cold case – CrimeFeed

It’s that time of year again: Tis’ the season of turkey, travel — and true crime podcasts.

Whether you are looking for a quick break from a roomful of people screaming at a football game or something to get you through the six-hour car ride to grandma’s house, we’ve got you covered.

Here are five podcasts to keep ID Addicts company during the holiday season:

1. The Mind of a Murderer

Dr. Michelle Ward [Investigation Discovery]

Those who binge-watched the whole season of Mindhunter and are looking for a new window into a killer’s mind will love The Mind of a Murderer. Each episode is narrated by criminal psychologist and trial consultant Dr. Michelle Ward, who talks face-to-face with six violent murderers. Ward uses her experience as a trial consultant to look into each killer’s psyche and find out what drives them to kill.

2. Someone Knows Something

Like Serial, Someone Knows Something follows one case over multiple episodes. The first season covered the disappearance of a five-year-old boy in Ontario in 1972, while season three focused on a cold case from the Deep South.

In 1964, the remains of Charles Moore and Henry Dee were found in the Mississippi River — but no one was convicted. Forty years later, Charles’s brother Thomas goes back to Mississippi with David Ridgen to reopen the case and confront the Klan.

3. Detective

Rod Demery [Investigation Discovery]

The Investigation Discovery–produced series Detective features true stories from behind the yellow tape. The first season features Lt. Joe Kenda and his true stories from 23 years on the Colorado Springs Police Department’s Homicide Division. The latest season features Detective Rod Demery sharing revealing stories of his career as a homicide detective — and his sometimes dramatic private life.

3. Actual Innocence

Actual Innocence presents true stories of individuals who were convicted of crimes that they did not commit, often served lengthy prison terms, and were later exonerated. The podcast provides insight on how listeners can become advocates for those who have been wronged by the criminal justice system — and the stories are heartbreaking and inspiring. The podcast also provides bonus material and follow-ups to the individual stories.

5. Finding Tammy Jo

Tammy Jo Alexander [FBI]

Finding Tammy Jo is a podcast series about the murder of Tammy Jo Alexander in upstate New York. Tammy Jo was found fatally shot in a cornfield in 1979, and remained unidentified for three decades.

The case remains unsolved, and the podcast covers facets of the investigation from DNA testing to potential suspects. The episodes are short — around 10 minutes long — so are perfect for quick grocery store runs over the holiday.

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Main photo: Picture of crime scene tape [Wikimedia Commons]

The post 5 True Crime Podcasts We Are Loving Right Now appeared first on CrimeFeed.

CINCINNATI, OH — In November 2006, a worker from Consolidated Grain and Barn Co. spotted a body dressed in pearls floating in the Ohio River.

Authorities, who were unable to determine her identity, reported that the woman was five feet two inches tall with hazel eyes, a fair complexion, and very well-maintained teeth. She had been dead for approximately two days.

They were also left with one other crucial clue: The gold-and-pearl necklace that she was wearing.

She was known locally as the “Pearl Lady” or “River Lady” for eight years — and during this time, law-enforcement officials and thousands of amateur sleuths on the Internet attempted to identify her. But the case would remain cold for the next eight years.

Finally on November 5, 2014, her fingerprint was matched to those of a woman arrested for shoplifting in San Diego in 1986. At last, the “Pearl Lady” had a name: Barbara Hess Precht.

But since her identification, the mystery of what happened to Barbara and her family in Cincinnati has only deepened.

James Precht [Provided / Hamilton Co. Sheriff’s Office]

Barbara Precht was a wealthy socialite who was born into the prominent Hess family in Cincinnati. Her father was the head of the local bar association, and her uncle was a judge.

She married her husband, James Precht, who was employed as a school supervisor, and had two daughters while living in Indian Hill, Ohio.

The family decided to flee Ohio in 1983 to California — which was the year that her husband, 79-year-old James Precht, later told investigators that “men with guns” came into their home.

Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Brian Williams revealed at a press conference in 2014 that Precht said that he and his wife left the area to get “a better life.”

One of Barbara’s daughters recalled hearing individuals, presumably intruders, arguing with her parents one night and believed that the men were possibly armed.

The family settled in Covina, California, and dropped off the radar entirely until 1986, when Barbara was arrested for shoplifting food, including chocolate chip cookies, Pringles, pasta, and Colby cheese. Not long after that, she and her husband dropped the girls off at an orphanage.

Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco, said, “This wasn’t a mom abandoning children. This was the hardest decision she had to make, to give them up for their own safety. That’s what it seems to me.”

Barbara’s official cause of death has never been determined.

Investigators have determined that she hit the water at a high rate of speed, breaking several ribs and other bones. They believe that it is possible that Barbara jumped from the bridge, but she may also have been pushed.

When police finally tracked down Precht at his apartment in Clifton, he initially told them that his name was Jim Tuman — and later refused to cooperate with the investigation.

He was arrested for falsification and obstruction of justice and eventually sentenced to 25 days in jail — but he has since been released.

Police are still investigating why he never reported his wife missing. And many other questions remain, including: Why did the family leave town so suddenly? Did the men who were allegedly threatening the family really exist — and, if so, who were they?

Dr. Sammarco was reportedly exploring other theories, including the possibility that one of them was in the witness-protection program.

The investigation continues.

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Main photo: Barbara Precht, at about age 46, prior to her 1983 departure from Ohio to California [Wikimedia Commons via Hamilton Co. Sheriff’s Office]

The post Mystery Body In The Ohio River: What Really Happened To The “Pearl Lady?” appeared first on CrimeFeed.

The Zodiac Killer, a serial slaughterer who struck repeatedly in northern California during the late 1960s and early 1970s, has never been apprehended. His terror spree remains one of the most notorious and fascinating cold cases in U.S. history — as well as one of the most cinematic.

In mysterious, intricately complex letters to police and the media loaded with pictograms, map coordinates, and encoded clues, the killer, who called himself “Zodiac,” claimed to have committed 37 murders. However, authorities have only been able to definitively pin seven attacks on the same perpetrator.

Two of Zodiac’s victims survived, and another is believed to have escaped physically unharmed. One survivor described the killer as wearing a black executioner’s hood, black wraparound sunglasses, and a black smock bearing a white cross-within-a-circle on the chest — the same symbol Zodiac used to sign his letters. Truly, this seemed the stuff of horror movies.

The movie business certainly picked up on the ticket-selling potential of the case, as well.

Whether Zodiac is dead, behind bars for a different crime, or still at large, his legacy as movie subject has generated cheap exploitation flicks, acclaimed thrillers, and one bona fide detective film classic. Here’s a handy guide.

The Zodiac Killer (1971)

A grimy grindhouse nugget ripped from the headlines decades before Law and Order, The Zodiac Killer sticks close to the facts of the case that was still terrifying the public.

Paul Avery, the actual San Francisco Chronicle reporter to whom Zodiac sent his bizarre missives, opens the movie by stating: “[The film’s] goal is not to win commercial awards, but to create an awareness of a present danger… if some of the scenes, dialogue, and letters seem strange and unreal, remember — they happened.”

Don’t let that apparent stamp of authenticity carry too much weight, though. The Zodiac Killer eventually offers up its own theories as to the murderer’s motives (his father is a psycho caged in a mental hospital) and even his identity (he may be a bunny-loving postal worker who wonders, “Why are evil people allowed to live, but innocent rabbits must die?”).

Dirty Harry (1973)

Set in San Francisco, one of the Zodiac’s hunting grounds, Dirty Harry introduces Clint Eastwood’s iconic rogue cop anti-hero by pitting him against “Scorpio” (Andy Robinson), a mysterious sniper, kidnapper, and psycho terrorist whose crimes were modeled directly after the real-life Zodiac murders.

Director Don Siegel crafts a masterpiece of tone, taut pacing, and suspense, centered on the mesmerizing minimalism of Eastwood versus Robinson’s over-the-top hysteric of a homicidal maniac. Plus, Dirty Harry ends the way many wish the real Zodiac case could have.

The Exorcist III (1990)

A bomb when first released, The Exorcist III, directed by original Exorcist author William Peter Blatty and based on his novel 1983 Legion, has since become a cult favorite.

The film chronicles George C. Scott as Lieutenant William F. Kinderman, a D.C. detective who notices that a series of satanic murders uncannily resemble the work of the Gemini Killer, a serial slayer confirmed to be dead.

Blatty based Gemini on Zodiac, inspired in part by the real-life killer proclaiming in one of his letters that The Exorcist was the “best saterical [sic] comedy I have ever seen.”

