, and from great embarrassment had I ever attempted to see it through to completion. My girlfriend and I soon parted ways, a painful renting of boundary-less hearts that took me years to accept.</p>
<p class="subsq">During my study at seminary, I first encountered what was destined to become one of my greatest passions, though 20 years would pass before it would take root in the fertile ground of my imagination. I was pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Calvin Theological Seminary on the same property as my college. In late 1987 or early 1988, I was relaxing one evening with my newest true crime book. My housemate Eric had come up from his basement hermitage to engage me in the living room area where the two of us, and two other students, shared a rented home.</p>
<p class="subsq">It was the custom of the mysterious Eric to emerge from his secluded habitation in the early evening. After a trek to the local convenience store for beer—typically two oversized cans—he would spend the rest of the night plying himself with his purchase until his speech was slurred, and he presumably descended into sleep back down in his basement room. Most nights, he disappeared from sight to enjoy his beer. On occasion, he lounged upstairs to interact with others. I do not now recall whether my odd housemate was also a student, or whether he had already entered the workforce. What I do vividly remember was his eager excitement when he noticed my book.</p>
<p class="subsq">Or perhaps <i>he</i> was the one reading true crime that evening and I was questioning him about his book, which sparked his excitement. The details are dimmed now in the misty corridors of distant memory. However it arose, the topic was of keen interest to the both of us. I would have similar exchanges with many friends and acquaintances over the following decades, but this was one of my first. Since many neither approve of, nor understand, a profound interest in true crime, especially within tight-knit conservative communities, it can be a real joy to find someone who revels in the genre. Today, with the thousands of documentaries and podcasts dedicated to the field, it is much more socially acceptable to be fascinated by, and challenged to understand, the deviant criminals in our society.</p>
<p class="subsq">I shared my reading list with Eric. In that era, I was frequently detouring into the true crime section of bookstores to examine the latest releases. At some point in the conversation, Eric turned to me and asked a question that would change my life forever, “Have you heard of the Zodiac?” (The query may have followed a question about other interesting titles that I could add to my library.) When he learned that I had not, he proceeded to educate me about the San Francisco Bay Area killer of five victims—and possibly many more. I learned the diabolical perpetrator had also written letters to the police, sent ciphers to the press, and had threatened school children with bomb sketches. And he was never caught.</p>
<p class="subsq">I responded with an amalgam of surprise and anger. Not so much because of the appalling deeds—I was by then rather inured to the actions of the most depraved in our society—but because I knew the Bay Area very well and had never heard of the Zodiac.</p>
<p class="subsq">I had just completed a nine-month internship with a medium-sized suburban congregation in Hayward, a Bay Area community to the south and east of San Francisco. I had lost my preaching virginity in the process, even though I did not possess the required preaching license to satisfy the rules of the denominational administrators. Vern, the affable senior pastor under whom I worked at the West Coast church, blithely told me, “It’s a long way to Grand Rapids (the headquarters of the Christian Reformed Church) from here.” Accordingly, during my stay in the region, I delivered a total of five sermons. The disjointed organization of my early efforts, together with my weak delivery as I cowered behind the lectern, left much to be desired. The congregation was very encouraging and infinitely patient.</p>
<p class="subsq">My job description with the church required that I engage with people in the neighborhood. I was the Outreach Pastor, responsible for inviting others to join our worship services, for enfolding new members into the full life of the congregation, and for functioning as a bridge between longstanding families and the church’s newly emerging members. My job enabled me to meet and talk with many, many area residents. Of the hundreds of fascinating and unique Californians I encountered that year, through thousands of conversations, not one single person mentioned to me the name of the serial killer who held court and terrified citizens in every corner of the Bay Area from 1968 to 1974. By 1986, apparently, the murders no longer hung in the air, even as a fleeting memory. The killer was either dead, incarcerated on unrelated offenses, or had moved to greener pastures, as far as most were concerned. No killings had been committed in the prior 17 years, and it had been at least a decade since the last authenticated Zodiac letter arrived by U.S. mail. The fear had evidently dissipated, and was no longer fodder for casual conversation. My position in the church may have made it uncomfortable for others to mention the appalling activities that had tarnished the region’s reputation. They may have falsely assumed that I as a preacher carried no interest in the horrendous actions of a deranged criminal.</p>
<p class="subsq">Now engaging Eric as his speech began to slow, my interest was piqued in a topic that would become near to my heart. The failure of Californians to even mention the events did not deter me from an obsessive quest to engage the crime spree—or from a desire to resolve it. The silence may even have heightened the case’s intrigue.</p>
<p class="subsq">Eric filled me in on as many details as he could recall, and told me about the one publication available at the time. Within three decades of our conversation, there would be three serious motion pictures that would inspire more than 100 books on the subject. The case would spawn television shows, documentaries, podcasts, and magazine articles, in addition to innumerable newspaper stories, a seemingly endless parade of Zodiac products. In the absence of any firm resolution to the case, some believed that anyone’s speculative guess was as good as anyone else’s. The marketplace ensured that any minor piece of circumstantial evidence could and would be packaged by someone bent on bringing a new product to market.</p>
<p class="subsq">Eric’s words penetrated far deeper into my psyche than I realized at the time, and for far longer than I ever would have ever guessed. I was captivated by the details he shared in part because the serial killing case was unsolved. Most of the true crime I was reading at the time covered criminals who had been caught by the time of publication, and whose life was an open book for scrutiny. Following the carefully described details of the murders and the extended investigation, my chosen reading material inevitably lingered long on the tale’s conclusion—an arrest and a successful prosecution usually covered in excruciating detail. The idea of a “modern” high profile-killer that had eluded capture, like Jack the Ripper in London’s East End back in the late 1800s, overtook my imagination. And it had occurred in the United States. And it had happened in California, a region I love.</p>
<p class="subsq">When I finally determined to tackle the case with a conscious and concerted effort in 2007, there were still only a handful of books that even remotely covered the topic, some fictional, the others loose with the case’s facts. I committed myself to reading all that had been written—an exercise that would occupy a few months of my time—and to viewing all the documentaries that had been produced. It took somewhat longer to wade through the hundreds of pages of police reports made available to the public.</p>
<p class="subsq">There have been other passions in my life, but none that ever challenged the huge monoliths of chess, theology, or the Zodiac. I at various times pursued Canadian coins and currency (hoarding the world’s largest collection of 1948 Canadian 10-cent pieces), the acoustic guitar—later, also the electric guitar—and table tennis (ping-pong). I recently found an autobiography I wrote in grade six, which reminded me that I also went through phases of breeding guppies, completing paint by number oil paintings, and learning to play the piano. I also indulged a passion for jogging and competitive long-distance running, which I received from Andrew, my taciturn older brother.</p>
<p class="subsq">One day when I was in grade six, out of the blue, Andrew informed me that he was going for a run with a friend, using a term that I had never heard before: “jogging.” The two had mapped out a course in the neighborhood, and were going to trace its four-mile perimeter. I now suspect that there was a classmate of Andrew’s along the route, some girl who had captured his attention, though I didn’t know about any current love interest, and never saw any young woman that night.</p>
<p class="subsq">When I asked to join them, they warily accepted me, not certain that I could keep up with their pace since I was a full two years younger. The distance proved not to be arduous, and I was barely winded by the time we returned home. It was a great challenge for me to match my brother step for step. In the end, I had succeeded.</p>
<p class="subsq">Andrew and I each began our own regiment of jogging. I assumed that he felt the same joy in the physical activity and the pride of accomplishment that I did, but we never discussed it at any great length. At first, I didn’t track my mileage, or set any goals. Soon, my competitive nature emerged, and over the course of a few years, I bought a bright red jogging suit, received a professional stopwatch for Christmas, and acquired some books about running. I was particularly drawn to the long distances that enabled me to set an easy pace, and lose myself in imagination as I worked through any emotional or intellectual challenges of the day.</p>
<p class="subsq">Soon even very long distances felt comfortable to me. The private elementary school I attended, Immanuel Christian School, which consisted of four classrooms and a couple dilapidated portables, held annual walk-a-thons to help raise tuition money. I spent many hours canvassing our neighborhood to gather sponsors, generous families who would agree to pay even a small amount for every mile I covered. Each fall beginning in grade seven, I ran the entire walk-a-thon course to see if I could complete the distance more quickly than the other participants. It became an annual competition among fellow runners.</p>
<p class="subsq">One year, I was the first person back at the school, having completed the 16-mile course (the distance was also listed as 25 kilometers, as Canada transitioned from the British system to the metric system); the following year, as I tried to match my accomplishment, I made a wrong turn and ran four more miles than required. I had pulled so far ahead of the other runners at the beginning of the course that when I detoured, I was unable hear the shouts of my classmates and the teachers directing me to return. I ran on, oblivious to those who sought to help me. I did not realize that the route had been altered from the previous year. I arrived at the final check point, the school itself, about 15 minutes after the first runners, having covered the few more miles than the “winner.”</p>
<p class="subsq">In high school, at the end of each year, the physical education teacher awarded a small trophy—smaller than a hand and not much bigger than a thumb—to each student who ran 125 miles over the course of the previous school year. It was a ritual designed to encourage physical activity among members of the student body. I dutifully recorded all my jogging sessions, and qualified each of the four years I was enrolled. In my senior year, grade 12, I pushed myself in the final weeks to accomplish the lofty total of 500 miles, four times the necessary distance. Janet, the teacher who awarded the trophies that year, and my colleague at summer camp—we awkwardly transitioned each summer from a teacher-student relationship to that of fellow staff members, then back again—simply announced that some students had run more than the required mileage, some “many more miles.” I was downcast that my name wasn’t specifically mentioned or the details of my effort. I may have hoped to impress my female classmates but I remained anonymous; my long hours unrecognized apart from the tiny trophy that I and a dozen other students were awarded.</p>
<p class="subsq">Three times that school year, I attempted to jog home from my high school, a distance of more than 19 miles. On my first try I only ran for about 10 miles before I acceded to public transportation for the remainder of the journey, hopping on a public bus that was going in the correct direction. I covered 13 miles on my next attempt. It was not until my third and final run that I was successful, and completed the entire 19.5-mile trek without stopping. On one of those runs, one of my school’s buses passed me, a handful of students staring out of the back window as it drove away. I wondered whether the students realized I was bound for Scarborough, and a Plato-like Odyssey.</p>
<p class="subsq">Also in my senior year, I competed in the second annual Toronto Marathon. Partly because I carried no food or sugar—and the checkpoints provided only water—I was only capable of running for the first 20 miles. I walked most of the remaining 6 miles for an elapsed time that exceeded four hours. I was pleased with the certificate that arrived in the mail a few weeks later.</p>
<p class="subsq">That fall, as I began my first semester at Calvin, I sauntered into the office of the track and field coach, hoping to share my running skills with my new school. As I sat in a waiting room and listened to a fellow athlete discuss his strategy for an upcoming event—the runner was worried that two races on the same day would prevent him from posting a good time for the second one, I heard him note, “Sometimes in a second race on the same day, I <i>do</i> run my best time.” When my turn came to speak with the coach, I learned that the upperclassman who had just left competed at a pace that approached a four-minute mile. My times were far too slow to provide any help to the team. I listed my track times, and the coach politely thanked me for visiting.</p>
<p class="subsq">My disappointment in not being fast enough, and the depression brought on by the gray skies of West Michigan, both led me to set aside my sneakers. Running, like table tennis and chess beforehand, had lost a prized place in my life, and was relegated to sporadic eruptions in my usually busy life. But I would never completely forget the tug on my heart that was induced by Eric and his intriguing details of an unidentified California serial killer.</p>
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Mark G. Hewitt DBA
Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer
$19.95
In Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer, Dr. Mark Hewitt invites readers into his gripping journey of unraveling one of America's most enduring mysteries. Dr. Hewitt, an expert on the Zodiac case, shares his transformation from a pastor to a dedicated true crime investigator.
This memoir details Dr. Hewitt's meticulous research, personal encounters, and the profound impact of the Zodiac case on his life. Moving to California reignited his passion, leading him to explore crime scenes and connect with other enthusiasts. His relentless pursuit is not only about the Zodiac but also about understanding the complexities of human nature and the quest for truth.
Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer provides a unique blend of personal narrative and investigative insight, offering readers a compelling look at the determination and challenges faced by those who seek to solve cold cases. Join Dr. Hewitt as he navigates the twists and turns of this enigmatic case, shedding light on his life's work and his unwavering commitment to uncovering the truth.
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<h1 class="center" id="c3">Chapter One: The SIU</h1>
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<div>Imagine you’re at a neighborhood party. Stan, the nondescript neighbor you never talk to, approaches. Unsure what to say, you attempt, “Hi… Stan. How’s work?”</div>
<div class="indent">“My work?” Stan beams. “I got a great insurance story!” He moves into your space to drone on about his days navigating the rigors of risk management.</div>
<div class="indent">At that point, you either plan to fake a phone call or pray your significant other shouts, “It’s time to heat your casserole.” Anything but being cornered with insurance stories. Is anything more boring than an insurance person talking about their job? After all, it’s a product that’s only used when you’ve experienced a terrible loss—perhaps a car crash, fire, theft, injury, or death. Who wants to dwell on that?</div>
<div class="indent">I’m hoping to change that perception. My decades of combating insurance crimes have revealed a fascinating investigative niche unknown to most of the public. Our cases were filled with creativity, amusement, and sometimes pure evil. And even more significant, the cases financially impacted every one of our lives.</div>
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<div class="indent">For a quarter century, I investigated insurance fraud, based out of Miami—which, as you may or may not know, has had a small fraud problem.</div>
<div class="indent">Former Governor Rick Scott described “Florida’s embarrassing problems” with its insurance system. While describing a $910 million scheme, he coined the term “fraud tax” to describe the financial burden these crimes place on all consumers.<sup><a href="ypft_0054.html#n1-2" id="r1-2">[2]</a></sup></div>
<div class="indent">For the first five years, I investigated a broad range of fraudulent property and injury cases. For the following twenty, I managed diverse teams of insurance investigators for the largest property/casualty insurer in the United States, representing over 9 percent of the market, and a global top-ten carrier based on revenue.</div>
<div class="indent">Not for one moment was the job boring or routine. What other career could possibly lead to dealing with organized crime rings, art and jewelry theft, staged accidents, human trafficking, and faked deaths? We had to investigate without having a badge, a gun, or any real authority. Law enforcement had no duty to help us, though many times our cases intersected. We were the unsung heroes of the company’s SIU (Special Investigation Unit).</div>
<div class="indent">I must pause the swelling orchestra to issue a disclaimer that none of the following statements, narratives, or opinions reflect those of my former company. I will not disclose any confidential or proprietary information or trade secrets or name any specific carrier unless notated, and I have changed the names of parties and companies unless otherwise cited. The described scenarios are all true, and I will discuss how to avoid being a victim of the same crimes in our personal lives.</div>
<div class="indent">So, what is an SIU? It is a division within an insurance company that investigates potentially fraudulent insurance cases. SIUs are at the forefront of the ongoing fight against insurance crimes. Their job is to detect, deter, and pursue actions against fraudulent activities. SIU professionals who investigate insurance crimes are also employed by federal, state, or local law enforcement and anti-fraud organizations such as the NICB (National Insurance Crime Bureau).</div>
<div class="indent">Insurance fraud is probably as old as the carpenters who inflated repair costs after Noah’s flood, but the first formal SIU was established in Massachusetts by Kemper Insurance in 1976.<sup><a href="ypft_0054.html#n1-3" id="r1-3">[3]</a></sup> The primary concern at the time was auto-related fraud. Next, with larger property losses, arson became the focus of most SIU teams. Then came the shift into injury, medical, healthcare, and even organized crime.</div>
<div class="indent">Today, virtually all insurance companies worldwide have established SIU teams to help protect the financial integrity of their businesses. Most states have passed legislation mandating that insurance companies establish SIUs, as well as requiring anti-fraud training, essentially asking the carriers, “So, what are you doing about it?”</div>
<div class="indent">For the state in which I was housed, Florida Statute 626.9891, also known as the Fraudulent Insurance Act, mandated every insurer admitted to the state shall create anti-fraud units to investigate and report fraudulent insurance acts, or contract with a third party to investigate possible fraudulent acts. <sup><a href="ypft_0054.html#n1-4" id="r1-4">[4]</a></sup></div>
<div class="indent">With the creation of SIU teams, carriers needed to staff them with experienced people trained to investigate, take statements, and knock on doors, sometimes in unsavory areas. Therefore, employees couldn’t be easily intimidated and would have to work professionally with attorneys and law enforcement.</div>
<div class="indent">SIU teams also serve as liaisons to law enforcement including local and state police, FBI, fire marshals, Coast Guard, and ATF, as well as attorneys, surveillance experts, forensic analysts, and private investigators. Their relationships with experts in those fields are their greatest assets.</div>
<div class="indent">SIU representatives are not any sort of law enforcement. There are no badges, and they can’t make arrests. They are employees with specialized investigative training who represent the carriers. Many times, fraud is committed by people who aren’t the policyholders, such as medical clinics, unscrupulous attorneys, organized crime rings, body shops, dishonest agents, or our newest class of perpetrator: cybercriminals.</div>
<div class="indent">Regrettably, there’s job security in the field of fraud investigation—and it’s on the rise. According to 2022 data from the Insurance Information Institute<i>,</i> about 75 percent of insurers stated fraud has increased significantly, with an 11-point increase since 2014. <sup><a href="ypft_0054.html#n1-5" id="r1-5">[5]</a></sup></div>
<div class="indent">To keep up, a cottage industry of fraud detection firms has grown at a similar pace. The insurance fraud detection market, an entire industry of fraud analytics, is estimated to be a $912.3 million market in the U.S. alone, expected to grow 13.7 percent from 2019 to 2025.<sup><a href="ypft_0054.html#n1-6" id="r1-6">[6]</a></sup></div>
<div class="indent">Here are some facts to enlighten you on the crisis:</div>
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<div class="margin">Right now, you and every one of your family members are paying over $932 per year in increased premiums just to fund insurance fraud. That’s nearly $3,800 for a family of four.<sup><a href="ypft_0054.html#n1-7" id="r1-7">[7]</a></sup></div>
<div class="margin">Fraud occurs in about 10 percent of all property/casualty losses.<sup><a href="ypft_0054.html#n1-8" id="r1-8">[8]</a></sup></div>
<div class="margin">Non-medical insurance fraud is estimated at $45 billion per year. <sup><a href="ypft_0054.html#n1-9" id="r1-9">[9]</a></sup></div>
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<div class="indent">In the following chapters, I’ll describe various cases, categorized by type and escalating in severity. Most are cases that our SIU teams or I investigated; others are from our colleagues in the industry.</div>
<div class="indent">I’ll begin with routine burglaries, including “art theft on the high seas.” It’ll escalate into arson for profit, the monstrous acts of some arsonists, and even ritual sacrifices gone wrong. Then we’ll move on to organized crime, including the Russian mob’s varied enterprises. I’ll illustrate boat theft schemes and their use in human trafficking. We’ll shift to the rise of illicit medical clinics. Then we’ll recover sunken cars that contain haunting secrets. I’ll explain how not to fake your death, and I’ll conclude with my team’s role in the terrifying Pain & Gain double murder case (complete with robbery, extortion, and torture). I told you there was never a boring day.</div>
<div class="indent">Bottom line: Greed and opportunity continue to increase insurance crimes. Laws and corporate responsibility have hardened the need for SIU investigators as the schemes grow more creative, complex, brazen, and sometimes deadly.</div>
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Richard Wickliffe
You Paid For This
$17.95
Embark on a gripping 25-year journey delving into the author's investigation of insurance crimes in Miami, spotlighting Special Investigation Units (SIU) –an investigative world invisible to most, yet one for which we all pay.
In YOU PAID FOR THIS, Richard Wickliffe takes the reader from routine burglaries to art theft on the high-seas, arson for profit, and even failed ritual sacrifices. He describes a variety of cases he encountered, including the Russian mob and organized crime, boat thefts linked to unconscionable human trafficking, sunken cars that conceal deadly secrets, and the pitfalls of faking one's death. The book culminates with the SIU's involvement in Miami's harrowing Pain & Gain double murder case, featuring kidnapping, extortion, and mutilation.
With an informative yet witty tone, YOU PAID FOR THIS exposes the creative and chilling facets of insurance crimes, cautioning and advising readers on how to protect themselves from potential victimization in their own lives.
