cold case – CrimeFeed

HOLLYWOOD, CA — On September 13, 1943, David Gaspar Bacon, a handsome and wealthy playboy who found fame playing “The Masked Marvel” in the movies, was the victim of a fatal stabbing.

Bacon’s murder mystery — which is still unsolved — and the cryptic clues left behind would prove to be as bizarre as any of the twists he filmed onscreen.

On the day he died, a witness saw Bacon’s car weaving erratically near Washington Boulevard before crashing into a bean field, and a second spectator ran to help Bacon. The actor climbed out of his car wearing only swim shorts and staggered a few feet before collapsing in a pool of his own blood.

An investigation later determined that Bacon had been killed by a single knife wound to the back. A wallet and camera were found in his car, and when the film from the camera was developed, it was found to contain only one image of Bacon — nude and smiling on a beach. Police theorized that the photograph had been taken shortly before his death by his killer.

Police found blood smears and fingerprints in the car — which, according to reports, all belonged to Bacon. Another clue was a crew-neck sweater with several blond hairs, which was found in the car and placed by a witness under Bacon’s head as he lay dying. Since the sweater was too small to fit Bacon. police believed that it could have belonged to the killer.

According to the autopsy surgeon, the blade was around six inches long — and Bacon could have lived for 20 minutes after being stabbed. It was never clear whether Bacon was stabbed inside or outside the car, and the murder weapon was never found.

Investigators searched for clues, but have never determined exactly what happened inside that car or if Bacon knew his attacker — or if, as some experts believe, he may have been forced to drive his killer, or killers, around as he bled to death.

Bacon was born on March 24, 1914, in Barnstable, Massachusetts. He came from a background of wealth and privilege. He had been educated at Deerfield Acadamy, Groton, and Harvard; his father served as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts; and his grandfather had been Secretary of State for Theodore Roosevelt and Ambassador to France for President Taft.

While summering on Cape Cod, a young Bacon met James Stewart and Henry Fonda, who he later lived with while he struggled to establish himself.

After working as a commercial flyer and drifting for several years, Bacon moved to New York. During his time there he was supported by a wealthy British patron, which led to speculation that he was a gigolo.

Bacon later moved to Los Angeles, where he met and married Austrian opera singer Gretta Kellner in 1942. The couple lived in the Hollywood Hills, and in 1943, Gretta became pregnant with their first child.

But their perfect Hollywood marriage was a sham: In her later years, Kellner revealed that Bacon was homosexual and that she was a lesbian, and that their marriage had allowed both of them to maintain a facade of a “normal” couple so that they could continue to work in Hollywood.

Bacon’s height and striking green eyes soon landed him a screen test with Metro, and in 1942 his first movie, Ten Gentlemen from Westpoint, was released. This was followed by Crash Dive, Gals Incorporated, and The Masked Marvel — the 12 chapter serial for which he is best remembered.

Bacon played the Marvel, a hero dressed in a business suit and a face mask, who fights his Japanese archenemy Sakima. Since Bacon was wearing a mask, the audience did not know who played the hero until the ending.

On the day he was killed, Bacon had reportedly been planning to go to the Santa Monica beach house of their friend Geraldine Spreckles to take a dip.

At first, LAPD detectives believed Bacon could have been killed by a hitchhiker or stranger, but soon found evidence that pointed in another direction. They found out that Bacon had recently rented a cottage in Laurel Canyon, and, in his wallet, they found a key for that cottage.

The owner of the cottage told police that had met Bacon at the cottage in the company of an unidentified man less than 48 hours before his death. He described the man as about 35 years old, five foot eight inches, weighing 140 pounds, and “evidently an Austrian” — and said it seemed that he and Bacon had been arguing.

Gretta revealed that Bacon kept a secret diary written in code. Police searched for it, but it was never found. His attorney also claimed that Bacon had had a premonition that he would die, and left behind a hand-written will only three months before his murder.

Another witness came forward who claimed to have seen a man and woman riding with with Bacon on the day he died, while a man who had been at a service station about a half-mile west of the crash told police that he had seen two people — a man and woman — in the car with Bacon.

newspaper clipping from the Los Angeles Examiner

On September 20, the case took another strange turn when the Los Angeles Examiner was contacted by Blakely A. Patterson, an actor who said he had met Bacon while swimming at Santa Monica Beach and had dinner with him a couple of times. On the day of his death, Patterson claimed that Bacon had told him the man they ate with was blackmailing him for an unspecified reason.

But the next day Blakely recanted his story, saying he had mistakenly identified the man he met as David Bacon, and made up the extortion story. He was arrested, but soon released.

Gretta Bacon collapsed when she heard about her husband’s death. She was hospitalized, and it was later reported that her baby had been stillborn at Hollywood Hospital.

No one was ever charged in connection with Bacon’s murder, and the case remains unsolved.

TomChristopher.com

Main photo: Masked Marvel movie poster [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Who Killed The Masked Marvel? Hollywood Movie Star Murder Still A Mystery appeared first on CrimeFeed.

LONG ISLAND, NY — The Long Island carpenter who was convicted of killing two prostitutes in the 1990s may be responsible for at least one of 10 unsolved murders near Gilgo Beach, according to a prosecutor.

Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla announced after John Bittrolff’s sentencing on Tuesday that remains of some of the Gilgo victims “may be attributed to the handiwork of Mr. Bittrolff.”

Bittrolff, 51, received consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences for the beating deaths of two victims — 31-year-old Rita Tangredi and 20-year-old Colleen McNamee. The remains of the women were found nine miles apart in late 1993 and early 1994, about 35 miles from the Gilgo Beach site. Both were working as prostitutes, and both had been strangled and suffered severe head injuries.

The killings remained unsolved for two decades until homicide detectives linked evidence found on the women’s remains to Bitrolff’s DNA. He was arrested in 2014.

Police on Long Island are still investigating the killings of 10 victims of an apparent serial killer or killers, who has been dubbed the “Long Island Serial Killer” by the media. The Gilgo Beach murders are all still unsolved, and Suffolk County Police Department said detectives do not comment about ongoing investigations.

But Bittrolff’s attorney, Jonathan Manley, insisted that any alleged connection by his client to the Gilgo killings has absolutely no factual basis.” He said:

“Mr. Bittrolff maintains his innocence in the deaths of Ms. Tangredi and Ms. McNamee and any insinuation that he had anything to do with the Gilgo killings is laughable and meant simply to attract headlines.”

According to prosecutors, Bittrolff’s was the first conviction in a homicide case in New York state involving “partial match” DNA. He was arrested in 2014 after investigators discovered that a DNA sample submitted by his brother, Timothy Bittrolff, was a partial match to the DNA left on the two dead women.

After eliminating Timothy as a suspect, police obtained a DNA sample from John Bittrolff’s garbage, which was left outside his home.

Bittrolff has denied killing any of the women and intends to appeal the verdict.

New York Post

Main photo: John Bittrolff [Suffolk Police Department]

The post Lead In LISK Case? Assistant D.A. Thinks This Man Could Be The Long Island Serial Killer appeared first on CrimeFeed.

MIDLOTHIAN, IL — On September 14, 1988, searchers in a vacant lot unearthed the body of Jaclyn Dowaliby, a Chicago-area seven-year-old girl who had apparently been taken from her own bedroom four nights earlier.

Her mother, Cynthia Dowaliby, had reported Jaclyn missing and presumably abducted on the morning of September 10.

Responding officers discovered a broken basement window that appeared to be a point of entry — until David Dowaliby, Jaclyn’s adoptive father, said he thought he saw that the back door had been left open.

That bit of potentially conflicting information initially raised questions that perhaps Jaclyn’s parents knew more about her disappearance than they initially claimed.

As authorities waited several days for a ransom call and it never came, they began to look at Cynthia and David Dowaliby even harder

Jaclyn’s remains turned up in Blue Island, another Chicago suburb about six miles from her home. Officers interviewed occupants of the surrounding area and thought they might have found something by way of local resident Everett Mann.