What a creep!

Uli Lommel’s Zodiac Killer (2005)

Infamous schlock filmmaker Uli Lommel began pumping out a succession of true-crime-inspired, direct-to-video quickies with the (amusingly) pretentiously titled Ulli Lommel’s Zodiac Killer.

Shot on a nauseating handheld camera, ULZK tells the sordid saga of a nursing-home worker who worships the original Zodiac and initiates a new series of killings in the same tradition. You’ll want to shoot your TV screen.

Curse of the Zodiac (2007)

To cash in on the major Hollywood release Zodiac, writer-director Uli Lommel returns to the source material of his previous Zodiac Killer effort. Remarkably, this one is worse.

As such, it’s very much of a piece (of junk) with its predecessor, along with Lommel’s uniformly inept endurance tests B.T.K. Killer (2005), Green River Killer (2005), Black Dahlia (2006), Son of Sam (2008), D.C. Sniper (2009), and Manson Family Cult (2012).

Zodiac (2007)

Zodiac is Hollywood’s big-budget, high-prestige take on the Zodiac Killer case, directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network), starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey, Jr.

The movie effectively recounts the saga from the point of view of the police and the San Francisco Chronicle staffers who set out to decode Zodiac’s messages.

In addition, Zodiac even implies that one real-life prime suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch), was not only somehow involved in the crimes, but that he died in 1992 just as investigators took a new interest in him.

Critics almost universally praised Zodiac, with the film landing on numerous best-of-the-year lists. No one knows if the actual Zodiac Killer ever got to see it.

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Main photos: Zodiac Killer (1971) movie ads

The post Serial Killer Cinema: 6 Films Based On The Zodiac Killer appeared first on CrimeFeed.

STATE COLLEGE, PA — On the afternoon of November 28, 1969, Penn State grad student Betsy Aardsma dropped by the campus library to research a project for class. At some point, Aardsma ventured into Row 51 of the “stacks,” a narrow alley in the basement of the library – and she was never seen alive again.

The murder of Betsy Aardsma has become the most notorious unsolved mystery in the university’s history, and continues to confound investigators 47 years later.

Investigators were able to fill in some of the blanks of what transpired. They discovered that sometime between 4:45 and 4:55, Aardsma was stabbed a single time through the left breast with a knife.The wound severed her pulmonary artery and pierced the right ventricle of her heart.

Police later determined that Aardsma was most likely attacked from behind, given the lack of defensive wounds on her hands.

Following the stabbing, Aardsma slumped to the ground and, a minute or so later, one or two men exited the central region of the library. Before leaving, one man told a desk clerk, “Somebody better help that girl”. Neither he or the other possible person of interest has ever been identified.

Aardma’s wound produced only a small amount of visible blood, and it was further obscured by her wearing a red dress.

First responders, then, thought that perhaps Aardsma had experienced a seizure or some other medical ailment. It was not until Aardsma was examined at the Health Center that anyone realized that she had been stabbed.

Bystanders rendered first aid and attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Aardsma and called the campus hospital at 5:01 PM. By 5:19 PM, an ambulance had transported Aardsma to the Health Center, where she was pronounced dead.

Later, investigators spoke to a witness who had been near the row where Aardsma was last seen and claimed to hear two people, a man and a woman, having a conversation nearby.

According to the witness, the voices were not raised – but soon afterwards, he said that he heard someone falling and hitting one of the metal bookshelves.

The police went to the crime scene only to find that a janitor had thoroughly cleaned the area, destroying any possible evidence at the location of the attack.

In the days and weeks following the crime, thousands of men were interviewed as the search for Betsy’s killer fanned out across the university’s campus and surrounding area. The desk clerk helped create a drawing of the man who had spoken briefly to her. Regardless, the trail went cold.

The murder has spawned at least two books, a website called “Who Killed Betsy Aardsma? Uncovering Penn State University’s Most Notorious Unsolved Crime” and an upcoming movie titled, simply, Betsy.

Over the years, amateur sleuths have made a list of potential suspects. One of them who was geology student Rick Haefner, who died in 2002. Officers interviewed and dismissed Haefner as a suspect early on, but he continued to raise eyebrows as he had a criminal history that involved molestation of underage boys.

