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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.
No One Has To Die (Paperback)
4.8from 11 readers
$19.95
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Chapter 1
Not Just Another Day…
U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gary DiMartino began his law enforcement career in a Rhode Island police department before applying for, and beginning, his calling with the USMS.
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.
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 1st Congress of the newly formed United States government.
When the 1st 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 1st 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.
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.
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.
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.
As David S. Turk, the official historian of the Marshals Service, noted in his seminal work entitled Forging the Star, “[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.”?i
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.”
It was a decisive moment in the long run-up to this point in the case of the United States v. Edward L. Brown & Elaine A. Brown. Their failure to appear was long feared by both Monier and DiMartino.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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 16th, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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, “Will Plainfield be another Waco?”
Local and state media also began covering the Ed and Elaine Brown story. The NH Union Leader, New Hampshire’s only statewide newspaper, and the Concord Monitor, published in New Hampshire’s capital and widely distributed, and the Valley News (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.
On January 12, 2007, Margot Sanger-Katz, a reporter for the Concord Monitor (a prominent New Hampshire newspaper covering the capital city region) 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.
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 Concord Monitor. “He’s standing up to the federal government.”
Ironically, Sanger-Katz’s article about the trial’s proceedings appeared on January 12th, 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.
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.
At the close of the court’s proceedings on January 11th, 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.
Both, however, failed to return to court on Friday, January 12th.
On Tuesday, the 16th 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Guard (Paperback)
5.0from 29 readers
$20.95
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Guard: A True Story of Duty, Sacrifice, and Leadership in Kentucky's Maximum Security Penitentiary
Step Behind the Bars: Experience life inside “The Castle,” Kentucky State Penitentiary, through the eyes of a seasoned prison guard.
Witness Unthinkable Events: From mass escapes and hostage crises to daily violence and racial tensions, every page delivers gripping, real-life drama.
Relive Harrowing Moments: Discover chilling details, including a highway crime spree where two officers were shot, and the struggles of managing executions.
Explore the Evolution of Justice: Learn how the penitentiary transformed from medieval punishments to modern-day practices, reflecting the changing face of the prison system.
Gain Unique Insights: Understand the toll on those tasked with managing society’s most dangerous individuals, as well as the compassion and resilience required for the job.
Perfect for True Crime and Memoir Fans: An unforgettable read for those captivated by real stories of duty, sacrifice, and leadership under extreme conditions. Dr. Norman Rose, professor of Sociology and Criminology at Kent State University, will be pairing Guard with his book, A Career in Corrections, for use with his students. When used together in a course, the books offer students the opportunity to read insightful perspectives of an instructor within the discipline and a correction officer within the field, providing them with a holistic and comprehensive understanding of work within the corrections system. https://titles.cognella.com/a-career-in-corrections-9798823310499
The Parking Lot Rapist (Paperback)
5.0from 2 readers
$17.95
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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.
3 Decades Cold (Paperback)
$16.95
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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.
True Crime in Real Time
5.0from 1 reader
$15.50
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Why All the Misdirection?
It is a cold December morning, and you roll up on the address, a house in an affluent suburb. The large custom homes in the neighborhood are decorated for the holidays. The patrol units are already there. The call is a kidnapping.
You have been partnered with Theodore “Ted” Miller for many months now and Ted has always taken the lead on your cases. Ted is short and stocky, balding on top and greying on the sides. He has always been a no-nonsense by-the-book detective and has been an effective mentor, providing you with a great deal of investigative knowledge.
You and Ted are still in the unmarked unit when Ted says, “Okay, we are going to put all that experience, education, and knowledge you have to work. I am going to test you. I am going to ask you your opinion throughout the case. I am going to assess your observation skills, your critical thinking, and your assessment of human behavior. I am going to let you take the lead on this case. You ready?”
“Yes, I am ready,” you say.
“Let’s go.” You and Ted open your doors and get out of the vehicle. Ducking under the crime scene tape, you walk up the front driveway.
You pause for a moment to look at the front yard. You both stand there and carefully observe the scene. noting that there are no foot tracks on the lawn or in the snow. The snow is sparse in some areas and does not completely cover the front lawn. Standing next to you, Ted asks what you think. You say, “Uh, if someone was traversing this area, leaving or coming into the residence, they should have made some impressions in the snow or in the wet grass.” You then inspect a window low to the ground. The window is slightly open, perhaps broken as it does not close completely, and when you look inside it appears to lead to a basement.
Ted asks your impressions. “What do you think so far about the outside of the residence?”
You say, “Erm, well, uh… I don't think anyone really came this way as there are no tracks in the snow, and even if the snow is scattered a little it doesn’t seem like anyone came in or left this way or went into or out of that window.”
Ted smiles and you proceed to the front door and walk up a couple of steps. The front door is ajar, and you carefully step inside. Just inside the front door is a small foyer, a living room is to your left with a fireplace in the corner, and the staircase leading to the upper floors is straight ahead.
You are introduced by a patrol officer to the lady of the house, the mother of the kidnapped child. Her name is Sylvie Garnier. She corrects the pronunciation, “Gar-nee-yay.”
Mrs. Garnier is, of course, very distraught and her face shows anguish. She is wearing a red, black, and grey fleece jacket and black velvet pants, an evening outfit. You ask to see the basement. She is cooperative and takes you past the stairs leading upstairs and around a corner to a set of stairs leading down to the basement.
You walk down the steps to the basement, and you ask to see the window that you inspected earlier. The woman leads you straight ahead into a room that has some toy train sets. You proceed into the next part of the room where there are storage racks along the walls, and shelves with art supplies.
She points to your right, and you see there is a piece of luggage below the open window. Sylvie mentions that the suitcase came from another area in this room where the luggage is normally stored. You move close to the window and inspect it further. The window is high on the wall towards the ceiling of the basement, and you see that it has a small portion of glass that is broken. You also see that the dust is not disturbed and there is a spiderweb that is still intact. Sylvie leaves you and goes upstairs, and you stand and survey the rest of the basement storage room.
“What do you think?” Ted asks you.
“Uh, well… there's no way, in my opinion, that anyone took a young child or would even think they could take a young child out through that window, especially by using that unstable piece of luggage. It also does not look disturbed other than being moved to that spot. My impression of that piece of luggage is that it is staging. It was put there to throw us off the track by the kidnapper. It was not used to enter or leave through the window.” You further state, “The point is not to say that the window was used by the kidnapper. It could have been. The point is everything in visual evidence says that it wasn’t.