Mann told the cops that, at around 2 A.M. on the night Jaclyn disappeared, he saw a person with a “large, straight nose” speeding away from what would turn out to be where the dead girl had been discarded. He also said the figure drove off in a dark car — maybe brown, probably blue, and most likely a “1979 Chevy Malibu.”

David Dowaliby fit the bill in terms of the distinctive facial feature. Cynthia owned a 1980 Chevy Malibu.

For the next two months, then, law-enforcement agents built a case against the Dowalibys. In November 1988, police arrested David and Cynthia for the murder of their daughter. Cynthia, at the time, was two months pregnant.

As the Dowalibys’ court date approached, public sentiment took a hard stance against the couple.

In April 1990, the trial judge called both the prosecutors and the defense lawyers to his chambers. He said insufficient evidence existed to convict Cynthia and that he’d be dismissing her charges. The case against David, however, could keep moving forward.

A month later, after three days of deliberation, a jury found David Dowaliby guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to 45 years.

Immediately following David’s conviction, Cynthia flew into action to clear her husband. She started a grassroots campaign that attracted the attention of several journalists who also took up the cause.

In addition to other prosecutorial missteps, Everett Mann — whose eyewitness testimony put David at the location where Jaclyn was found — proved to be a highly dubious source.

First, Mann changed multiple details from his story. Secondly, he identified David from a forward-facing photo despite having claimed to only see a shadowy figure in profile from 75 yards away in the middle of the night.

Most devastatingly, it came to light that Mann had been rejected for police duty due to bipolar-disorder issues and that he’d long been struggling with other symptoms of mental illness.

In addition, other witnesses claimed they saw Cynthia’s car parked in the Dowalibys’ driveway when the abduction occurred, and no one else near the Blue Island dump site had spotted any kind of vehicle.

In October 1991, the Illinois Court of Appeals overturned David’s conviction and freed him from jail.

While some investigators and other observers reportedly still believe that David and possibly Cynthia may have been involved in Jaclyn’s murder, others point to a suspect that police originally let go when he seemed to have an alibi.

Jimmy Guess, the brother of Jaclyn’s biological father, had previously been accused of trying to kidnap his young niece. That specific claim got dropped, though, when Guess turned out to be in jail at that time, doing a stretch for sexual assault.

Regarding the occasion of Jaclyn’s actual abduction, Guess, who had been clinically diagnosed as schizophrenic, told the cops he’d been hanging out in an all-night diner. Two waitresses backed him up.

Later, after NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries devoted an episode to Jaclyn’s murder, a tipster credibly alleged that Jimmy Guess was lying.

One of the waitresses recanted her original statement, saying that she lied because she believed the Dowalibys were guilty. This time, she told authorities that Guess had only briefly dropped by the restaurant at around 9:30 P.M.

The Illinois State’s Attorney reopened the case, and grilled Guess anew. Despite having never officially been to the Dowalibys’ home, he seemed to know numerous details of the layout. He chalked that up to a “spirit” that lived inside him and supplied him with such details.

Despite mounting questions, Guess never faced any charges. In 2002, he died. As a result, then, the murder of Jaclyn Dowaliby, who’d now be 36 years old, remains a mystery still.

Main photo: Jaclyn Dowaliby/Missing Poster [YouTube screenshot]

The post Who Killed 7-Year-Old Jaclyn Dowaliby? The Case Remains Open — & Chilling appeared first on CrimeFeed.

GREENWICH, CT — The tutor whose life was turned upside down after the 1975 murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Connecticut, has revealed disturbing new details about his former pupil Michael Skakel.

Kenneth Littleton was 23 when he was hired to tutor 15-year-old Michael, his 17-year-old brother Tommy, and their four siblings at their mansion in the tony neighborhood of Belle Haven. According to Littleton, who tells his story in a episode of Investigation Discovery’s Guilty Rich, Michael was already a hard-drinking, entitled teen with a mean streak.

October 30, 1975 — the night of Moxley’s murder — was Littleton’s first night on the job. Earlier that day, Rushton Skakel, who was Robert Kennedy, Sr.’s, brother-in-law, had offered him the $400 per month position on the spot. At first, Littleton said, it seemed like a dream job.

But later that night, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was beaten to death with a golf club. Her body was found hours later in a clump of pine trees, less than 200 yards from her front door.

After the murder, Littleton said he became increasingly convinced that Michael was the killer. Littleton recounted a disturbing incident that took place, he said, just a few weeks after the murder when he found a dead chipmunk on the grounds of Belle Haven Country Club that had been “mashed” with a golf club and “crucified.”

When he confronted Michael about the dead animal, asking if he had killed it, he said the teen replied by saying, “Who else could have done it, Kenny?”

“I knew he had committed the murder, in my heart,” Littleton told the New York Post.

Michael Skakel reacts during a parole hearing at McDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Conn., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. [AP Photo/Jessica Hill, Pool]

Investigators said that Moxley had not been sexually assaulted, but they found pieces of a golf club — which were later traced to the Skakel home — near the body.

After the gruesome discovery, Littleton was almost immediately singled out as a suspect in the case. He said that his life was made a living hell by the accusations — and that he was no match for the blue blood East Coast family and its stable of high-priced lawyers.

Over the years, Littleton has battled many demons, including alcoholism and mental illness. He told the New York Post that he considers himself another victim of the case.

Littleton claims that he first heard the name Martha Moxley the morning after the murder, when members of her family came by to ask if anyone had seen her.

Both Michael and Tommy were questioned by police, and then released. Rushton later barred detectives from accessing Michael’s school and mental-health records.

Littleton was fired from his tutoring job. Months later, he went on a drug binge and was charged in Nantucket with stealing $4,000 worth of goods after breaking into a gift shop and a boat.

The Connecticut police brought him in for questioning in 1976. After that, he lost his new job at an elite school in New Canaan. His drinking began to spiral out of control, and then he stopped teaching and bounced from one part-time job to another.

He spent time at a psychiatric hospital and attempted suicide. He had become paranoid that that the Kennedy family was out to get him, and that they were trying to kill him with tainted drugs.

In the early nineties, police once again targeted Littleton — this time by having his ex-wife wear a wire. It failed; he did not confess. He then agreed to be questioned by police without a lawyer present — and failed two lie-detector tests.

Still, Littleton has always denied any involvement in Moxley’s murder. In 1998, Littleton was granted immunity, and his testimony about Skakel was recorded. Finally, police could arrest Michael.

In 2002, Michael was convicted of Moxley’s murder, and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. But in 2013, a judge granted him a new trial after evidence surfaced that Skakel’s lawyer may not have adequately defended him in 2002. He was released from prison in 2016.

In December 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated Skakel’s murder conviction. Skakel, now 56, remains free while his lawyers work on his case, and lives with relatives in Bedford, New York.

To learn more about this case, watch the “In the Shadow of Privilege” episode of Investigation Discovery’s Guilty Rich on ID GO now!

New York Post

New York Times

Main photo: Martha Moxley [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Michael Skakel’s Tutor Reveals Disturbing Details About 1975 Murder Of Martha Moxley appeared first on CrimeFeed.

NEW BEDFORD, MA — In the 11 months between July 1988 and June 1989, death came cruelly and without justice to New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Nine bodies turned up alongside major traffic thoroughfares running through the waterfront city. All were female, all had been strangled, and each had been struggling with drug addiction and/or working as prostitutes.

In addition to those confirmed murders, two other missing women remain unaccounted for — teenager Christina Monteiro and Marilyn Cardoza Roberts, whose father was a police officer.

Among all the women who fell prey to the still unknown assailant referred to as the New Bedford Highway Killer, 15 children lost their mothers.

New Bedford is a former whaling outpost that boasts a tight-knit Portuguese-American community. The murders struck at the heart of the city as many residents knew the victims and their families, and viewed these particular women with sympathy as they contended with devastating personal issues.