Still other experts believe that Gaefner was not Aardsma’s killer – and have named potential suspects including Ted Bundy and the Zodiac Killer. The murder investigation remains officially open.

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Main photo: Betsy Aardsma (left) and the Stacks at Penn State (right) [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Murder In The Library Stacks: A Penn State Cold Case appeared first on CrimeFeed.

McALLEN, TX — A former Roman Catholic priest is due to stand trial this week on charges he beat, raped, and strangled to death a Texas beauty queen nearly 60 years ago — right after hearing her last confession.

John Feit, 83, has long been suspected of the April 1960 murder of 25-year-old Irene Garza in McAllen, Texas.

Feit was indicted for murder in February 2016 but his lawyers have denied that he had any involvement in the killings, according to court filings.

Garza, a second-grade schoolteacher and Miss All South Texas Sweetheart 1958, vanished in April 1960 after visiting Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen for confession during Holy Week.

Five days after Garza disappeared, her body surfaced in a canal. An autopsy revealed that Garza had been raped while unconscious, and then beaten and suffocated, according to CBS.

The former Father Felt has been on the authorities’ radar since Garza’s remains turned up, as his personal photo slide viewer was among the debris found after authorities drained the canal.

Fellow priests later told investigators that they noticed scratch marks on Feit’s hands after midnight mass – and said that it was irregular for him to have taken Garza into the church rectory to hear her confession.

Two clergymen, Dale Tacheny and Joseph O’Brien, came forward in 2002 to say that Feit had confessed to them shortly after the murder, but the Hidalgo County district attorney considered the evidence too weak to secure a conviction.

The district attorney brought the case before a grand jury in 2004, but Feit was not indicted.

Investigators reopened Garza’s case in 2015. The following year, Arizona police arrested in 2016 Feit. He was later extradited to Texas.

Shortly after Garza died, church superiors ordered Felt to leave McAllen, the Dallas Morning News reported. He subsequently quit the priesthood and moved to Arizona, where he started a family.

Feit’s trial will be held in Hidalgo County and is likely to take about two weeks, county officials said on Monday.

Read more:
AOL News
CNN
NY Daily News
People

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Main photo: Irene Garza [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Did Ex-Priest Rape & Murder Texas Beauty Queen After Hearing Her Last Confession? appeared first on CrimeFeed.

TORONTO, CANADA — On December 2, 1919, Canadian entertainment mogul Ambrose Joseph Small disappeared. Police have never successfully concluded what happened, nor has his body ever been recovered.

In the realm of Toronto theater lore, the vanishing of Ambrose Small has long been the stuff of legend, right up to ongoing talk that the magnate’s spirit continues to haunt the Grand Opera House, his flagship property.

At 58, Ambrose Small loomed as a brash, famously ambitious public figure. He had worked himself up from ticket-taker and usher to ultimately being elected chairman of the Canadian Theatrical Managers’ Association and owning seven prestigious showplaces in Ontario alone, in addition to 62 other buildings.

On December 1, he made the deal of a lifetime (in his case, literally), selling the chain for a net profit of $1.6 million dollars (today, that would be $28 million).

The very next day, Small conferred with attorney F.W.M. Flock at Toronto’s Grand Opera House, where the mogul kept his central office. At around 5:30 P.M., Flock departed the theater, and he remains on record as the last person known to ever see Ambrose Small alive.

Ambrose Small Missing Poster [Toronto Police Department handout]

Related: Disappeared — What Happened To Utah Teen Macin Smith?

At first, few noticed Small’s absence, as he had been known to slip off by himself for extended periods, often to indulge his signature vices: sex, liquor, and gambling.

In addition to his office, Small had a secret “playroom” at the Grand Opera House bedecked with an ornate bed, a full bar, and pornographic artwork. He was said to regularly entertain female actresses and chorus girls in his proto-swing-pad. Supposedly, they called him “Amby.”

Even so, Small apparently lusted for money most of all and strategically married Theresa Small (née Korman) — whose mother was wed to Small’s father — with an eye on inheriting the sizable Korman family fortune. Matrimony hardly slowed down Small’s salacious ways, however.

Initially thinking her husband had taken off on another one of his runs, Theresa Small waited a full two weeks to contact the authorities. At first, Theresa put up $500 for information, but when police convinced her that Small had likely been kidnapped, she upped the offer to a staggering $50,000. Even so, nobody responded, nobody demanded a ransom, and nobody tried to siphon Small’s bank account.