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<div id="chapter-1" class="element element-bodymatter element-container-single element-type-chapter element-with-heading" role="doc-chapter" epub:type="chapter">
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<div class="element-number case-mixed"><span class="element-number-term">Chapter</span> <span class="element-number-number">1</span></div>
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<div class="title-block">
<h1 class="element-title case-mixed">Not Just Another Day…</h1>
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<div class="text" id="chapter-1-text">
<p class="first first-in-chapter first-full-width"><span class="first-phrase">U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier</span> arrived at his desk at approximately eight a.m. on Friday, January 12, 2007. This was going to be the fourth day of the trial for Ed and Elaine Brown of Plainfield, New Hampshire, on felony charges for conspiracy to commit federal income tax violations. The government had a very strong case, and the Browns were representing themselves.</p>
<p class="subsq">A friend sympathetic to their cause, Michael Avery, from the suitably named Outlaw Legal Services of Florida, was serving as a “paralegal.” He had helped Ed and Elaine prepare all their pre-trial motions. He was seated at the defense table to “advise them.” The Browns had rejected any representation by an attorney.</p>
<p class="subsq">It wasn’t going well for the Browns. Ed Brown’s spurious arguments against having to pay federal income taxes were rejected by the court, and his theories on the federal tax laws were shut down by presiding Judge Steven McAuliffe at several points. The government’s witnesses were showing that Ed and Elaine had stopped paying their taxes in 1996 and owed more than $625,000 in unpaid income tax. They were also charged with structuring, the intentional manipulation of financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.</p>
<p class="subsq">As was his custom on getting to the office, Marshal Monier checked in with the control room upon arrival and spoke with the two court security officers manning the cameras and other systems monitoring courthouse activity that day. All was quiet, they said.</p>
<p class="subsq">Marshal Monier and his chief deputy, Gary DiMartino, were both concerned about this trial. The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) had deemed that the trial was “high risk” given that Ed Brown, a self-described “retired exterminator,” had become a leader in the militia group, U.S. Constitution Rangers. Membership in the rangers had grown in the aftermath of federal law enforcement’s attempts to serve arrest warrants at Ruby Ridge in Idaho and at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Chief DiMartino and Inspector Brenda Mikelson had ordered extra courtroom security and intelligence gathering for the trial. They had ensured that court security officers were being extra vigilant in screening people involved with, or attending, the trial in the U.S. District Court in Concord, New Hampshire.</p>
<p class="subsq">Marshal Steve Monier and Chief DiMartino had worked together for the past five years in the District of New Hampshire. Chief DiMartino was a career deputy U.S. marshal who had risen through the ranks to become a chief deputy in the Marshals Service, the number two person in every one of the ninety-four district offices of the USMS.</p>
<p class="subsq">Deputy U.S. marshals are highly trained federal law enforcement officers, not unlike career FBI, ATF, and IRS agents. They apply for open positions in the Marshals Service, take written and physical exams, and are subjected to background investigations prior to being hired. They attend, and must successfully complete, the USMS Academy and other advanced training programs throughout their career.</p>
<p class="subsq">Gary DiMartino began his law enforcement career in a Rhode Island police department before applying for, and beginning, his calling with the USMS.</p>
<p class="subsq">Because he had served in several supervisory positions on both the East and West Coasts during his long tenure with the agency and had taught at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy in Glynco, Georgia, he was a highly respected and well-known chief in the USMS. Marshal Monier considered him a very qualified, competent, and professional member of the service and was pleased that when President George W. Bush had nominated him to become the U.S. Marshal for the District of New Hampshire, Gary was his chief deputy.</p>
<p class="subsq">Unlike the deputy U.S. marshals, who form the corps or “backbone” of the USMS, each U.S. marshal (USM) who heads the district offices of the USMS is nominated by the President of the United States and must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before taking the oath of office. This has been the case since the U.S. Marshals Service was created in 1789 by the 1<sup>st</sup> Congress of the newly formed United States government.</p>
<p class="subsq">When the 1<sup>st</sup> Congress of the United States stood up the federal judiciary, they realized there was no agency to enforce court orders, apprehend offenders, or help run the court system. In the Judiciary Act, the 1<sup>st</sup> Congress created the United States Marshals Service, with each marshal in each district to be appointed by the president with the “advice and consent” of the United States Senate.</p>
<p class="subsq">President George Washington swore in the first thirteen U.S. marshals, including the first marshal of the District of New Hampshire, in 1789. The U.S. Marshals Service is our republic’s oldest federal law enforcement agency, with the broadest of authority in enforcing federal law and orders from the U.S. courts. For over 234 years, the U.S. Marshals have done everything from protecting the courts, to taking the census, to protecting the President of the United States.</p>
<p class="subsq">In the twenty-first century, their core mission is the protection of the U.S. courts, enforcing court orders, apprehending fugitives, running the witness protection program, finding missing or abducted children, and taking the lead on enforcing the provisions of the Adam Walsh Act to track and monitor convicted sex offenders.</p>
<p class="subsq">Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice made several legislative and administrative changes to how the work of the USMS was conducted over the decades, and in particular, in the twentieth century. Originally, each U.S. marshal could appoint his own deputies as needed, to carry out orders from the court.</p>
<p class="subsq">As David S. Turk, the official historian of the Marshals Service, noted in his seminal work entitled <i>Forging the Star</i>,<i> </i>“[L]ong after gaining their Old West reputation with personnel such as Seth Bullock, Wyatt Earp, Bass Reeves, Bat Masterson, and Heck Thomas, U.S. Marshals and their deputies followed a winding trail of transition.”?<sup class="main-text-refnote-cue"><a href="notes.xhtml#chapter-1-endnote-1-text" id="chapter-1-endnote-1" class="refnote-marker marker-format-roman-lower endnote-cue roman-lower-i" role="doc-noteref" epub:type="noteref">i</a></sup></p>
<p class="subsq">At approximately nine-thirty on that Friday morning, Chief DiMartino stuck his head into the marshal’s office and said, “Marshal, Ed and Elaine failed to show up this morning for the continuation of their trial.”</p>
<p class="subsq">It was a decisive moment in the long run-up to this point in the case of the <i>United States v. Edward L. Brown & Elaine A. Brown</i>. Their failure to appear was long feared by both Monier and DiMartino.</p>
<p class="subsq">Both had had uneasy feelings about this case, since the district court’s magistrate judge released them on conditions, at their arraignment on May 24, 2006, on the income tax and other charges.</p>
<p class="subsq">Among the conditions of release were that the Browns surrender all weapons to the USMS and the U.S. probation officers who would accompany them back to their Plainfield home. Further, they were to cooperate with, and report regularly to, the U.S. probation officers at the U.S. district court and appear at all future court proceedings.</p>
<p class="subsq">Deputy U.S. marshals and U.S. probation officers drove Ed and Elaine back to their home in Plainfield to remove their weapons that day in May of 2006. Sharp-eyed deputy marshals noted the layout of the Browns’ home on the property, took photographs, and later sketched out the interior layout of the home. This proved to be pivotal in what ensued in the continuing Brown saga.</p>
<p class="subsq">The deputies who went there also told Chief DiMartino that they didn’t believe Ed Brown had surrendered every weapon in his possession to the U.S. probation officers. The property, they reported, was simply too large and the house and outbuildings had too many places where firearms could be concealed.</p>
<p class="subsq">Within a few hours of the morning the Browns failed to appear for the continuation of their trial, the news got worse. The USMS learned that heavily armed militia members and supporters of Ed Brown had gathered at the end of their long driveway leading to their hilltop home in Plainfield. Judge Steven McAuliffe issued warrants for the Browns’ arrest on failure to appear.</p>
<p class="subsq">Initially, at the USMS and the prosecution’s request, the warrants were sealed. Chief Gary DiMartino counseled that the best course immediately was to call the Browns and convince them to return to court for the remainder of their trial. The marshal and Judge McAuliffe concurred, as Gary had carefully established a rapport with Ed and Elaine while they were detained in the Marshals Service’s detention facility at their arraignment in May.</p>
<p class="subsq">“I had faith in Gary’s ability to use his considerable communications skills to convince the Browns that they should return to court to finish the trial,” Monier reported. Instead of immediately attempting to arrest the Browns at their home, where Ed’s armed followers had gathered, he consented to Gary’s suggestion that he try and convince them to return for the remainder of the trial.</p>
<p class="subsq">Gary DiMartino spent the next three days talking with Ed and Elaine via telephone to do just that. The fact that the Browns took every one of his calls over that weekend was a positive.</p>
<p class="subsq">At one point, it looked like the chief would be successful and that both Ed and Elaine would return to the court on Tuesday morning. Elaine was more noticeably willing to do that given the chief’s convincing arguments that this was a financial crime and that they need not take this to any further level.</p>
<p class="subsq">Gary argued that it would be hard for them to continue to mount a defense if they weren’t in the courtroom to do so. The jury, he said, “will only hear the government’s side, and not yours.” As it turned out, Chief DiMartino was only partially successful.</p>
<p class="subsq">Chief DiMartino continued to speak with them directly over the phone throughout the weekend and into the day on Monday, which was a holiday. On Tuesday morning, January 16<sup>th</sup>, Gary had brokered the return of the Browns for the remainder of their trial. Elaine Brown got into the car to return to the courthouse in Concord. At the last minute, however, Ed demurred and refused to get in the car.</p>
<p class="subsq">This was a partial victory for the Marshals Service. While it isolated Ed Brown from Elaine, Ed was not alone. He was left with some die-hard armed militia supporters who shared his belief about the “corruption of the federal government.” Soon thereafter, others joined the group, including members of the “Free State” movement in New Hampshire who, while not professing violence themselves, joined in the discussion about the “overreach” of the federal government into the lives of ordinary Americans. A select number of the New Hampshire Free Staters, who preached an extreme form of libertarianism, supported the Browns.</p>
<p class="subsq">In a letter posted on the internet shortly after Ed Brown’s public announcement that he would not be returning for the remainder of his trial, New Hampshire native William D. Miller wrote on a blog posting, “I am going to see Judge McAuliffe and U.S. Attorney Colantuono and various other officials hanged for treason for these actions.” In response, the U.S. Marshals Service issued a “be on the look-out” (BOLO) to area law enforcement in an attempt to locate Miller.</p>
<p class="subsq">Miller, a New Hampshire resident who was living in Florida at the time, had a history of local law enforcement contacts. He was also an early disciple of Ed Brown and the Constitution Rangers and had been one of Ed’s followers for some time.</p>
<p class="subsq">When Bill Miller learned of the trial, and Ed’s vow to fight any attempt to force him to return to the courtroom, Miller got in his car and drove nonstop from Florida “to protect Brown” at all costs. Miller was armed and ready to take on the role of “chief of staff” to Ed Brown when he arrived in Plainfield, New Hampshire, twenty-four hours later.</p>
<p class="subsq">With Miller’s help initially, Brown made use of the internet, emails, blog postings, and media interviews almost immediately upon deciding that he was going to fight any attempts to arrest him or force him from his property.</p>
<p class="subsq">“I will defend my property, and I am willing to die before going to jail…” Ed Brown told his followers. Apparently, Ed had concluded that he and Elaine were likely to be convicted at the conclusion of the trial. He was publicly critical of Judge McAuliffe and his rulings and, in interviews with the gathering media, called it a “kangaroo court.”</p>
<p class="subsq">Word was quickly spreading through the militia, U.S. Constitution Rangers, and the sovereign citizen communities that things were heating up in Plainfield. Comments on blogging websites and emails about the federal government unfairly targeting the Browns were spreading hourly. Supporters were calling for all good patriots to stand up for them. One message being spread on anti-government websites was titled, “<i>Will Plainfield be another Waco?</i>”</p>
<p class="subsq">Local and state media also began covering the Ed and Elaine Brown story. The <i>NH Union Leader</i>, New Hampshire’s only statewide newspaper, and the <i>Concord Monitor</i>, published in New Hampshire’s capital and widely distributed, and the <i>Valley News</i> (covering the Hanover, Lebanon, and Plainfield region) all took note. The marshal and chief assigned a deputy, who was particularly adept at high tech, IT, and the internet, to begin monitoring all activities related to the Browns. In a call to HQ, they asked that the Investigative Services Division (ISD) and the Intel Unit do the same.</p>
<p class="subsq">On January 12, 2007, Margot Sanger-Katz, a reporter for the <i>Concord Monitor </i>(a prominent New Hampshire newspaper covering the capital city region)<i> </i>wrote one of her first news stories about the Browns’ trial when she reported on the first two days of it. The trial had already gained a local interest amongst the state’s papers and the statewide ABC-affiliated TV station, WMUR-TV 9, as supporters of the Browns demonstrated in front of the U.S. district courthouse.</p>
<p class="subsq">Dave Ridley of Keene, New Hampshire, a member of the “Free State” movement in the state, held a sign reading “Ministry of Torture” in reference to “government-sanctioned torture with taxes.” “That’s why I support Ed,” Ridley told the <i>Concord Monitor</i>. “He’s standing up to the federal government.”</p>
<p class="subsq">Ironically, Sanger-Katz’s article about the trial’s proceedings appeared on January 12<sup>th</sup>, the same day Ed and Elaine Brown both refused to return to the courthouse. The government was close to resting its case against the Browns after the testimony of the lead IRS agent handling the investigation and testimony from several postal service employees about the Browns’ habit of purchasing multiple postal money orders just below the $3,000 limit required for notification to the government of the transaction.</p>
<p class="subsq">According to the government’s witnesses, this “structuring” of money orders is a common method to avoid paying income taxes. Over a two-year period, the Browns purchased more than $300,000 in money orders. Ed and Elaine, according to postal service investigators, would separately each wait in line and purchase a money order for $2,800.</p>
<p class="subsq">At the close of the court’s proceedings on January 11<sup>th</sup>, both Browns told the court that they would begin their defense in the morning, and both told the judge that they planned to testify in their own defense.</p>
<p class="subsq">Both, however, failed to return to court on Friday, January 12<sup>th</sup>.</p>
<p class="subsq">On Tuesday, the 16<sup>th</sup> of January, 2007, the day that Elaine agreed to Chief DiMartino’s entreaties to return to court, she also agreed to have a court-appointed attorney, Bjorn Lange, represent her. Michael Avery, the paralegal, continued in his role and sat in on the plea negotiations between the government prosecutor and Attorney Lange.</p>
<p class="subsq">Learning of the plea negotiations, Judge McAuliffe agreed to postpone the couple’s trial for another day when it appeared that Elaine Brown would be willing to reach a deal with the prosecution. That is, if she pled guilty to the extent of her criminal liability and conduct. As a dentist, Elaine Brown earned most of the couple’s income. She also had been charged with failing to collect employment taxes from the staff at her dental office in Lebanon.</p>
<p class="subsq">The judge continued the trial for another day so that the government could calculate what they expected Dr. Brown would pay in back taxes and penalties and the terms of a prison confinement. Elaine was given until ten o’clock the following morning to make a decision on whether to accept a plea deal. If there was no deal, the judge ruled, the trial would continue with or without Ed Brown in the courtroom.</p>
<p class="subsq">Because Elaine had failed to appear on Friday, the judge ordered new bail conditions for her. He ordered Dr. Brown to stay with her son in Worcester, Massachusetts, and not to return to her Plainfield, New Hampshire, home. She was only allowed telephonic contact with her husband, and she was ordered to wear an electronic ankle bracelet so that U.S. probation officers could monitor her whereabouts.</p>
<p class="subsq">The Waco Branch Davidian standoff lasted fifty-one days. When both the Browns failed to appear on January 12, 2007, it set in motion what would become a nearly nine-month standoff, the longest armed standoff in the 234-year history of the U.S. Marshals Service. Would Plainfield, New Hampshire, join the lexicon of American history as another Waco or Ruby Ridge?</p>
<p class="subsq">District of New Hampshire Chief Gary DiMartino, U.S. Marshal Steve Monier, and USMS Chief Regional Inspector Dave Dimmitt were determined not to let that happen.</p>
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Steve Monier
No One Has To Die
$19.95
On January 12, 2007, what began as a felony tax trial for Ed and Elaine Brown in Plainfield, New Hampshire, spiraled into the longest armed standoff in U.S. Marshals history. Refusing to appear in court and surrender to federal authorities, the Browns transformed their home into a fortress, drawing support from militia groups and anti-government activists nationwide.
No One Has To Die offers an in-depth look at the tense and perilous nine month standoff that tested the resolve and tactics of the U.S. Marshals Service. Steve Monier, with contributions from Gary DiMartino and Dave Dimmitt, recounts the meticulous planning and tactical negotiations aimed at resolving the situation peacefully, against a backdrop of rising militia activity and public scrutiny.
This compelling narrative dives into the Browns' extremist beliefs, the challenges faced by law enforcement, and the strategies employed to prevent another Waco or Ruby Ridge. Through detailed accounts and personal insights, the book highlights the importance of communication, patience, and strategy in averting violence and ensuring that no one has to die.
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<h1 class="element-title case-upper">ONE</h1>
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<h2 id="subhead-1" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">FINDING MY FOOTING</h2>
<p class="first first-in-chapter first-full-width first-after-subhead"><span class="first-phrase">I grew</span> up about two miles from Possum Trot, a rural community in Western Kentucky. I was a shy, awkward kid who was not particularly good at sports, nor was I a good student. I was average at best. I didn’t have a lot of friends in school. I just tried to blend in. It was 1970 when I graduated from North Marshall High School. Most of us were just hanging out waiting to see if we would be drafted. My first job out of high school was as a riverboat deckhand. It was good money, but it wasn’t for me. In fact, the job was not the adventure I thought it would be. It wasn’t long before I decided I needed to do something else with my life just in case I wasn’t drafted. I enrolled in a community college where I had to really study and apply myself just to make average grades. I guess this was because I had not learned much in high school.</p>
<p class="subsq">After two years in community college, I enrolled in Murray State University, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I attended one year of graduate school, but I was burned out. I was tired of being so poor and living on student loans. When I finally got my draft notice, I went for my physical and was turned down because I had flat feet.</p>
<p class="subsq">Probably the biggest influence in my life was my practice of Karate while I was in college. I had a knack for it. I would practice every day for hours. I became obsessed. When I earned my black belt in Wado Ryu–style Karate, I started entering tournaments. One of my instructors was Sensei Vic Milner. I became an instructor and taught Karate at the university. I also taught in several local Dojos. I had won tournaments in the black belt division in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. I only lost two times, once in a full-contact event in Alabama and once in a “Battle of Champions.” Some of my students were guards and supervisors from KSP. I had a standing offer as a guard if I ever needed a job.</p>
<p class="subsq">I graduated from college in the Jimmy Carter years while the economy was stalled. There were no jobs. Finally, I decided to give the prison a try. What did I have to lose? I didn’t have any other prospects for a job unless I wanted to go back on a riverboat or go back to graduate school. So I applied for the job and was hired as a correctional officer. I never looked back.</p>
<h2 id="subhead-2" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">THE BELLY OF THE BEAST</h2>
<p class="first first-after-subhead">My first day at KSP (Kentucky State Prison) was July 3, 1978. And I was nervous. As I rounded the curve and drove down the road from Pea Ridge, there it was, looming like a medieval fortress on the banks of Lake Barkley. The Castle on the Cumberland River. What had I gotten myself into? I could only imagine what convicted inmates might think when they see the Castle for the first time. The prison itself resembles something out of the Middle Ages, with its soaring walls, stone parapets, and heavily guarded watchtowers. An imposing place, with a reputation to match.</p>
<p class="subsq">As I started up the crumbling steps to the main entrance, I heard a grumpy voice say, “HALT! State your business.” I stopped dead in my tracks. The command to halt sounded threatening—as if I might be shot if I didn’t obey.</p>
<p class="subsq">I looked up and saw a middle-aged man peering down at me from the gun tower. I responded, “I am Philip Parker, and I am reporting to work.”</p>
<p class="subsq">“Go ahead,” was all he said. I didn’t know what to think about this first encounter, but I knew I was about to enter a strange, new world.</p>
<p class="subsq">As I approached the front gate, I stepped aside as several uniformed men with shotguns came running from the armory located at just off the top of the steps. Startled, I stepped aside and froze as they passed. I thought to myself, <i>What in the hell is this about?</i></p>
<p class="subsq">I learned later that there had been a mass escape from Four Cell House. My very first day. Three inmates, Joe Craig, James Hatfield, and Charles Murphy, had cut through their cell bars and made their way down the short distance from the opening to the ground using bedsheets fashioned into a braided rope. As with every prison escape, their luck was fleeting; the men were apprehended a few days later. As first impressions go, this was a lot to take in for a new corrections officer.</p>
<p class="subsq">I stood at the entrance, waiting to be ushered in. There was no control center at the time to automatically open prison doors. After the front gate officer keyed the lock, I crossed the threshold and entered the belly of the beast. One of the things I never quite became accustomed to after all my years in the Castle was the smell. The Castle has an odor unlike anything I have ever experienced: an ungodly combination of cigarette smoke, body odor, sewer gas, death, and history. It still smells that way to me. Some five decades later, I still notice that odor as I walk up to the prison gates. Half-jokingly, I always say it is the smell of the Castle Beast, the one that trolls the front entrance, taunting all those who sense its presence.</p>
<p class="subsq">After filling out employment paperwork with two other new hires, we were told to go to the receiver’s basement to get our uniforms. I thought to myself, <i>What the hell is the receiver’s basement?</i> Turns out it was a warehouse in the basement of Five Cell House with an outside entrance. I learned my first lesson on the job: prison workers have their own language to describe the Castle’s twisty, cavernous interior. I knew we had to learn fast or we would not find our way around. KSP is enormous, with five large cell blocks that housed 1,200 inmates in 1978. In subsequent years, two new cell blocks were added, even as the overall population decreased to around 980, because inmates no longer shared cells.</p>
<p class="subsq">With uniforms in hand, the new hires were directed to report to the hospital for a physical. The hospital, I later learned, was a state-licensed facility complete with infirmary beds, a surgical wing, a pharmacy, and an emergency room. But we had no idea how to get there. After wandering around the sprawling prison yard for what seemed like an eternity, one of the older guards took pity on us and pointed to where we had to go.</p>
<p class="subsq">A man in a lab coat with a stethoscope led me into an exam room and asked some standard questions about my health. I filled out a medical history as he listened to my heart and lungs, took my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. I thought he was a doctor. Several weeks later, I saw him in the canteen line and realized the man I mistook for a doctor was actually a convict.</p>
<h2 id="subhead-3" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">SOMETHING FISHY</h2>
<p class="first first-after-subhead">A “fish” is a term used to describe a newly hired officer or a new inmate who just got off the bus. Why, I don’t know. It is just prison slang. The “fish tank” was a row of cells in One Cell House used to house inmates until they had been given an orientation and a list of the rules. They would also meet the Classification Committee to be assigned a job and a cell.</p>
<p class="subsq">A fish <i>officer</i> is a new hire who has not attended the academy or learned the ropes. These rookie officers are basically useless and treated accordingly. You remained a fish officer until you became familiar with all the ins-and-outs of daily prison operations and earned a small degree of respect. You had to prove yourself, meaning you would not run from trouble and you would back up your fellow officers. You also had to follow orders to the letter.</p>
<p class="subsq">I was hired in with two middle-aged female employees, Betty Blackwell and Rosy Mitchell. In the late 1970s, only a handful of females were hired as correctional officers. It was still a man’s world, but that was rapidly changing for the better. Nora Aldridge was the first female hired as a correctional officer sometime around 1976. Soon after, Judy Groves was hired and had already made sergeant by the time I came aboard. I try to imagine how they must have felt entering such a hostile, male-dominated environment, where danger and violence were the norm. These were courageous and brave women.</p>
<p class="subsq">As the three of us made our way out to the receiver’s basement, we had to traverse a sidewalk just below Four Cell House then Five Cell House. Inmates could stand at the barred windows in the hallways of Five Cell House and look down at the walkway we were on, the cars in the parking lot, and the boat traffic on Lake Barkley. We were about to learn our next lesson.</p>
<p class="subsq">Betty Blackwell, walking next to me on the winding sidewalk, was a middle-aged blond with an attractive figure, and Rosie Mitchell, a middle-aged person of color, strode alongside Betty as we made our way to the receiver’s basement. As we passed under Five Cell House, we could hear a whistle and catcall from somewhere above us on one of the four floors of Five Cell House. “Shake it, baby, shake it!” I was street smart and did not look toward the direction of the voice. Betty reflexively glanced up, however, and that same voice yelled, “Not you, Bitch. HIM.” I thought, <i>Oh my God, they are talking to me!</i> Another lesson for a fish guard.</p>
<h2 id="subhead-4" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">TRAINING</h2>
<p class="first first-after-subhead">Training consisted of a two-week academy at Eastern Kentucky University, the training center for all correctional officers and police officers in Kentucky. After the academy, we endured a week of firearms training at KSP, followed by on-the-job training. Before could be scheduled for the academy, I had to shadow more experienced officers. I was not allowed to work by myself until I graduated from the academy.</p>
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Philip W. Parker
Guard
$22.95
Guard: A True Story of Duty, Sacrifice, and Leadership in Kentucky's Maximum Security Penitentiary
In 1978, Philip Parker started his decades-long career as a prison guard at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, a place known as "The Castle" for its medieval look. On his first day, a mass escape set the tone for the dangerous and intense journey ahead. Over the years, Parker faced numerous challenges, from federal court allegations to life-threatening situations, including a dramatic hostage crisis with a notorious inmate.
Parker's memoir takes readers through the emotions and realities of prison life. From handling daily violence and suicides to witnessing murders caused by racial tension and other conflicts, Parker describes the harsh environment of the prison. Guard includes detailed accounts of harrowing events, like the highway crime spree where two of his colleagues were shot.
The book also covers the evolution of the prison itself, from its early days with medieval punishments to modern-day improvements. Parker shares his experiences as a warden, dealing with staff corruption, inmate violence, and the heavy responsibility of carrying out court-ordered executions.
Guard is a vivid and honest account of a life spent managing the worst in human behavior while finding moments of compassion and redemption. It highlights the dedication and resilience required to maintain order in such a challenging environment, and offers a unique perspective on the sacrifices made by those who work in the prison system.