Victims of the New Bedford Highway Killer, from top left — Sandra Botelho, Marilyn Roberts Cardoza, Rochelle Clifford, Deborah DeMello, Deborah McConnell, Debra Medeiros, Dawn Mendes, Christina Monteiro, Nancy Paiva, Robbin Rhodes, Mary Rose Santos [Bristol County District Attorney’s Office]

Deborah Medeiros, 30, was discovered first by a motorist who pulled over for a moment on July 3, 1988. Several weeks later, a pair of bikers came across the remains of Nancy Paiva, 36.

New Bedford Police Detective John Dextradeur considered the nature of the slayings and the body dumps, and also noticed the curious amount of women who had very suddenly vanished from New Bedford in recent months.

Dextrauder also made special note of the fact that Franklin Pina, the boyfriend of Nancy Paiva, voluntarily walked into the New Bedford Police station to ask for help. Pina had a long criminal record and no fondness for law enforcement. As a result, Dextrauder suspected more than just a few random murders might be afoot.

The detective then assembled a task force and hunted down answers regarding the disappearances.

In short order, almost every missing-person case on Dextradeur’s list ended with a strangled, discarded corpse.

Forensics technology being what it was back in 1988, identifying the women took weeks or even months, which added to the frustration and heartbreak for loved ones. Compounding the tragedy even further is the fact that the murderer has never been captured.

Although, through the years, several suspects have emerged.

Mark Simmons, a bartender who reportedly supplied local working girls with cocaine, took the initial brunt of the investigation.

Tony DeGrazia, a brutish stonemason known as “Flat Nose,” proved more compelling. Word among the girls on the street was to avoid a regular cruiser who “looked like a boxer,” as he liked to rough up and force himself on the women he hired. Eventually, the cops picked up DeGrazia for raping and choking prostitutes. He killed himself in 1991.

Another theory even proposes that the “Lisbon Ripper” worked the highway before murdering and mutilating streetwalkers several years later in the Portuguese city of Lisbon.

Kenneth C. Ponte, 1970 mug shot [New Bedford Police Department]

One name, however, repeatedly came up during the investigation: Kenneth C. Ponte, a former hard-core heroin junkie who reportedly switched to cocaine upon becoming an attorney and setting up a New Bedford legal practice.

Local sex workers are said to have been intimately familiar with Ponte. Time and again, they described him to investigators as “weird.” Stories arose of Ponte picking up prostitutes, taking them home, and bolting the doors. He reportedly furnished the girls with copious amounts of cocaine and “didn’t seem interested in sex.”

In addition, Ponte’s name allegedly swirled around in street talk about someone in the area making snuff films.

Such rumors intensified after one woman he hired to hang out and snort coke claimed he showed her a porn video in which a woman appeared to get strangled to death.

Desperate to nail someone — anyone — for the Highway Killings, in August 1990, New Bedford authorities charged Ponte, then 40, with the murder of Rochelle Dopierala, 28.

Two years earlier, Ponte had legally represented Dopierala when she accused another man of raping her. Shortly after Ponte took her case, Dopierala disappeared. Medical examiners identified her body in December 1988.

Ponte, who had since moved to Florida, returned to Massachusetts to plead “absolutely not guilty.”

The case against Ponte hinged on the idea that he killed Dopierala after she threatened to expose his drug use. Without any “smoking gun” proof, though, the notion seemed flimsy. Even the detectives who had to bring Ponte in had doubts about it. On July 29, 1991, the district attorney dropped the charges against Ponte, citing lack of evidence.

Nonetheless, Ponte long remained on investigators’ radar. In 2009, authorities dug up the driveway and patio of Ponte’s former New Bedford residence, acting on what they said was new information. The search produced nothing.

A year later, Ponte turned up dead and rotting on a bare mattress in his rancid drug pit of a home. Police did not suspect foul play.

Alas, the New Bedford Highway Murders remains an open and unsolved case.

Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer, a true-crime book on the topic by journalist Maureen Boyle, came out to acclaim in 2017. The Highway Murders, a documentary about the tragedy that incorporates numerous interviews with investigators and survivors, is expected to be released in 2018. Perhaps this surge of publicity will bring about some final answers. The victims of this sick slayer, as well as their families and friends, have for too long deserved it.

Read more:
Fox25 Boston
South Coast Today
UPNE
Daily Mail
Boston.com
WFHN

Main photos: From top left — Sandra Botelho, Marilyn Roberts Cardoza, Rochelle Clifford, Deborah DeMello, Deborah McConnell, Debra Medeiros, Dawn Mendes, Christina Monteiro, Nancy Paiva, Robbin Rhodes, Mary Rose Santos [Bristol County District Attorney’s Office]

The post 9 Dead, 2 Missing, No Suspect: Who Is the “New Bedford Highway Killer”? appeared first on CrimeFeed.

For more than two decades, authorities in Massachusetts have been hunting for a killer who kidnapped a 24-year-old teacher’s aide in 1992, slit her throat, and left her body in a wooded area. On Monday, the Hampden County district attorney told reporters that police had finally arrested a suspect in the brutal murder of Lisa Ziegert.

Gary E. Schara, 48, confessed to the killing in writing, District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni said.

Ziegert, a teacher’s aide at Agawam Middle School, was working a shift at her second job at Brittany Card and Gift Shop on the night of April 15, 1992, when she was kidnapped. She was reported missing to police the next morning by the store’s day clerk who arrived to find the store open with the lights on and Lisa’s car still parked where it had been the previous evening.

The money was still in the store register, and Lisa’s purse and school materials were also left behind, so robbery didn’t seem to be the motive.

Her body was found on Easter Sunday in a wooded area off Route 75 in Agawam near the Connecticut border. She had suffered multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been slit.

Lisa Ziegert [provided, Ziegert Family]

Over the years, the Agawam Police Department, Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit, Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory, and FBI have worked on the case — and Gulluni said Schara had been a person of interest since 1993.

Taking advantage of advances in forensics, authorities were eventually able to develop a single-source male DNA profile from evidence taken from Lisa’s body. In August, they began a legal process to obtain DNA samples from a small number of people of interest in the case whose DNA profiles were not in any law-enforcement databases.

On September 13, police attempted to notify Schara about the process and serve him notice of a hearing. He was not at home, so police left the information with someone in the residence. The message must have spooked him, as 24 hours later an unidentified tipster whom authorities say is a relative of Schara gave investigators a confession allegedly written by him as well as a suicide note.

Detectives say they were also able to match Schara’s DNA to evidence recovered from the crime scene.

He fled to Connecticut, where he was taken into custody at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford, seeking medical treatment after a suicide attempt, according the The Hartford Courant.

“We have arrested the person who is responsible for the heinous acts committed against Lisa, and the 25-year-long search for answers is over,” Gulluni said. Schara has been charged with murder, kidnapping, and aggravated rape.

Lisa’s mother, Dee Ziegert, told the press and public during the news conference that she feels “satisfaction” knowing the alleged assailant is behind bars — and that they can finally get justice for Lisa.

The district attorney declined to discuss further details of the case, but told 22News that he did not believe that Ziegert and Schara knew each other. The investigation continues.

Boston Globe

Hartford Courant

Main photo: Gary Schara [Hampden District Attorney]

The post Suspect Arrested In 25-Year-Old Cold Case Murder Of Lisa Ziegert appeared first on CrimeFeed.

On February 9, 2004, University of Massachusetts student Maura Murray crashed her car on an icy road in New Hampshire, over 100 miles from her dorm room where she should’ve been quietly studying. She was never seen again.

Over a decade later, there remain more questions than answers in Murray’s disappearance, and some of them are so strange that it’s no wonder this cold case has never been forgotten.

Watch “What Happened to Maura Murray?” Saturday, September 23 at 8/7c on Investigation Discovery!

Photo: Investigation Discovery's "Disappeared"

Maura Murray [Investigation Discovery’s Disappeared]

1. What was going on in Murray’s life?

The official website created by Murray’s loved ones includes a multi-part biography of Murray, calling her an “All-American Girl,” a model student, athlete, and daughter. She had attended West Point before transferring to UMass at Amherst to study nursing, and was planning to marry her high school sweetheart, Billy Rausch, who was stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.