“By the way,” you add, “I noticed that she has on makeup, and it looks like she is wearing what she wore last night to a party. And her hair is still together.”
“Interesting. That’s good. I might not have noticed that,” Ted says.
You go back upstairs and turn right into the kitchen off the main living room to find Sylvia there leaning against the kitchen counter. The first thing that strikes you is the black and white checkered floor. There is a lot of clutter on the counters of the kitchen, perhaps from recent meals. It is a small narrow kitchen with doors on either side and another door to a breakfast room.
You stand in the kitchen with Sylvie, who is looking very cooperative and expectant, as if waiting for your questions. You look over at Ted inquisitively. Ted says, “This is all yours, go ahead.”
Out of curiosity, thinking perhaps it was used in the search for her child, you ask about a flashlight sitting on a counter on the other side of the kitchen. “Uh, was that flashlight used last night or recently?”
The flashlight is large, heavy, black, and cylinder-like, like a policeman’s, typically known as a Maglite. From where you are standing it looks like an ordinary flashlight—no damage, nothing unusual about it.
Sylvie says, “I don’t really know where the flashlight came from. I believe it was given to us by a neighbor, erm, or someone. I am not sure why it is out and in the kitchen.”
You have an instinct that leads you to ask about a bowl with a spoon in it on the kitchen counter. “Is that bowl from yesterday?” you ask, initially as a matter of mere conversation, because there are a lot of various plates and dishes there.
“My son, before going to bed, often has a dish of milk and pineapples.”
“Did he have a bowl of pineapples last night?” you ask.
“No, he fell asleep on the way home last night. And we put him right into bed. Both of them fell asleep on the way home and we put them right into bed.”
You stand there in the kitchen looking at your feet for a second. Then you look at Sylvie and say, “Okay, now, where was the ransom note left?”
She guides you and Ted out of the kitchen through the door on the other side. Straight ahead, you notice what appears to be a home office. You follow her as she turns to your right and leads you down a short hall to the bottom of a spiral staircase. “This is where I found the note as I came down this morning.” These seem to be the back stairs, not the main stairs that are near the front door.
“Not the front stairs?”
“This staircase leads up to our bedroom and this is the way I come down every morning.”
“Was the ransom note found right at the bottom of these stairs?”
“Yes, right there,” she says, pointing.
You look around and see that there is a desk to your right, and to your left, there is a door that goes to a mudroom and eventually out to the garage.
You ask her, “Where did they get the writing pad and pen?” and she points out a drawer in the small desk to the right of the stairs. There are pens in a cup on the top of the desk.
You open a drawer in the desk and see some writing tablets. You take out a tablet, carefully handling the edges, thumb through it, then put it down on the desk. You do the same for the next tablet below it. You pick up the third tablet down in the drawer and stop after opening the cover. You inspect the first page, then pick up a pen and use it to turn to the second page. You inspect that page. After continuing to handle the tablet carefully, you put it down on the hall desk.
Ted sees the change in the look on your face and says, “Let’s step in there for a second,” pointing to the door that leads into the mudroom.
You walk into the mudroom so you and Ted can have a little conference. Ted asks you, “What do you think?”
As you begin answering Ted you draw a sketch of the first floor.
“I think…. First, back to the kitchen. It’s interesting about the bowl of pineapples. It was there but she said that her son did not have it the night before. And then there’s the big flashlight that she said she didn’t know how it got there in her kitchen. Also, it seems strange that the ransom note was on the back stairs. How did the kidnappers know she, or anyone, would come down those stairs to find it, and not the main staircase?”
When you retreat back to the hallway near the stairs, Sylvie is no longer there. You proceed down the hallway past the office, through the kitchen and a couple of rooms, to a police officer standing alone in a dining room.
“The note?” Ted says to the officer and looks over at you.
“Right, yes, can we see the ransom note, officer?” you say.
The officer hands you the note and you both view it together, quickly reading the long, rambling, three-page ransom note within plastic covers.
“What do you see?” Ted asks.
“Um, I think this would have taken a long time to write. It looks like a tablet was used and then placed back into the drawer underneath two others. One page shows indented writing as practice and the next page shows the indented writing of the full note. That writing looks like one of those pens on the desk, and they apparently put the pen back in the cup. The wording in the note is just weird. The requested amount is strange. Not a hundred thousand dollars but one hundred eighteen thousand dollars. Why is that?”
“What’s the deal with an ‘attaché’ and ‘exhausting delivery’?” Ted adds.
“Yeah, I don’t know. It says they will call between eight and ten this morning, so I guess we wait.”
You and Ted move over to the other door, and you can see from the dining room into the living room where the victim’s father, Jean-Claude Garnier, is there talking with another man. The officer followed you there.
“Who is with Jean-Claude?” you ask the officer. He tells you that is a friend of Jean-Claude’s, Mr. Rivers, who has come over to help. “That’s… that’s not supposed to…”
“Has anyone talked to the young boy?” you ask.
The officer responds by saying, “No. Jean-Claude prohibited it. No one wanted to go against that.”
Just then you see Jean-Claude and his friend leave the room, walking out the other door toward the stairs.
A minute later, Jean-Claude rushes back into the room carrying a bundle and places it on the living room floor. It is their daughter. The mother races into the room, along with Mrs. Rivers, Sylvie’s friend who has just arrived, as well as Mr. Rivers, and they all crowd around. You hurry over to them and observe what you can in the chaos.
You raise your voice. “Wait! Everyone move back! Do not touch anything! Don’t touch anything.”
Sylvie is kneeling down next to her daughter’s body. Sylvie’s friend, Mrs. Rivers, is trying to hold her back, but she is also kneeling, touching the child’s face with the back of her palm, and crying out.
You move in close and kneel down on the other side of the little girl. She is obviously dead, her body pale and stiff. She is wearing a long-sleeved shirt made of white sweatshirt-like material with an embroidered star on her chest. She is also wearing a pair of white long-john-type bottoms.
Her hands are out over her head with a white nylon cord lightly bound around her right wrist and flowing away from it. There is a similar cord around her neck that has a small, broken paintbrush twisted into it like it was used to tighten the cord.
“Please everyone,” you declare, “I know this is going to be difficult, but we need to preserve the evidence.” Everyone is frozen in place staring at the child on the floor. A white blanket that had been wrapped around her is now laying on the floor next to her.