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<div class="element-number case-upper"><span class="element-number-term">CHAPTER</span> <span class="element-number-number">1</span></div>
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<div class="title-block">
<h1 class="element-title case-upper">THE MURDER OF GINA MARIE TISHER</h1>
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<div class="text" id="chapter-1-text">
<div class="alignment-block alignment-block-align-center">
<div class="text-block">
<p class="alignment-block-content alignment-block-content-center">Friday, January 2, 1976</p>
<p class="alignment-block-content alignment-block-content-center">Whittier, California</p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="first first-in-chapter first-full-width"><span class="first-phrase">The rapist knew exactly</span> what he was looking for. He always knew when he had found the right one. Until he found her, he continued to walk aimlessly through the Whittier shopping center. He followed one young woman, but she never left the security of the crowded center. He followed another younger girl and thought she might be the one, but she kept looking back at him nervously. He would stop and look in the shop windows pretending to be interested in the merchandise. Finally, he gave up on her and went back into the parking lot to look for another.</p>
<p class="subsq">He knew he should be at work. He had just gotten the job at the Chevron Station and had promised his common-law wife Mollye he would stay with it this time and not lose this job as he had the others. But when the urge came over him to follow a girl, he could not seem to help himself. He had to do it again, as he had many times before. He couldn’t remember exactly when it started, but it had been going on for a while now. He couldn’t stop. It used to be he could go for weeks before the impulse came over him, but lately, it seemed to happen more often. He couldn't explain why.</p>
<p class="implicit-break scene-break"></p>
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<p class="alignment-block-content alignment-block-content-center"><b>From the transcribed confession of the killer:</b></p>
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<p class="first blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose blockquote-position-first">I was supposed to be at work, but that urge came over me, and something was driving me to go look for a girl. I was talking to myself. I drove around for a long time, and then I was at the Whitwood Shopping Center in Whittier. I was hanging around there a long time also. I was about to give up and go home, and I was walking through a rear exit or something. There was a dry cleaner by a Vons or an Albertsons. It’s a shopping center, and there was a grocery store there, and there are a couple of little businesses there, and there’s a dry cleaner. And she was putting her clothes in [the car] from the dry cleaners, and I walked on by her, and I started to go around her car, and I looked back and she was having a hard time. And I turned around, and I looked, and there wasn’t anybody watching. She had long dark hair. She was wearing a dress, and I think a sweater, nylons, and shoes. She was pretty, young, and I think she was about twenty or twenty-two years old. She was sophisticated looking, but not the kind of sophisticated where they have an air about them. She was driving a newer gold or brown-colored Granada.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">So, anyway, she was putting the clothes in, and I turned around, and I walked back around her and walked right up to her, and by then she had gotten into the car. I was standing there, and then I turned around, and I walked back behind the car, and just as I got behind it, I turned, and I looked into the back window, and she was just about started up, and she reached around and messed with the clothes again or something and she saw me. I pointed to her left rear tire and said, “Ah, you aren’t gonna get far with that tire like that.” Or something, and she said, “OK.” So, I started to walk away, and I turned around, and I looked at her, and I said, “Did you hear what I said?” And she said, “What?” I was yelling at her or something. I walked back around to the driver’s side of the car, and I reached down, and I kicked the tire or something, and I said, “You’ve got a flat tire here.” She said, “I do?” And she cracked the door open.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">As soon as she got the door open, I pulled the gun out and stuck it in her face. I said, “Scoot over.” She said, “What?” I said, “Scoot over, right now, quick. Don’t give me no shit, just scoot over, scoot your ass over.” And I pulled the door open, and I jumped in, and half pushed her over, and she slid over. I said, “Give me the keys.” She said something like, “What the hell is going on?” I told her, “Just shut up and give me the keys. Put the keys in the ignition.” She put the keys in the ignition, and I started the car up. I think it was about five-thirty or six. Yeah, because the banks were still open until six. I drove out of the parking lot across into a tract of homes due east of Whitwood Center, and I pulled around the corner, and I said, “OK, take all the money out of your purse. You haven’t got any weapons or anything? Knives or guns or anything like that?” She said, “No, I never had one.” “What’s in the back seat?” I asked her. She said, “Laundry.” And I think she had a present or something for someone. I’m not sure. Anyway, she told me what was in the back seat, and she gave me the money she had. I told her it wasn’t enough, and she said they were newlyweds, and they just had a vacation and spent most of their money on vacation or something or other. And I said, “Well, what about a bank account?" She said the car was a rental from the place where her husband works because her car was being worked on or something and that they really didn’t have any money. They spent it on their honeymoon. The only thing she had was ten or twenty bucks that she gave me and her paycheck, her paycheck that she had to cash.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">She showed the paycheck to me, and I jumped on it, and I said, “OK, we’re going to go cash it.” Anyway, she told me what bank she banked at, and I said, “Well, where is one of those?” And she said, “Well, where are we?” And I pulled back out to the main street. I don’t know the name of it, but anyway I saw the name of it, and I told her, and she said, “OK, well, we’ve got to go that way.” And she named the place. I was going to go to a drive-up window or a walk-up window without going inside the bank, and I told her that. She said, “Well, the only one I know like that is my bank. It is on the other side of town or something. It’s a quarter to six now and closes in fifteen minutes so we’ll have to hurry.”</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">So, I said, “OK, in the meantime, climb over into the back seat and get on the floor.” And it had bucket seats. She got on the floor, and I took off. I was driving with my left hand. I had my gun stuck in the back seat pointed at her in my right hand. I had it stuck between her legs. I took off. I said, “OK, we’re coming to (so-and-so) street, which way?” She said the bank was on Imperial. So, I took what I thought I knew was a shortcut or something. Somehow, we got off on a side street and went all over the goddamn place and didn’t ever come out. We just kept getting deeper and deeper.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">Finally, I told her to get up in the front and show me the way out, and she didn’t know where we were. It was about five minutes to six. She said if we go back to Whitwood Shopping Center the bank there was open. I told her that was no go—that there had to be somewhere, a store or some grocery store or somebody that knew her that would cash it. She said she knew of a place or two that had cashed her checks. I said, “For how much?” “Well, for ten or twenty dollars or for the amount of purchase only,” and that she didn’t know of any place that would take, I think it was a two-hundred-and-forty-dollar check, or something like that, a payroll check. We drove around trying to find a place for a half hour or an hour where she could cash the check, but we never stopped anywhere. And so finally I got pissed off and told her.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">Well, she was in the back all that time. She got back in the back from Whitwood before we took off. So, we took off and drove around and looked at these places. Nothing. I got pissed off. I kept sticking … I had the gun between her legs up her skirt, and I kept sticking it into her, poking her, and poking her with it. I drove off up Hacienda Boulevard up over the hills somewhere. I drove back, and I turned off a side road and went halfway back up it—parked underneath this bank that there was a house up on. I told her to get back up in the front seat. I started asking her questions about her family, and when her husband got home from work, where did her parents live. They live in Anaheim; I think—Anaheim or Santa Ana. Did they have any money to buy her back? No, they didn’t have much money, but her mom had a turquoise necklace that was worth a thousand dollars or something. I told her, “Well, I could only get ten percent on that. That’s only a hundred bucks, and I need five hundred dollars.” She said, well, she thought they had a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars in cash. I told her that was still two hundred dollars short.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">I turned back north on Hacienda and got going up over the hill, and she said she didn’t know where she could get the money. And so, we got up over the hill, and we started coming down the hill, and I turned right off into the tract of homes again and was driving around in those homes and telling her she had to come up with more money, she had to come up with more money. And she couldn’t do it. I said, “Well, you’ve got to come up with some collateral or something to make up for the money.” “Well, you can have the car,” she told me. I said, “Well, I already planned to take the car. I can get five hundred bucks for it, but I need a thousand. We’re still two hundred and fifty short. You gotta come up with two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of something.”</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">So, we went around and around and around for a while, and finally, I drove up to the City of Industry. I think that is where we ended up, back there in some factories or something. In the meantime, I had convinced her that she could give me two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of sex, and I’d call it even. I had her unbutton her clothes while I was driving, and somewhere along the line I undid my fly, and I’m beating off while she was undressing, I mean while she was undressing, and I was driving.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">I went down in front of this factory and pulled behind it. There was a whole row of factories, and I went down to the last one, and I went behind it and parked. I told her just to open up her dress. I think it was a one-piece dress. I told her to open it up and to just climb in the back seat, and she said the seats recline. I told her to show me how to recline the seat, and she did. I told her to take off her shoes. She took off her shoes. Then she took off her nylons. I know she took off her underclothes anyway, and so I started screwing her in her seat. Her back was on the seat. I kept telling her, “Faster! Faster!” She kept going faster and harder. “I want my money’s worth; I want my money’s worth.” She kept working harder and harder. I was playing with her all the while we were doing that, and she started panting and getting in rhythm. She started liking it. I said, “You really like this, don’t you? Have you ever been screwed in the ass?” She said, “No.” She said, “I think it will hurt.” I said, “No it won’t. Come on.” So, I pulled it out, and she turned over, and she laid across the seat. And I rammed her really hard, and she jerked away, and she said it hurt too much—do it the other way.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">So, I said, “OK,” and she turned back over. She started going again. I was playing with her tits. We went for about five minutes, and she started coming, and I was chewing on her neck or something. She was saying, “Yeah, yeah,” and I was saying, “Yeah, yeah.” Tighter and tighter. I started squeezing my muscles tighter and tighter, and I kept squeezing my hands tighter and tighter. I just kept squeezing, and she kept squeezing, and it felt good. She kept squeezing harder and harder and harder, and I come. As soon as I come, she stopped. I took my hands off her, and she just lay there. I felt her neck, and she didn’t have any pulse. I felt her wrist, and she didn’t have any pulse. I yanked her off me, and I jumped back over in the driver’s seat. I started the car back up. I tried to get my pants on, but I couldn’t get them on. I jumped out of the car and got dressed, and I got back in the car, and I just kept looking at her, and she was dead, but I couldn’t believe she was dead. I just kept expecting her to do something. But she didn’t do shit, she just laid there.<sup class="main-text-refnote-cue"><a href="chapter-001.xhtml#chapter-1-footnote-1-text" id="chapter-1-footnote-1" class="refnote-marker marker-format-arabic footnote-cue arabic-1" role="doc-noteref" epub:type="noteref">1</a></sup></p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">So, I put the car in gear and started to drive away, and she fell over against me. I pushed her off me, and I just stopped the car, and I picked her up, and threw her over in the back seat, threw her down on the floor, and I was looking at her, and she didn’t do nothing. I took off, and I drove somewhere. I don’t know. I drove for a while. I drove, and I drove, and I kept looking at her and driving and looking at her and driving, and nothing happened. I finally ended up on some freeway somewhere. I ended up on the Pomona Freeway. Yeah, the Pomona Freeway going east. I had all the windows pulled down, and I was going about eighty-five or ninety. I was sweating and going faster, and I had the tape deck turned up full blast. She just lay there. I saw this sign saying the Orange Freeway, or the 57 Freeway or whatever it is, and I turned onto it, and I thought home, I gotta get home. Oh man, I must have done ninety or a hundred down that freeway all the way home.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">I got to what I think was Imperial. No, maybe it was Lambert Road. I pulled off, and I stopped. I tried to collect myself. What was I going to do? I reached back, and she was cold. I was sure she was dead then, and I had to get rid of her.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">I pulled off on Lambert Road, on the off-ramp, and I just sat there for a second. I turned the tape deck down. I thought, “I gotta wipe my prints off and get out of here.” I was really pissed because she was dead. I was really pissed! I reached back, and I hit her. I hit her hard on the chest. I hit her right in the sternum because I remember she, ah, gasped or something, and I thought, oh wow, maybe she’s going to come back alive. I remember that I got back on the freeway, and I got to Yorba Linda Boulevard, and I got off there. I turned left, and I went over to K-mart. You know the K-mart on Yorba Linda Boulevard and Placentia?</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">And I drove around the K-mart parking lot for a while, and I parked in there. I just sat for a while, and I smoked a cigarette. Then I tore all the clothes down and the clothes hanger and covered her up. I got out of the car, and I locked it up, and I went into the K-mart, and I bought—what did I buy? Oh yeah, I forgot about the jewelry. I took the jewelry from her when we were parked in Hacienda Heights. She told me it wasn’t worth much, and I told her, “I could get something for it.” It was a wedding ring set. She told me she didn’t know how much her husband had paid for it. I told her it looked like it was worth something. She said there was a green class ring or something. She told me it was jade or an emerald or something and was valuable. So, I took it, and I think she had a watch. I think she had post earrings or something. I took all of that back in Hacienda Heights somewhere.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">I went in the K-mart, and I bought something. Shit, I don’t know what the hell it was, and I went back to the auto supply section, and I bought some brake fluid. I remember the brake fluid was something somebody told me about, that brake fluid was good for cleaning things. I thought, well, I’ll clean up the car with the brake fluid. I bought a can of brake fluid, and I know I got something for, I think I bought a toy for Unity, my daughter, a little mouse, or something.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">I went back out to the car, I got in the car, and I was going to wipe it down right there. Then somebody drove into the parking lot that I knew that I thought I knew or that they thought they knew me, or I don’t know, and they were driving around and looked at me weird. I thought, “I think I know those people. That must be why they’re driving around me wondering what I’m doing in this nice car.”</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">I started the car up, and I hauled ass out of there and went over to Gemco. It was kind of catty-corner. I drove around the Gemco parking lot for a couple of minutes, and I forgot about what I was doing, and then I followed this girl out to her car, and I was going to get out of the car and go rob her or something, but then I remembered that I had to clean that car up.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">So, I drove over by the cleaners and parked in front of a liquor store. The cleaners and the liquor store are by each other in the Gemco parking lot. And I parked there, and I took some kind of rag and dumped brake fluid on it. I spent about five or ten minutes wiping the car down. And I started the car up, and I drove across the parking lot towards Yorba Linda Boulevard, and I stopped again and got the check. I wiped the dash down a couple of times and the steering wheel and a couple of other things down.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">Then I drove around, and I got out of the car again in a garage area of some apartments. I poured some of the brake fluid on a rag. I then tried to stuff the can into her vagina, but when I found it wouldn’t go, I think I stuffed the rag in. I think I wiped down the outside of the car. I know I locked the car up though, and I walked back up the alley towards State College, and I took the can of brake fluid and chucked it up on the roof of one of the carports, and I got to the end of the carports, back to the parking lot where the taco and pizza places are. I had the car keys, and I threw the keys in the trash. Then I thought, I might want them, so I took ‘em back out of the trash, and I chucked ‘em up on the corner of the roof.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">Well, I walked out of there around Shakey’s [pizza restaurant] and started walking. I had cut between the Tic Toc, the gas station, and the pizza place, right through Nutwood, and turned right around the Emporium. I turned right on Nutwood, and I walked along the north side of Nutwood under the underpass, and then I cut across a field or a parking lot. There’s a field and a parking lot there or something, and I cut across it into a fraternity house or whatever that is there. I cut across there and then over to Commonwealth up off of Nutwood Street, then across Commonwealth through some more fraternity houses or something, and came out almost across the street from some type of camping store or, there’s a ski shop there and the Sav-On parking lot, cut across the street behind it, that is on Chapman, then I went behind it, came back around it, went around the front, walked in the Sav-On, and was eating an ice cream or something when I saw Winchell’s over on the corner. I decided to go to Winchell’s instead, so I walked over to Winchell’s.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose">I called Ruby<sup class="main-text-refnote-cue"><a href="chapter-001.xhtml#chapter-1-footnote-2-text" id="chapter-1-footnote-2" class="refnote-marker marker-format-arabic footnote-cue arabic-2" role="doc-noteref" epub:type="noteref">2</a></sup> on the phone from there. I told her that I’d been kidnapped. I said I’d been kidnapped by four black guys that morning, and they dragged me around in the trunk all day and dumped me out in Irvine, and I’d just gotten this far, and that I needed a ride the rest of the way home. I think it was either nine-thirty or ten-thirty. She asked me, “Well, what do you need, an alibi?” I said, “No, I’m telling you what happened.” She said, “What have you been drinking?” I said, “Forget it, Ruby, I’m telling you the truth. Just get in touch with Mollye and tell her I’m on my way home and that I’m OK. I’ll walk from here, and it’ll be a little while till I get home. Tell her not to worry.” She said, “OK,” she’d get in touch with her.</p>
<p class="subsq blockquote-content blockquote-content-prose blockquote-position-last">So, then I called up a Yellow Cab from Winchell’s. Then I went over, and I sat and had a jelly donut and a cup of coffee. While I was drinking the coffee, the taxi pulled up. We went up to Commonwealth. I told him I had three or four bucks or something, and he took me as far as Gilbert and Commonwealth to a McMahan’s gas station and let me off there. It was twenty cents under what I told him I had. That wasn’t what I had, but that’s what I told him. And I got out from there, and I walked home.</p>
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<div id="chapter-1-footnote-1-text" class="refnote footnote marker-format-arabic" role="doc-footnote" epub:type="footnote"><p class="first"><span class="refnote-marker-container" hidden="hidden"><a class="refnote-marker marker-format-arabic arabic-1 refnote-backlink" href="chapter-001.xhtml#chapter-1-footnote-1">1</a> </span>Even in his confession of this cold-blooded murder, Hulbert attempts to minimize his acts by saying that the victim was “starting to enjoy it” and she kept squeezing, when in fact he was strangling her to death. He also fails to mention the fact he bit her breast so severely the criminalist was able to cast the bite after her death. Throughout these interviews, he never showed any remorse or compassion for his victims or their families.</p>
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<div id="chapter-1-footnote-2-text" class="refnote footnote marker-format-arabic" role="doc-footnote" epub:type="footnote"><p class="first"><span class="refnote-marker-container" hidden="hidden"><a class="refnote-marker marker-format-arabic arabic-2 refnote-backlink" href="chapter-001.xhtml#chapter-1-footnote-2">2</a> </span>Ruby Rose Patterson, the owner of the home the suspect was renting in southwest Fullerton, and the woman who had cared for him when he was a child, after the death of his mother.</p>
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Lee DeVore
The Parking Lot Rapist
$15.50
In The Parking Lot Rapist, retired detective Lee DeVore recounts the harrowing investigation that led to the capture of a serial rapist and killer who terrorized Los Angeles and Orange Counties in the 1970s. This gripping true crime narrative begins with the tragic murder of nineteen-year-old Gina Marie Tisher and delves into the relentless pursuit of justice by the Fullerton Police Department.
DeVore provides his insider's view of the complex and meticulous investigation, revealing the strategies, challenges, and breakthroughs that ultimately led to the arrest and conviction of Kenneth Richard Hulbert. Through detailed accounts of key moments, including transcripts of Hulbert's chilling confessions, collaboration with various law enforcement agencies, and the emotional toll on the victims' families, DeVore paints a vivid picture of a community united in its fight against a monstrous predator.
The Parking Lot Rapist is more than just a detective's tale; it is a testament to the dedication, teamwork, and unwavering commitment of an entire police department. This compelling story captures the essence of true crime, highlighting the painstaking efforts and sacrifices made to bring a dangerous criminal to justice.
Whether you are a true crime enthusiast or simply seeking an authentic account of law enforcement's pursuit of justice, The Parking Lot Rapist offers an unflinching look at the resilience and determination necessary to protect and serve.
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<h1 class="center" id="c3">CHAPTER 1</h1>
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<h2 class="center sigil_not_in_toc">The Early Years</h2>
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<div>I graduated from the Philadelphia Police Academy in class 294 on March 25, 1991. My grandmother—“Nan,” as I liked to call her—threw a party for me at her home in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia. There was a big cake with my badge number, 4487. As I observed family, friends, and loved ones celebrating this turning point, I couldn’t help but reflect on what led me there.</div>
<div class="indent">Lexington Park, Philadelphia, is where I grew up with my parents. But some of my fondest memories are from Nan’s summer home. In the summer of 1977, I was a skinny seven-year-old kid. The Wildwoods were, and still are, known as one of the most popular places along the South Jersey shoreline. Nan’s place was right next door to the North Wildwood Police Department, and from the time I was about four years old, I would watch the police officers from our front porch. I loved spending summers at my Nan’s because it was much more fun than the neighborhood in Philly. You can always enjoy five miles of beach and boardwalk rides, arcades, and shops.</div>
<div class="indent">On a typical hot and humid summer day at the Jersey Shore, I was riding my bike in front of Nan’s house when I fell. Two officers saw me and got out of their patrol car to help. They recognized me as the kid who lived in the house next to the police station. From that day forward, the same two officers always waved at me when they passed by. They were genuinely good guys. I remember seeing their cruiser up close with the door open, and hearing the crackle of the police radio amazed me. Day in and day out, summer after summer, I watched the officers of the North Wildwood Police Department protect and serve their community.</div>
<div class="indent">Fast forward ten years later to May 7, 1987, the day of my junior prom. My beautiful daughter, Caitlin, was born. Needless to say, I didn’t go to the dance. I was seventeen and in eleventh grade, so I had another year until graduation. I attended Catholic school, and some priests broke my balls over being a teen parent. They had to play the role, after all. They felt they were doing the right thing. We named our daughter after Caitlin Davies from the popular 1980s television series <i>Miami Vice</i>. Actress and singer Sheena Easton played this role of Sonny Crockett’s wife on the show.</div>
<div class="indent">Caitlin’s mom, “Marie,” and I met through mutual friends in the spring of 1986. I’ve decided to use a false name in this bio for her and her family’s privacy. I was sixteen years old. My parents were divorced, and I lived with my father in Northeast Philadelphia. For the record, I didn’t choose my father over my mom; I didn’t want to leave home. My father refused to leave our house in Northeast Philly for years. Because of this, my mother had no choice but to move out.</div>
<div class="indent">One summer night, when I was eleven or twelve years old, my parents and I were driving to the shore in my dad’s ‘76 Cadillac Coupe Deville. I fell asleep in the backseat because it was late and dark. When I woke up, my parents were arguing but trying to keep it down so they wouldn’t wake me. They could have been more successful. I didn’t sit up; I just lay there pretending to be asleep in the back seat. I was afraid if I sat up, I’d get yelled at. I could feel the tenacity and anger in my mom’s voice as they went back and forth at each other; she was practically spitting venom at him. My father was driving and didn’t say as much, but he clearly was disgusted as it radiated through his voice when he responded. Have you ever heard two people try to argue quietly? It doesn’t work. That was the first time I heard the song “Hearts” by Marty Balin, and now, any time I hear it, it reminds me of that night in my dad’s car—it has stuck with me forever.</div>
<div class="indent">When Marie and I got together, she lived in the nearby Mayfair section, and her parents had split up by then too. It was my first real relationship. When she got pregnant, our lives changed forever. I remember she had a pregnancy test done at the local free clinic, and, as it turned out, she was nineteen weeks along. It was clear she had been holding out on me. I panicked initially; I knew I had to tell my parents.</div>
<div class="indent">Thanksgiving Eve 1986, we told my father about the pregnancy—he was the first to know. He was disgusted with us and called my mom first, then Marie’s parents. Everyone gathered at my father’s house, and our mothers were very emotional; they both cried and fell apart. Our fathers were even-tempered yet heavy-handed. They laid down the law and told us we would put the baby up for adoption. They didn’t ask or suggest; they just told us. I disagreed with the “plans,” but we were too afraid to speak up against them. We were kids; we couldn’t provide for a baby and hadn’t even graduated high school. I only agreed to the adoption to get them off our backs. I told Marie to play along with them, and she did. Workers from the adoption agency visited us every week, but we never met the people who planned to adopt Caitlin.</div>
<div class="indent">Nan was the only person I could talk to in our family. She knew I didn’t want to give up the baby, but I was scared. I didn’t know how we would take care of a baby. Where would we live? How could I pay the bills? I’ll never forget the day my Nan turned to look at me and said sternly, “We will pay the bills. Don’t let that be a reason to give up the baby.” I had no intention of going through with the adoption, but I dreaded facing our fathers over it.</div>
<div class="indent">Each of our mothers showed up at the hospital the day Marie went into labor, but our fathers were absent. We were at the hospital all night as she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Caitlin. Our decision to keep the baby caused a huge wedge between my dad and me. Eventually, I moved out to live with Nan in the neighboring Mayfair section of Philadelphia. Caitlin stayed with her mother, who lived just two blocks from Nan’s house.</div>
<div class="indent">I <i>attended</i> Father Judge Catholic High School in Northeast Philadelphia. I emphasize “attended” because I didn’t learn a thing there, except how to talk my way out of detention, aka JUG—“Justice Under God.” I was a terrible student and went to summer school two out of my four years there. The nuns at St. Hubert’s High School wouldn’t let Marie attend school once she started showing. But after Caitlin was born, she returned to school and graduated on time.</div>
<div class="indent">Father Kilty, academic dean, and my English teacher was very good to me while the other priests looked down on me. He was the kind of guy who would sit me down with a cigarette in his mouth and have casual heart-to-heart talks. Occasionally I’d bum a smoke off him too.</div>
<div class="indent">He also baptized Caitlin. That day played out interestingly with my dysfunctional family. Imagine: My mother and Nan weren’t talking to my father. My father and his girlfriend sat on the other side of the church. On top of that, Marie’s parents were separated and didn’t want to sit next to one another. It was so awkward that at one point, Father Kilty announced, “Let’s remember Caitlin is here for a purpose.”</div>
<div>Twenty years later, Caitlin was attending nursing school while Nan was dying. Caitlin jumped in and took fantastic care of Nan. My mother and I would never have been able to go through it without Caitlin. Father Kilty’s declaration ultimately rang true.</div>
<div class="indent">Father Kilty was different from the other priests—he never lectured or shamed me in any way. He didn’t speak down to me as an adolescent. Instead, he was honest with me. I always knew where I stood with him and never left the room confused. When I learned I would be a father, I sat down with him and said, “I fucked up.” And he replied, “Yeah, you did fuck up. But you fucked up once, and you could’ve fucked up twice by getting an abortion, and you didn’t.” I felt like a man in his presence, not an irresponsible teenager who got a girl pregnant.</div>
<div class="indent">Father Kilty would tell me stories about my great-uncle, who was in the priesthood. Monsignor Joseph McMullin died when I was four years old. I have no memory of him, but he did baptize me. He taught at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia.</div>
<div class="indent">Monsignor McMullin, or “Holy Joe The Hammer,” as they called him, spoke thirteen languages. Father Kilty was one of his students at the seminary before he was ordained. I understood the nickname “Holy Joe,” but I asked Father Kilty why they called him “The Hammer.” Kilty laughed and said my great-uncle enjoyed telling jokes and was known for knocking a firm elbow into the recipient’s arm and saying, “Did you get it, did you get it, did you get it?” Hence, “The Hammer.” Years later, Father Kilty transferred to a different school, and we eventually lost touch. However, he left a lifelong impression on me, and I will always be grateful for the time we spent getting to know each other.</div>
<div class="indent">When I graduated high school, I knew I wanted to become a police officer. All those years sitting on the front porch in North Wildwood lit a fire in me, and I no longer wanted to watch the cops; I wanted to be one. My father and I were now on good terms, although he didn’t like where I was in life. Nan still had her summer house in North Wildwood and her primary home in Mayfair. I was able to live with her while going to college part-time. I worked at the Friendship Pharmacy and Spitzer’s Mobil Station. I also mowed lawns to help support Caitlin financially.</div>
<div class="indent">In the summer of 1989, I interviewed for a seasonal dispatcher position at the North Wildwood Police Department (NWPD) with Captain Gary Sloan. He was in his forties and stood about six feet tall. He had a calm demeanor about him. During the interview, he questioned why I wanted to be in law enforcement, and I replied, “I want to help people.” Captain Sloan then asked, “Do you have any relatives in law enforcement?” I answered, “None that I’ve ever met.” Nan had told me about relatives I never knew in New York City who were on the job. She once mentioned that I had a great uncle, Mickey Finnigan, who was in the NYPD and walked a beat in Harlem.</div>
<div class="indent">“Are you ready to work for the North Wildwood Police Department?” asked Captain Sloan. I smiled and said, “Yes, I am.” Captain Sloan emphasized the importance of getting to know the town’s citizens and, in his words, stated, “Do little things, too… like helping little kids up when they fall off their bikes.” He smiled, then told me I had the job. If you haven’t caught on yet, he was one of the police officers who helped me when I fell off my bike in 1977. He remembered me, and I began working as a seasonal dispatcher for the NWPD.</div>
<div class="indent">The second officer who helped me when I fell off my bike that day was Anthony J. Sittineri. He had since become the chief of police. He was an old-school street cop described by other cops as “a cop’s cop.” One evening, I was working in dispatch and received a call from Chief Sittineri’s youngest daughter, Sharon. Her older sister had just given birth to her first child. Sharon asked if I could announce over the police radio that Chief Sittineri had just become a grandfather.</div>
<div class="indent">I was the new guy and hadn’t been working there long. I didn’t know if I should make a broadcast over the police radio about the chief’s family, but on the flip side, I didn’t want to refuse a request from the chief’s daughter, so I told her I would do it. I figured he would either be pleased or fire me. I keyed up the mic and said, “Two to 200.” (NWPD was District Two, and the chief’s call sign was 200). He responded, “200.” As you may have guessed from the name Sittineri, he was Italian and had that old-school Italian way about him that I loved. I replied, “Your youngest daughter called; congratulations, you’re a grandfather.” He didn’t acknowledge the announcement immediately, and I got scared, thinking he would fire me or have me whacked out. After a few seconds, he finally replied with a typical “Ten-four.”</div>
<div class="indent">A few minutes later, Lieutenant Jake Stevenson walked into HQ, and I again thought I was toast. Instead, he approached the dispatch window and commented, “That’s great!” As it turned out, he, and more importantly, the chief, was happy I had broadcast the news.</div>
<div class="indent">One year later, I began working as a part-time police officer for the NWPD. May 14, 1990 marked the day I started training at the Cape May County Police Academy as a North Wildwood Class II Officer cadet. Being a cadet was a whole new ball game compared to working as a dispatcher. I had no idea what I was in for. It was grueling, military-style training, six days a week for seven weeks. The course was not as long as full-time police officer academies, but it was strict with a military atmosphere.</div>
<div class="indent">We were required to have crew cuts, be clean-shaven, and wear khaki uniforms. We marched and got yelled at by the drill instructors constantly. I laugh about it now but was not too fond of it back then; actually, I hated it.</div>
<div class="indent">Day one at the academy started with seventy-two cadets from all over the tri-state area assembled as the 5th Special Class. Only forty-two of us made it to graduation day. Thirty cadets washed out for a variety of reasons. Some couldn’t handle the physical training. I recall one guy who failed the drug screening. Some couldn’t qualify with their firearms. The rest quit.</div>
<div class="indent">The physical training was demanding. The instructors pushed and ran us until we fell or puked, sometimes both. I was never a star athlete but managed to hang in there. I refused to give up and forced myself to suck it up. If you’ve ever watched the movie <i>An Officer and a Gentleman</i>, I adopted the dialogue and mentality portrayed by Richard Gere’s character, Zack Mayo: “You can kick me out, but I ain’t quitting!”</div>
<div class="indent">During our workouts, we wore white T-shirts with our last names in black lettering on the front and dark blue sweatpants with our last names in white lettering on our asses. That way, no matter which direction we were facing, the drill instructors could yell at us by name, and they did so constantly.</div>
<div class="indent">In the gym, we had a formation to abide by, and we each had a designated spot to stand in. At any given time, a drill instructor would yell out your name, and you would have to respond loud and clear, “Yes, sir!” If he ordered you to “take the stand,” then you would run like hell to the front of the class. Then he would say, “McMullin, lead the class in squat thrust exercises.” The proper way to do this would be to address the class loudly and say, “Class, squat thrust exercises, starting positions… move! Ready… by the numbers… exercise! One-two-three, ONE! One-two-three, TWO! One-two-three, THREE!” and so on. If whoever was on the stand did not give the exercise order using those exact words, the instructors would punish the rest of the class with additional exercises, which sucked! I was in excellent physical condition by the time we graduated—I wish I were in such good shape now.</div>
<div class="indent">When the time came to go to the shooting range, I was nervous. I had never fired a handgun in my life. My father had taught me how to shoot shotguns and rifles before, but handguns were a new experience. By the grace of God, I shot well enough to score a passing grade.</div>
<div class="indent">Later that September, I was hired by the Philadelphia Police Department. One good thing about the intensity of the Cape May County Academy was that it prepared me for the Philadelphia Police Academy. Since my new job would be in a different state, I had to attend their academy before I could work there.</div>
<div class="indent">I began my training at the Philadelphia Police Academy in October. Although Philly was hard, it was not nearly as grueling as Cape May. The stressful environment they created at the Cape May County Academy was so much harsher. Drill instructors constantly scrutinized and yelled at the cadets to try to break us down. They were shaping us into rugged individuals, mentally and physically.</div>
<div class="indent">The day after I graduated from the Philadelphia Police Academy, I bought a house in the Holmesburg neighborhood of Philadelphia. I moved Caitlin and her mother in with me. Marie wanted to get married even though we weren’t getting along. Our parents knew we didn’t belong together, but, despite their opposition, we got married at a courthouse. It was for all the wrong reasons—mainly so Marie could have medical coverage under my health benefits. She had recently sustained a life-threatening asthma attack that had put her in the hospital for ten days, and I wanted to provide her with the best medical care possible.</div>
<div class="indent">The marriage lasted less than a year. Marie later met another guy, who she married and settled down with. They’re still together, and I’m happy for them.</div>
<div class="indent">During the graduation party Nan threw for me, I found my mother on the second floor of Nan’s house, crying. She was afraid something terrible would happen to me as a police officer. At first, I didn’t understand. But I soon realized that my two summers as a seasonal cop in North Wildwood didn’t concern her nearly as much as me working in Philadelphia. She grew up in the Bronx, New York, and my dad is from Philadelphia. When they were engaged, my dad got accepted into the NYPD and made plans to move to NYC. But my mother didn’t want him to be a cop, so they moved to Philly instead, and my dad kept his job as a machinist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.</div>
<div class="indent">So there I was, doing exactly what she had kept my father from doing, which devastated her. From that point on, I understood why it bothered her so much. I could only assure her I would be safe, and I’ve kept that promise so far.</div>
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Chris McMullin
3 Decades Cold
$15.50
Detective Chris McMullin's career of finding missing people and solving murders wasn't just his job. It was his passion and dedication to helping victims.