The case became an international sensation. Every lead investigators pursued turned into a dead end. The most promising person of interest, Small’s assistant James Doughty — who also took off to parts unknown on December 2 — turned out to have just been an embezzler.

The press contacted iconic mystery author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and asked him to take a crack at the case. Alas, even the creator of Sherlock Holmes came away stymied.

In 1924, having come up with a half-decade of nothing, the Canadian government officially declared Ambrose Small dead.

Various theories have emerged throughout the decades. Typical accusations attempt to pin the murder on Theresa but, time and again, she has been exonerated.

Toronto’s Grand Opera House, 1874 [public domain]

As is customary in theater culture, many who have visited the Grand Opera House claim that they’ve encountered Ambrose Small’s restless spirit ambling about the rafters. No matter what, Toronto’s most famous disappearing millionaire took at least one endlessly compelling secret to his grave.

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Main image: Ambrose Small Missing Poster [Toronto Police Department handout]

The post Theater Owner Ambrose Small Vanished In 1919: Does His Ghost Haunt The Opera House? appeared first on CrimeFeed.

TACOMA, WA — The discovery of a partial human skull last month in a wooded area in East Pierce County, Washington, has reignited police interest in some long unsolved missing persons cases — including the possibility that they may be dealing with a serial killer.

Investigators have not yet determined if the skull fragment is from a man or a woman, but either way, the finding has prompted them to take another look at the case files of five women who disappeared from Tacoma between 1994 and 2010.

All of the women were reportedly involved in prostitution in the areas around Puyallup Avenue and in downtown Tacoma.

“I can’t say that we have any evidence linking these five cases together, but it’s certainly possible that one or more of these women were victims of some serial offender who may be in prison already or may be in custody for another crime, or it could be somebody that we don’t know about yet,” Detective Lindsey Wade of Tacoma Police told 13 FOX News.

The victims who disappeared and were reported missing or kidnapped with evidence of foul play include 17-year-old Tami Kowalchuk, who vanished after a night out on December 26, 1999. Kowalchuk told her mother that she was going out with friends, but she never came home.

Other missing women include Helen Tucker, 27, who disappeared in 1994, Debra Honey, who has been missing since 2002, and 16-year-old Jennifer Enyart. Enyart had run away from her home in Spokane to Seattle where police picked her up for prostitution. Her parents came and picked her up on September 21, 2000 — but on the ride home, Enyart jumped out of the car at a gas station near Spokane and fled. Her family never saw her again.

The most recent of these disappearances was Danielle Mouton, who was reportedly involved in prostitution and drugs when she disappeared from Tacoma in 2010 at the age of 24. She left behind a young daughter, and her family is still holding out hope that someone may come forward with helpful information.

Helen Tucker’s case was originally assigned to the Green River Killer Task Force, but the investigators were able to rule out Gary Ridgway as a suspect in her case. However, police say that the cannot eliminate Ridgway as a suspect in all of the missing women’s cases, since he was still active at the time of some of their disappearances.

Investigators are hoping to talk to anyone who knew the women or teens or who they associated with at the time they went missing — and stress that any detail, however small, could be important to the case.

They ask anyone with any information about the women to contact Tacoma Police or the Washington State Patrol’s Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit at 1 (800) 543-5678 or email them at MUPU@WSP.WA.GOV

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Main photo: The missing Tacoma women (left to right) Debra Honey, Tami Kowalchuk, Danielle Mouton, Jennifer Enyart and Helen Tucker [Q13 FOX (screenshot)] Background: Photo of downtown Tacoma [Wikimedia Commons]

The post Could These 5 Missing Women Have Been The Victims Of A Serial Killer? appeared first on CrimeFeed.

JACKSONVILLE, NC — On December 6, 1995, the skeletal remains of an unknown female turned up in a field next to Marine Boulevard on US Highway 17 in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Surrounded by other possible clues, the mystery figure has come to be known as “Jacksonville Jane Doe.” Read on to see if perhaps you can help crack the case.

Jacksonville Jane Doe, forensic facial reconstruction [Wikipedia]

Despite a lack of any obvious signs of foul play, authorities believe Jacksonville Jane Doe was murdered. The actual cause of her death, however, remains elusive.