But behind Murray’s smile, what secrets could she have been hiding? It remains unclear why exactly she left West Point – some investigation has suggested that she may have been asked to leave for an Honor Code violation. During her time at UMass, Murray ran into some legal trouble, and was charged with improper use of a credit card a few months before her disappearance for possessing and using stolen credit card numbers. According to the blog of true crime writer James Renner, her arrest record was once public, and he was able to retrieve a copy, but it’s now no longer available to reporters.

In the days before she disappeared, Murray uncharacteristically emailed professors to tell them that she would not be attending class, claiming there had been a death in the family. But there was no death, and nothing except a few internet searches and a phone call to a Vermont rental property to give any clues as to where Murray was headed or why.

2. How could Murray have vanished without a trace?

That February night in 2004, Murray drove her Saturn up Route 112 in New Hampshire. It was dark, there were snowbanks on either side of the road, and her car had been having problems. In fact, her father, Fred Murray, had visited her at school only a few days before to go car shopping, although they didn’t end up purchasing a new car.

Local bus driver Butch Atwood was on his way home when he came across the wrecked Saturn and a woman matching Murray’s description. He offered to help, but she insisted that she had already called AAA – strange, he thought, since cell phone reception was notoriously spotty in the remote area. Atwood went home, filed some paperwork for his job, and decided to call the police anyway. By the time the police arrived at 7:46 P.M., the Saturn was still in the road, but Murray was gone.

There were no sightings of any other vehicles, no footprints in the fresh snow. The area has been searched many times over the years, and if Murray was taken by one of the few people living within walking distance of the crash site, or if she wandered off to die in the elements, her body has never been found.

To learn more about this case, watch the “Miles to Nowhere” episode of Investigation Discovery’s Disappeared on ID GO now!

Courtesy of the Maura Murray Missing Facebook Group

3. Could Murray still be alive?

Murray’s father maintains that Murray was abducted, and he has not given up his search for his daughter, whether dead or alive. Although investigators have never been able to detect any pattern between Murray’s disappearance and that of other women and girls gone missing in similar circumstances, there have been cases that might indicate the possibility of a connection. Four years before Murray’s disappearance, 16-year-old Molly Bish seemingly vanished from her lifeguard post in Warren, Massachusetts. Her remains were found three years later in a wooded area only miles from her home. Her murder is still unsolved.

The disappearance of Brianna Maitland is also eerily similar to that of Murray. Maitland’s abandoned car was found approximately 100 miles from where Murray’s was, one month later. The case caught the attention of Murray’s family, who added a page about Maitland to their official website. To this day, Maitland’s disappearance is unresolved, and her body has never been found.

Renner, who wrote True Crime Addict about his obsession with Murray’s disappearance, and has maintained a comprehensive blog tracking his investigation, posits at the end of his book that Murray may have willfully disappeared and is still out there, alive. There have been reported sightings of her in Montreal, a possible picture pulled from Facebook, individuals who insist that they have seen Murray in the 12 years since she disappeared. Either way, every time one lead seems to suggest answers, it splinters and multiplies into more questions. If Murray met with foul play, where is the evidence? In all this time, how has no one slipped and revealed information that might point to her killer? And if Murray did disappear of her own free will — why? Will she ever come out of hiding to tell us?

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The post 3 Haunting Questions About The Disappearance Of Maura Murray appeared first on CrimeFeed.

It’s been 20 years since his murder, but Christopher Wallace — who is better known by his stage names The Notorious B.I.G., Biggie, or Biggie Smalls — continues to be hugely influential in music and pop culture.

On March 9, 1997, Wallace was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles — and the identity of the gunman is still considered to be one of rap’s biggest unsolved mysteries.

Wallace was born and raised in Brooklyn, and when he released his debut album Ready to Die in 1994 he immediately became a central figure in the East Coast hip-hop scene during a time when West Coast hip-hop was dominant in the mainstream.

While recording his second album, Wallace became heavily involved in the increasingly ugly East Coast vs. West Coast hip hop battles.

Notorious B.I.G. with former friend Tupac Shakur [Photo: lyovlyov777/YouTube (screenshot)]

Notorious B.I.G. with former friend Tupac Shakur [lyovlyov777/YouTube (screenshot)]

The beef between opposing sides — with major players including Sean “Diddy” Combs and Bad Boy Records on one side, and Suge Knight and Death Row Records on the other — would eventually come to pit Wallace against his former friend Tupac Shakur.

In a 1995 prison interview with Vibe, Shakur accused Uptown Records’ founder Andre Harrell, Sean Combs, and Wallace of having prior knowledge of a robbery that resulted in him being shot five times and losing thousands of dollars worth of jewelry on the night of November 30, 1994.

Wallace and his entourage denied the accusation, calling it a “coincidence” that he had been at the studio at the same time as Shakur.

Following his release from prison, Shakur signed to Death Row Records, and the insults and violence on both sides continued to mount.

Sketch of the suspect in Wallace's shooting [Photo: Wikimedia Commons]

Sketch of the suspect in Wallace’s shooting [Wikimedia Commons]

Wallace married R&B singer Faith Evans in August 1994, just weeks after meeting at a Bad Boy photo shoot. Their turbulent marriage would be cut short when Wallace was gunned down.

Evans later recalled Wallace’s reaction the night that Shakur was shot. She said:

“I remember Big calling me and crying. I know for a fact he was in Jersey. He called me crying because he was in shock. I think it’s fair to say he was probably afraid, given everything that was going on at that time and all the hype that was put on this so-called beef that he didn’t really have in his heart against anyone.”

The night he was shot, Wallace attended an afterparty hosted by Vibe magazine and Qwest records at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Fellow guests included Faith Evans, Aaliyah, Sean Combs, and members of the rival Bloods and Crips gangs.

In the early morning hours of March 9, Wallace left in a GMC Suburban SUV and, while the SUV was stopped at a red light at the corner of Wilshire Blvd and South Fairfax, a dark-colored Chevrolet Impala SS pulled up alongside Wallace’s car. The driver, a black male, rolled down his window, drew a 9mm blue-steel pistol, and fired at the SUV.

Wallace was hit with four bullets, and his entourage rushed him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 1:15 A.M. — six months after Tupac Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting.

Wallace’s autopsy was released to the public in December 2012, over a decade after his death. According to the report, three of the four shots were not fatal, but the fourth struck his right hip and hit several vitaL organs before stopping in his left shoulder.

Wallace’s murder remains unsolved, and there are many theories regarding the identities and motives of the murderers.

In Murder Rap: Inside The Biggie & Tupac Murders, former LAPD detective Greg Kading concluded that Wallace’s murder was orchestrated in retaliation for the killing of Tupac Shakur. According to Kading, Combs hired Crips gang member Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis to kill Shakur and Suge Knight for $1 million. He alleges that on September 7, 1996, Keffe D’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, shot Tupac in Las Vegas.

Kading believes that Knight hired gang member Wardell “Poochie” Fouse to kill Wallace in retaliation.

Life After Death was released 16 days after Wallace’s death and immediately shot to number one on the charts. He has certified sales of 17 million units in the United States

A tribute single called “I’ll Be Missing You” – released in 1997 by Puff Daddy, 112, and Faith – won a Grammy award.

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Main photo: Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Who Shot Ya? 20 Years Later, Biggie Smalls Murder Still A B.I.G. Mystery appeared first on CrimeFeed.

On September 26, 1979, a jogger discovered a young woman’s body on the beach at Blackie’s Pasture in Tiburon, California, at about 8:50 A.M.

The victim had been stabbed 43 times with an ice pick and shot in the head — and then her body was doused with acetone and set on fire. A witness saw a van speeding away.

For more than 27 years, no one knew who she was, and she was filed as a “Jane Doe.”

In 2007, investigators in Washington and California were able to identify her as Tammy Vincent, who was reported missing in Seattle in August 1979 when she was 17 years old.