“Officer,” you say, “please try to keep everyone from touching anything… get CSU on the way and make all the necessary calls.” You don’t want to seem callous by asking for the coroner in front of the family. You turn to the people there and ask, “Where was she?”
“In a room in the basement,” Mr. Rivers says.
“Show me,” you say, holding onto his elbow. “Please, everyone, don’t disturb anything while we’re gone.”
Mr. Rivers takes you and Ted back to the front entryway and down the stairs that lead to the basement. You follow Mr. Rivers down the stairs. This time, instead of going straight ahead into the train room, you walk through another door to the left that leads down a small passageway within the boiler room where there are several pipes and a water heater. It is relatively dark down here, the only light coming from a small window high on the wall above a chest freezer.
Mr. Rivers reaches up above the door, releases a latch, opens the door to a room straight ahead of you, and says, “In here.”
“Nobody checked in here before?” you ask.
“I did. Sort of. I looked in and it was very dark. This whole passage was very dark, and it is difficult to walk around down here. See,” he says, pointing, “the light switch is way over there. It is hard to find.”
You look around the room and see some racks with wine bottles. “That blanket?” you ask about a white blanket on the floor.
“She was wrapped in it.”
“And the nightclothes?” you ask, referring to a small pink nightgown lying spread out on the floor next to the blanket.
“That was just there.”
“What is that piece of black tape on the floor?”
“Oh yes, Jean-Claude pulled that off her mouth just before he picked her up.”
You move toward the back corner of the wine cellar and spot a red pocketknife on the floor. Ted’s eyes widen.
“Mr. Rivers, this pocketknife, did Jean-Claude bring that down to cut the cords?”
“No, that was already laying there.”
“Hmm,” Ted says.
“Have you seen it before?” you ask.
“I think I have seen young Bobby with it a few times.”
“Thank you. Okay, so you two just came down here and found her?”
“Yeah, it was kind of weird. Jean-Claude said, ‘I’m going to search again,’ but he came straight down here, opened the door, turned on the light, and saw her. And, ah…”
“What is it, Mr. Rivers?”
“Well, I swear he gasped before he turned on the light.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rivers.” He slips away down the passage.
“Good job,” Ted says. “You got a lot out of him. Let’s go back upstairs.”
You leave the wine cellar, go down the passage, and, stopping near the stairs, you draw a sketch of the basement.
After finishing your rough sketch you walk up the stairs to the first floor.
Jean-Claude, Mr. Rivers, Sylvie, and Mrs. Rivers are all standing in the living room. Mr. Rivers has his hand on Jean-Claude’s shoulder and Mrs. Rivers is hugging Sylvie.
You approach Sylvie and Mrs. Rivers. “I’m so sorry. May I talk to you for a bit?”
“Do you really have to?” says Mrs. Rivers.
You say, “Yes, I’m sorry, I must.”
You move past the fireplace and into the front room. Ted is standing next to you now, facing Sylvie and Mrs. Rivers.
Sylvie says, “All right.”
“Could we go over last night again, please?”
“Yes, we came home, she was asleep, and we put her to bed. I put a brand new pair of underwear and a sleep top on her, covered her up, and she went to sleep in her bed.... Then I got up this morning and found the note. And…” Sylvie puts her face into Mrs. Rivers’ shoulder.
“I’m sorry. But I have to ask,” you say, “Where was the blanket kept?”
“Oh, that was in the dryer.”
“Where is the laundry room?”
Mrs. Rivers answers for Sylvie. “The laundry room is down in the basement. To the left of the stairs.”
“The laundry room is near the craft room?”
“Yes. It is near the train room and storage area down there.”
Just then there is some noise at the front entryway. You look through the living room and see more officers arriving.
You meet them at the door. You look at Ted and then bark orders. “Alright, it looks like this is a murder. CSU, photograph everything, tag, and bag. Officers, scour this house for anything that might be evidence and protect it for CSU. Make sure the perimeter of the house is taped off. Officer Jackson, wait for the coroner and protect the evidence on the victim. Try to keep the family away. All right now. Everyone, let’s get to work.”
You look over at Ted and see him smile. “That was impressive,” he says.
***
You and Ted are sitting in your cubicle at the office, reviewing the case reports.
“The family has refused any interviews,” Ted says. “They got a lawyer as soon as we started the second search of the home.”
“Here is the 911 call. Listen.” You play the tape. “911 what is your emergency?”
“[Garbled] – Police.”
“What’s going on ma’am?”
“644 14th Street.”
“What’s going on there ma’am?”
“We have a kidnapping. Hurry please.”
“Explain to me what’s going on. Okay?”
“There. We have a… there’s a note left, and our daughter’s gone.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“She’s… she’s six years old. She’s blonde, six years old.”
“How long ago was this?”
“I don’t know; I just got the note, and my daughter’s gone.”
“Does it say who took her?”
“No, I don’t know. There’s a… there’s a ransom note here. It says SBTC Victory.”
“Do you know how long she’s been gone?”
“No, I don’t. Please, we just got up and she’s not here. Oh my god. Please.”
You stop the tape and add, “Dispatcher says she thought she heard voices, a young person’s voice, at the end there but couldn’t make out what was said. It is hard to tell anything.”
“Ah, the ‘ransom’ note. Quite bizarre if you ask me,” Ted says.
You have it in front of you and say, “It reads:
Mr. Garnier, Listen carefully! We are a group of individuals that represent (spelled wrong) a small foreign faction. We respect your business (misspelled) but not the country that it serves. At this time, we have your daughter in our possession (misspelled). She is safe and unharmed; if you want to see her again, you must follow our instructions to the letter.
You will withdraw $118,000. Make sure you bring an adequate size attache to the bank. I will call you between 8 and 10 am tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be rested. If we monitor you getting the money early, we might call you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence an earlier pickup of your daughter.
Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denier her remains for burial. The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you, so I advise you not to provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as Police, F.B. I. , etc., will result in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you alert bank authorities, she dies. If the money is marked or tampered with, she dies. You will be scanned for electronic devices and if any are found, she dies. You can try to deceive us but be warned we are familiar with Law enforcement countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back. You and your family are under constant scrutiny (again misspelled) as well as the authorities. Don't try to grow a brain Jean-Claude. Don't underestimate us, Jean-Claude. Use that good, southern common sense of yours. It's up to you now Jean-Claude! Victory! S.B.T.C.