For thirty years, Chris worked at the Bensalem Police Department in Pennsylvania. He started as a patrol officer and became a detective in the Special Victims Unit, where he handled cases involving murderers, sexual predators, and violent criminals. Some of his most important cases included Lisa Todd, Christian Rojas, Tracy Byrd, and Barbara Rowan, a 14-year-old girl who was murdered in 1984 and whose case wasn't solved for 31 years. The Rowan case was especially important to Chris and motivated him to work on cold cases.
3 Decades Cold tells the story of Chris's impressive career, from joining the police academy in 1991 to his retirement and beyond.
Today, Chris McMullin works as a Lieutenant for the Bucks County Sheriff's Office in Pennsylvania. He now leads a nonprofit organization to work on cold cases and has a true crime TV show in development.
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<h1 id="c1">Case Briefing</h1>
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<div>Welcome to the incident room. This is your case briefing.</div>
<div class="indent">“Congratulations on your promotion to homicide detective,” the Detective Major tells you. “You and your partner will be assigned to our major cases. As a team, you will uncover evidence, interview suspects and witnesses, and, if there’s enough conclusive evidence, send the case to the DA. Good luck, we’re all counting on you.”</div>
<div class="indent">As a reader in the role of a member of the somewhat fictionalized investigative team, you will face several challenges. You will uncover the evidence based upon historical crimes as an actual investigator would—as they present themselves in the course of the investigation. The crimes are real, and the evidence comes from the actual case files. Your partners are fictional characters based on a composite of real detectives and others who investigated these crimes. All the evidence that is uncovered is based on police reports, interviews, court transcripts, and contemporary news reports.</div>
<div class="indent">These cases are truly a collaboration between you, the reader, and the rest of the investigative team at the crime scenes. At the conclusion of each case, you will provide an assessment of the evidence and decide for yourself where the evidence leads you.</div>
<div class="indent">As you work your way through these crimes, keep in mind there was a diligent endeavor to maintain important interviews and the evidence for these real cases as accurate as possible. Most of the conversations of the individuals involved were taken from actual interviews and transcripts of the cases. The conversations between you and the fictional detectives are, of course, invented to propel the story forward.</div>
<div class="indent">The evidence discovered is based on diligent research. Some of the specifics may surprise you, as they have not been highly publicized, such as new suspects or a new approach to analyzing the evidence.</div>
<div class="indent">The stories have been adapted to allow you, as the main character, to uncover pertinent evidence. All other aspects of the real cases have been maintained for accuracy.</div>
<div class="indent">As you read through the case and follow the evidence, remember that each step in a criminal investigation is a conscious choice. What is the evidence telling you? Would you have proceeded as these detectives did? Does the totality and circumstances of the case warrant the steps taken by these detectives? Are there any bits of evidence that you would have given more weight to than these detectives did?</div>
<div class="indent">In these stories, you are also challenged to consider some new approaches that have not been previously presented before. See if you agree with the conclusions of the detectives you are “partnered” with.</div>
<div class="indent">You are also challenged to test your knowledge of true crime and use the evidence, locations, and crime scenes to name the actual cases behind the re-creations. The names have been changed but, again, the evidence from these true crimes reflects the actual evidence.</div>
<div class="indent">In many true crime cases, there can be a definitive turning point in the investigation that alters the judgment of the investigating detective. A piece of evidence that changes the trajectory of the case. It flips the switch on the case, it is the ignition point. It changes the case from questionable to convincing in the mind of the detective, and clearly points to the one perpetrator. Since you are the detective in all the cases that are contained in this book, an additional challenge is for you to find that ignition point that will help you solve each of these cases.</div>
<div class="indent">As you become more experienced as an investigator, your partners, first starting out as your trainer, gradually gives you more freedom to explore the evidence on your own. As your expertise grows, your partner more frequently asks your advice about the evidence and the suspects you will encounter. You will learn the value of not jumping to conclusions. Even if you are familiar with the suspects, you only go where the evidence takes you. You often contribute suggestions during the investigation but, like every great investigator who has come before you, you always wait until all the evidence has been tested and the investigation concludes to render your opinion on the case.</div>
<div class="indent">You are not required to agree with your team. You are encouraged to take notes along the way and come to your own conclusions about which suspect, if any, should be sent to the DA for prosecution.</div>
<div class="indent">Now get to work.</div>
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Steve Scarborough
True Crime in Real Time
$15.50
“Welcome to the Incident Room. This is your Case Briefing.”Congratulations on your first day as a police detective. You have been partnered with an experienced detective who will walk you through some of the toughest and most infamous crimes in American history. You will visit the crime scene, review the evidence, search for clues, interview witnesses, read the news reports, and decide with your partner who’s the most likely culprit and send the case off to the DA’s office. This is true crime in real time.As you gain experience, you will be given more autonomy in investigating the cases. Your partner will be there to guide and observe you, but it will be up to you to not only decide who to prosecute, but also name the famous case based on the facts and circumstances. Your investigative skills will be challenged, and so will your knowledge of historical cases throughout the decades, from the late 19th century to the present.Follow the evidence wherever it takes you, don’t jump to conclusions, and use the experience you gain through these investigations to make your case. Even if you recognize the case and think you know the answers, think again. These cases were selected to challenge and surprise you.Now get to work.
Billy The Liquor Guy
The Making of Billy The Liquor Guy
from $17.95
The Making of Billy the Liquor Guy is set to release at the end of June 2024. Order yours now.
Billy The Liquor Guy spent twelve years as an undercover investigator working for New York’s Petroleum, Alcohol, and Tobacco Bureau (PATB), which enforces tax laws for imports into the state. Sounds pretty tame, right? In fact, it was challenging, harrowing, and life-threatening, leading Billy and his team to develop PTSD on the job and for years to come. Much of this is detailed in Billy’s first book, Under Too Long.
The Making of Billy the Liquor Guy fills in the rest of the story. It is a wide-ranging saga of undercover operations, criminal takedowns, and wild successes—as well as internal affairs investigations, betrayals, and serious repercussions stemming from the lack of trust and political game-playing in the bureau.
Not exactly a prequel, The Making of Billy the Liquor Guy gives the backstory behind Under Too Long, introduces familiar characters, and explains who Billy was when he began his career as an undercover operator, as well as what he became as a result of the stress, deception, and treachery he experienced in the PATB.
The Making of Billy the Liquor Guy is a must read for anyone who wants to know what undercover operations, often romanticized in the media, are truly like, as well as anyone who enjoyed Billy’s first book, Under Too Long.
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<h1 class="center" id="c3">CHAPTER 1: <br/>WAIT, WHAT? (JURY SELECTION)</h1>
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<div class="indent">When I got the letter in the mail kindly suggesting that I show up for jury duty, I had no idea what the trial would be or how big it was. I still didn’t even suspect it when I showed up at the courthouse. I was put in a room with a lot of other people, and I guess I should have had a clue then, but I just thought it was business as usual at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho. There were trials to be tried and they needed jurors to try them.</div>
<div class="indent">I was given a number. My number was 1864, but I didn’t think that meant I was number 1864 out of what someone later said was 2400 total jurors called in for this case. I’ve heard there were 1800, 2400, and 2600 initial calls out to potential jurors. All three of those numbers came from people I thought should know. Whichever number it was, it was a lot of people called for jury service in this case. Serving on a jury was my duty as a citizen and I would do as they asked.</div>
<div class="indent">What they asked of me first was to fill out a questionnaire. It was pretty generic and still didn’t clue me in to what I might be in for. That was it for Day One. A few days later, I received a message that I was again to show up at the courthouse at a given time. I showed up and again sat in the same room with a whole bunch of other people. Potential jurors were being called into the courtroom around 50 at a time. Still not having a clue but wondering what case I might be called in for, I waited for my group to be called. Let me tell you, if you haven’t experienced it yet, things in the judicial system don’t move along very fast.</div>
<div class="indent">When I was finally called to go in, I lined up with the rest of the people in my group waiting to be escorted into the courtroom. Here I should say I was only vaguely familiar with Lori Daybell. I knew her kids had been missing for a long time and that they were eventually found dead. I knew what she looked like from news clips that I really didn’t pay much attention to. (I know it sounds strange that anyone wouldn’t be very familiar with the case, especially someone living in Idaho, but I spent a lot of the Covid years building a cabin in the mountains up close to the continental divide between Idaho and Montana where I had no internet, cell service, or even electricity.) Two bailiffs escorted us into the courtroom and there she was, sitting between her two attorneys! It hit me like a brick in the face. And she was looking right at us.</div>
<div class="indent">A lot of emotions were coursing through me at this moment. The first thing I felt as I walked into the courtroom was the weight of the responsibility I would have serving as a juror in this court. I could feel it. It was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop, and there must have been close to 100 people in that courtroom.</div>
<div class="indent">After the trial was over, I heard people say they felt pure evil emanating from the defendant. Whether it was something real that actually existed or just an emotion people felt, I’m not sure. But that first day, there she was, sitting right across from me, and she was looking at each of us in turn. When her eyes came to me, I refused to let myself look away until she did, but man was it hard. I didn’t want to look at her. I didn’t even want to admit to myself that people who were accused of what she was accused of existed on this earth or that they were real. It’s not that I was assuming she was guilty. It was just that people had been murdered and it was sad. Her situation was sad. I hadn’t thought about it before, but before that, I guess I just thought of her as someone on TV. Separated from me by that. But not anymore. This was the first time during this trial that I realized I was being confronted with realities I would rather have avoided.</div>
<div class="indent">At this point, the judge, Hon. Steven Boyce, announced to us what the case was, so now there could be no doubt—but the reality still hadn’t totally sunk in.</div>
<div class="indent">My first impression of Judge Boyce, which was reinforced over the next several weeks, was that he was a kind and thoughtful man. Possibly it was because of his position, sitting above us all in his robes, but he seemed fair. He seemed like the kind of person I would want trying my case, if I were on trial. One thing I noticed right away is that he did not have a gavel. I was kind of disappointed by that. I wanted him to have a gavel. I guess maybe it’s a thing of the past, but in all the movies I’ve ever watched there was a gavel and at some point it was used by the judge to bring order in the court.</div>
<div class="indent">Judge Boyce was appointed by Idaho Gov. Brad Little in 2019 to the Idaho Seventh Judicial District. He is a member of the LDS Church, as are most people from southeast Idaho. I learned later that some people didn’t think he would be up to the task. How could any judge be? This case was so convoluted. I think he did well though. Not just because he was able to wind his way through it all without making any critical mistakes, but also because I think he stood firmly on the law and didn’t allow himself to be backed into a corner. There are many decisions a judge has to make daily in a trial like this and any wrong decision can lead to a successful appeal of the verdict.</div>
<div class="indent">Still though, there were up to 2600 potential jurors, so what were the chances of me actually sitting on the jury? I calculated the odds in my head while I sat there, something to take my mind off the heaviness of the moment. One chance in 144.4 to be exact. That is using 2600 as the number of potential jurors.</div>
<div class="indent">Judge Boyce asked us a lot of questions and we were given the opportunity to say why we shouldn’t serve on this jury. It was pretty obvious to me what I should say if I wanted to get out of it. Basically, they were looking for people who were not aware of what had been all over the news in Idaho, and the whole world for that matter, for over two years.</div>
<div class="indent">He asked if it was a hardship for anyone and my mind was racing thinking about everything I would have to put off, all of my plans I would have to change to serve for a trial he said might last for eight weeks. By the time he came to me, I had heard some real hardships that some people would be facing if they had to serve on the jury and mine seemed pretty weak. My work is somewhat seasonal and springtime is when I usually start painting, replacing fences, fixing broken sprinkler systems, and things like that. None of it is critical. Putting it off for two months would just mean it would pile up and I would have to catch up later, but I could certainly do that.</div>
<div class="indent">One young woman was a single mom of two kids and worked two jobs. She was afraid she would lose her jobs if she had to serve on the jury. At the very least, she would lose the pay she would have received, and she said she would not be able to pay her rent, among other things. Another guy had his own business and was required to travel. He would lose his contracts and the income associated with them. He would have to lay off some of his employees. Judge Boyce did not release either of these people, at least not right then. After hearing these stories and others, I would have been embarrassed to say mine out loud. There went my first opportunity to walk away. I wasn’t too concerned though, because my chances of being chosen to serve were still very slim.</div>
<div class="indent">Before being released for the day, Judge Boyce admonished us potential jurors, as he would at the end of every day: We were not to talk to anyone about the trial or watch, listen to, or read anything related to the trial. So, not only were we going to be in court every day for up to eight weeks, but we couldn’t tell anyone what we were up to.</div>
<div class="indent">Eight weeks is a long time and there were people wondering what I was up to. Because this case was so prominent in Idaho, some figured it out on their own, which was fine, and they were curious but respectful when I explained I wasn’t able to talk about it. Well, I can talk about it now!</div>
<div class="indent">I was called back the next day for mostly the same long, boring drill. This time when my group was called in, the attorneys questioned us individually. The most common question was basically: What do you know about this case? Then: How do you <i>not</i> know about this case? Have you watched the series about the case on Netflix?</div>
<div class="indent">Like I said earlier, I didn’t know much. I was honest when asked how I didn’t know much. I just said I found the story depressing and sordid, so I didn’t pay attention to it when I saw it on the news. It was true, but I thought the defense might be offended by my answer. Apparently they weren’t, or I suspect they were grasping to find 18 jurors who knew as little as I did. As for the prosecution, they told me later they were looking for people who they thought would be able to follow such a complicated case. That was it for Day Three—after the admonishment from Judge Boyce, of course.</div>
<div class="indent">Day Four was kind of bizarre and I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. There were 42 of us in the courtroom and I didn’t know we had been boiled down to just those 42. Had I known, I would have calculated my chances of serving on the jury at 1 in 2.33. Considerably worse than the 1 in 144.4 of the previous days. The attorneys kept looking at individual jurors and passing papers back and forth, through the bailiff, from the defense to the prosecution and vice versa.</div>
<div class="indent">I found out later after the sentencing, when I interviewed the prosecution team, that the prosecution and the defense each had the opportunity to release 12 potential jurors without having to have a reason. They would look over the jury, write something down, and hand it to the bailiff. The bailiff would walk the paper over to the opposing counsel. Opposing counsel would look at it and write something down, hand it to the bailiff, and the bailiff would make a return trip. This took hours and was excruciatingly boring, especially since I had no idea what they were up to.</div>
<div class="indent">Finally juror numbers were called out and those jurors whose numbers were called were thanked for their time and dismissed. We were down to 18. I still didn’t understand we were the final 18 and I was on the jury! After being admonished by the judge, we left the courtroom and were escorted into the jury room.</div>
<div class="indent">Randy, the court’s jury administrator, started giving us instructions and it slowly dawned on me. Holy crap, I was on the jury for the Lori Vallow Daybell case! Everyone was kind of looking around at each other, realizing we would be spending a lot of time together, and I imagine wondering where we all stood. According to Judge Boyce’s admonition, we couldn’t even discuss the trial with each other. I noticed some people had a kind of stunned look on their faces and I imagine I did too.</div>
<div class="indent">We were told we would be picked up at an as yet undisclosed location and driven to the courthouse in vans. We would be notified when and where to be, and the pickup location would be changed regularly.</div>
<div class="indent">Now I was a little nervous. According to the charges filed against her, Lori Daybell had either murdered or conspired to murder people she knew. Was I in danger? Was my family in danger? Would the pickup location be secure and guarded? Maybe I’ve watched too many movies. At the time, I didn’t know who Alex Cox was or that he was dead. I didn’t know who the players were, and I didn’t know whether some of them might still be out there. I wouldn’t say I was afraid, but I did ask my wife to keep the doors locked when I wasn’t home, and to be aware of what was going on around her, something we’re not used to in Boise.</div>
<div class="indent">Looking back, I realize they were more concerned with the media hunting us down than any danger we might be in. Of course, I wouldn’t have talked to a reporter if they had found me, but the court didn’t know that for sure and there was a lot at stake. The media did try to contact me after the trial was over, but I didn’t answer their calls. I simply didn’t answer if the call came from someone not in my contacts. Once I figured out who in the media were legitimate, I talked to those people well after the verdict was in, but even then, I was careful about what I said, not wanting to take the chance of saying something the defense could use in an appeal.</div>
<div class="indent">As it turned out, I was right to be careful. One juror innocently said something to Nate Eaton, a reporter who had covered the case extensively since the beginning. Neither the juror nor Nate Eaton would have intentionally done anything to endanger the verdict, but something was said by the juror that the defense tried to use to call for a mistrial. Fortunately that didn’t go anywhere, but why take the risk?</div>
<div class="indent">We live in a very quiet neighborhood with only one way in and out and only two short streets that both end in cul-de-sacs. We all know each other and if there is ever a police car or fire truck in the neighborhood it’s big news. We started noticing police cars going by regularly or sometimes parked just down the street from our house. I never did find out for sure, but I suspect they were patrolling the neighborhood just to make sure we weren’t being harassed. I wasn’t sure at the time whether to be reassured by the security, or more nervous.</div>
<div class="indent">You’re probably wondering why “juror number 18.” We all know that according to our U.S. Constitution, a criminal trial jury consists of 12 jurors. In this trial there would be 12 jurors, plus 6 alternates. The kicker was, that no one would know who the 6 alternates were until their number was literally pulled out of a hat after the prosecution and defense rested and the judge gave his instructions to the jury, just before the jury went into deliberations. Judge Boyce told me later they did that because it would be such a long trial and surely some jurors would have to drop out due to health, family, or something. But not one juror did.</div>
<div class="indent">I was proud of the other jurors (and myself) for seeing it through to the end. It wasn’t easy for any of us, and I think it was very hard for some. Not just because of time away from family and work, but also emotionally. Some of the subject matter we were exposed to was not for the faint of heart. It definitely took a toll on all of us. There were a few who I thought would crack, but they stuck it out.</div>
<div class="indent">I had the opportunity to meet with the ones I was concerned about a few weeks after the trial and they seemed okay but are seeing a counselor. I hope they are okay. They are good people and didn’t deserve to be confronted with what we had to see and hear in that courtroom. Eighteen more victims of Lori Daybell—although I’m sure my fellow jurors wouldn’t admit that.</div>
<div class="indent">Talking to some of the other jurors after the trial was over, I found out some of them actually cried when they learned they were on the jury. Not only because of the enormity of the case, but because of the hardship it would cause them serving for up to eight weeks, financially and otherwise. A few were moms with young children at home and I know at least one was a contractor with contracts to keep. Some were shocked and confused as to how they suddenly found themselves on the jury for this case. Some had mixed emotions, being excited to serve as jurors on such an important case, but at the same time feeling the weight of the responsibility.</div>
<div class="indent">I know some of the jurors weren’t sure if they and their families were safe from Lori Daybell and her “friends.” Remember, we didn’t know much going into the trial. We didn’t know who the people were in the courtroom gallery. For all we knew, the people who were looking us over constantly could have been Lori Daybell’s supporters.</div>
<div class="indent">At least one of us was followed home by the media during the trial. The idea that someone could do that must have been terribly unnerving. They would have had to follow our jury van from the courthouse to our parking lot, and from there, they would have had to follow the juror home. This was something our drivers were very careful to avoid, so they must have been quite stealthy about it.</div>
<div class="indent">The other jurors I talked to after the trial was over all said they felt the police investigating this case did an amazing job. They felt sad the police had to experience the things they had to go through, and their hearts went out to the officers. I know I felt that way.</div>
<div class="indent">When I asked one of the other jurors what they thought about the defense not calling any witnesses her response was: “Who could they call?” I thought that was a great answer and I had to agree because it was so true. By the time the kids’ bodies were found, Lori and Chad Daybell had lost the support of everyone, even Lori Daybell’s mother who had supported her right up until the bodies were found in Chad Daybell’s backyard.</div>
<div class="indent">I think we jurors universally felt proud of the system we became a part of. I can say for sure I was proud to have served with 17 other people who I feel now were more than up for the task. Of course we all had different personalities, different political views, and different backgrounds, and that is as it should be, but I think we were respectful of each other and worked together well.</div>
<div class="indent">After the trial was over, we were offered counseling and I did consider it, and still might take advantage of the offer. We’ll see how it goes. I’m hoping writing this book will help set my mind at ease.</div>
<div class="indent">I’ve had some weird dreams and full-on night terrors since the trial, which hadn’t happened to me in years. One of the night terrors featured the bat Charles supposedly used to hit Alex in the head. Who knows why; nothing else in the dream made sense. It took me a minute after waking up to realize everything in my world was okay. It did make me terribly sad thinking of the terror Tylee and JJ must have felt.</div>
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Tom Evans
Money, Power, and Sex: The Lori Daybell Trial
$17.95
$19.95
When Tom Evans reported for jury duty, he had no idea he would be assigned to one of the biggest and most notorious cases in Idaho history, if not the nation. The Lori Vallow Daybell trial turned his life upside down. By the time the trial was over he was changed in ways he’s still struggling to understand. He knew two things for sure: He was overcome with the need to find some way to make something positive out of his involvement as a juror, and he needed to tell his story. Money, Power and Sex does both of these things.