Her family and some experts believe that Tammy could have been a victim of the Green River serial killer. Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to most of the killings of which he was accused, plus six additional murders — but Tammy’s case is still officially unsolved.

Gary Ridgway mug shot [King County Sheriff’s Office]

Others believe that her murder was carried out because she was due to testify in court against people accused of running a prostitution ring.

Tammy was last seen shortly before being subpoenaed to appear before an inquiry judge investigating a prostitution ring in the Seattle area, but she never appeared — and her family never heard from her again.

Tammy Vincent was born in 1962 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and grew up on a farm in Okanogan County in Washington state.

But as a teen, she had a rebellious streak that led her to leave home at age 16. She ended up in a foster home in Spokane, and later worked as a prostitute in Seattle.

Tammy was last seen in Seattle on September 10, 1979, at a motel getting into a silver Lincoln Continental owned by one of the suspects in the sex-shop investigations.

The trial went on in spite of Tammy’s absence, and the sex-shop operator was sentenced in March 1980 to five years in prison for promoting prostitution. Other suspects received sentences of up to eight years in prison.

Her family knew nothing about the investigations, and said that they last time that they saw her was in the summer of 1979 when she showed up at the family home in a car with another person.

According to her sister Sandy Vincent, she called one time later that summer — and sounded scared as she stated that she wanted to come home.

The family suspected she may have been killed by the Green River Killer and began contacting King County’s Green River Task Force, which prompted investigators to add Tammy to their list of missing women.

In 2003, the family got a call from a King County deputy working with the task force asking if they could provide a DNA sample from a member of the family. Sandy Vincent provided a saliva swab — and investigators were able to make a rare DNA match from a single hair taken from Tammy.

Marin County investigators were finally able to break the news to Tammy’s family in Washington that her remains had been found.

Detectives in Marin County had also reopened the 1979 murder case in 2001, and investigators learned that a clerk at a San Francisco Woolworth’s store had “vividly recalled” a mysterious man in a white leisure suit coming to the store that summer with a girl matching Tammy’s description who was about 5 feet 6 inches tall, about 125 pounds, with light-brown, Afro-style hair.

His shopping list is chilling — the man bought acetone, paint, and an ice pick, the clerk said.

On August 10, 2007, Tammy Vincent’s cremated remains were returned to Washington state, and her family was finally able to lay her to rest.

Police say that they are continuing to interview witnesses, and that the investigation will continue until they identify Tammy’s killer.

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Main photo: A composite photo of Tammy Vincent (left) next to an actual photo (right) [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Was This Woman A Victim Of The Green River Serial Killer? appeared first on CrimeFeed.

Even in a state known for crazy crimes, the killer clown accused of murdering her love rival 27 years ago may go down as one of the strangest cold cases ever investigated in Florida.

Sheila Keen Warren, 54, was arrested in Virginia for the murder of her husband’s former wife, 40-year-old Marlene Warren, in 1990, according to police.

Officials said on Tuesday that Warren had been charged with first-degree murder with the use of a firearm.

On May 26, 1990, Marlene was eating breakfast with her son Joey and some of his friends when a strange car pulled up outside their home in Wellington, Florida.

Marlene Warren [Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office]

A clown, wearing an orange wig, white face paint, and a red nose, got out and walked to the door carrying a bunch of flowers and two balloons.

When Marlene opened the door, the clown shot her in the face with a pistol — then jumped into a car and drove away.

“This is the strangest thing I’ve seen in all my 19 years in law enforcement,” Bob Ferrell, then a spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office, told the Sun-Sentinel at the time.

“As she went to take the flowers and balloons, the clown shot her. As far as I know, nothing was said.”

Marlene died two days later, and the murder would remain unsolved for almost three decades.

Police immediately suspected Marlene’s husband Michael Warren, since authorities knew that the marriage had been shaky — and the couple had more than $1 million in property and business assets, all of which were in Marlene’s name.

Sheila, who was then using her maiden name of Keen, was also a person of interest the murder. Some strong circumstantial evidence appeared to connect her to the crime: Sheila’s estranged husband confirmed the pair were having an affair, and she lived across the street from the only costume shop in Palm Beach County believed to sell the type of balloon the killer was carrying.

Staff at the store reportedly stated that they believed that she could have been the woman who bought a clown costume two days before the murder.

But prosecutors never had enough evidence to charge her until new technology allowed them to retest DNA evidence after the cold case was reopened in 2014.

Police tracked down Sheila and Michael, and found out that they had married in 2002 in Las Vegas (Circus, Circus?), and were running a restaurant together in Tennessee.

On August 31 this year, a grand jury issued a first-degree murder indictment for Sheila Keen, leading to her arrest.

The lesson here is, do not ever open the door to a mysterious clown! This should not even have to be said.

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Main photo: Sheila Warren [Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office]

The post Woman Arrested For Murder In 27-Year-Old Killer Clown Cold Case appeared first on CrimeFeed.

DIVIDE, CO — A registered sex offender who was arrested in Colorado on Monday could be connected to the unsolved murders of two Indiana teenagers, according to police.

Authorities are investigating a possible connection between Daniel Nations, 31, of Indianapolis, and the murders of Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, in February.

Police arrested Nations on Monday afternoon after he allegedly threatened several people with a hatchet near a Colorado trail where a man was murdered two weeks ago.

Liberty and Abigail, both eighth graders, were hiking on a day off from middle school on February 13 when they disappeared on a trail near their rural hometown of Delphi, Indiana. Their bodies were found the next day.

In July, police released a composite sketch of a man they say could be connected to the teenagers’ murders. The man in the sketch is described as white with reddish brown hair, standing between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-10, and weighing 180 to 220 pounds.

Composite sketch of suspect [Indiana State Police]

The Indiana State Police Department confirmed that they are investigating to see if Nations could be a suspect in the Delphi double-murder investigation. The department declined further comment.

Indiana State Police Sergeant Kim Riley told ABC News that while they are investigating a possible connection, police have had “over 1,000 photographs of people who look like the guy in the sketch.”

Nations was booked into the Teller County Jail in Divide, Colorado, on a charge of weapons possession by a previous offender. Additional charges are pending, according to a spokesperson for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado.

The investigation continues — and police have offered a reward of over $230,000 in exchange for information leading to an arrest.

Mug shot of suspect in Monument and Mount Herman Road menacing: Daniel Nations, DOB: 10/08/85 pic.twitter.com/MGPobvkJCJ

— EPCSheriff (@EPCSheriff) September 27, 2017

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ABC News

Main photo: Liberty German and Abigail Williams [ABC News (screenshot)]

The post Sex Offender Arrested In Colorado Could Be Connected To Delphi Snapchat Murder Girls appeared first on CrimeFeed.

Lady Lucan, the 80-year-old widow of Lord Lucan — who vanished in 1974 after allegedly killing the family nanny — has been found dead at her home in London.

Police said they found her body on Tuesday during a welfare check at a property on Eaton Row. Her death is not believed to be suspicious, according to the Met Police.

Lady Lucan was one of the last people to see her husband John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, alive.

Lucan disappeared after Sandra Rivett, who was nanny to his three children, was found murdered in the family home at 46 Lower Belgrave Street. Lady Lucan was also attacked but managed to escape. It’s believed that Lord Lucan mistakenly murdered Rivett, believing her to be his real target — his wife.

She was born Veronica Duncan in 1937, and worked as a secretary and model in London before meeting Lord Lucan at a golf event in 1963. The couple tied the knot in November of that same year.

Over the years, various theories tackling the mystery of what happened to Lord Lucan have made international headlines.

Alleged sightings of the wealthy peer have popped up in locations as far flung as Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and New Zealand.

After he disappeared, his vehicle was found abandoned and soaked in blood in Newhaven, East Sussex. An inquest jury later declared that Lucan had killed Rivett.

Lady Lucan has publicly stated that her husband was abusive and had a violent temper. In a TV interview, she said she believed Lord Lucan had made the “brave” decision to take his own life.