Forensic scientists deduced that her remains had been laying in the field for about two years prior to discovery. Since then, artists have created facial-reconstruction images that may provide clues to Jane Doe’s appearance in life, and analysts have come up with an array of possible physical characteristics. Among them:

• Jacksonsville Jane Doe was a white female who stood between 5’5 and 5’8”.

• Her age range is guessed to have between 32 and 38.

• Jane Doe’s hair was red or auburn and may have been curly

• She had undergone extensive dental work, including a root canal, but one tooth was missing a crown. In addition, some of her teeth prominently stuck forward.

• Her fifth rib appeared to be split

Jacksonville Jane Doe, 3-D forensic facial reconstruction [Wikipedia]

In addition, police found a number of items that may have belonged to Jacksonville Jane Doe, including:

• A yellow short-sleeved shirt with shoulder pads

• A red short-sleeved shirt with shoulder pads emblazoned with the words, “No Speed Limit OSC”

• Black Lee jeans

• Black bra and panties

• One left-footed white Nike shoe

• Broken eyeglasses

• Gold hoop earrings

• Two New York City subway tokens

• Two hotel keys with a partially fire-scorched tag

Given the nature of how and where her body was found, investigators looked into the possibility that Jacksonville Jane Doe had been a sex worker. Alas, nobody knew her, nor had any local sex workers gone missing at the time.

Jacksonville Jane Doe, forensic facial sketch [Wikipedia]

From there, the trail went cold until 2012, when DNA connected incarcerated serial killer and sadistic rapist Matthew Lorne Alder to a number of unsolved murders from two decades earlier. In 2013, Alder pleaded guilty to killing a victim named Wanda Musk and thereby closing that 1993 case.

Alas, Alder has not been similarly forthcoming about Jacksonville Jane Doe, nor has the DNA link proven strong enough to charge him. So the search continues.

If you have any information regarding the identity of Jacksonville Jane Doe, please contact the Jacksonville Department of Public Safety at (910) 455-1472.

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Main images: Jacksonville Jane Doe, forensic facial reconstructions [Wikipedia]

The post “Jacksonville Jane Doe”: Can You Help ID This Mystery Murder Victim? appeared first on CrimeFeed.

On December 9, 1987, Soviet serial killer Gennady Mikhasevich was executed by firing squad in the USSR.

Police were able to prove that Mikhasevich, who raped, strangled, and smothered his victims with a variety of weapons, committed 36 murders. He actually confessed to 43, but experts say that his real body count may have been 55 or even higher.

Mikhasevich also made history by becoming known as the first serial killer who was acknowledged by the secretive Soviet media.

Robert Keller wrote in his book Murder By Numbers: The 100 Most Deadly Serial Killers From Around The World that the investigation was held back due to the fact that police insisted that serial killers were only a decadent capitalist phenomenon that did not exist in a socialist society.

Mikhasevich, a metal worker, did not fit the profile of the typical serial killer. On the surface he appeared to be a good family man. He was married with two children, did not drink, and was a diligent worker and a good member of the Communist Party. Mikhasevich also served as part of a volunteer police militia force.

He later told investigators that his killing spree began after he came home from the Army and discovered that his girlfriend had abandoned him and married someone else.

On the night of May 14, 1971, he was feeling despondent due to the breakup and decided to hang himself when, by chance, he met a young woman on the road.

Enraged, his suicidal instincts turned homicidal instead and he made the decision to kill her — using the rope he had initially planned to use to take his own life.

He killed again in October 1971, and strangled two other women in 1972 near Vitebsk. He raped his victims and strangled or smothered them. Rather than bringing weapons with him, he improvised with items that he found near the scene, such as a cord made of rye.

During the time period in which he was committing these killings, he was able to graduate from technical school and get married. He also robbed his victims of money and stole valuables — some of which he would later present as gifts to his wife.

During the 1980s, a young investigator named Nikolay Ignatovich began to figure out that the killings of females near roadways were the work of the same person. In 1985 alone, even as the investigation escalated, Mikhasevich killed 12 women.

Then, in an attempt to mislead investigators, he sent an anonymous letter to the local newspaper on behalf of an imaginary underground organization, “Patriots of Vitebsk,” supposedly calling on his fellow militants to intensify their struggle of killing communists and “lewd women.”