“There are just so many things that are weird about this note,” you state, then continue, “First, it seems like it was written by someone that lived through the time of Patty Hearst and the SLA, the Chicago Seven, and all that. Like what is SBTC?”
“And what is ‘respects the victim’s business’ and ‘get some sleep’? Or ‘be rested’? What kidnapper says that? It is the middle of the night. They would already be asleep.” Ted sighs.
“It also seems like the misspellings are easy words but then they correctly spelled words like ‘adequate,’ ‘attaché,” and ‘hence.’ Hence!” you say, laughing.
“And,” you continue, “the talking to a stray dog, she dies, alert the bank, she dies. Along with don’t grow a brain. Doesn’t that sound like it is straight from the movies?”
“Yeah, it does. And the note implies ‘they’ are a group by saying ‘we’ but then the writer forgets the ruse and writes an ‘I’ and ‘my.’”
Then Ted adds, “The $118,000 is strange. Not one million, not 100,000. I checked and the $118,000 is exactly Jean-Claude’s recent bonus.”
Turning the pages, you say, “The whole ransom note is three pages. I checked with a friend at the FBI, and they think this is the longest ransom note on a kidnapping case in history.”
“What does Documents say?” Ted asks.
“Ah, yes. Documents. They say the note would take about 20 minutes to write. But they also say, unfortunately, that the broad fiber-tip pen distorts the minute details. And that they can eliminate everyone else in this case but not Mrs. Garnier.”
“Yeah,” Ted says, “but can you imagine the pressure a document guy would be under to ID someone in this type of case? I know I wouldn’t want to do it. He is wise to just report that it is very similar, and they can’t eliminate her.”
“Here is the postmortem report,” you say. “It’s nine pages long.” Flipping through the various pages, you continue, “A lot of doctor speak, but it comes down to strangulation as the cause of death. There was that ‘garrote’ around her neck. There is a large hemorrhage on the scalp, a blow that caused a brain injury to the head that most likely occurred before strangulation or death.
Ted says, “Here on page seven, it says, ‘small intestine contains fragmented pieces of fruit material which may represent fragments of pineapple.’
“There is one strange line on page nine that I am not sure what it means,” you say. “It says, ‘focal interstitial chronic inflammation.’”
“Looking at the evidence reports,” Ted says, doodling on them with a pencil, “I see that they found the other part to the broken paintbrush used for the garrote in a plastic craft tote box near the wine cellar.
“And they found some fibers similar to Sylvie’s clothes on the tape that was supposedly over her mouth. It says the fibers on the tape are consistent with her fleece jacket.”
“I also see here in the report that upon examining the tape, they got the impression that it was put on the victim after death. They are not sure, but it looks like it.” You say, “I’ve got a report here. I don’t know how much credence to put into these neighbor interviews, but one neighbor remembers seeing lights on during the night and a light off in the front room that is usually on all night.”
“Another neighbor remembers hearing a scream at about two a.m.”
“You know,” Ted says, “according to dispatch, only four minutes elapsed from the 911 call to police arrival, and yet the parents were both dressed.”
You add, “Yeah, they were fully dressed in what looks like something they wore the night before, at that. Why lie about getting dressed in the morning?”
Ted adds, “Then there is the blanket that was in the dryer. Who knew where that was? And wrapped around her just like a mother would do.”
You respond, “And why lie about the pineapple thing? Why lie about what she was wearing when she went to bed?”
“The staging here is quite weird. It is like staging within staging,” Ted says.
“Listen,” you continue, “if you are in the middle of a kidnapping, you don’t write a three-page 20-minute ransom note while you are in the house. You don’t leave the note by the back stairs. You don’t kill the victim in the house. And you don’t fake or stage an elaborate kidnapping to disguise a murder.”
“That’s the way I see it,” Ted agrees. “If you accept that there has been a lot of staging, staging always means misdirection, and you have to accept there has been lying, like lying about putting her right to bed. Lying is always done by the guilty, so it must be someone in the family who committed the murder. No intruder would stage the suitcase, the garotte, the tape, the long ransom note, et cetera.”
“That’s right. It’s not only staging, but also evidence fabrication. It is unlikely the craft-made garotte is what caused the strangulation. It was fabricated to account for it. The note, the tape, the luggage, the cord—all fabricated.”
After a long pause, Ted says, “Well, we have hashed out the evidence. Overall, what do you think?”
“Here is what I think,” you say. “This is speculation, but I think the children didn’t go right to bed and were not asleep when they got home. Bobby was given some pineapple and milk. For some reason, the little girl took the bowl from him and ate some of his pineapple. He got angry and hit her, perhaps with the flashlight, or maybe she was pushed against the sink. She didn’t die right then but maybe went into convulsions caused by the brain injury. In order to get her to be quiet and stop squirming, he strangled her, and she died. He probably did not intend to go that far. Then the parents came in and saw the situation. Like I say, speculation.”
“But to blame it on an intruder they used the rest of the night to create this ruse. They were in a state of panic knowing that they had just lost their daughter and did not want to also lose their son. They put the suitcase under the window, made the garotte from Sylvie’s craft supplies to account for the strangulation, placed her in that semi-hidden wine cellar, and lightly tied her hands. They got the blanket out of the dryer, and for some reason placed a nightgown next to her. Then they sat down and used the notepad and pen at the desk to write the long ransom note. Including the exact amount of the bonus.
“Then, after everything was prepared, things were put back in their places like the pad and pen, except they forgot about Bobby’s Swiss Army knife and the flashlight. After perhaps even disposing of a couple of items like the tape and the cord, Sylvie called 911. Because they never undressed, they were fully dressed when the first officer arrived four minutes later.
“They would not let anyone talk to Bobby, for good reason. When no one found the victim after a few hours, Jean-Claude couldn’t stand it any longer. So, he went down into the basement and brought the victim upstairs.”
“I’ve got one for you,” Ted says. “What about the DNA they found on the underwear?”
“Sylvie said it was a brand-new package. It’s not in fluid so it is most likely touch DNA. I’m betting it would match a packager in a factory somewhere. If they never get into the system, we may never know whose DNA it is.”
“Yeah, but it’s DNA. People are going to pay a lot of attention to that,” Ted reminds you.