Lord Lucan was officially declared dead by the High Court in 1999. A High Court judge granted a death certificate in February 2016, which allowed his son Lord Bingham to take his title.

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Main photo: Lady Lucan [Thames News / YouTube (screenshot)]

The post The Mysterious Lord Lucan’s Widow, Lady Lucan, Found Dead In London appeared first on CrimeFeed.

PALOS VERDES ESTATES, CA — The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office has filed a murder charge against a registered sex offender who was arrested last week in connection with an unsolved 1980 rape and murder.

Robert Yniguez, 65, has been charged with one count of murder with the special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a rape — which makes him eligible for the death penalty. Authorities stated that Yniguez was “angry, but not surprised,” when they arrested him.

65 yr old Robert Yniguez arrested in 1980 murder of Teresa Broudreaux. LASD says DNA cracked the case. Story at 6pm @nbcla pic.twitter.com/4M3pzet4CM

— Angie Crouch (@AngieNBCLA) September 30, 2017

The nude body of Teresa Broudreaux, 20, was found on the morning of March 4, 1980, on a rocky beach in Palos Verdes Estates, California. Police said Broudreaux, who was pregnant at the time and had a four-year-old daughter, died of blunt-force trauma to the head.

Detectives took a fresh look at the cold case in 2013. By using technology that was not available at the time of the murder, authorities were able to link DNA evidence found on her body to Yniguez.

Yniguez had a conviction for rape in the 1980s, and served time in prison, Sheriff’s Detective Ralph Hernandez said. He was arrested in 1981 and suspected of sexually assaulting a young woman, but the charges were dropped when the woman stopped cooperating.

Yniguez was arrested again the next year and served eight years in prison after being convicted of rape. According to detectives, since he got out of prison Yniguez has married and been employed as a construction worker.

“I’ve waited a long time for this day,” Broudreaux’s husband, Ronnie Fematt, said during a news conference held Friday to announce the arrest. “It has been a long time, what I’ve been through, the uncertainty of not knowing why or how.”

Fematt said that he and Broadreaux got into an argument on the night she was killed, and she went to stay at her sister’s house — but never arrived.

For almost 40 years, Fematt said he has endured gossip from people who believed that he killed his wife.

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Los Angeles Times

Main photo: Teresa Broudreaux [Handout]

The post Cold Case Update: Sex Offender Charged With 1980 Rape & Murder Of Pregnant Woman appeared first on CrimeFeed.

Human bone fragments found in Aruba do not belong to Natalee Holloway, according to forensic scientist Dr. Jason Kolowski.

Additionally, out of the four individual bone fragments found, Kolowski said that only one appeared to be human. Dr. Kolowski had previously told the press that the remains were “human” and “of Caucasian, European descent.”

The identity of the person is still unknown, as well as if the person was male or female.

Holloway, an Alabama native, vanished on May 30, 2005, while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba. Her disappearance caused a media sensation in the U.S., and the case remains unsolved.

Holloway was last seen with Joran van der Sloot, an Aruban native who was 17 years old at the time. Aruban police considered Van der Sloot a primary suspect in the case, but he was never charged due to lack of evidence.

Van der Sloot was convicted, however, in the brutal 2010 murder of Stephany Flores in Peru, where he is now serving a 28-year-sentence in prison.

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Main photo: Natalee Holloway [Wikimedia Commons]

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On October 4, 2006, the skeletonized body of 21-year-old student nurse Frauke Liebs was found by a hunter in a forested area in the woods near a road near Lichtenau, Germany.

Liebs was seen alive on June 20, 2006, when she was watching the FIFA World Cup match between England and Sweden at a pub in Paderborn’s city center.

Her remains were found with the clothes she was wearing on the day of her disappearance — but her cell phone, purse, wallet, and wrist watch were missing.

While she was still at the pub, she borrowed a friend’s phone battery since her own battery was dead. She gave the battery back before leaving the pub at around 11 P.M. and — since she reportedly had no more than five Euros with her — it was believed that she planned to walk approximately one mile to her home.

At 12:49 A.M., her flatmate Christos got a text message from Lieb’s phone saying that she would be home later — but she never came back. After she failed to appear at work the day after, her mother reported her missing.

The police later discovered that the text message had been sent from Nieheim, a small city about 20 miles northeast of Paderborn.

In the following days, Liebs’ roommate received five more calls on the mobile phone. In the first, which was received the day after she went missing, Lieb, according to an English translation provided by a German TV show, said, “Hello Christos, I just wanted to tell you I’m fine… Please tell mom and dad I’m fine,” and hung up.

Christos later told Liebs’ mother that Liebs sounded tired and distressed — and said he found it strange that she used his full name rather than his nickname, “Chris.”

Black Friday Cold Case: Cops Still Seek To Identify Teen Girl Strangled With Her Bikini Top In 1991

Police were able to track the calls to different industrial areas in Paderborn. During the conversations, Liebs — or the person identifying themselves as her — continued to say that she would return home soon, and gave vague answers to questions.

Liebs’ last phone call was on June 27 in the presence of her sister, who also talked to her. During this conversation, Liebs is said to have answered the question of whether she was being held captive with a faint “yes,” immediately followed by a loud “no.”

She was never heard from again.

The body provided investigators with few clues: Due to the advanced state of decomposition, the time and cause of Liebs’ death could not be determined.

German police reportedly developed a theory that Liebs was abducted and held near Nieheim before being killed, and that the calls from Paderborn were meant to serve as a distraction.

The case has been covered extensively on German television, and there is a Facebook group (and many other online sleuths in Germany) dedicated to cracking the case — but so far, no arrests have been made and the case remains unsolved.

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Reddit / Unresolved Mysteries

Facebook / Mordfall Frauke Liebs

Main photo: Frauke Liebs [Mord an Frauke Liebs – ZDF Aktenzeichen XY vom 09.11.2006 / YouTube (screenshot)]

The post The Mysterious Disappearance & Murder Of German Student Nurse Frauke Liebs appeared first on CrimeFeed.

On the evening of October 30, 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was on her way home from a Halloween party at the home of her classmates Tommy and Michael Skakel in the exclusive Belle Haven neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut.

She was found viciously bludgeoned to death on a nearby lawn, and the mystery of who killed Martha Moxley would haunt the city for decades. Michael Skakel, also 15 at the time, was convicted in 2002 of murdering Moxley and sentenced to 20 years to life. In 2013, he was granted a new trial by a Connecticut judge and released on $1.2 million bail. In December 2016, the murder conviction was reinstated.

The Skakels had serious money and connections: Rushton Skakel is a nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Martha’s final hours

According to friends, Moxley began flirting with and eventually kissed Thomas Skakel, Michael’s brother. Moxley was last seen going behind a fence with Thomas Skakel near the pool in the Skakel backyard at around 9:30 P.M.

The next day, Moxley’s body was found underneath a tree in her family’s backyard. Her trousers and underwear were pulled down, but she had not been sexually assaulted. Pieces of a broken six-iron golf club were found near the body. An autopsy indicated she had been both bludgeoned and stabbed with the club, which was traced back to the Skakel home.

The suspects

Due to his weak alibi, Thomas Skakel became the prime suspect, but his father forbade access to his school and mental health records. Kenneth Littleton, who had started working as a live-in tutor for the Skakel family only hours before the murder, also became a prime suspect. However, no one was charged, and the case languished for decades. In the meantime, several books were published about the murder, including Timothy Dumas’s A Wealth of Evil; A Season In Purgatory by Dominick Dunne; and Murder in Greenwich by Mark Fuhrman.

Over the years, both Thomas and Michael Skakel changed their stories. Michael had originally claimed that he was watching a Monty Python movie with a cousin, but later told detectives that he had climbed a tree outside Martha’s bedroom window and masturbated. Chillingly, the tree he described turned out to not be located outside her bedroom window, but was rather the tree under which her body was discovered.

At the time of Michael’s sentencing in 2002, many people, including Mark Fuhrman, said that they believed that other members of the Skakel family had assisted in covering up for Michael and should faces charges.