Tom’s jury experience started out being dark, heavy, and downright depressing. By the end of the trial, other, more positive emotions overcame the darkness. Despite all the horror he was exposed to and all the victims, living and dead, who he empathized with, by the end of the trial, he was filled with pride in the judicial system and honored to have done his part.
As this book covers the horrible events as they were presented to Tom in the trial and the history that led to those events, he offsets the disturbing nature of the case with his firsthand exposure to the dedication and hard work on the part of the police, the FBI, the prosecution, the defense, the court, and the bravery of the survivors and their family.
After the trial was over, Tom was given exclusive access to some of the key people in the trial. This book follows Tom’s journey through the trial and the unexpected good he found along the way.
Proceeds from this book will go to Hope House, an organization that helps children in need.
Tom Evans is a first-time author, and plans to follow this book up with part two, which will include new information the prosecution has promised to expose in the upcoming Chad Daybell trial.
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<h1 id="c2">Chapter 1: Back to December</h1>
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<div>A sense of dread tugged at my heart as I pulled into the narrow parking space of the Bowling World parking lot. I turned off the ignition as retired detectives Jay C. Rider and Chris Boyd looked up, acknowledging my arrival with a wave. “Well, here I am,” I said out loud as my shoes hit the pavement with a loud thud. I slammed my Suburban door shut and slowly made my way toward them. Even from across the parking lot their somber expressions told a story: The two men were standing in the very spot where Melissa Witt had parked her white Mitsubishi on that fateful December night in 1994.</div>
<div class="indent">“Let’s get started,” Rider directed. He pointed at the stained and worn asphalt as we made eye contact. “This is it. This is where Melissa parked that night.”</div>
<div class="indent">I scanned the pavement, almost expecting to see the bloodstains left behind from the blitz attack that had left Melissa Witt critically injured. I let out a gasp at the thought, and then immediately turned away from the detectives. I yanked at the oversized sunglasses that were perched on top of my head and quickly put them on in an attempt to hide the tears that were forming. “I’m…” my voice trailed off as I rapidly surveyed the expansive parking lot. “I’m stunned.”</div>
<div class="indent">Boyd nodded. “It’s hard to believe that the son of a bitch attacked her in such close proximity to the building, isn’t it?” he barked.</div>
<div class="indent">“He was bold,” I offered back.</div>
<div class="indent">“That he was,” Rider added.</div>
<div class="indent">As Rider and Boyd dove into a serious discussion about the details surrounding Melissa’s abduction and murder, I slipped away quietly. There was something I needed to do. With my head down, I slowly made my way to the entrance of Bowling World. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…” I counted. How many steps had separated Melissa Witt from safety on the night she was attacked? “Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.” I needed to know. At “forty-five” I stopped abruptly in front of the glass doors of Bowling World. “Forty-five steps away from safety.” My thoughts shifted into overdrive. Forty-five was also the number of days between the date of Melissa’s abduction—December 1, 1994—and the date her body was recovered in the Ozark National Forest—January 13, 1995.</div>
<div class="indent">Unsettled by the strange coincidence, I bypassed the retired detectives and hurried back to my Suburban. Inside the safety of my SUV, I slumped down in the driver’s seat and reached for a notebook resting on the dashboard. Months earlier, I had carefully written the title “Witt Case” across its cover. I flipped through the pages before landing on what I was looking for—a crude outline of events from December 1, 1994:</div>
<div class="indent">6:30-6:40pm—Witness hears a woman shouting “Help me” in the Bowling World parking lot. A young boy, Jeremy, was with his mother at the bowling alley that night. Jeremy reported leaving Bowling World to retrieve a book from his mother’s car. He heard a woman scream “Help! Help me!” Underneath the words “Help me” I had written: MELISSA WITT CALLS FOR HELP WHILE SHE IS ATTACKED in bold, red ink.</div>
<div class="indent">Directly under those words I had also jotted down this note: Melissa Witt’s car keys were located in the parking lot of Bowling World at approximately 7:45pm. The keys were immediately turned in to the front desk inside the building. In the column to the left of these notes I had written: NOBODY noticed the blood spatter on Melissa’s keys.</div>
<div class="indent">I stared at the words, willing an answer to suddenly appear among my copious notes. “Back to the beginning,” I whispered to myself. “If we want answers to this case, we need to go back to the beginning.”</div>
<div class="indent">A knock on my window interrupted my train of thought. I rolled down the window when I saw Rider standing there. As usual, the exceptionally dressed retired detective was all business. “You coming?” Rider asked. “I want to walk through the timeline of events once again,” he said.</div>
<div class="indent">I leaned across the console to place the notebook back in its original place on the dashboard.</div>
<div class="indent">“I’m coming,” I assured him.</div>
<div class="indent">“Good. I want to go back to the beginning.” My head snapped quickly back in Rider’s direction at the sound of his words.</div>
<div class="indent">Astounded by the second strange coincidence of the morning, I responded by slowly repeating Rider’s own words back to him as I nodded: “Back to the beginning.”</div>
<div class="center">?</div>
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<div>As I drove home, Rider’s words continued to echo in my head. When I arrived at my office, I decided to once again take a closer look at the events that unfolded on the day Melissa disappeared. From all reports, the day started off routinely. She spent the first part of the morning with her mother, Mary Ann. The honor student would head to Westark Community College next. After that, she went to lunch at the Chick-fil-a in Central Mall with her friend, John, then off to her job as a dental assistant.</div>
<div class="indent">Before she left that morning in 1994, Melissa had a minor disagreement with her mother. She had asked to borrow money, and Mary Ann, in an effort to teach her daughter money management, had told her no. Melissa and her mother were especially close. They shared the same beautiful smile, kind heart, and innocent outlook on life. So this argument, while minor, was unusual for them.</div>
<div class="indent">Panged with guilt, before Mary Ann left for work that morning, she left a note for Melissa reminding her she would be bowling with her league that evening and offered to buy her a hamburger. She signed the note, “<i>Love, Mom.</i>”</div>
<div class="indent">At five o’clock that evening, after clocking out of her job as a dental assistant, Melissa discovered that her 1995 Mitsubishi Mirage wouldn’t start. After trying to start the car a few times, Melissa gave up and waited with a co-worker until a local businessman, later dubbed the Good Samaritan, gave her car a jump.</div>
<div class="indent">Police reports explain how Melissa’s dome light was left on by mistake, draining the car battery. Investigators tracked down the Good Samaritan and interviewed him multiple times before ultimately clearing him in the teenager’s disappearance and murder.</div>
<div class="indent">“<i>People ask about the Good Samaritan all the time because those events leading up to Melissa’s abduction seem suspicious</i>,” Rider once explained.<i> “I mean, the Good Samaritan seems suspicious until you realize how many times he was questioned</i>. <i>He was cleared of any suspicion in Melissa’s murder</i>.”</div>
<div class="indent">We know that, once Melissa’s car started, she went home to change out of her uniform. Those clothes were found crumpled on her bedroom floor. Mary Ann Witt was able to determine that her daughter had then donned a white V-neck sweater and jeans.</div>
<div class="indent">Melissa must have seen her mom’s note, because authorities believe she headed to Bowling World, arriving between 6:30 and 7:00pm. She parked in the northwest corner of the lot, but she never made it inside. There were no cameras to record the events that unfolded in that parking lot that night. Witnesses would later tell police they heard a woman screaming “<i>Help me!</i>”</div>
<div class="indent">Since Melissa never entered the bowling alley that night, her mother simply thought she had decided to go out with friends instead. Mary Ann went home expecting to see her daughter later that evening. Hours passed and Thursday slowly turned into Friday.</div>
<div class="indent">At nine o’clock on Friday morning, Mary Ann reported Melissa as a missing person. When the patrolman took the report that December morning, one of the very first things he asked Melissa’s mother was if she and Melissa had argued. Mary Ann told him there had been a small dispute over money. Once he knew about the argument, according to Jay C. Rider, the officer chalked it up to a routine missing person situation. After all, Melissa was considered an adult and it wasn’t illegal for her to decide not to come home.</div>
<div class="indent">However, Melissa’s friends and family knew that it was not like Melissa to take off without telling her mom where she would be. So by Saturday, Melissa’s friends and family were frantically passing out flyers, blanketing the River Valley with over 6,000 pleas for help in finding the missing teenager.</div>
<div class="indent">Once news stations picked up the story on the search for Melissa Witt, the Fort Smith Police Major Crimes Unit, led by Jay C. Rider, asked to see the missing person report that had been filed. The report had little information. The patrolman knew little more than a 19-year-old girl didn’t come home after an argument with her mother. There was no evidence to suggest that Melissa had been abducted. The officer had seen this type of scenario play out hundreds of times before. He was certain Melissa would return home soon. Three days after the initial report of the teenage girl affectionately called “Missy” by her friends and family was marked as a “runaway case,” the tide shifted and the Fort Smith Major Crimes Unit had boots on the ground actively searching for the missing teen.</div>
<div class="indent">Almost immediately, investigators received a shocking phone call from a bowling alley employee. This call would turn the Witt case upside down. The employee described how at approximately 7:45pm, a set of car keys were found in the parking lot and were turned in to the front desk of Bowling World. The keys held an important clue. The name spelled out on the keychain was “Missy.” Even more shocking, no one had noticed the spatters of blood that were slowly drying on the metal keys.</div>
<div class="indent">Immediately, investigators began a search to find the person who turned in Melissa’s keys on December 1, 1994. After making repeated pleas in partnership with area news stations, after nearly two months, the construction worker who found the car keys came forward. Curtis McCormick had been working at a Tennessee construction site since he had turned in the keys and he had no idea about Melissa’s abduction until he returned home to Arkansas.</div>
<div class="indent">After his arrival, McCormick’s brother was discussing the Witt case with him and that’s when the two realized that Curtis was the person police were looking for. When interviewed by investigators, McCormick described how he had spotted the keys when he was distracted by a car with its headlights left on when he arrived at the bowling alley sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. with his wife and teenage son. According to McCormick, he found the keys laying on the pavement where police later found Witt’s car abandoned.</div>
<div class="indent">As I reviewed the details of Melissa’s disappearance over two decades later, I sat on the floor of my living room, poring over the news footage that captured Melissa’s friends and family distributing flyers with her smiling photo and identifying information. I could feel their sorrow. <i>Where is Melissa? </i>That question loomed with each news piece. I watched what started out as hopeful interviews with friends and family slowly turned into desperation, despair, and sadness. The answer to their most pressing question “Where is Melissa Witt” had an answer. Her friends and family just didn’t know it yet. December would slip quietly into January before the Ozark National Forest would give up the secret that was hidden amongst its dense trees and thorny undergrowth. Melissa Witt was dead. But the smiling faces of her friends and family in this early December news footage had no idea of the horrors that awaited.</div>
<div class="indent">I closed my laptop and wondered aloud if Melissa’s killer had watched this same footage in the days after her disappearance. I envision him huddled on his mother’s expensive couch that cold December weekend, glued to the television, wondering if his terrible secret was safe. When I close my eyes, I can see his smug face, reliving every gruesome detail of Melissa’s murder. I imagine him running his murderous fingertips along the steel of her Mickey Mouse watch. I opened my eyes and reached for my iPhone. I opened the Facebook app and scrolled briefly until I found the profile of the man I believe is responsible for killing Melissa Witt. “There you are,” I say out loud as I enlarge his profile photo on my phone. I stare at his smiling face and steely eyes. <i>Did you do it?</i> I think to myself. <i>Did you kill Melissa Witt?</i></div>
<div class="indent">I close the Facebook app as Jay C. Rider’s words from our meeting in the bowling alley parking lot flood my mind. “<i>Back to the Beginning</i>,” he had said. Instinctively, I grabbed one of my notebooks. This one, titled “December 2016,” stored a wrinkled copy of an email I had received on December 28, 2016. The one sentence email packed a punch: “<i>Probably not relevant, but my old college roommate told me he was meeting Melissa the night she disappeared.” </i>He had no way of knowing it at the time, but this email was beyond relevant. It turns out, his college roommate knew Melissa Witt. Stranger still, his college roommate had actively been contacting me about the Melissa Witt case.</div>
<div class="indent">I sank back into the worn and cracked leather of my black office chair and thought back to a description of the Bowling World parking lot given by law enforcement regarding that cold December night. Despite the fact that the dark bowling alley was teeming with cars, there was very little activity happening outside. Inside, however, Bowling World was bustling with bowlers, friends sharing a beer after work, and kids playing video games or pool. The empty parking lot provided the perfect opportunity for a 19-year-old girl to be spirited away under the cloak of darkness.</div>
<div class="indent">Like a predator carefully stalking his prey, he watched and waited. His eyes intensely focused on her every move as an unsuspecting Melissa parked her 1995 Mitsubishi Mirage, turned off the engine, and stepped out into the shadows of the Bowling World parking lot. Suddenly, Melissa is caught off guard. She looks up in a mix of fear and surprise. But it’s too late. His sharp eyes are locked on the target. He is ready to strike. And then, it happens. The hunter makes his move.</div>
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LaDonna Humphrey
Connected by Fate
$15.50
$17.95
Connected by Fate unfolds against the haunting backdrop of the Ozark National Forest, where the unresolved murder of Melissa Witt has cast a long shadow over the dense woodlands for almost three decades. The mystery, woven into the fabric of the remote mountaintop, has become a part of the lore of the land, with the true identity of the murderer eluding capture, concealed by the forest's imposing presence.
Enter LaDonna Humphrey, driven by a profound sense of justice and a personal commitment to uncovering the truth, despite never having met Melissa Witt. LaDonna's connection to the case transcends the ordinary, fueling her with a relentless determination that has defined her life for almost a decade.LaDonna's investigation is a riveting narrative of courage, resilience, and an unwavering pursuit of truth in the face of overwhelming odds. Each breakthrough and setback, each clue unearthed and lead followed, draws her deeper into a web of intrigue that extends far beyond the initial crime.Connected by Fate is more than a true crime story; it's a testament to the power of human spirit and determination fueled by the knowledge that solving Melissa's murder is not just about bringing a killer to justice—it's about restoring dignity to a life cut tragically short, and offering closure to a community haunted by the specter of an unsolved crime.
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<h1 id="c6">CHAPTER 1</h1>
<div><b>“And then I started wondering, was Robin really the first? Could there have been others before her?”</b></div>
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<div class="indent">The phone rings every April 8 in Susan Fuldauer’s Indianapolis home. She will pause what she is doing, look at the incoming number, glance quickly at the calendar, and smile. Mike Crooke never, ever forgets.</div>
<div class="indent">“I just pick up the phone every April 8 and I call her,” Crooke says. “And I say to her ‘Hey Susan, I am not calling you because I have some good news to report about.’ It is more like ‘Hey Susan, I have not forgotten about you, your family or your sister Robin, and I never will. I am still out here plugging away. I am still out here trying to do my best.’ I always call her on the anniversary of that day and just remind her that she and her family are still in my thoughts, and they always will be.”</div>
<div class="indent">Crooke, the longtime sergeant of the Indianapolis Police Department, has remembered since April 8, 1992, the day the Robin Fuldauer nightmare began. He is long since retired, but he has never, ever forgotten.</div>
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<div class="center">***</div>
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<div class="indent">November 2021. Our crew left St. Louis in the early morning and headed east, photographer Chuck Delaney driving, producer JJ Bailey riding shotgun, and me in the backseat taking notes of the scenery along Interstate 70. As we drive along the highway I picture in my mind what the killer saw 30 years ago. Pick an exit to get off, quickly find a small store in a strip mall, make sure a woman is working alone, get in and get out without being seen, and leave a body behind. Surely it is not that easy. It simply can’t be.</div>
<div class="indent">Our first stop, like the killer’s, was Indianapolis. Interstate 70 east through Indy to the 465 loop, then a quick jaunt north. The killer wasn’t patient, he took the first possible exit, Pendleton Pike. He could have headed east or west. He could have picked any woman, anywhere, to kill. He chose to turn left at the light and go west. And then he immediately had options to kill on both his right and left. He picked the Payless shoe store.</div>
<div class="indent">The Indianapolis police detectives still working the Robin Fuldauer case were waiting for us when we arrived. Like other major cities, Indianapolis had seen a huge spike in homicide cases recently. Their staff was spread thin trying to solve not only murders that seemed to be happening daily, but cold cases that had piled up over the years. Clearance rates, or rates of solving homicides, ranged around 50 percent. That meant hundreds of unsolved cases piled up each year. After 30 years, an unsolved homicide is often a file, in a box, in a closet, never to be opened again.</div>
<div class="indent">“We have thousands of unsolved cases over the years,” said Captain Roger Spurgeon of the Indianapolis Police Department. “And more are coming every week. It is overwhelming. You do the best you can do, and then another case lands on your desk.”</div>
<div class="indent">Spurgeon and I looked around the busy Pendleton Pike area and I knew we were reading each other’s minds: The killer could have stopped anywhere.</div>
<div class="indent">“Why here, do you think?” I voiced to the detectives. “He could have stopped anywhere. Why do you think he stopped here?”</div>
<div class="indent">The men looked at each other and shook their heads. A question that has never been answered here, or at any of the other crime scenes.</div>
<div class="indent">“This would be one of the last places you would think he would strike,” said Columbus Ricks, one of the Indianapolis detectives. “Look at how busy this area is.”</div>
<div class="indent">But Spurgeon guessed there was a method in the killer’s madness. “I think there would have been a variety of stores for him to choose from in the area,” Spurgeon said. “It was just a matter of whatever our suspect was looking for at the time. You have all of this busy traffic around this area, all of this movement, all of these people coming and going so quickly. Unless somebody really stood out to someone as behaving oddly or looking oddly, you could really go about your business with relative anonymity and nobody would ever really pay you any attention.”</div>
<div class="indent">I pointed to the busy Speedway gas station that was literally steps from the Payless shoe store. Customers were filling their tanks, and numerous people were coming and going inside the store by the minute.</div>
<div class="indent">“Was the gas station there in 1992?” I asked Spurgeon.</div>
<div class="indent">He nodded yes.</div>
<div class="indent">“That does not make any sense,” I said. “You would have to be a fool to kill somebody with this many potential witnesses around.”</div>
<div class="indent">Ricks and fellow detective David Ellison both laughed.</div>
<div class="indent">Spurgeon nodded again. “Welcome to the world of the I-70 serial killer where nothing makes any sense.”</div>
<div class="indent">I walked up to the front door of the gas station, and then took a few steps to the Payless store. It took me less than 20 seconds. Ellison and Ricks stood alongside Spurgeon and watched me make the walk.</div>
<div class="indent">“Twenty seconds,” I hollered at them. “No way somebody is killing somebody with all of these people just 20 seconds away.”</div>
<div class="indent">I looked at Spurgeon again. He nodded and I shook my head. “No way,” I muttered to myself.</div>
<div class="indent">I kept walking between the gas station and shoe store, and then returned to the detectives.</div>
<div class="indent">“Let me make sure I have this right,” I said. “He somehow chooses this busy location in the middle of the day. Then he kills Robin with all these people around. And then what, he just disappears?”</div>
<div class="indent">“Pretty much,” said Ellison. “Pretty much.”</div>
<div class="indent">Robin Fuldauer was not sure where life was taking her yet, but she was moving very quickly. She was the salutatorian of her Lawrence Central High School class, located just down the street from the Payless shoe store. She graduated a few years later from Indiana University. And now she had already risen to become a manager for Payless.</div>
<div class="indent">Sometime around 1pm on that April day, a serial killer was about to embark on a month-long journey, one that would take him to five cities, leaving six body bags behind. He was patrolling Pendleton Pike Road, looking for his first victim.</div>
<div class="indent">Receipts from the store show the last purchase was made at 1:12pm. Police believe the killer was likely in the store at the time, saw the only other customer leave, and then made his move. He forced Fuldauer into a storage room in the back of the store, made her kneel, then shot her twice in the back of the head, execution style, with a .22 caliber handgun. There was no sign of any struggle inside the store. The killer then rummaged through the cash register, taking less than $100. Police believe he left through a back door by 1:30pm, leaving Fuldauer lying dead behind a closed door. For the next hour, Payless customers would have their run of the store, with nobody in sight.</div>
<div class="indent">“I don’t believe there was an opportunity for anybody to go inside the store and observe that there was a body there,” Spurgeon said.</div>
<div class="indent">The Payless store had little in the way of store security. Just a bell that would ring when a new customer arrived.</div>
<div class="indent">Police records showed a woman named Lucretia Gullett was working at the Speedway gas station the day Fuldauer was killed. It was Gullett who discovered Robin’s body and called police.</div>
<div class="indent">Before arriving in Indianapolis, I began the task of searching for Lucretia Gullet.</div>
<div class="indent">“Is this Lucretia Gullet?” I asked the woman on the other end of the phone.</div>
<div class="indent">“It is,” she said.</div>
<div class="indent">“Ma’am,” I said, “I am a reporter working on a serial killer from 1992. And I believe you found the body of his first victim. A woman named Robin Fuldauer in the Payless shoe store.”</div>
<div class="indent">Gullett paused on the other end. “I did not really find her body. But yes, I was there, and I called the police. But what did you say about a serial killer?”</div>
<div class="indent">I told Gullett her Payless killer went on to kill numerous other women across the country.</div>
<div class="indent">“What?!” she screamed into the phone.</div>
<div class="indent">And I realized she was unaware. “Do you still live around Indy?” I asked her.</div>
<div class="indent">“I do,” she said.</div>
<div class="indent">“I am coming to town,” I told her. “Would you meet with me?”</div>
<div class="indent">“I will,” she said. “And did you say serial killer?” Apparently, she was still coming to grips with this.</div>
<div class="indent">I stood by the Speedway gas station with my crew and the police detectives, and watched as a woman parked her car and walked toward us.</div>
<div class="indent">“I am looking for Bob,” she said.</div>
<div class="indent">“Hi Lucretia,” I said, and we shook hands.</div>
<div class="indent">We began walking around the area. “This brings back a lot of memories,” she said.</div>
<div class="indent">“Have you been back here since…?” I asked.</div>
<div class="indent">“No,” she said as she looked around. “Thirty years is a long time. I just avoided coming around here.”</div>
<div class="indent">I asked Gullett to take me back to that day, as best she could.</div>
<div class="indent">“My shift at the Speedway gas station was ending at 3pm. I was almost getting off work to go home when I received a phone call from a man who said he was the district manager of the Payless store. It was probably around 2pm,” Gullett remembered. “He told me that he had been calling the shoe store for quite a while, but that no one was answering the phone there. He was really concerned, so I told him I would go next door to Payless and see what was going on over there.”</div>
<div class="indent">Gullett and I made the 20 second walk from one store to the other. “What happened when you walked in?” I asked.</div>
<div class="indent">Gullett paused at the door. “This is hard,” she said. “I walked up to the front door, opened it up and looked around. I did not see anybody. No manager, no customers. I looked over to the left and noticed that the cash register was open and then I went through the aisles, but nobody was around. I really was not sure what was going on, but I knew it was not right. Then I heard someone talking in the back of the store, so I went back there and I saw a woman who had a child with her. They were looking at some shoes. I asked her to please leave, and told her something was wrong. I did not know what was happening, but I knew something was wrong. So I just immediately stopped looking around and called the police. I was probably only in the store for about 10 minutes. And then I just waited for the police to arrive.”</div>
<div class="indent">Police records show they arrived at the scene around 3pm. When they did, Gullett said she then stood watch over the front door while detectives made their way inside. She watched them search the store before heading towards the back. And then she saw them open a closed door and look inside.</div>
<div class="indent">“One officer looked down to the right,” Gullett said, “and I could tell he was shocked at what he saw.”</div>
<div class="indent">Incredibly, some 30 years after Robin Fuldauer was murdered, Gullett says she was not aware the homicide scene she walked into three decades ago became linked to a serial killer, or that it was not solved all these years earlier. “I just became aware of that when you called me,” she said.</div>
<div class="indent">“You did not follow the case over the years as it exploded?” I asked.</div>
<div class="indent">“No,” she said. “I was shocked when you told me it was a serial killer. I was like, whoa! That is when I put two and two together, and like, wow!”</div>
<div class="indent">Brought back to the scene, and meeting new detectives for the first time. Gullett is now spending time detailing the case to police again.</div>
<div class="indent">“They wanted to know if there was anything else I ever came up with or thought about.” And then she winked and smiled. “Maybe. Maybe. It might just be a coincidence. But yes, I hope I can help.”</div>
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<div class="indent">Roger Spurgeon was an Indianapolis police officer at the time of Robin Fuldauer’s murder, not yet working in homicide. Now, he has been with the police department more than 25 years, most of them in the homicide unit. He would inherit the Fuldauer case, and says that in spite of the busy area, and in spite of the busy time of the day, early leads in the case quickly fizzled. “At first, because there was a small amount of cash taken, detectives thought it was likely a robbery that somehow turned into a homicide. They had a variety of potential suspects they were looking at in the very beginning. But If you describe a suspect as somebody you really have a keen interest in because of some sort of an evidentiary link or eyewitnesses, no, there was nothing there which stood out to the investigators at that time.”</div>
<div class="indent">Detectives immediately began canvassing the area on Pendleton Pike. The first witness they found was the store manager at MAB paint, across the street from the Payless, He told police he saw a strange looking man carrying a long bag. The witness said he watched the man repeatedly circling the Payless store, and then watched as the man sat down at a curb nearby for nearly 30 minutes. And then around 2pm, he suddenly disappeared from sight. The witness told police the man appeared to either be on drugs or had a mental problem.</div>
<div class="indent">Police would only locate less than a half dozen potential witnesses. One of them said they saw a man who matched what the earlier witness said calmly trying to hitch a ride along the highway. Police found a couple of other witnesses in the area who thought they saw something, but none of those leads panned out.</div>
<div class="indent">Detective Columbus Ricks is part of the Indianapolis Unsolved Homicide Unit. Like Spurgeon, he was also an Indianapolis police officer at the time of the Fuldauer murder. “The homicide investigators tracked down almost everybody that was said to have seen something in the area or had been seen by someone. They all had enough of an alibi to eliminate them. The descriptions of the suspect were all black males…” Ricks said, shaking his head. “And within days, after Wichita, the detectives knew the killer was a white male.”</div>
<div class="indent">I looked at Ricks and laughed. “How stupid,” I said.</div>
<div class="indent">“Not as easy as it seems on TV,” Ricks laughed again.</div>
<div class="indent">And then came the question: How did the killer get away? How did he simply walk out of the store in the middle of the day, with people all around, and disappear into thin air?</div>
<div class="indent">“I think he could have easily parked a vehicle on one of these residential side streets and casually walked to it,” Spurgeon said. “And nobody would have paid any attention to him unless he was acting strangely. Obviously, he had to have some sort of wheels to get from point A to point B. But we still do not have a good handle on that. Detectives had a lot of different theories at the time.”</div>
<div class="indent">Our crew walked around the area near the store. Busy streets in front, a side street on the side, and an older residential section behind it. Spurgeon appeared to be on target. The most likely answer was the killer parked a car on one of the residential streets, walked calmly to the Payless store, murdered Robin Fuldauer, and then walked back to his car.</div>
<div class="indent">Time moves forward. Today, a Batteries Plus store sits where the Payless Shoe store stood in 1992. But what has not changed is that police departments in five cities are still digging, talking to each other, and hoping for a DNA match.</div>
<div class="indent">“Science was not as developed then as it is now,” said Ricks. “We are going to see if DNA and new technology can assist us in solving this case.” Ricks added that another new witness may have recently emerged. Until then, we wait. The police. The families. Everyone. And they all understand that they are waiting for an answer that may never come.</div>
<div class="indent">Robin’s sister Susan will never forget that day. You can still hear the sadness in her voice. “My husband found out about Robin first. He came home and told me. It was just so incredibly hard to process. It was something completely out of the realm of expectations. I immediately went to pick up my daughter and then we went to the Payless store. There was so much activity at the scene it was hard to believe. It is just a nightmare that you live through and cannot possibly process. It is just very hard to describe.”</div>
<div class="indent">And then just a few days later, the bombshell of Wichita came, where 700 miles away and just three days after Robin Fuldauer was murdered, Patricia Magers and Patricia Smith were killed in the same fashion. And almost immediately, police were hit with a stunning reality: The same gun used in Indianapolis was used in Wichita. It seemed impossible with the time frame. But, suddenly, Indianapolis and Wichita had a serial killer on their hands.</div>
<div class="indent">“Then it all became just surreal,” Susan said. “Wichita was connected to my Robin? And again, look at the pattern. So cold blooded. Another busy, noisy store. And then the others soon came rolling in. And then I started wondering, was Robin really the first? Could there have been others before her? This was now totally beyond belief. And then our family began grieving not just for Robin, but for all of these other families going through the same exact nightmare that we were going through.”</div>
<div class="indent">There is another heartbreaking twist of fate to Robin’s story. She was not supposed to work that day, but another employee called in sick. The Payless store was short-staffed, so Robin came in to cover the shift, as she had so many times before.</div>
<div class="indent">After all these years, one thought keeps sticking in Susan’s mind. “I know you cannot turn the clock back. But I usually went by Robin’s store on most days after I got off of work, just to make sure she was okay. For some reason, I did not go by that day. And I always ask myself, ‘Could I have possibly done something? Could I have possibly stopped something?’”</div>
<div class="indent">Susan Fuldauer is realistic about the chances of finding the killer after all these years. But she says she will always remain hopeful. “We have always maintained hope that Robin’s murder will someday be solved. Maybe the killer is in jail somewhere. Maybe he is no longer alive. But, like the detectives tell us, we have new technology now. We have new DNA techniques. We have hope. It does not bring Robin or the other victims back. But to know that he might be stopped, and he can never do anything like this again, that would be a major victory for our family.”</div>
<div class="indent">Mike Crooke, who has seen everything in his 52 years in law enforcement, insists the case can someday be solved. “I am still hopeful we will resolve this. We did not have the advances in science 30 years ago that we have now.”</div>
<div class="indent">Robin Fuldauer was 26 years old. She was the first known victim of the I-70 serial killer. And while it all began in Indy, sadly, it did not end there. And on April 8, pick a year, any year, Mike Crooke will pick up the phone and call Susan Fuldauer. She will smile. They will talk. And they will cry. “It is so kind and considerate of Mike to reach out to my family,” Susan said. “He reminds us that Robin will never ever be forgotten. I appreciate that so very much. We do not talk about the what ifs, because this was such a heinous crime. It is just very comforting to know that Mike remembers us each year. That amount of kindness is really wonderful and will never be forgotten.”</div>
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Bob Cyphers
Dead End: Inside the Hunt for the I-70 Serial Killer
$15.50
In 1992, a store clerk was found shot to death in broad daylight at the Boot Village in St. Charles, Missouri. Nothing was stolen and there was no sexual assault. This bizarre and seemingly isolated murder was quickly connected with others in Indianapolis, Wichita, Terre Haute, and Raytown. The media dubbed the suspect “The I-70 Serial Killer.” He has never been captured, and the story quickly fell out of the media’s attention. But the cases never went cold for the officers in those cities.