“I get it,” you say. “You got to look at this from a total perspective. If we have a case where you have a murder, a gun is at the scene, a bullet matches the gun, a casing matches the gun, a suspect owns that gun, he is seen that day with the gun, the suspect hated the dead guy. So, all the evidence we have points to that guy. And let’s say they discover foreign DNA on the gun, Should you throw out all your evidence and not prosecute the guy because of the foreign DNA? No. Here, once you recognize the staging and all the things meant to misdirect us actually came from right there in the house—the flashlight, the garrote, the blanket, the note, the pens and pads, even the luggage are all from within. Nothing really points to the outside. Except the DNA.”
“You can’t let one thing overrule everything else.”
“Right you are. But I know this is going to be hard for the DA to come to grips with,” you say. “We’ve got this prominent family who just lost their daughter, and perhaps their son committed the crime. To what end will charging the young boy accomplish? He’s a minor, so we know how that goes. If you charge the parents for their part, that would look really bad politically because they just lost their daughter. To what end would that bring justice for the murder?”
“I sure wouldn’t want to be in the DA’s shoes,” Ted adds with a finality.
“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.
The Making of Billy The Liquor Guy
5.0from 4 readers
$17.95
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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.
Connected by Fate (Paperback)
4.8from 4 readers
$19.95
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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.
Dead End: Inside the Hunt for the I-70 Serial Killer (Paperback)
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CHAPTER 1
“And then I started wondering, was Robin really the first? Could there have been others before her?”
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.
“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.”
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.
***
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
“Why here, do you think?” I voiced to the detectives. “He could have stopped anywhere. Why do you think he stopped here?”
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.
“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.”
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.”
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.
“Was the gas station there in 1992?” I asked Spurgeon.
He nodded yes.
“That does not make any sense,” I said. “You would have to be a fool to kill somebody with this many potential witnesses around.”
Ricks and fellow detective David Ellison both laughed.
Spurgeon nodded again. “Welcome to the world of the I-70 serial killer where nothing makes any sense.”
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.
“Twenty seconds,” I hollered at them. “No way somebody is killing somebody with all of these people just 20 seconds away.”
I looked at Spurgeon again. He nodded and I shook my head. “No way,” I muttered to myself.
I kept walking between the gas station and shoe store, and then returned to the detectives.
“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?”
“Pretty much,” said Ellison. “Pretty much.”
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.
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.
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.
“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.
The Payless store had little in the way of store security. Just a bell that would ring when a new customer arrived.
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.
Before arriving in Indianapolis, I began the task of searching for Lucretia Gullet.
“Is this Lucretia Gullet?” I asked the woman on the other end of the phone.
“It is,” she said.
“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.”
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?”
I told Gullett her Payless killer went on to kill numerous other women across the country.
“What?!” she screamed into the phone.
And I realized she was unaware. “Do you still live around Indy?” I asked her.
“I do,” she said.
“I am coming to town,” I told her. “Would you meet with me?”
“I will,” she said. “And did you say serial killer?” Apparently, she was still coming to grips with this.
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.
“I am looking for Bob,” she said.
“Hi Lucretia,” I said, and we shook hands.
We began walking around the area. “This brings back a lot of memories,” she said.
“Have you been back here since…?” I asked.
“No,” she said as she looked around. “Thirty years is a long time. I just avoided coming around here.”
I asked Gullett to take me back to that day, as best she could.
“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.”
Gullett and I made the 20 second walk from one store to the other. “What happened when you walked in?” I asked.
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.”
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.
“One officer looked down to the right,” Gullett said, “and I could tell he was shocked at what he saw.”
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.
“You did not follow the case over the years as it exploded?” I asked.
“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!”
Brought back to the scene, and meeting new detectives for the first time. Gullett is now spending time detailing the case to police again.
“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.”
***
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
I looked at Ricks and laughed. “How stupid,” I said.
“Not as easy as it seems on TV,” Ricks laughed again.
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?
“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.”
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.
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.
“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.
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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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?’”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.
Things Aren't Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five
5.0from 5 readers
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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.
Murder in a Sundown Town (Paperback)
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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.
The Crater Lake Murders (Paperback)
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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, 1,000 interviews, and 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 firsthand 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.
Prescription For Evil (Paperback)
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"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.
Kill Your Characters: Crime Scene Tips for Writers (Paperback)
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"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.
12/26/75 (Paperback)
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CHAPTER ONE
“We’ll catch the guy”
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 any case—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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On October 21, 1975, The Visalia Times-Delta published an update story on the Snelling homicide:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 travelled 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.
The EAR/ONS crimes were profiled on the A&E show “Cold Case Files” 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, 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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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… at least twelve homicides could have been prevented.
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.
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.”
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 The Sacramento Bee 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.
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.
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 onramp 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 extremely 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.
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, that’s 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.
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.
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 directly back to Visalia and the VR.
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.
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 The Sacramento Union 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.”
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.
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 not 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.
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.
I asked John how he had eliminated Clifton as the VR, and he just laughed. Clifton was 6´2˝ and 150 pounds dripping wet—”he was a beanpole.” 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.
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.
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.
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.
We also agreed that we should be looking for VR suspects in Exeter. 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.
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 Exeter Sun 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.
Chapter One Sources
1. VPD Reports 1974-1977
2. VPD Report - Gomes September 11, 1975
3. VPD Reports - Shipley & Arnold September 15, 1975
4. Visalia Times-Delta - October 21, 1975
5. VPD Report - Shipley October 24, 1975
6. VPD Report - Vaughan October 28, 1975
7. VPD Report - McGowen October 2, 1975
8. VPD Report - McGowen December 19, 1975
9. VPD Report - Hartman December 13, 1975
10. VPD Report - Vaughan December 17, 1975
11. VPD Report - Vaughan November 20, 1975
12. Visalia Times-Delta - May 18, 1977
13. Sacramento Bee - April 5, 2001
14. Visalia Times-Delta - November 26, 1974
15. Visalia Times-Delta - December 2, 1974
16. VPD Report - Vaughan October 8, 1975
17. Sacramento Bee - March 20, 1977
18. SSD EAR Report - April 2, 1977
19. Sacramento Bee - April 5, 1977
20. SSD EAR Report - May 17, 1977
21. TCSO Report - Johnson December 26, 1975
22. Sacramento Union - July 22, 1978
23. SSD EAR Reports - October 9 & 18, 1976
24. VPD Report - Vaughan September 25, 1975
25. VPD Report - McGowen September 28, 1975
26. TCSO Report - M. Richmond December 28, 1975
27. Mt. Whitney Yearbook 1975
28. Photo of ski mask at Neel Ranch
“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.