The Sutton report

The Skakel family hired a private investigation firm, The Sutton Agency, to conduct its own investigation. The Sutton report, which Rushton Skakel had ordered destroyed, was later leaked to the media — and reportedly concluded that Tommy was the most likely killer.

Two patients at a treatment center testified that they heard Michael Skakel confess to killing Moxley with a golf club. Gregory Coleman testified that Skakel was given special privileges, saying Skakel bragged, “I’m going to get away with murder. I’m a Kennedy.”

Michael Skakel’s Trial

During Michael’s 2002 trial, the jury heard part of a taped book proposal, which included Michael Skakel speaking about masturbating in a tree on the night of the murder — possibly the same tree under which Moxley’s body was found the next morning.

On June 7, 2002, Michael Skakel was found guilty of murdering Martha Moxley, and was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

Michael Skakel’s Trial: Part II and Aftermath

On October 23, 2013, Skakel was granted a new trial by a Connecticut judge, Judge Thomas A. Bishop, who ruled that his attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2002.

Skakel was released in 2013, and must be monitored with a GPS device, cannot have contact with Moxley’s family, must periodically check in over the phone if required, and is not allowed to leave the state of Connecticut unless granted permission.

After Skakel’s murder conviction was reinstated, his attorney’s filed a motion to reconsider the ruling of the Connecticut Supreme Court “to ensure a full and fair determination.” Meanwhile, Skakel is still a free man.

Alternate suspects?

In July 2016, Robert Kennedy released a book entitled Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit. In the book, Kennedy made the case that two young black men, friends of the cousin of Kobe Bryant, who had been visiting New York City killed Moxley. Prosecutors say that Kennedy’s claims were thoroughly vetted and found to be “baseless” before Skakel’s first trial.

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Main photo: Martha Moxley [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Crime History: A Look Back At The Still Unsolved Murder Of Martha Moxley appeared first on CrimeFeed.

Kylr Yust, whom investigators have long suspected of involvement in the disappearances and killings of Kara Kopetsky in 2007 and Jessica Runions in 2016, has formally been charged with murdering both women.

Court documents show that in addition to the first-degree murder, Yust has also been charged with two counts of abandonment of a corpse. The remains of Kopetsky and Runions were found next to each other in April 2017 by a mushroom hunter in rural Cass County.

Police quickly zeroed in on Yust as a suspect due to his connection with both women. Runions disappeared after she left a party with Yust in September 2016. Kopetsky, who was Yust’s ex-girlfriend, was last seen walking out of Belton High School on April 28, 2007. She was 17.

Shortly before she went missing, Kopetsky filed an ex parte order against Yust after he kidnapped her from her job. Yust admitted to police at the time that he didn’t like that she was seeing other people after their volatile on/off relationship. A judge granted her request for a restraining order on April 30 — four days before investigators believe she was killed.

Investigators have been trying to crack the case for years.

Yust had confessed to friends, roommates, and cellmates that he had killed Kopetsky because he was upset that she wanted to end their on-and-off relationship, according to a probable cause statement released Thursday:

“(The witness) stated Yust then told him the victim K.E.K. wouldn’t love him and that he was angry with her because he didn’t want her to love someone else. Yust then told (the witness) that he had just snapped, and that something bad happened to the victim.“

Between 2010 and 2012, multiple people called police and told them that Yust had admitted to choking Kopetsky to death and hiding her body in the woods.

On September 9, 2016, Runions was reported missing a day after leaving a party with Yust. Witnesses said that he was drinking heavily and acting possessive of his date. Police found Runions’ burned-out car on September 10.

A man who was with Yust that same day told police that he drove Yust home, and that Yust had told him he strangled Runions and “she was gone.”

Yust was arrested on September 11, and investigators noted that he had burns on his face, hands, and arms — and scratches on his face.

He is still in custody in Jackson County, where he is due to go to trial later this month on a charge of burning Runions’ SUV.

According to authorities, Yust will be held on a $1 million bond.

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Main photo: Kylr Yust [Benton County Sheriff’s Office]

The post “He Just Snapped”: Kylr Yust Charged With Murdering Both Kara Kopetsky & Jessica Runions appeared first on CrimeFeed.

NEW YORK, NY — More than 25 years after LGBTQ icon Marsha P. Johnson’s body was pulled from the Hudson river on July 6, 1992, the circumstances surrounding her death remain a mystery.

Johnson, a drag queen, activist, and New York City icon who identified as a woman, was reported missing shortly after the 1992 Pride March on June 30. Six days later, her body was found floating in the Hudson River off the West Village Piers. She was 46.

According to the medical examiner’s office, Johnson drowned. The NYPD initially described her death as a suicide — a definition her family and friends reject.

The controversial case is the subject of a new Netflix documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. Filmmaker David France said he met Johnson soon after he moved from the Midwest to New York City, where she was a key figure in the political movement for LBGTQ equality.

The documentary follows retired Anti-Violence Project counselor Victoria Cruz as she re-investigates the case. Cruz seeks out witnesses and follows leads, including reports that Johnson was seen trying to escape two men down 22nd Street toward the water. The documentary also investigates rumors that she may have been targeted by the mafia or anti-LGBTQ forces due to her activism.

Johnson was born in New Jersey, and moved to Manhattan after graduating high school in 1963. She first worked in a restaurant before pursuing a new life as “the biggest drag queen in the world.”

Johnson modeled for Andy Warhol and performed onstage with the drag performance troupe Hot Peaches.

She was referred to as both the “mayor” and “saint” of Christopher Street, where she was frequently spotted wearing flowers. She participated in the Stonewall riots in the summer of 1969 — and many identified Johnson as the first to fight back against the police during the fracas. She then cofounded trans-rights organization STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with activist Sylvia Rivera in 1970, an organization which helped young homeless drag queens and transwomen of color.

Though Johnson reportedly had mental-health issues, many friends and other members of the local community insisted she was not suicidal and noted that the back of Johnson’s head had a massive wound. Others believed that she may have experienced hallucinations, or that she could have jumped to her death in an effort to escape harassers.

One witness reportedly saw someone, a “known rabble-rouser” named Michael, fighting with Johnson days prior to her death and calling her a homophobic slur. Michael allegedly later bragged to someone at a bar, saying that he “had killed a drag queen named Marsha.”

Despite a campaign from Johnson’s friends and vigils at the site where Johnson’s body had been found, initial attempts to get the police to investigate the cause of death were unsuccessful. Finally, in November 2012, Lopez was able to get the New York Police Department to reopen the case as a possible homicide.

According to People, detectives were not available to discuss the investigation, and a spokesman with the district attorney’s office declined to comment.

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Main photo: Marsha Johnson [Wikimedia Commons]

The post The Controversial Death Of LGBTQ Activist Marsha P. Johnson appeared first on CrimeFeed.

LOS ANGELES, CA — It’s a Hollywood murder mystery that has gone unsolved for over 70 years: On October 12, 1944, Georgette Bauerdorf, a 20-year-old oil heiress and volunteer hostess at the Hollywood Canteen, was brutally raped and murdered in her Los Angeles apartment.

Cleaning staff discovered her the next morning, naked from the waist down, floating face down in her bathtub with the water still running. She had been strangled to death by someone who police believed was lying in wait for her — but her murderer has never been caught.

Investigators attempted to piece together a timeline of what happened the night that Bauerdorf, who was young, rich, and beautiful, and appeared to have the world at her feet, was murdered.

On October 11, 1944, newspaper reports indicate that Bauerdorf ate lunch and later went shopping with her father’s secretary Rose L. Gilbert, who reportedly told police that Bauerdorf was in good spirits. Bauerdorf left the Hollywood Canteen at around 11:15 P.M. and may have gone directly home.

A neighbor, who requested anonymity, told police he was awakened by screams around 2:30 A.M, followed by a female voice yelling “Stop, stop, you’re killing me!” Believing that the argument was a domestic dispute, he went back to bed.

Fred Atwood, the janitor who found her body, told deputies that on the night of October 11 he heard a woman’s heels clicking back and forth on the floor, followed by a loud crash — but could not confirm that there had been a second person in the apartment.