In 2021, with the advancements in DNA, St. Charles Police Captain Raymond Floyd launched a task force, bringing all jurisdictions together along with federal agencies to take one final crack at solving the crimes. The task force selected Bob Cyphers of KMOV-TV to follow them along, city by city, in the hunt for the killer. Cyphers and his KMOV crew produced a seven-part award winning series called “Chasing the I-70 Serial Killer.” Their work led to national exposure of the case in People magazine and on the Discovery Channel, winning an Edward R. Murrow Award and being nominated for an Emmy.
Dead End: Inside the Hunt for the I-70 Serial Killer follows on the work done by the task force with the important goal of keeping the story alive in the public eye. New evidence, never before available to the public, is revealed here, with the hopes of triggering a memory or revealing a new lead. The task force may be closed, but the drive to find this killer is alive and well.
Anyone who may have information about the case should contact the I-70 hotline at 1-800-800-3510.
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<h1 id="c5">CHAPTER ONE: THEIR WORLD</h1>
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<div>Working on this book required a great deal of research about the five men and the case itself. I also needed to gain a better understanding of intellectual disabilities and mental illness. Countless hours were spent watching videos and documentaries about people living with schizophrenia or an intellectual disability. A majority of what I watched was created by people diagnosed with a mental illness or an intellectual disability. What I learned is that there are challenges, but people live productive lives. Some have careers and families. People might count them out, but they have proved their critics wrong.</div>
<div class="indent">While Gary Mathias was diagnosed with schizophrenia, there was not a clear diagnosis for Weiher, Madruga, Sterling, or Huett. All four were rubber-stamped as “disabled.” Some information was provided about Madruga and Sterling. It is difficult to understand a disability if you have limited resources. Family members clarified the disabilities of the four to the best of their abilities, but they wish they had an actual diagnosis at the time.</div>
<div class="indent">Weiher, Madruga, Sterling, Huett, and Mathias grew up in a time when intellectual disabilities and mental illness were swept under the rug or treated with complete disdain. Special education classes were available to some but not everyone with a disability. Some were sent away to institutions that ranged from acceptable to downright inhuman.</div>
<div class="indent">The 1970s were a time of deinstitutionalization for psychiatric hospitals due to legal and economic factors. Another change was the 1973 Rehabilitation Act passed by Congress. Section 504 of the act stated that employers and organizations that received federal funds had to provide equal opportunity benefits and services to people with disabilities. It was in the books, but it did not mean life changed instantly for those with disabilities. For the five, they had dealt with years of obstacles and other personal difficulties long before that law was signed.</div>
<div class="indent">In 1975, Congress passed the Education for all Handicapped Children Act. At the time, it was estimated that there were eight million children with disabilities in the United States, and one million of those children were excluded from the public school system. The act would provide a free “appropriate” public education to these children. The five were out of high school when that was passed. Their families do not recall if the men faced major obstacles with their education.</div>
<div class="indent">During the interview process, I didn’t press the families too hard about intellectual disabilities or mental illness. Some discussed the topic without me bringing up the issue, and for others I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to press my luck. From what I gathered, the men’s families dealt with their intellectual disabilities to the best of their abilities. The men were not treated differently from their siblings. I spoke with someone about this, and they wondered if it was the parents treating their children as equals or some sort of unconscious denial that there was something wrong.</div>
<div class="indent">Discussing mental illness was harder since Gary Mathias’s schizophrenia was viewed by many as the reason behind the men’s disappearance. His family was on the defensive, and rightly so. It’s hard to know if the person interviewing you is using the information to shed light on mental illness or to use the information as data to prove Mathias was the villain.</div>
<div class="indent">Without a doubt, the families of Weiher, Madruga, Sterling, Huett, and Mathias did their best to raise their children. During the 1960s and 1970s, Yuba County and neighboring Sutter County provided certain services for the five, and they were part of programs including the Gateway Projects.</div>
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<div class="center">***</div>
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<div>I grew up in Ohio, which is basically a Midwestern state where people drive through or fly over to get to somewhere more interesting or exciting. My hometown of Springfield, Ohio, was once a city with the potential to be something bigger, but it never happened due to a variety of circumstances. In 1983, the 50th anniversary edition of <i>Newsweek</i> featured a story about some families in Springfield. “The American Dream” was the title of the article, and some 30 years after that <i>Newsweek </i>story ran, Springfield was in the press again, but this time, it was being examined as the American city with the biggest decline of middle-class residents from 2000-2014.</div>
<div class="indent">As I began studying the history of Yuba County for this book, I noticed some curious similarities. Marysville, the county seat for Yuba County, and my hometown were visioned at one time as becoming major cities, but it was not their destiny. Both are very blue-collar and pretty much filled with conservative, God-fearing folk. Perhaps Springfield and Marysville had already experienced the best of times, but both towns have citizens who believe that the best is yet to come.</div>
<div class="indent">My research also focused on the histories of neighboring communities like Olivehurst and Yuba City in Sutter County. As I studied the Yuba County area, I realized that my understanding of California was just Southern California and the Bay Area. Sure, I was familiar with Napa Valley, the mountains, and the giant sequoias in Northern California, but I knew nothing of the communities north of Sacramento. I began to expand my knowledge of a region of California that’s not always depicted in movies or television.</div>
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<div class="center">***</div>
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<div>At the time they went missing, Weiher, Madruga, Huett, and Mathias resided in Linda and Olivehurst, communities in Yuba County east of the confluence of the Yuba and Feather Rivers. Sterling lived west of the Feather River in Yuba City. Located some forty-five minutes north of Sacramento, life in the Yuba County region was vastly different from the faster-paced lifestyles of Southern California with its glitz, glamour, sun, surf, and beaches.</div>
<div class="indent">“I grew up in Marysville when it was a vibrant and diverse regional ‘hub’ of an agriculturally rich three-county region,” said Mike Geniella, a former employee of the <i>Appeal-Democrat</i>, the local newspaper for Marysville and Yuba City. “Marysville had a vibrant business center, great restaurants, a bar on practically every corner, and a rich history dating to the gold rush era. It was a mercantile center for the northern gold mines.”</div>
<div class="indent">Agriculture was a way of life for many, and some residents were descendants of the old gold rush while newer residents left places in the Central Plains or South, with a few considered true “Okies” from the Dust Bowl. The five may have had a small-town upbringing, but they lived over an hour’s drive away from the Plumas National Forest, while Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, and Reno were anywhere from two to three hours away by car.</div>
<div class="indent">Marysville and Yuba City have been part of an area of great agricultural importance known as the Central Valley. From Redding down past Bakersfield, the Central Valley covers some twenty-thousand square miles and is bounded by the Cascade Range to the north, the Tehachapi Mountains to the south, the Sierra Nevada mountains to the east, and the Coast Ranges to the west. Two major rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, run through the Central Valley.</div>
<div class="indent">To the west of Yuba City, the Sutter Buttes are visible to those in the region. Remnants of an ancient volcano, they are two thousand feet in height and run roughly eleven miles going north to south while measuring roughly ten miles from east to west. The Sutter Buttes are not classified as a mountain range, although they are referred to in the area as “the world’s smallest mountain range.”</div>
<div class="indent">Marysville was named in honor of Mary Murphy, a survivor of the infamous Donner Party. A group of settlers, led in part by the Donner family, left Independence, Missouri, during the spring of 1846 to claim fertile land in California. By the time they reached Fort Laramie (in modern-day Wyoming), they had learned of a shortcut to California, which turned out to be a lie that cost numerous lives and allegedly resulted in some of the survivors choosing cannibalism to survive. One of the factors that brought them to that last resort was the same unforgiving winter conditions of the Sierra Nevada that sadly also took the lives of the Yuba County Five.</div>
<div class="indent">Gold put Marysville on the map during the 1850s, and some believed the town had the potential to be the state capital of California. Marysville was along the Feather River that flowed to Sacramento, and it became a popular shipping route for miners. A lust for gold led to the practice of hydraulic mining, which caused an environmental disaster that raised river levels. Flooding became an issue. A levee system was built in Marysville for protection, but it boxed in the city, limiting its growth. Hydraulic mining also made the rivers less navigable, leading to Marysville, which ended the fairytale for the town that some envisioned as “the New York of the Pacific.”</div>
<div class="indent">When the gold boom came to an end, the area would turn to a new business. Agriculture flourished in the region and is still a major business today. Rice, almonds, walnuts, plums, and peaches are a few examples of the hundreds of crops that are grown in the Central Valley. Orchards are visible in the region to this day, along with the rice fields that make up most of the rice produced in the state. Yuba City is home to Sunsweet Growers, Inc., a major producer of dried tree fruits.</div>
<div class="indent">Marysville’s neighbor to the west is Yuba City, the county seat of Sutter County. Located along the banks of the Feather River, Yuba City had similar beginnings to Marysville. It was an area of interest during the California Gold Rush. By 1856, it would become the seat of Sutter County, which was one of the original twenty-seven counties in California.</div>
<div class="indent">To the Southeast of Marysville is a census-designated area known as Olivehurst. It was settled mostly by people looking for work in California to escape the Great Depression. Some of those people were true Okies, and there are streets in Olivehurst named after communities in Oklahoma. This is where some of the Yuba County Five resided.</div>
<div class="indent">“Social tensions existed for a long time between the townsfolk and the new arrivals, the ‘Okies,’” said Geniella, who added, “Even though we were blue-collar, my parents, their families, and neighbors scorned anyone from Olivehurst.”</div>
<div class="indent">Agriculture would drive the economy of both Sutter and Yuba Counties. Commercial agriculture would be successful in California during the late 1800s, and the state would lead the way in exporting grain. Technology and innovation allowed California to thrive, but it was also at this time that many farmers saw the potential in growing other crops like fruits and vegetables. Refrigerated cars and an impressive irrigation system were contributing factors to their success.</div>
<div class="indent">It was mid-December of 1955 when a historic rainfall hit Northern California. Beginning on December 18th, the Sierra Nevada had areas that measured over thirty inches of rain, while the valley and coastal regions would record twenty inches of rain in areas. Runoff from the Sierra Nevada flooded the region, and the result was roads being washed away, farmland destroyed, and towns flooded.</div>
<div class="indent">The floods did a great deal of damage from Christmas Eve into the new year, where some eighty people were killed, over four thousand injured, some fifteen hundred homes were destroyed, while an additional estimated four thousand were badly damaged beyond repair, resulting in an estimated $225 million in property damages. Marysville and Yuba City would be the worst hit cities during this flood.</div>
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<div>For ten years, I taught modern American history classes part time at a community college. It covered our nation’s history from 1865 to the present, and students learned about topics such as the migration West during the late 1800s, the Great Depression, and the post-World War II era. After doing some genealogical research on all five families, I learned that the Yuba County Five were born to families that hoped to find a better life in California. Some of the five’s grandparents and parents came from places like Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Virginia. A few were Okies leaving areas of the United States known as “the Dust Bowl” during the Great Depression, while others were just dirt-poor individuals sold on the dream of success in California. The families knew how to work the land, and their skills were a definite advantage in living in the Central Valley. It was a place where the families could escape poverty and live an idyllic American dream type of life. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, there were some disturbing incidents in the Yuba City-Marysville area that shattered the quiet, all-American appearance of those communities.</div>
<div class="indent">It was May 20, 1971 when a shallow grave was discovered in an orchard north of Yuba City. The victim was believed to be a transient worker in their mid-thirties, and they died a horrible death by a hatchet or machete. A freshly dug hole was found by the property owner on May 19th, and the next day, they noticed the hole had been filled with dirt. The police were contacted immediately.</div>
<div class="indent">As investigators searched the area days after the discovery, they found more graves. One body became a dozen, and it was just the beginning. A grand total of twenty-five victims were discovered, and clues found during the investigation were linked to a man named Juan Corona. Married and the father of four children, Corona was a farm labor contractor who had been committed in 1956 to the DeWitt General Hospital in Auburn, California, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Apparently, the horrors of the 1955 flood had disturbed him greatly. He later found work recruiting farmhands, which was the way he met his victims. On January 18, 1973, Corona was convicted of the deaths of twenty-five men, and he would later be sentenced to life in prison. At that time, Corona was considered one of the worst serial killers in the history of the United States.</div>
<div class="indent">Less than ten months after Corona was sentenced, the Yuba City-Marysville area was shocked by the murders of two young girls named Doris Derryberry and Valerie Lane. Both were thirteen and were close friends who attended the Yuba Gardens Intermediate School. Derryberry and Lane had left their homes sometime on Sunday, January 11th, and were reported missing the next day. Their bodies were discovered in a wooded area southeast of Marysville, and both had been shot at point-blank range and were assaulted. Very little was found in the way of clues, suspects were nowhere to be found, and the case would remain cold for decades.</div>
<div class="indent">Somehow, the area could not release itself from the grasp of tragedy. On May 21, 1976, a school bus carrying some fifty-seven Yuba City High School students and adults crashed through a guardrail on an on-ramp and plunged some thirty feet, landing upside down. The crash occurred in Martinez, California, and twenty-nine people on the bus died. It would end up being one of the worst bus accidents in United States history.</div>
<div class="indent">Murders and tragedies should not be the legacy of a community or region, but Yuba City and Marysville had their fair share of heartbreaking incidents. Although the area had a rich agricultural history and was seen as a quiet getaway from bigger cities, Yuba City and Marysville also faced issues with unemployment, illegal drug activities, and crime during the 1970s. Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, Jackie Huett, and Gary Mathias lived in the area, were educated in the area, worked in the area, and enjoyed many sports-related activities in the area. They were loved and respected by family, friends, and coworkers. Their families were hardworking people proud to be blue-collar and, in some cases, proud to be devoted to their faith and God. Somehow, through some cruel twist of fate, an incident on February 24, 1978, added their names to yet another tragedy linked to the area. They would forever be known as the Yuba County Five.</div>
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Tony Wright
Things Aren't Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five
$15.50
Things Aren’t Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five explores the bizarre and tragic 1978 disappearance of Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, Jackie Huett, and Gary Mathias in the Plumas National Forest in Northern California. Four of these men had intellectual disabilities while one was diagnosed with schizophrenia. On Friday, February 24, 1978, they left the Yuba County, California area in Madruga’s 1969 Mercury Montego to attend a basketball game in Chico, California. Four days later the car they were traveling in was found abandoned on a snow-covered road in the mountains of the Plumas National Forest, some 75 miles in the wrong direction from home.
Four jurisdictions of law enforcement would investigate and search for the missing men. Psychics were brought in, and there were strange reports of sightings of the five from numerous people. One witness came forward with an incredible story of seeing the men disappear into the forest that night. Yet every lead came to a dead end. About four months after they vanished, four of the five men’s remains were found some 12 miles from the car, with one discovered in a US Forest Service trailer with plenty of food and fuel to keep them alive for months.
Once described as “bizarre as hell,” the case of the Yuba County Five has baffled law enforcement and the families of the missing men for over 45 years. Tony Wright has meticulously researched this case, earning himself the reputation of being one of the foremost authorities on the subject, and his conclusions are likely as close as anyone will come to making sense of this tragedy.
Alexandra Kitty
Murder in a Sundown Town
$15.50
In Murder in a Sundown Town, author Alexandra Kitty looks at the shocking 1968 homicide of Carol Jenkins, a sweet and resilient 21-year-old woman stabbed in the heart on her first day on the job selling encyclopedias in Martinsville, Indiana. What seemed to be an easily solved homicide turned into a four-decade cold case and became a tragic story about racism, sexism, gossip, and walls of silence. It is a case of injustice and persistence that still leaves as many questions as answers. In an age of both “true crime” fascination and modern social politics holding equal attention, this book looks at an old case in a contemporary light. From the clues to its racial and gender politics, investigation, resolution, and cultural impact, the book takes an in-depth look at a young woman’s frightening last hours and why Carol’s case is as relevant today as it was in the ‘60s.
Monty Orrick
The Crater Lake Murders
$17.95
When two General Motors executives drove into Crater Lake National Park in July 1952, no one could predict they would be dead within an hour—not even their killers. It was a crime of opportunity, a botched robbery during the middle of summer in a crowded national park. When Albert Jones and Charles Culhane were found shot to death two days later, the story became a national obsession. The FBI used every resource and available agent but, as time wore on, the investigation ran out of steam. A lack of evidence worked to the killer’s advantage. He had committed a perfect crime.
The FBI tried hard to solve the case. Their 2,000+ page report details a staggeringly complex, multi-agency effort: 200 ballistic tests, 1000 interviews, 466 license plate identifications. The man hours were beyond calculation, and yielded valuable information— buried within the individual reports of the FBI, Oregon State Police and local agencies are many clues to the nature and identity of the perpetrator.
The FBI file has rarely been seen by anyone outside the Bureau until December 2015 when the author received it on two discs, satisfying a Freedom of Information Act request submitted three years before. This book summarizes all the information: the FBI file, Oregon State Police reports, fresh research and interviews, county records, rare first hand accounts, reaction from one victim’s family and an obscure college thesis that first named the killer. Add to this, the personal account of a man to whom the killer confessed. Before the confessor died, he swore his wife to secrecy, reminding her about “the things that nobody talks about.”
The Crater Lake Murders tells the true narrative: four men with nothing in common until the day they met and, after that, the Fate all Men share.
James Kirkpatrick Davis
Prescription For Evil
$16.50
"Prescription for Evil" is the story of the most horrifying FBI case in American medical history. It begins on May 27, 2001, when a nurse in a Kansas City doctor's office sends a vial of chemotherapy medicine called Taxol to a lab. When the results come back on June 12, 2001, it's a shocking revelation. The Taxol sample from the lab contains only about one-third of the amount of medication the doctor had prescribed. This is a dangerous situation because diluted medicine could lead to severe, even deadly consequences.
In September 2001, the FBI starts a new case called "Diluted Trust," which quickly became their top priority under the leadership of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. As they dig deeper, they uncover a disturbing truth. A pharmacist named Robert Ray Courtney had been diluting chemotherapy drugs for years, making a huge profit. But the real tragedy lies in the human cost. More than 4,200 patients were affected, with at least 40 known deaths. This was an unprecedented case in American medical history.