A true crime investigation driven by advocacy, restraint, and an unwavering refusal to let a young woman be reduced to a headline.
The Girl I Never Knew (Paperback)
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Chapter One
THE DISCOVERY
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On January 13, 1995 at 9:40am, two animal trappers, about 15 miles north of Ozark, stumbled upon what they believed could be a mannequin lying face down in the woods about 30 feet off of the main road. The two men, avid outdoorsmen, had walked this very path the day before. There had been nothing there.
As they approached the strange mannequin 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.
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.
Over 20 years later, as I sat 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.
“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.”
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.
“Sheriff Ross told me on that call that he thought he had found the body of Melissa Witt. And knowing him like 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.”
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 the rain came down in heavy thuds, hard and fast, soaking my clothes as I ran. Another memory of me complaining to my coworkers about the miserable weather conditions on that day also replayed in my mind: “Why did what started as a beautiful day drastically turn out to be so tragic?” My words unknowingly foreshadowed events that would haunt me almost two decades later.
As 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 explain my passion for finding justice for a girl I never knew.
“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.” Rider’s tough demeanor fueled my anxiety.
“Tell me about January 13, 1995. The day you found Melissa Witt’s body.”
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.”
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.
“Can you tell me more about the location?” I asked.
“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.”
“What else do you remember about that day?” I asked.
“I will never forget that day,” Rider explained. “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 shirt or something to change into so I could stay warm.”
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.
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.
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.
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. A—n area so isolated that if you had never been there before, it would be almost impossible to find. 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.
According to police records, Melissa’s decomposing body had visible marks where someone, presumably the killer, had grabbed hold of her in order to move her closer to the road.
“It would have been a gruesome task,” Jay C. Rider explained. “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.”
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 voice message recording, a lady called and with a thick Southern accent could be heard saying, “Go ahead and tell them what you found.” There also 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 identity remains a mystery.
Now, decades after this heinous crime, as I sat with retired investigators decades after this heinous crime, they described additional clues found near Melissa’s body, such as cigarette butts and papers. What was even more puzzling were the items that were missing from the crime scene: Her clothing, purse, wallet, remaining gold hoop earring, and her beloved Mickey Mouse Watch. (Gold hoop earrings and Mickey Mouse watches were very common for teenagers in the ‘90s. I certainly had them, too.) Both retired Detectives Boyd and Rider seem to think that the killer kept Melissa’s watch for a very specific reason.
“A sociopath maybe wanted to keep it as a memento to represent the relationship they once had with Melissa,” explains Rider, “As a trophy of some sort.”
The discovery of Melissa’s body fueled an obsession in Rider to find justice for her at all costs.
I quickly began to recount the facts of the case for myself: Melissa was found nude near a headstone-like rock. She had been strangled and her clothes, shoes, and Mickey Mouse watch and jewelry were removed and have never been located.
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 have a family or 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.
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.
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% percent of these cases, the victim was found outdoors. In 17% of these cases, the offender stole something from the victim. In 14% of all of these cases, the victim was first hit with a blunt instrument.
A cold chill went down my spine. Did Melissa know her killer?
I compared these facts to what I had learned about the gruesome murder:
1) According to the autopsy report, Melissa was hit in the head with a blunt instrument.
2) She was found strangled, outdoors, and she was naked—her clothing and personal belongings had been taken from her.
3) The remote location was familiar to her killer. Authorities believe he had been there before.
I began to look even closer at 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 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.
However, 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. Melissa and her mother were especially close. They shared the same beautiful smile, kind heart, and innocent outlook on life.
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, “Love, Mom”
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 co-worker until a local businessman, later dubbed the Good Samaritan, gave her car a jump.
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.
“People ask about the Good Samaritan all the time because those events leading up to Melissa’s abduction seem suspicious,” Rider explained. “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.”
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.
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 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, “Help me!”
Two decades later, as I poured 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.”
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.
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.
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.
I lived in Northwest Arkansas 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:
“Melissa would not just disappear like this.”
“Where could she be? This is not like Melissa at all.”
“I hope she’s okay. I am scared she’s been hurt.”
Christmas passed and the new year rang in but there was still no Melissa Witt.
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 out the way it did.
A quote by the late Michelle McNamara, in her book I’ll be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, 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.
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 mountain top 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.
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.
True Crime Activity Book
5.0from 2 readers
$9.99
$11.99
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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.
Simple, Safe & Secret (Paperback)
5.0from 1 reader
$17.95
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Chapter One
“Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate”
The audience rose to their feet with thunderous applause as the ensemble reached the crescendo at the end of Act I. Joan tapped her gray shoes still humming “Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate.” She loved the theater and the exhilaration of New York City. The empty seat next to her in the heaving playhouse was the only blight on her otherwise perfect evening of Friday, November 27, 1981.
As the curtain rose for the second act of The Pirates of Penzance. Joan settled back into her seat next to her parents and her sister, Anne. Their older brother, Steve, was half a country away, living in Illinois with his pregnant wife, Eve. Joan smiled, not daring to show her disappointment. Family logistics nixed the planned visit of her friend over the Thanksgiving break. The Websters organized their calendars down to the smallest detail. The shift in the schedule was out of character, but the adjustment set the stage for the dramatic chain of events about to unfold.
Joan’s father George nodded to the songs of Gilbert and Sullivan as the actors belted out uncanny premonitions in Act II. The comedic constables on the stage voiced a logical notion. When criminals were not engaged in their enterprise, they did normal things anyone might do. The players’ lyrics warned of impending despair, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. Joan’s mother Eleanor thumbed the pages of her Playbill. Subliminal messages, delivered in an entertaining performance, reassured her everything was prepared. A swashbuckling troupe challenged the young actor on stage with a paradox when he left the fold. The verses held more meaning than Joan could have foreseen. The librettos projected a dismal fate for the lamb straying from the flock and the contradictions of her guardian.
When the curtain came down on the musical comedy, George, Eleanor, Anne, and Joan walked out of the Minskoff Theatre on W. 45th Street in New York City’s theater district. George played the soundtrack cassette in the car as he drove to a favorite watering hole for a nightcap. Cosmos knew George by name and gladly entertained his requests on the piano. Joan’s father gulped down his Scotch and placed a folded bill in Cosmos’ gratuity snifter. The patriarch subtly signaled to his brood; it was time to leave. Docilely, his entourage took their positions in the blue Buick station wagon. George turned into the Lincoln Tunnel headed for home turf in New Jersey.