There were other clues: Police revealed that an automatic night light over the outside entrance of the apartment had been unscrewed two turns so that it would not go on, and fingerprints were found on the bulb.

Investigators also found an empty string bean can and some melon rinds in the kitchen waste basket. Examination of her stomach revealed that she had eaten string beans about an hour before her death.

The primary motive did not appear to be robbery: Almost $100 was taken from her purse, but her jewelry and other valuables were left untouched, including a large roll of $2 bills and thousands of dollars worth of sterling silver lying in an open trunk.

The1936 Pontiac coupe that Baeurdorf drove — which was registered in the name of her sister Connie Bauerdorf — was missing and later found abandoned on East 25th St. in Los Angeles, where it had apparently run out of gas.

A forensic examination of her body revealed that Bauerdorf had been raped, and the knuckles on Bauerdorf’s right hand were smashed and bruised, indicating that she had put up a fight. She had been strangled with a piece of bandage material stuffed down her throat, and her right thigh showed the bruised imprint of a hand with fingernail marks piercing the skin.

Georgette Bauerdorf was born in New York City, and grew up living a life of wealth and privilege.

She aspired to be an actress, and moved to Hollywood in August 1944 where she took a job working as a junior hostess at the Hollywood Canteen. One of her duties was dancing with enlisted men, and she reportedly had several suitors.

Army authorities joined with the Sheriff’s Department in a search for clues, and investigators questioned several sailors that were mentioned in Bauerdorf’s datebook — including a particular soldier who was rumored to have been infatuated with her. According to police, he was later cleared.

June Ziegler, who was at the canteen on the night prior to the murder, told detectives that Bauerdorf dated a six-foot-four serviceman less than a month before her murder. According to Ziegler, Bauerdorf remarked that the tall soldier was enamored of her, but she did not return his affections.

Police got another lead when they learned that the day before her death, Bauerdorf cashed a $175 check and purchased an airline ticket to El Paso, Texas, for $90 after telling friends that she was going to meet her soldier boyfriend.

On October 11, Pvt. Jerome M. Brown, an antiaircraft artillery trainee from Fort Bliss, was identified by authorities as the man Bauerdorf was going to visit. Brown told Army officials he met Bauerdorf at the Hollywood Canteen on the night of June 13, and that he had received several letters from her since then.

The Spanish-style apartment where Bauerdorf lived, El Palacio on 8493 Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood, has seen its share of tragedies over the years. Marilyn Monroe lived in the apartment at one point, and Dorothy Dandridge died in the same residence after reportedly overdosing on barbiturates in 1965. In 2007, Lindsay Lohan, who has an obsession with Marilyn Monroe and other doomed Hollywood starlets, purchased the same apartment.

Some people associate Georgette’s death with that of Elizabeth Short, aka “the Black Dahlia,” theorizing that the same man murdered the two dark-haired young women, who were both in Hollywood during the same time period, seeking their fortunes. Both women were also known to have dated multiple soldiers — although that was not unusual for attractive young women in the 1940s.

But until a perpetrator is caught, what happened that night in West Hollywood remains a mystery.

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Main photo: Georgette Bauerdorf [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Hollywood Murder Mystery: Heiress Raped & Strangled In Bathtub, Killer Never Caught appeared first on CrimeFeed.

LOS ANGELES, CA — It’s the infamous Los Angeles hotel that several serial killers called home — and it’s been the site of at least 16 gruesome and violent deaths resulting from suicide, accident, or murder.

The Cecil Hotel, located downtown at 640 S. Main Street, is the subject of a new Investigation Discovery series called Horror at the Cecil Hotel.

The new series focuses on three disturbing deaths that took place inside the Cecil’s walls, including the mysterious drowning of Elisa Lam, a history of serial killers who stayed in Room 1402, and a series of bizarre murder-suicides.

The Cecil was constructed in 1924 by hotelier William Banks Hanner as a destination for business travelers and tourists, and opened in grand style in 1927. Built in the Art Deco style to the designs of Loy Lester Smith, the hotel cost $1 million to complete and boasted 600 guest rooms and an opulent marble lobby with stained-glass windows.

But within five years, the U.S. had sunk into the Great Depression, and Main Street later declined into an area that would be known as Skid Row. By the 1950s, the hotel had gained a reputation as a residence for transients, prostitutes, and drug users.

Serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger both lived there — Ramirez in 1985, Unterweger in 1991. Ramirez was known for leaving his bloodied clothes in the hotel dumpster after a murder, and walking through the lobby partly undressed — which didn’t raise any eyebrows in the sketchy neighborhood. Unterweger is thought to have chosen to stay at the Cecil in homage to Ramirez.

Other unexplained deaths at the Cecil include Grace E. Magro, who fell from the ninth story window in an incident that the police were unsure had been an accident or suicide, and Dorothy Jean Purcel, a 19-year-old mother who threw her newborn son from a window. She was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Another strange death took place on June 4, 1964, when “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood, a retired telephone operator, was found dead in her ransacked room by a hotel worker distributing phone books.

Osgood, who had earned her nickname due to the fact that she befriended and fed nearby birds, had been stabbed, strangled, and raped. Near her body, police found the Dodgers cap she always wore and a paper sack full of birdseed — but no one was ever arrested for the crime.

It was also rumored that Elizabeth Short, also known as “the Black Dahlia,” made the Cecil her last stop before her death in 1947 — though this account has reportedly been debunked.

In 2011, new owners took over, and the Cecil Hotel was renamed “Stay on Main.” It took on a new identity as more of a hostel for young students and travelers.

The hotel’s most infamous crime took place on February 19, 2013, when the naked body of 21-year-old Canadian student Elisa Lam was found in the water supply tanks on the hotel roof.

Lam had gone missing almost three weeks earlier, and her decomposed body was discovered by a maintenance worker after several guests complained about low water pressure and water that “tasted funny.”

Authorities later ruled Lam’s death as an accidental drowning, but video surveillance footage from inside an elevator that was released by police appeared to show her acting strangely.

The four-minute clip that shows Lam pressing multiple elevator buttons, hiding in the corner of the elevator, and waving her arms wildly went viral and continues to be an obsession for amateur sleuths who speculate about her final moments.

After the elevator video was made public, many started to believe in a more paranormal explanation — and the death became the inspiration for many documentaries, and season 5 of American Horror Story. It later emerged that she had bipolar disorder that could have contributed to her death.

Lam’s mysterious demise led to an increased interest in the hotel’s history, and records that revealed a prolific history of suicide, murder, or unexplained deaths at the hotel almost since it was first opened.

Los Angeles based author and journalist James T. Bartlett, who has catalogued his findings in a 2016 publication, “Gourmet Ghosts,” acknowledges that, “with many thousands of guests per year, hotels are inevitably going to be the scene of accidents, natural deaths, suicides, crime, and even pure bad luck.”

Noting that the Cecil seems to disproportionately affected by violence, he wrote that “it really is possible to wonder whether this building is cursed, or that there are negative forces inside.”

The hotel was sold to NYC hotelier Richard Born for $30 million in 2014, and another New-York based firm, Simon Baron Development, acquired a 99-year ground lease on the property. Born, who runs expensive boutique New York hotels like the Mercer, the Maritime, the Bowery, the Greenwich, and the Ludlow, said that he is set on transforming the hotel into “reasonably priced residences catering to young professionals.”

On June 13, 2015, the Los Angeles Times reported that the body of a 28-year-old male had been found outside the hotel. According to the newspaper, a spokesperson for the county coroner told the press that the death was being investigated as a potential suicide — but that cause of death had not been determined.

On February 28, 2017, the Cecil Hotel was granted historic status by the Los Angeles city council.

Watch Horror at the Cecil on Investigation Discovery, Monday, October 16, 10/9c!

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Main photo: Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Hotel Horror: The Dark, Disturbing Past Of Los Angeles’ Cecil Hotel appeared first on CrimeFeed.