"Prescription for Evil" takes you on a heart-pounding journey through the FBI's pursuit of Robert Ray Courtney and the devastating impact he had on thousands of patients and their families. “Prescription for Evil” is a must-read that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Steve Rush
Kill Your Characters: Crime Scene Tips for Writers
$17.95
"Kill Your Characters" is a critical handbook for crime writers everywhere. Imagine you have a dead body on the floor, and your detective character needs to solve the crime and catch the killer. But, if you're not an expert in forensic investigation, how can you describe the death accurately, so the clues make sense?
This book, written by former detective and forensic investigator Steve Rush, equips you with the tools you need to impress not only armchair detectives but also real ones. It's your ultimate guide to crafting a gripping opening incident for your story. No more hours wasted searching for accurate information elsewhere.
In "Kill Your Characters," you'll find an accurate guide to crucial questions like: How did your character meet their end? What were the circumstances of the murder? Which weapon did the killer use? What evidence did they leave behind? How can you build an airtight case against the suspect?
With this book, you'll have the facts to make your fiction stand out. Whether you're plotting your next murder scene or tackling challenges like determining the time of death or understanding forensic evidence from a gunshot wound, Steve Rush's extensive experience is packed into practical tips and activities that will enhance your storytelling. "Kill Your Characters" is a valuable resource for any author aiming to bring credibility and authenticity to their murder scenes.
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<h1 id="c5">CHAPTER ONE</h1>
<div><i>“We’ll catch the guy”</i></div>
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<div class="indent">“I’ll be driving my wife’s orange Jeep, you won’t be able to miss me.” Retired VPD Sgt. John Vaughan is a master of understatement.</div>
<div class="indent">I chose the Black Bear Diner because it seemed like the kind of place where cops eat. They serve all-day breakfast, steaks, and bottomless cups of coffee in their signature white mugs. I was afraid that if I suggested a place more suited for a vegan from Los Angeles, I might make an already awkward meeting totally unbearable for both of us.</div>
<div class="indent">The Jeep was the brightest thing in the parking lot, maybe in the entire county, now turned brown after years of endless drought. As I drove into town, the only color was the green from irrigated groves of citrus trees. Although it was still early, the day was quickly heading over 100 degrees. Visalia is a small city stuck in time. It prides itself on pretending that it is still 1950. The A&W brews its own homemade root beer, and sells it in jugs that you can take home. However, it was impossible to miss the racist graffiti scrawled on the wall of the Indian grocery store on the edge of the A&W parking lot.</div>
<div class="indent">I understood Visalia, and its power structure. My great-grandparents chased the American farming dream across the country at the turn of the 20th century, going from Kansas to North Dakota, then to the newly planted orange trees of Southern California. My great-grandfather was a pacifist, and they fled to Canada during WWI, finally returning to the apple and cherry trees of northeastern Washington State. My great-uncle, “Buck,” was the police chief of a small farming city a lot like Visalia. Rumors were that he ran the town as his own personal criminal empire. He took a cut of every illegal enterprise, and black and brown suspects ended up dead in the river, rather than in a jail cell or courtroom. According to my mother, the rumors were all true. As soon as she could, she left for Seattle, and never looked back. Her sister took the other path, became a police dispatcher, and married the son of a homicide detective in Spokane.</div>
<div class="indent">I never planned on becoming an attorney, but somehow my internal need for fairness found a practical profession. Handling criminal appeals immediately put me in direct conflict with law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges. It’s a specialized area of the law that requires endless hours of research on each case. The best appellate attorneys start at the beginning, with the events leading up to the crime, not the trial itself. That means digging into original police reports, witness statements, and forensic lab bench notes. Overworked and underfunded public defenders are rarely granted money for investigators and forensic experts, and critical details can easily be missed.</div>
<div class="indent">Although my office is staffed by licensed attorneys and private investigators, we each bring unique life experiences and skills. I spent summers on drilling rigs in the Arctic Circle and in Montana. Guns were a necessity in camps accessible only by helicopter, and stalked by grizzly bears and wolves. We have dirt bike riders, and a pilot who can conduct surveillance via small plane or drone. One of our attorneys is a forensics expert, who studied criminology at Oxford University, and can build a complete family tree for a subject while you wait in the field for the next address to check out or vehicle to follow. Two of us lost close friends to serial offenders, and we are guided by what we know they would want us to do if we were pursing their killers. Terri and Laurie would want the truth—no matter how long it takes, or how difficult it may be to accept.</div>
<div class="indent">My first phone call to John Vaughan went pretty much exactly as I expected. John had retired as a sergeant with VPD in 1996 after 35 years of service, and 20 years later, he had little interest in revisiting a 40-year-old unsolved crime spree. However, I wasn’t calling about just <i>any case</i>—it was the longest and most expensive investigation in VPD history, and Sgt. Vaughan had been the lead detective. I asked him if I could just email a few documents, and he finally agreed to let me mail him an envelope. The day he got the documents he called back, and asked if we could meet to discuss the information. Now here we were in the parking lot of the Black Bear Diner.</div>
<div class="indent">Even twenty years after retirement, John still looked like he could topple his wife’s Jeep with one hand, and the expression on his face as I pulled up made me think he was considering it. Walking into the restaurant together, we made small talk, and the mood hadn’t really improved by the time we were done ordering. John was a wall of skepticism, built over 40 long years of listening to an endless number of overly excited “theories” about his biggest case. Between March 1974 and December 1975, a man dubbed the “Visalia Ransacker” had terrorized his city. There had been over 150 residential burglaries with a very weird and specific MO.</div>
<div class="indent">The burglar ignored expensive jewelry and electronics, and instead stole Blue Chip trading stamps, piggy banks, food, coins, cameras, two dollar bills, knives, and single earrings from a pair. He took guns, but only if they were older or foreign, and therefore lacked traceable registration numbers. Immediately upon entering the home, he opened multiple escape routes, and placed the window screens in odd places, like on the bed. He also put chain locks across doors, or blocked them with chairs, to delay the homeowner should he return during the burglary. He displayed undergarments and jewelry boxes on beds and pillows, and stole photos of the attractive teen girls who lived in the rooms. All areas, including the kitchens, were heavily ransacked. Drawers were left pulled out, or contents dumped on the floor. Sometimes he placed stacks of undies and nightgowns in rows down the hallway.</div>
<div class="indent">The VR always struck in the early evening, while the residents were out to dinner, a movie, or the local football game. He confined his activities to a small area of single story homes, often on cul-de-sacs, owned by middle class professionals. The houses were usually locked, and the VR favored prying and chiseling locks on sliding glass doors or back doors to garages, then going into the kitchens. The VR traveled almost exclusively through backyards, ditches, open spaces, alleys, and greenbelts—always careful to avoid sidewalks and streets. The burglaries got little press attention or police investigation, and were treated like a nuisance, not a threat.</div>
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<div class="indent">At 2:24 am on Thursday, September 11, 1975, VPD received an emergency call to respond to a shooting at the Snelling home. When they arrived two minutes later they found Claude Snelling lying mortally wounded inside his front door. His wife explained that he had been shot by a man who had kidnapped their 16-year-old daughter, Beth. Forty-five year-old Claude, a journalism professor at nearby College of the Sequoias, was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.</div>
<div class="indent">The killer had entered the house by removing the screen on an open window, and unlocking the back door. The air conditioning unit had stopped working that evening, likely due to intentional tampering. Beth awoke to find the masked man on top of her, pinning her arms, and holding his hand across her mouth. In a clenched teeth whisper, he ordered her to get up and go with him, or he would stab her. As they walked through the house, Beth struggled with the kidnapper, and her father got up to investigate the noise. Claude called out: “Where are you taking my daughter?” Rather than running away, the man let go of Beth, and walked back a few feet to get a clear shot at Claude as he exited the back door. As he stepped into the yard, the man fired two shots, both hitting Claude. The kidnapper then pointed the gun at Beth’s head, kicked her three times in the face, and calmly walked away towards the street. He just disappeared into the darkness.</div>
<div class="indent">Sgt. Vaughan was assigned as lead investigator, and his team quickly determined that the gun used to kill Claude had been stolen in a recent VR burglary. The gun owner was able to show them where he had done some target practice, and ballistics examination of the spent rounds matched the bullets that killed Claude. The investigation showed that the VR had arrived on a stolen bike, which he left in a yard a block away, and departed on foot, using a landscaped ditch along the highway. Sgt. Vaughan quickly realized that Beth, and her friends at Mt. Whitney High School, had been the Ransacker’s targets all along. They had been stalked and terrorized for nearly two years by a man whose true plan was kidnapping and murder. The VR was suddenly front page news, but the more that Sgt. Vaughan and his team promised to catch him, the more brazen the VR became.</div>
<div class="indent">On October 21, 1975, The <i>Visalia Times-Delta </i>published an update story on the Snelling homicide:</div>
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<div class="margin-indent">Presently, Sgt. John Vaughan and agents William McGowen and Duane Shipley are handling the investigation. All are confident they will succeed. “We are getting a lot of leads and tips. Lots of things are being worked on,” Vaughan said. “We’ll catch the guy,” McGowen said.</div>
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<div class="indent">Just as that story hit newsstands and porches that afternoon, the most recent VR burglary victim, Ruth Swanson (a pseudonym), returned home for the day to an empty house. Suddenly, she heard someone trying to open the front door. When she checked the peephole, all she saw was a hand covering it. She ran to the living room window, but saw nobody on the front porch. A few minutes later, she received a couple of hang up phone calls, followed by an obscene one, using her name. VPD responded, and installed a trap on her phone.</div>
<div class="indent">On Friday, October 24th, the VR committed four burglaries. It appeared from witness reports and footprints that he started with two homes on W. Campus Avenue. At around 10:30 pm, while Sgt. Vaughan and his team were responding to those burglaries, the VR moved on to Whitney Lane. A neighbor saw the VR cutting through yards to S. Redwood, where he committed a third burglary—325 feet from the Snelling house. The VR then crossed Redwood to the house where he had left the stolen bike on the night of the Snelling homicide, passed through that yard, and across the back fence. He then burglarized the home on the other side of the fence.</div>
<div class="indent">The burglaries seemed to serve no real purpose other than to commit signature ransacking, sure to be recognized by VPD: kitchen drawers were pulled out evenly, but not disturbed; women’s undergarments were displayed with jewelry boxes on the bed pillows; lotion was left out; and the chain was thrown across the front door. Sgt. Vaughan noted in his report that the only motive for much of the ransacking appeared to be to “draw attention” and “to leave his calling card.” Sgt. Vaughan believed that they were being taunted for their comments to the newspaper.</div>
<div class="indent">It quickly became clear to Vaughan’s team that the VR was working with a deep knowledge of police procedure, their patrol rotation schedule, and even their planned stakeouts. He knew exactly when and where to strike to avoid all of the police efforts to catch him. The only advantage they had was their newfound knowledge of the VR’s true motive—he was stalking particular girls and young women in a set zone. Earlier that year, another teenage girl, Debbie Ward, had encountered the masked VR after he had just burglarized the apartment of their tenant, who lived over the garage. He pushed Debbie aside to escape, but she was unharmed.</div>
<div class="indent">Agent Bill McGowen was assigned to contact the Ward family and several other prior VR victims. He told them to look for signs of a prowler in their yards, and to report any strange noises. It paid off. Mrs. Ward found fresh footprints under Debbie’s bedroom window, and upon further investigation, Agent McGowen saw a circular impression next to the prints. He found a matching flowerpot in the neighbor’s yard that had been used as a step stool to look in Debbie’s window, and then had carefully been put back in place.</div>
<div class="indent">Sgt. Vaughan was heading to Los Angeles for PERT training, but he was able to plan the stakeout of Debbie’s house. It was agreed that Agent McGowen would hide in the neighbor’s garage, next to Debbie’s bedroom window. Agent Duane Shipley would be placed across the street to watch from that angle. The rest of the team would be positioned in the surrounding area to look for the VR, and create a net around the neighborhood should he appear. Sgt. Vaughan said that he was worried about not being there, but he trusted Agent McGowen. McGowen had been chosen because of his honesty and morality; he didn’t cut corners, swear, or drink. McGowen’s father, C.E. McGowen, was a police captain in the city of Tulare, and his brother, Richard, was a sergeant with the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO). Sgt. Vaughan said that he knew Bill McGowen would always do the right thing, no matter how dire the circumstances.</div>
<div class="indent">The biggest change in the Ward stakeout was its silence. Not only were the officers ordered to stay off the radio, their entire operation was kept top secret within the department. The only people who knew what they were doing were the team members themselves, and they were not allowed to discuss it with anyone. Sgt. Vaughan had become convinced that the VR was a member of law enforcement, who not only listened to their radio frequency but also talked directly to officers on his squad—it was the only possible way he could have avoided all of the prior stakeouts.</div>
<div class="indent">At 7:00 pm on Wednesday, December 10, 1975, the stakeout of the Ward house began. Agents McGowen and Shipley were in place, while four other officers in two cars and on foot covered the surrounding neighborhood. Agent Hartman oversaw the operation in a roving, unmarked car. At 8:38 pm, a frantic call broke radio silence, “Shots fired, officers need assistance.”—Agent McGowen was down.</div>
<div class="indent">A few minutes before, the VR had been spotted at Debbie Ward’s window, and McGowen had confronted him at gunpoint in the side yard. The VR was wearing a mask, which he took off, and put in his right jacket pocket to show McGowen that he was complying. He then turned, jumped the gate, and ran into the backyard screaming, “Please don’t hurt me, oh my god, no.” McGowen fired a warning shot into the ground to try to make the VR stop moving, and to attract the attention of Agent Shipley. The VR then jumped the fence into the Ward yard, raised his right hand, and said, “See, my hands are up.” As he reached his left hand into his pocket, he pulled out a gun, and fired at McGowen through the fence slats, hitting his flashlight dead center. Mr. Ward looked out of his patio door just in time to see the VR hop over his back fence, and disappear into the night.</div>
<div class="indent">Agent Shipley found Bill McGowen on the ground, saw blood on his face, and thought he was dead. Glass from the flashlight lens had hit McGowen’s eye, knocking him to the ground, but he had not been shot. Agent Hartman then called in the California Highway Patrol, TCSO, and all VPD units to help seal off the area and try to prevent the VR from escaping. It did no good—he was gone. Investigators found a sock full of loot dropped by the VR on the Ward’s patio. The stolen items were quickly tied to a nearby home burglary that had occurred shortly before the shooting. There was no doubt, the man who had killed Claude Snelling, shot at McGowen, and committed the VR burglaries was the same offender.</div>
<div class="indent">McGowen created a composite sketch of the suspect. Sgt. Vaughan’s team investigated and eventually cleared nearly one hundred suspects, but by September 1976 they had run out of new clues to follow. Then the Criminal Investigation and Identification (CII) system notified them of an MO and suspect match to a serial rapist in Sacramento who had started his crimes in June 1976. John immediately saw the connection. He requested the burglary and rape case reports from the SSD for the offender whom media had dubbed the “East Area Rapist.” (EAR). In May 1977, Detectives Shipley and McGowen traveled to Sacramento and met with EAR investigator Detective Richard Shelby, who felt the VR was a good lead. Unfortunately, nobody else in Sacramento agreed, and Shelby was taken off the case a month later. In 2001, DNA connected the EAR to ten murders in Orange, Ventura, and Santa Barbara Counties (Original Night Stalker-ONS); that killer had never been caught.</div>
<div class="indent">The EAR/ONS crimes were profiled on the A&E show “<i>Cold Case Files</i>” in 2000, and that led to multiple online discussion boards dedicated to the cases. A&E eventually shut down their board after users started naming and harassing “persons of interest” in real life. Several of the people involved in the discussions were convinced that they were experts<i>,</i> and repeatedly contacted different members of law enforcement to tell them how they should be running their investigation and exactly who they should consider as suspects. Generally, five minutes’ worth of research could prove that their “suspect” could not have committed the crimes. Although law enforcement officers tried to be patient and have an open mind so that they didn’t miss an important tip, many of these case theories from internet investigators proved to be exhausting.</div>
<div class="indent">It would be wrong to put all internet sleuths or armchair detectives into the same group. Some individuals who become interested in a cold case bring unique research skills, or real life investigative experience, while others simply like to go with crowd sourcing, guesses, or theories, rather than with hard facts. As an attorney and private investigator, I didn’t fit into either group. I was relying on original police and forensic reports, witness statements, and court records, not the internet. Also, I was looking for evidence that could meet a higher standard—evidence that could support probable cause for a search warrant, arrest, and conviction.</div>
<div class="indent">I could tell that John Vaughan was not entirely convinced that my ideas were grounded in facts rather than hunches, and he asked me if I had ever talked to some of the other people who had approached him about the case. I hadn’t, and he seem relieved. He was not in the mood for a manic recitation of disconnected stories that added up to nothing. He was also a bit suspicious of my work as a defense attorney—generally a cop’s natural enemy. Nobody likes to have their work scrutinized, criticized, and second-guessed.</div>
<div class="indent">I opened our conversation by telling him how impressed I was with the forward thinking, professionalism, and thoroughness of his original investigation into the VR. It was textbook police work, with complete canvasses of the neighborhoods, and no potential suspect off limits. My only criticism was the hypnosis of Beth Snelling and Agent McGowen, which seemed to have changed their original suspect descriptions and thrown the case off track. Making “suggestions” to witnesses creates false memories that feel real, which is why hypnotized witnesses cannot testify in court. However, in 1975, it was considered cutting edge science. I also pointed out to John that his team was the only one to ever catch the suspect; nobody else had even come close. It turned out that he was a lot harder on himself than I ever could have been.</div>
<div class="indent">Sgt. Vaughan expressed an enormous amount of regret for being in Los Angeles during the McGowen shootout. He felt responsible for letting the VR get away, and later hurting and killing so many innocent people. Even after 40 years he was still immensely frustrated that he hadn’t been able to convince Sacramento that they were looking for the same suspect. He believed that Sacramento should have focused on men who had been in Tulare County between 1974-1976, with law enforcement training. John also thought that if Sacramento had utilized secret stakeouts, the VR/EAR could have been caught in 1977, and… <i>at least</i> twelve homicides could have been prevented.</div>
<div class="indent">To John, it wasn’t just a theory; he knew that the VR was the EAR. He explained the uniqueness of the MO, and the utter creepiness that he never felt or saw in any other case. If I had doubted the connection before, I didn’t after I looked into John’s eyes. I also had complete certainty that the Visalia Ransacker and East Area Rapist were the same person.</div>
<div class="indent">We finally got to the reason for our meeting—the information in the envelope I had mailed to him. I was worried and hesitant to start, but he had no problem barking out questions faster than I could answer them. I asked him what his working relationship with TCSO had been during the VR investigation, and he said simply that there hadn’t been one. They never worked cases together if they could help it—the feelings of dislike were mutual. I asked about a particular officer, TCSO Sgt. Bob Byrd. John’s eyes flashed. He recited a couple of unflattering names for Byrd, including “DBO” (Ditch Bank Okie), and said Byrd wasn’t an educated or trained police officer, and he had no business investigating real crimes. I carefully suggested that perhaps Byrd had manipulated and destroyed evidence, and John said, “Oh, it must have been a Tuesday.”</div>
<div class="indent">I felt a huge weight off my shoulders as one of my biggest fears lifted. If John had not been willing to believe that Byrd was both a terrible investigator and a rule breaker, our meeting would have been over. Instead, we moved on to discussing the homicide of Jennifer Armour, a name he barely recognized. At 7:30 pm on Friday, November 15, 1974, Jennifer, a 15 year old sophomore, disappeared while walking from her house to the Visalia K-Mart. She was meeting friends for a ride to the homecoming football game between her school, Mt. Whitney, and the rival Redwood High. Jennifer’s friends waited an extra fifteen minutes, then headed to the game. When they were unable to locate her there, they figured she hadn’t gotten permission from her mom and had stayed home.</div>
<div class="indent">When Jennifer didn’t return home that night, her mother assumed she was staying with a friend, and it wasn’t until Saturday morning that she realized that Jennifer had been missing for more than 12 hours. She called VPD, but in the 1970s, possible runaway teen cases got little attention. There was no sign that Jennifer had been harmed or was in danger. Had she told her mom she was meeting her girlfriends, but really run off?</div>
<div class="indent">The answer came on the morning of Sunday, November 24, 1974. A rancher found Jennifer’s body in the Friant-Kern canal, just north of Exeter. TCSO made it sound like an accidental drowning, and when Sgt. Vaughan got the Snelling case ten months later, Jennifer was not listed as a missing person or a homicide victim.</div>
<div class="indent">In the Black Bear Diner, John and I went over some maps I had printed out for the meeting. I showed him the two November 1974 VR burglaries that had immediately preceded Jennifer’s disappearance—they were three blocks from where Jennifer was last seen. We discussed how Jennifer and Beth Snelling were the same age, physical type, in the same class at Mt. Whitney High School, and were kidnapped just four blocks apart. Had Jennifer been one of the VR’s Mt. Whitney stalking victims? I asked John how many other Mt. Whitney students had ever been kidnapped in their homes, or off the street, in all of the years he had lived in Visalia. He didn’t know of any others. John had always assumed that Beth Snelling’s kidnapping was going to end in rape and murder in some remote, dark location—just like an orange grove out in Exeter.</div>
<div class="indent">I asked John about something else that was the hallmark of both the EAR and VR— his taunting of police. The EAR was perhaps most infamous for responding to two different public “challenges.” The first was in March 1977, when <i>The Sacramento Bee </i>published a story stating that the EAR “has never attacked while there is a man in the home.” The next attack, on April 2nd, was on a sleeping couple, and that soon became his signature. Then, on May 17, 1977, the EAR attacked a couple in the Del Dayo neighborhood. Detective Shelby immediately realized that the husband was the same man who had stood up and yelled at him at a community meeting on November 3, 1976. The man had berated Shelby for not catching the EAR, and said that in his native Italy, the men would never let their wives get hurt like that. Clearly, the EAR had been at that meeting, took the man’s comments as a challenge, and targeted him. In fact, almost every single time that SSD issued a statement to the press about the EAR, he would respond with another rape. It was a constant call and response.</div>
<div class="indent">I had noticed that the VR had done the same thing after Sgt. Vaughan and Agent McGowen had made statements to the press about “catching” him. In fact, the VR went right back to the Snelling neighborhood, and burglarized their block again. John confirmed that the VR had clearly taunted them after every public statement, and gone out of his way to embarrass his team. That took me back to the days after Jennifer Armour was found. Tulare County Sheriff, Bob Wiley, declared to the press that “there is no reason to believe that the girl may have been murdered.” Jennifer’s public service was on that Friday, November 29th, and that night the VR hit five homes in Visalia, and thirteen on Saturday night. This was an insane spree, even by VR standards—there was nothing else like it in the series, before or after. Eighteen burglaries in two nights. Clearly the VR was trying to get the attention of VPD, but it fell flat. It was almost a year before John took over the case, and the officers working the burglaries back in 1974 didn’t catch on to it—at all.</div>
<div class="indent">I took out some additional maps. Now we were looking at the Friant-Kern Canal, just north of the Exeter city limits. The area where Jennifer had been killed was easily accessed from the highway, yet totally secluded, with no homes or lights nearby. The killer kidnapped Jennifer right by the highway on-ramp in Visalia, drove east eleven miles, turned left and headed north, then right heading east again, and finally a left onto the same grove siding road the rancher was driving when he found Jennifer’s body. Those actions were deliberate, specific, and planned by someone who knew the area <i>extremely</i> well. Most of the agricultural property close to Exeter surrounds the owners’ ranch homes. When you turn off the road onto a dirt drive, you don’t know if you’re heading into trees or are on a driveway leading to a home full of people—and a shotgun.</div>
<div class="indent">I showed Sgt. Vaughan the grove, siding road, and spot in the Friant-Kern Canal where Jennifer was killed in November 1974. Then, I moved my finger just slightly to the southeast on the map to a different orange grove along the same canal, Neel Ranch. “And, <i>that’s</i> where Donna Richmond was killed in December 1975,” I told John. The distance was less than two miles, with a straight line of sight between the two groves.</div>
<div class="indent">Neel Ranch was owned by Hank Neel, who lived in Ventura. The property was purely agricultural, with no ranch house, and it could be accessed from the siding road along the Friant-Kern Canal. Like Jennifer, Donna had disappeared while she was alone on a Friday evening. Both girls had long blonde hair and blue eyes. Donna was a 14-year-old freshman at Exeter High, and like Jennifer, she had simply disappeared into a vehicle without any witness seeing or hearing a kidnapping.</div>
<div class="indent">At this point, I was expecting an eye roll, sigh, or some sign of frustration from John, but the moment passed quickly. A man named Oscar Clifton had been convicted of Donna’s murder, and had died in prison three years earlier, but John was unfazed: “So that guy Clifton didn’t do it.” He asked how Clifton had been eliminated in Jennifer’s murder, and I said that he and his family lived in Las Vegas—TCSO had fully checked his alibi since they really wanted to clear both cases with one suspect if they could. John agreed that it was now apparent that the same person had killed both Jennifer and Donna, and that the evidence in Exeter seemed to point <i>directly</i> back to Visalia and the VR.</div>
<div class="indent">I had originally wanted to talk to John because I believed that there were four things about Donna’s murder that were meant to be tied to the VR but had been totally missed by TCSO in their rush to convict an innocent man. The first was a ski mask that was collected into evidence on Neel Ranch. It was described by the forensics tech as a “multi-colored ‘ski cap’ with possible hairs adhering.” The description of the ski mask worn by the VR, as described by Beth Snelling, was “having white stripes and having multi-color zigzag design.” Obviously, there was no photo of the VR’s ski mask, but there is one from Neel Ranch. It is crumpled on the ground, but it clearly has white stripes, a zigzag pattern, and what appear to be eye holes. There would be no reason for Donna’s killer to leave the mask at the homicide scene unless he wanted it to be found and matched back to the Snelling case, and to the VR.</div>