The family entered the house through the garage door by the pantry. The girls headed upstairs for the night, and Eleanor settled in the den to watch the late news. George opened the liquor cabinet and poured another two fingers of Scotch. He carried the bottle to the den and placed it on the mirrored table beside him. His body gradually slid to an uncomfortable, half-reclined posture on the loveseat: his head tilted back, bobbing unsupported, and his spectacles askew. The guttural tone of George’s voice resonated as he mumbled and snored in a semi-conscious stupor. The pattern was familiar. Eventually, Eleanor nudged and coaxed her husband to bed.
The girls were already in place at the small kitchen table the next morning. George walked through the front hall and tapped the turtle’s tail announcing his presence. The turtle was a whimsical dinner bell, a symbol of the privilege of George’s upbringing. Eleanor busied herself dutifully in the kitchen. She moved to the table with George’s first course and a hot cup of coffee. As she sashayed through the kitchen, the itinerary tacked on the refrigerator rustled and reminded George to coordinate the day with his fledglings. His upcoming trip was uncharacteristic. As a senior executive with International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) in Nutley, New Jersey, George would normally delegate rather than interrupt his holiday. The impending agenda demanded his personal attention. None but the person in charge could know the full purpose of his mission.
George went to the cupboard to add some libation to his second course. The Bloody Mary began the daily ritual of numbing his senses. He pushed up his wire-rimmed glasses to peruse the news of the day in the paper. Only an occasional grunt suggested a story caught his attention. He pushed away from the table and headed back upstairs while Eleanor played the scullery maid, clearing the dishes. Dark, sullen eyes stared back at George from the bathroom mirror. He ran his fingers through his thick, wavy mane before splashing on the hair tonic to slick back the curves.
Joan retreated to her room to pack her belongings. She folded the essentials she had brought home for the long weekend and tucked them neatly in her Lark suitcase. She tossed a single green sock in her bag hoping its partner was back at the dorm. She carefully wrapped the folded clothes around a stack of photographs, memories from the family’s summer vacation in Nantucket. When Joan opened her bedroom door, she heard the door across the hall shut tightly. Her bedroom sat across the hallway from George’s upstairs small study. She could hear her father’s low guttural tones talking on his private line as she pulled bed linens out of the closet to take back to school. That second line into the house sat on George’s desk and was off limits. It was the rule of the house not to disturb George in his office.
The baby of the family, with two older siblings, Joan was a 25-year-old student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before returning to school, she lived in Manhattan for two years, working for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The independent student had even traveled alone through Europe. During her time in New York City, the petite young woman was the victim of a street crime when an assailant snatched her purse. She learned to be aware of her surroundings. As the dorm proctor at Perkins Hall, she passed along safety tips to the coeds she mentored. In her second year of graduate school, she was an excellent, award-winning student with a promising future.
On the Monday before the Thanksgiving break, Joan had presented an 11-week auditorium project to rave reviews before riding to New Jersey with her sister. It was disappointing her friend couldn’t come to visit as planned, but George’s trip over the weekend took precedence for the family. Rather than wait to ride back to Boston with Anne on Sunday, George made arrangements and scheduled a flight for Joan on Saturday night.
Eleanor announced that lunch was ready. George made his way back to the kitchen table, poured a glass of beef broth, and diluted the consommé with a shot of vodka. He confirmed that everyone knew the drill. The foursome would grab an early bite at the club before making the rounds and then drive Joan to Newark Airport. Everything was planned down to the minutest detail as if they had synchronized watches.
Joan collected a few last-minute items and stuck them in her leather carry-on tote bag. She added a few vinyl records from the musicals she enjoyed on Broadway, the Playbill from the night before, rolled up sketches and architectural pamphlets, and her pair of gray shoes.
The upper-middle-class family fit a finely tuned image. In public, the Websters embodied all the social graces to be on every guest list. Their credentials boasted all of the best schools and social connections. The charismatic men in the Webster family were engaging pied pipers. George and his son Steve often played the piano and entertained listeners with humorous tales. Irish wit and charm centered them in any gathering, and they relished the adulation. To the outside observer, they were a perfect family in complete harmony. Any hint of discord evaporated when the Websters opened the door from their inner sanctum.
Glen Ridge, New Jersey was a small hamlet near Manhattan. Families were close knit, and the children all grew up together. Vacations and holidays became community affairs. The Websters’ Georgian home was tastefully decorated, but a bit out of date. However, any connoisseur noticed the expensive paintings on the wall and the gold and silver trophies of prestigious regattas and thoroughbred victories at the track. A very large, round diamond on Eleanor’s finger fractured the light into a rainbow of color, brightening her otherwise bland attire. Wealth and status were an important part of the image but carefully displayed without being garish. George and his offspring all wore gold signet rings as if the circles identified exclusive membership in the clan.
George was the first to come down the curved staircase prepared for his upcoming trip. He double-checked his travel itinerary taped to the refrigerator. After loading the wagon, he headed straight back to the house to pour a distilled beverage over the cubes in his glass. He tapped his fingers to the beat of Gilbert and Sullivan tunes as he waited for his entourage to assemble. A sport coat, flannel trousers, and a Brooks Brothers tie completed the uniform George always wore to neighborhood fetes. The standard garb was a multipurpose wardrobe suitable for the theater, parties, or travel. Any acquaintance could anticipate the patriarch’s attire with certainty. George and Eleanor had developed their predictable patterns when they met working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1950s. Attention to detail, subdued outward behavior and dress to avoid drawing unwanted attention, planning to the point of obsession, contingencies, and secrecy were all part of the intelligence mindset. The ladies were ready to go. George slipped on his dark overcoat and loaded Joan’s suitcase and tote bag into the back end of the wagon.
“Fundador,” George announced with a single clap and then rubbed his hands. The buzzword was a call to attention.
Two family friends hosted small holiday gatherings that Saturday evening. The Joys and the Wittpenns warmly welcomed the Websters into their homes. By the time he hung his coat, the bartender had George’s beverage ready and handed him the tumbler. The scene repeated itself when the family moved on to the next party. These social gatherings were regular affairs, a chance to catch up with everyone before going off in their own directions. The younger generation clustered and exchanged their latest endeavors. Joan’s friends fully expected to hear good reports about her accomplishments at Harvard; things were going very well at school. Joan was upbeat and her normal, bubbly self. Her giggle was infectious, and her smile lit up the room. Anne was the quieter of the two sisters, but Joan’s enthusiasm buoyed them both. Joan held a warm cup of grog, a traditional holiday punch served by the Wittpenns.