<div class="indent">There was also no question that TCSO investigators were supposed to connect Jennifer and Donna’s murders, and then follow the cases back to Visalia and the VR. Kidnapping similarly aged blonde girls, in safe public areas on a Friday evening, and then leaving their bodies in orange groves on the Friant-Kern Canal, just north of Exeter, was a highly specific MO, and a lead that was meant to be seen and pursued. Sgt. Vaughan agreed, and said that it felt exactly like the offender he had been chasing for so many years—always taunting the police, and daring them to catch him. That brought me to a quote of John’s from <i>The Sacramento Union </i>newspaper: “Both men have been known to have this peculiarity of taking things—not of special value—from one house—and leaving them at other houses.”</div>
<div class="indent">He was correct. In October 1976, the EAR had even gone so far as to plant a bag of jewelry (stolen from EAR victims) in a house, then he attacked the next door neighbor and made statements to her indicating that he lived nearby. Sacramento Detective Shelby had the innocent neighbor, John Dority, put under surveillance, and that helped clear him when he was seen at home during the next EAR attack. The EAR had framed Dority with planted evidence, and it almost worked.</div>
<div class="indent">I had two more sets of maps for John to see, and I put them side by side. One showed the area where Donna’s bike had been found, three miles from Neel Ranch, at what appeared to be a staged kidnapping scene. The other map showed an area John knew well, an irrigation ditch on Ave 256, between Visalia and Exeter. About a week after the Snelling kidnapping and homicide, a man called VPD to report finding a gun in an irrigation ditch on Ave 256. It was <i>not</i> the missing murder weapon, but it was a Taurus revolver, identified by its serial number, that had been stolen by the VR from a residence on Mountain Drive in May 1975. That prompted John’s team to search the other irrigation ditches along the same road, where they found a large screwdriver and some ammunition wrapped in a clear raincoat. The gun had been located near a large fertilizer plant. John checked out those employees, and a few of them stayed on the suspect list. However, the location of the raincoat items was more of a mystery, and no suspects were developed there.</div>
<div class="indent">I told John I thought I knew the suspect that the VR was trying to frame with the raincoat—the same person he implicated with an invoice book found next to Donna’s bike at the staged kidnapping scene. John had found the raincoat across the road from a small dead-end street called Hypericum, a name I had seen in Donna’s homicide case file. One of the homes on Hypericum belonged to the parents of Oscar Clifton, and had been staked out by TCSO on the night they found Donna’s bike. According to TCSO, they found the invoice book used for Clifton’s repair business near the bike. I told John I believed the VR had tried to frame Clifton after the Snelling homicide, and then again after Donna’s murder. The VR was hoping that Clifton would be convicted of Snelling, McGowen, Jennifer, Donna, and all of the burglaries, and… the VR would be in the clear.</div>
<div class="indent">I asked John how he had eliminated Clifton as the VR, and he just laughed. Clifton was 6´2? and 150 pounds dripping wet—“<i>he was a beanpole.</i>” He also had a distinctive limp from a ruined knee, wore a metal brace, and had a thick Okie accent. The VR was more like 5´10? and 170 pounds, with strong arms and shoulders. John said that he gave Clifton one glance, and knew that he could not have been their suspect. Obviously, when the EAR attacks started six months later, John was proven right. Why the VR would choose to frame Clifton was more of a mystery, but clearly he didn’t know about the bad knee or his recent return after eight years of living out of state. It seemed like a question that couldn’t be easily answered until we identified the VR.</div>
<div class="indent">Sgt. Vaughan and I talked about TCSO Sgt. Byrd a bit more, and I detailed the misconduct I had found, and the total and complete lack of physical evidence. There was nothing that tied Clifton to Donna or the homicide scene. She had not been kidnapped where her bike was found, so the planting of Clifton’s invoice book (stolen from his unlocked truck) near the bike was just more staging. Clifton had a solid alibi, with multiple witnesses, and the state’s case and timeline were physically impossible—barring time travel and cloning.</div>
<div class="indent">I told John that when he identified the VR as being the EAR, and gave the timeline for the suspect leaving Tulare County as the summer of 1976, Sgt. Byrd had immediately ordered the destruction of the case evidence in Donna’s murder. It had only been five months since Clifton had been sent to death row. Not only was that highly illegal, it violated multiple court orders in place to preserve the evidence pending Clifton’s appeal.</div>
<div class="indent">I had finally told John something that truly shocked him. He simply could not believe that any police officer would intentionally destroy case evidence, especially evidence that would be needed if Clifton won his appeal and a retrial was ordered. Clifton would have walked free. John and I agreed that whatever truth Sgt. Byrd was hiding had to be worth the risk of getting fired, going to jail, or letting Clifton out of prison. We came to the same conclusions—Byrd knew who really killed Donna, was covering for him, and was afraid that either Sacramento or Visalia would match their suspect to the evidence in Donna’s murder.</div>
<div class="indent">We also agreed that we should be looking for VR suspects <i>in Exeter</i>. In 1975, the town had a population of 5,000 residents. Roughly half were men, and many were Latino. We knew we were looking for a white male, within a specific height and weight range, 20-30 years old, left-handed, with blue eyes. He was either active duty law enforcement in Tulare County, or was very close to someone who was. He seemed to want both Jennifer’s and Donna’s homicides investigated by TCSO, so we felt that he likely lived within the city limits of Exeter, not in TCSO jurisdiction. The man went unnoticed in solidly middle-class, professional neighborhoods, so he didn’t look like an obvious creep or criminal.</div>
<div class="indent">John said he would contact Detective Shelby, the EAR Task Force, VPD major crimes, and the TCSO forensics officer who worked Donna’s homicide. I agreed to work on a list of people of interest that fit our criteria. They had a solid suspect DNA profile, so all we needed to do was go down the list and eliminate them, one by one. It was going to be hard going without more help. The <i>Exeter Sun </i>newspaper microfilm reels had been sent for digitization, and nobody could find a copy of the local 1975 Exeter census. The phone books had to be accessed in person, during library hours. Assistance from law enforcement, with their vast resources, could really speed things up. John and I didn’t think it would be easy, but we never imagined the force and effectiveness of the backlash we would face.</div>
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<h2 class="center sigil_not_in_toc" id="c6">Chapter One Sources</h2>
<div class="indent"><b>1. VPD Reports 1974-1977</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>2. VPD Report - Gomes September 11, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>3. VPD Reports - Shipley & Arnold September 15, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>4. Visalia Times-Delta - October 21, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>5. VPD Report - Shipley October 24, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>6. VPD Report - Vaughan October 28, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>7. VPD Report - McGowen October 2, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>8. VPD Report - McGowen December 19, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>9. VPD Report - Hartman December 13, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>10. VPD Report - Vaughan December 17, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>11. VPD Report - Vaughan November 20, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>12. Visalia Times-Delta - May 18, 1977</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>13. Sacramento Bee - April 5, 2001</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>14. Visalia Times-Delta - November 26, 1974</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>15. Visalia Times-Delta - December 2, 1974</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>16. VPD Report - Vaughan October 8, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>17. Sacramento Bee - March 20, 1977</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>18. SSD EAR Report - April 2, 1977</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>19. Sacramento Bee - April 5, 1977</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>20. SSD EAR Report - May 17, 1977</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>21. TCSO Report - Johnson December 26, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>22. Sacramento Union - July 22, 1978</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>23. SSD EAR Reports - October 9 & 18, 1976</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>24. VPD Report - Vaughan September 25, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>25. VPD Report - McGowen September 28, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>26. TCSO Report - M. Richmond December 28, 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>27. Mt. Whitney Yearbook 1975</b></div>
<div class="indent"><b>28. Photo of ski mask at Neel Ranch</b></div>
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Tony Reid
12/26/75 - a wrongful conviction that let the Visalia Ransacker go free
$17.95
“12/26/75” is more than a story about a murder. It is a case of wrongful conviction, prosecutorial misconduct, corruption, and a serial killer. For Tony Reid, this case began with a claim of innocence in the 1975 murder of Donna Jo Richmond. The original investigation and flawed trial resulted in a guilty verdict, but a reevaluation revealed that the defendant had been wrongly accused and railroaded. The question then shifted to who framed him. With a new team of investigators, including two original detectives, a startling possibility emerged: Could the real culprit be a serial offender?
Mr. Reid launched the "12/26/75" podcast, seeking information from the public. Based on primary evidence and new interviews related to Donna Jo's murder in Exeter, California, the team delved into every angle. What they found was more than a miscarriage of justice. They uncovered connections to the unsolved murders of Jennifer Armour and Claude Snelling, as well as links to The Visalia Ransacker/East Area Rapist. They exposed corruption by the lead investigator who destroyed trial evidence, and they investigated the mysterious death of the original defense attorney. This led them back to Exeter, where a new suspect emerged: Joseph DeAngelo, a sergeant with the local police department at the time, in charge of violent crimes and burglary investigations.
"12/26/75" goes beyond being a mere adaptation of the podcast. It offers fresh insights from the investigation, providing a firsthand view of the crimes and revealing the flawed evidence that led to the wrongful conviction. Most importantly, it highlights the grave consequences of letting a serial killer go free, compounded by mistakes, internal conflicts, and blame-shifting among different jurisdictions. The book makes it clear that reforms are urgently needed to prevent such tragedies from happening again, now that the truth of how it all unfolded is exposed.
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<h1 class="center" id="c3">Chapter One—THE DISCOVERY</h1>
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<div>On January 13, 1995, the world, consumed by the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, eagerly awaited the results of a hearing that would determine if evidence challenging Detective Mark Fuhrman’s credibility would be admitted in the O.J. Simpson trial.</div>
<div class="indent">As I made my way along the winding roads leading to Fort Smith, Arkansas, I listened as the local radio station announced how prosecutors believed that O.J. dropped a glove as he attempted to sneak back to his mansion the night of the Simpson and Goldman murders. Judge Lance Ito was also expected to rule whether O.J. Simpson’s former wife would be required to appear in court.</div>
<div class="indent">The unspeakable events surrounding the murders proved to be sensational, dark, and shocking. It was the perfect storm for a true crime addict. And I was hooked. At 21-years-old, I was already deep into my obsession. My fascination with murder mysteries gave me an adrenaline rush. The fix of the “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where” kept me reading every true crime novel I could get my hands on.</div>
<div class="indent">On this particular day, as my obsession kept me tuned in to the radio for the O.J. Simpson case, another announcement caught my attention. A body had been found in the Ozark National Forest and authorities were on the scene. They suspected the body could be that of 19-year-old Melissa Witt.</div>
<div class="indent">As my Nissan Altima crept along the two-lane highway of U.S. 71 that was at the time the main route between Fayetteville and Fort Smith, Arkansas, I gazed into the Boston Mountains and watched dark clouds roll in.</div>
<div class="indent">At the same time, a chill settled in across the Ozarks. The clouds opened up and unleashed torrents of furious rain on a remote and lonely crime scene. As it turns out, roughly 56 miles away in the Ozark National Forest, a beautiful landscape of trees and mountains had been hiding a terrible secret.</div>
<div class="indent">On January 13, 1995 at 9:40am, about 15 miles north of Ozark, two animal trappers stumbled upon what they believed could be a mannequin lying face down in the woods about 30 feet off the main road. The two men, avid outdoorsmen, had walked this very path the day before. There had been nothing there.</div>
<div class="indent">As they approached the strange figure lying in the woods, it became clear that what they found was something much more sinister. After 45 long days, the remote Forest Service Road 1551 in the Ozark National Forest had finally unearthed the unthinkable: the decomposing nude body of a young, white female.</div>
<div class="indent">Frantic, the pair immediately called the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department. Upon receiving the news, Sheriff Kenneth Ross contacted Detective Sergeant Chris Boyd with the Fort Smith Police Department Major Crimes Unit.</div>
<div class="indent">Over 20 years later, as I sat down to interview the now former Detective Boyd for a documentary I was producing on the Melissa Witt case, he could still vividly recall that cold and rainy morning.</div>
<div class="indent">“At the time, the police department was in the Sebastian County Courthouse and I distinctly recall walking through the basement to get to my office in the Detective Division. That’s when I received a phone call from Sheriff Ross.”</div>
<div class="indent">As the retired detective described the phone call, his expression turned serious and somber. I’d seen this look before. It was the expression of a man haunted by the unsolved murder of an innocent young woman.</div>
<div class="indent">“Sheriff Ross told me on that call that he thought he had found the body of Melissa Witt. And knowing him as I did at the time, I figured he was probably right. I had him describe to me what he was seeing and what the body looked like. Once he gave me the description… well, I knew I had to rally the troops at that point. We needed crime scene techs and detectives at that scene immediately.”</div>
<div class="indent">As the former detective described the events that unfolded the morning of Friday, January 13, 1995, my own memories flooded back. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the icy chill in the air. I remember arriving in Fort Smith that morning, and as I stepped out of my car, the rain came down in heavy thuds, hard and fast, soaking my clothes as I ran across the parking lot. Another memory of me complaining to my coworkers about the miserable weather conditions on that day also replayed in my mind: “Why did this beautiful day take a drastic turn for the worst?” My words unknowingly foreshadowed events that would haunt me almost two decades later.</div>
<div class="indent">As the former lead detective on the Melissa Witt murder investigation, Jay C. Rider entered the room, I nervously stood to greet him. As we shook hands, Rider asked if Melissa and I had been friends, an assumption others often make to describe my passion for finding justice for a girl I never knew.</div>
<div class="indent">“No sir. I never knew her. We had mutual friends, but we never met.” Rider eyed me skeptically, nodded, and said, “I guess that makes two of us.”</div>
<div class="indent">“Tell me about January 13, 1995,” I said. “The day you found Melissa Witt’s body.”</div>
<div class="indent">Rider described the day as normal, even for a Friday the 13th. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a superstitious guy. It was a normal day. It started off sunny—a perfect day. I decided to get some work done around the office. When the phone call came in from Sheriff Ross, as you can imagine, all hell broke loose. We all headed out to that crime scene. We feared the worst… that this body was Melissa Witt.”</div>
<div class="indent">News reports of the crime scene describe a lonely, remote logging road near Turner Bend just north of Ozark. I knew the location of Melissa’s body would reveal details about her killer.</div>
<div class="indent">“Can you tell me more about the location?” I asked.</div>
<div class="indent">“It was a logging road. More or less a single lane road, rough terrain, off the main gravel area. The road was mainly accessed by loggers clearing and cutting the national forest,” Rider explained. “Trappers, hunters, campers and sometimes local kids looking to party used that road. Believe it or not, the logging road ended—like a cul de sac—so it was a dead end. A remote, hopeless dead end.”</div>
<div class="indent">“What else do you remember about that day?” I asked.</div>
<div class="indent">“I will never forget that day,” Rider said. “We started working the crime scene and the temperature dropped drastically. It started to rain—hard rain—rain that was actually coming in sideways. The wind was blowing hard and it was miserable. None of us had jackets or anything else because it had started off as such a perfect day. I remember finding a raincoat in my car and trying to find a warmer shirt or something to change into so I could stay warm.”</div>
<div class="indent">Rider’s description of that fateful morning closely paralleled my own memories. But now it seemed that what we had witnessed was so much more than just a rainstorm. Instead, maybe we experienced the heavens releasing an unrelenting stream of tears for a girl we never knew.</div>
<div class="indent">The medical examiner’s report revealed that the official cause of death was “asphyxiation by strangulation.” Leaves and soil found in Melissa’s airway indicated she had been strangled face down and she had inhaled debris from the forest floor as she fought for her life.</div>
<div class="indent">Laboratory testing on the debris found in Melissa’s airway gave investigators an important clue: the debris was native to the Ozark National Forest. This told investigators that she had been killed at or near the location where her body was discovered. The medical examiner’s report also yielded another important clue: Melissa had non-fatal trauma on the side of her head that was believed to have been caused by a blow or a fall.</div>
<div class="indent">Armed with this information, investigators began to put together a profile of Melissa Witt’s killer. Two scenarios emerged: The killer was either a local or someone who frequented the area from out of state to hunt, hike, camp, or fish. Melissa’s body could have been disposed of in many places but her killer chose this remote location. An area so isolated that if you had never been there before, it would be almost impossible to find.</div>
<div class="indent">A more detailed examination of the crime scene shocked investigators. Indentations behind a large headstone-like rock positioned between two small trees revealed that her body had initially been hidden there.</div>
<div class="indent">According to police records, Melissa had visible marks where someone, presumably the killer, had grabbed hold of her in order to drag her decomposing body closer to the road.</div>
<div class="indent">“It would have been a gruesome task,” Jay C. Rider said flatly. “Think about it. Melissa’s body had been out in the elements for 45 days and was in advanced stages of decomposition. There was small animal activity on the body and the scene was… it was brutal. Whoever moved that body did it so it could be found more easily. Maybe so her mama could give her a proper burial. Regardless, the task was gruesome and we are still trying to figure out who moved her body and why.”</div>
<div class="indent">A strange phone call made to police a day or two prior to the discovery of Melissa’s body may have provided a different clue. The caller left a voice message at the Fort Smith Major Crimes unit one evening. On the recording, a lady with a thick Southern accent could be heard saying, “Go ahead and tell them what you found.” Then there was a younger male voice, also with a thick Southern accent who was reported saying, “No, I can’t,” and then the phone disconnected. Did the young man who was part of the mysterious phone call discover Melissa’s body in the woods and move it from behind the rock so she could be found? Was he scared he could be blamed for the murder? Sadly, we may never know. Despite extensive efforts to identify the people responsible for that phone call, their identities remain a mystery.</div>
<div class="indent">Determined to learn more about the psychology of this type of killer and crime, I obsessively began to research homicidal strangulation. I discovered that in a high percentage of cases, the offender and the victim are related or in a romantic relationship. Seventy-five percent of strangulation victims are females, with the most frequent motives being rape, sexual jealousy, or personal rivalry. Research also suggests that females are predominantly the victims in homicidal strangulation because they are more likely to be the targets of sexual assaults.</div>
<div class="indent">Could this be why her body was found nude? Was she sexually assaulted? Unfortunately, we may never know for certain. According to the medical examiner’s report, it was impossible to determine if she had been raped.</div>
<div class="indent">I kept researching. I found that a high percentage of female victims in homicidal strangulation are murdered due to a quarrel in their relationship and/or due to unrehearsed violence applied by bare hands to put the victim at a physical disadvantage and render the victim incapable of resisting. In 86% of the strangulation cases the victim was found at the scene of the killing. In 22% of these cases, the victim was found outdoors. In 17% of these cases, the offender stole something from the victim. In 14% of these cases, the victim was first hit with a blunt instrument.</div>
<div class="indent">A cold chill went down my spine. Did Melissa know her killer?</div>
<div class="indent">I compared these facts to what I had learned about her gruesome murder:</div>
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<ol><li>According to the autopsy report, Melissa was hit in the head with a blunt instrument.</li>
<li>She was found strangled, outdoors, and naked—her clothing and personal belongings had been taken from her.</li>
<li>The remote location was familiar to her killer. Authorities believe he had been there before.</li>
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<div class="indent">I began to look even closer at events that had unfolded on the day Melissa disappeared. From all reports, the day started off routinely. She spent the first part of the morning with her mother, Mary Ann Witt. The honor student headed to Westark Community College next. After that, she went to lunch with a friend and then off to her job as a dental assistant.</div>
<div class="indent">Before she left that morning, Melissa had a minor disagreement with her mother. She had asked to borrow money, and Mary Ann, in an effort to teach her daughter money management, had told her no.</div>
<div class="indent">Before Mary Ann left for work that morning, she left a note for Melissa reminding her she would be bowling with her league that evening and offering to buy her a hamburger. She signed the note, “Love, Mom.”</div>
<div class="indent">At five o’clock that night, after clocking out at her dental assistant job, Melissa discovered that her 1995 Mitsubishi Mirage wouldn’t start. After a few tries, she gave up and waited with a coworker until a local businessman, later dubbed the Good Samaritan, gave her car a jump.</div>
<div class="indent">Police reports detail how Melissa’s dome light was left on by mistake, draining the car battery. Investigators tracked down the Good Samaritan and interviewed him multiple times before ultimately clearing him in the teenager’s disappearance and murder.</div>
<div class="indent">“People ask about the Good Samaritan all the time because those events leading up to Melissa’s abduction seem suspicious,” Rider said. “The Good Samaritan does seem suspicious, until you realize how many times he was questioned. He was cleared of any suspicion in Melissa’s murder.”</div>
<div class="indent">We know that, once Melissa’s car started, she went home to change out of her uniform. Those clothes were found crumpled on her bedroom floor. Mary Ann was able to determine that her daughter had then donned a white V-neck sweater and blue jeans.</div>
<div class="indent">Melissa must have seen her mom’s note, because authorities believe she headed to Bowling World, arriving between 6:30pm and 7:00pm. She parked in the northwest corner of the lot, but never made it inside. There were no cameras to record the events that unfolded in the parking lot that night. Witnesses would later tell police they heard a woman screaming, “Help me!”</div>
<div class="indent">Two decades later, as I pored over police files and news footage, my heart broke to learn that Mary Ann was haunted by the note she left for Melissa that fateful Thursday. In one interview she is quoted as saying, “I try not to think about how our lives would be different if I had not invited Melissa to Bowling World that night. There is no use thinking about it. I know she is gone. But my heart…. You know, as a mom… I sometimes wonder what if I had done something differently.”</div>
<div class="indent">At approximately 7:45pm, Melissa’s car keys were found in the parking lot and were turned in to the front desk of Bowling World. No one noticed the splatters of blood that were slowly drying on the metal keys.</div>
<div class="indent">Since Melissa never entered the bowling alley that night, her mother simply thought she had decided to go out with friends instead. Mary Ann went home expecting to see her daughter later that evening. Hours passed and Thursday slowly turned into Friday.</div>
<div class="indent">At nine o’clock on Friday morning, Mary Ann reported Melissa as a missing person. By Saturday, Melissa’s friends and family were passing out flyers, blanketing the River Valley with over 6,000 pleas for help in finding the missing teenager.</div>
<div class="indent">I lived in Northwest Arkansas at the time, and remember seeing the story of Melissa’s disappearance light up news channels. Her picture seemed to be everywhere. Curious, I reached out to my friends in the River Valley. It turns out they knew her. Their voices trembled as they shared their worst fears with me:</div>
<div class="indent">“Melissa would not just disappear like this.”</div>
<div class="indent">“Where could she be? This is not like Melissa at all.”</div>
<div class="indent">“I hope she’s okay. I am scared she’s been hurt.”</div>
<div class="indent">Christmas passed and the new year rang in but there was still no Melissa Witt.</div>
<div class="indent">For more than a month, I, like the rest of the community, sat on the edge of my seat questioning what had happened to the beautiful All American Girl. None of us expected the story to turn into what it did.</div>
<div class="indent">A quote by the late Michelle McNamara, in her book <i>I’ll be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer</i>, resonates with me. She wrote, “He loses his power when we know his face.” These words sum up the rationale behind the countless hours I’ve spent investigating the Melissa Witt case. I want to see his face.</div>
<div class="indent">For over two decades the identity of Melissa’s killer has been hidden among the dense trees and thorny undergrowth rooted deeply in the uneven ground of a remote mountaintop in the Ozark National Forest. I envision him, a shadow-like figure, dark and dreadful, his confidence anchored in the predictability of a murder case slowly growing cold.</div>
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LaDonna Humphrey
The Girl I Never Knew - Who Killed Melissa Witt by LaDonna Humphrey
$15.50
$17.95
Justice for Melissa Witt
For over two decades the identity of Melissa Witt’s killer has been hidden among the dense trees and thorny undergrowth rooted deeply in the uneven ground of a remote mountaintop in the Ozark National Forest.
Determined to find answers, LaDonna Humphrey has spent the past seven years hunting for Melissa’s killer. Her investigation, both thrilling and unpredictable, has led her on a journey like no other.
The Girl I Never Knew is an edge-of-your-seat account of LaDonna Humphrey's passionate fight for justice in the decades-old murder case of a girl she never knew. Her unstoppable quest for the truth has gained the attention of some incredibly dangerous people, some of whom would like to keep Melissa’s murder a mystery forever.
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Leya Booth
True Crime Activity Book
$9.99
$11.99
Are you entertained by Sudoku and serial killers? Crosswords and crime? Then play detective and solve these entertaining puzzles! Alongside some of your favorite brain teasers are facts about infamous true crime cases. From word searches and encrypted messages to coloring Ted Bundy in court, the True Crime Activity Book will test your puzzle-solving skills and feed your need for true crime.
In line with Genius Books' philosophy, this book honors the victims and celebrates the heroes who fight for them.
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