Eleanor was in another gaggle of guests boasting about her offspring and dropping names to amplify the importance of her children’s successes. She was insecure. She had very humble beginnings; she was conceived out of wedlock. Her parents married, but the calendar was too short to disguise her inception. In her generation, the branding of illegitimate unfairly inflicted shame on a child, which Eleanor carried deeply within her soul. Her parents divorced when she was a young girl. The estrangement from her birth father lasted for the rest of her life. Her mother remarried, and the new husband adopted 14-year-old Eleanor and her younger sister as his own.
After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1948, Eleanor married Thomas Hardaway, a West Point Lieutenant. Thomas called his wife Terry, a nickname Eleanor embraced to distance herself from her shame. Her happiness didn’t last long. Thomas was killed in Korea in 1950. Loss became part of Eleanor’s existence. Soon after Thomas died, John Selsam, her stepfather, passed away.
Eleanor moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the CIA. She met George in the agency, a charismatic man raised in the circles Eleanor envied. He had attended Taft Boarding School, Yale, and had a brief stint at Harvard before joining the Merchant Marines during the war. George’s father was a wealthy, prominent businessman who raced thoroughbreds and wintered with the elite in Palm Beach, Florida. The young widow grasped her brass ring tightly. George and Eleanor married on May 16, 1952. Two lives, poles apart, merged into one and formed their foundation on intelligence training. Doors finally opened for Eleanor; she guarded her station.
George swallowed one final gulp of his cocktail and announced the family’s departure. He slipped on his coat and kept his flock on schedule. In the car, George strangely broke with his normal routine. It was customary for George to make airport runs himself, solo, but this journey was different. Their house was only minutes away, an easy stop to drop off Eleanor and Anne before driving Joan to Newark Airport. After all, Anne had a long drive back to Boston the next day. Instead, Eleanor and Anne rode along to bid farewell to Joan. On the cold November night, the heater fan circulated a strong whiff of alcohol through the car, but George didn’t relinquish the wheel. Eleanor didn’t drive after dark, but Anne could have obliged if that was the reason to bring them along. The Websters never did anything without planning or purpose. The most logical explanation for Eleanor and Anne to ride along to the airport was for the drive home if George was not in the car.
George tapped his fingers on the wheel replaying the performance the family had enjoyed last night. He pulled up to the curb for departures at the Eastern Airlines Terminal still humming “Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate.” He unloaded Joan’s bags, placed them on the curb, handed her money for a cab, and kissed her on the forehead. Joan turned to her family with a broad smile and waved goodbye before clutching her assorted belongings. Unsuspecting, she turned and walked toward the gate.
In a dark mind, the task at hand was simple.
Imagine a chilly April morning in 1990. A woman walking her dog suddenly stops in her tracks, shocked and disturbed. What made her pause? A human skull blocking a drainage tile. It turns out to be the remains of Joan Webster, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate student who had been missing over eight years ago, leaving the community baffled and investigators puzzled.
The prosecutors had a suspect, Leonard Paradiso, who had been tried and convicted for another local woman's murder. The only connection between these tangled cases was that both victims had long, dark hair. Assistant District Attorney Tim Burke was determined to prove Paradiso guilty of both murders. However, with limited evidence and constantly changing stories, the circumstances surrounding Joan Webster's death remain a mystery to this day.
But there's hope. Joan's sister-in-law, Eve Carson, has relentlessly pursued her quest for justice. "Simple, Safe & Secret" reveals the disturbing details and flaws in the system that have hindered justice in solving Joan Webster's murder. The truth about the bungled investigation and the wrongful conviction may be even darker than the story of Joan's murder itself. If you're a fan of crime thriller books and crime mystery books, this is a story that will grip you from start to finish.
A Question Mark (Paperback)
4.8from 5 readers
$19.99
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“A Question Mark” tells the story of the alleged suicide of Elliot Smith, and dives into the circumstances of the case to reveal the truth.
Back in the early 2000s, Elliott Smith was a rising star in the Indie music scene. He was a talented musician, but he carried a heavy burden—a drug addiction and a bleak view of life. His music expressed both his pain and his hopes. Then, in 2003, tragedy struck. Elliott Smith was found dead, and it looked like suicide. The media and his fans were quick to accept this explanation.
However, as more details emerged, things got murkier. His girlfriend claimed they had a heated argument, and while she was locked in the bathroom, Elliott allegedly stabbed himself twice in the chest, ending his life. Hours later, he passed away in the hospital from his injuries. The Los Angeles County Coroner, after examining the evidence, couldn't definitively say it was suicide. Fast forward eighteen years, and the case is still unresolved.
Alyson Camus, a dedicated Elliott Smith fan, couldn't let it rest. She wanted to uncover the truth. "A Question Mark" chronicles her relentless investigation into the alleged suicide of this Oscar-nominated singer. What she discovered reveals that the truth about his death might be an even bigger mystery than anyone could have imagined. This is a story that will keep you guessing until the very end.
Mysteries in the Music
5.0from 4 readers
$19.99
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"Mysteries in Music: Case Closed" is a book that uncovers the hidden, strange, and fascinating stories in the history of rock and roll. Jim Berkenstadt, known as The Rock And Roll Detective®, has spent years digging into these mysteries.
You'll travel back to the 1950s to find out who really discovered Elvis Presley. In the 1960s, a famous folk musician tried to create a supergroup with members from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones—what happened? Learn how some big-name artists used fake names to hide who they were. Explore a mysterious CIA situation in Jamaica in 1976, involving an election and the reggae legend Bob Marley. Did The Beach Boys really steal a song and its copyright from the infamous cult leader Charles Manson, keeping all the money? And dive into the secrets behind Nirvana's "Nevermind" album, which many consider the most influential rock album of the 1990s.
These mysteries have fascinated rock and roll fans for a long time because no one has asked the right questions or looked deeply into the evidence—until now. After many years, the untold stories of pop and rock music history are finally uncovered, revealing the truth in "Mysteries in Music: Case Closed."
See the review of Mysteries in the Music on CultureSonar.