Experts were eventually able to determine that Mikhasevich’s handwriting was a match to the notes, and also uncovered other evidence incriminating him. He was arrested in December 1985. He later confessed and was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad in 1987.

His case became notorious in the USSR as “The Vitebsk Case” or “Витебское дело” as it revealed both the incompetence of the police and the corruption of law enforcement.

By the time Mikhasevich was arrested, 14 people had already been arrested for the same crimes and had been tortured and forced to confess to them.

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Murderpedia

ExecutedToday.com

Main photo: State Emblem of the Soviet Union [Wikimedia Commons]

The post A Look Back: The First Soviet Serial Killer & His (At Least) 36 Victims appeared first on CrimeFeed.

A South Carolina man convicted of killing seven people has said that there are more victims out there who have not yet been discovered.

The Spartanburg Herald-Journal of Spartanburg, South Carolina, reports that, in an eight-page letter, Todd Kohlhepp wrote: “Yes there is more than seven.”

According to the paper, Kohlhepp previously attempted to tell the FBI about the alleged victims, but he said “it was blown off.” He further explained, “It’s not an addition problem, it’s [a] multiplication problem. Leaves the state and leaves the country. Thank you private pilot’s license.”

But despite sharing that chilling taunt, he doesn’t seem willing to divulge any details, bluntly stating, “At this point, I really don’t see reason to give numbers or locations.”

Don Wood, chief division counsel with the FBI’s Columbia office, said the agency has a pending investigation, but declined to give specifics.

Kohlhepp, 46, pleaded guilty in May to seven counts of murder for killings that took place over a period that spanned more than 10 years. During this time, he led a double life and worked as a successful real estate agent.

The killings were uncovered in 2016 after police rescued Kala Brown, who was chained at the neck in a storage container, and investigators found a body buried in a shallow grave. Brown told investigators she saw Kohlhepp shoot and kill her boyfriend Charlie Carver.

Brown has said that Kohlhepp regaled her with details of his body count that placed his killings “nearing the triple digits.”

Experts say that it is definitely possible that Kohlhepp could have committed crimes that no one knows about. Kohlhepp was able to keep his killing spree secret for many years, is a known gun enthusiast, and had a reported “arsenal” of weapons confiscated by authorities from his Woodruff property. The killer has been sentenced to more than seven life sentences in prison.

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright says, “We don’t have anything active right this second, but we’ve always left it open-ended in case he wants to say there’s some stuff we need to check. If he’s got something to say, we’re more than willing to listen.”

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Main photo: Todd Kohlhepp [Wikimedia Commons]

The post South Carolina Serial Killer Todd Kohlhepp Claims More Victims In Taunting Letter appeared first on CrimeFeed.

COEUR D’ALENE, ID — The body of a woman who has been missing since 2004 has been found in a remote wooded area of Kootenai County 12 years after she was first reported missing.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office announced on Thursday that the body of Christine Lott had been found along a forest Service Road near Coeur d’Alene in February of 2016.

Lott, a mother of three sons, was 33 years old when she vanished in 2004. Her husband, Steve Lott, was reportedly the last person to see her alive. Steve told police that he and his wife had been arguing the day she disappeared. The couple had been married for eight years.

Steve said that on March 25, she asked to be dropped off at Mitchell’s IGA grocery store in Priest River. Steve said that his wife made a call from a pay phone, and at around 11 A.M. he saw her get into a red 1990s model Ford pickup with Washington plates with another man. Steve was unable to describe the driver to authorities.

According to previous media reports, Steve waited two days before calling police to report Christine’s disappearance. He told investigators that he spent that time calling family and friends in an attempt to locate his wife.

Despite finding Christine’s remains over a year ago, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said in a release, “The news of her discovery was kept confidential until her husband could be located and interviewed by KCSO detectives.”

Officials have not yet commented on any potential suspects in the case.

Back in 2006, authorities said that there had been no contact between Christine and her family since the day she vanished in March of 2004. Steve reportedly left the state with the two younger children, neither of which are his biological sons, in 2006.

This case is being investigated as a homicide by the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office and the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office.

Police are asking anyone who interacted with the Lott family in 2004, or who have any other information, to contact Detective J. Northrup by leaving a message at (208) 446-2237 or emailing jnorthrup@kcgov.us.

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Main photo: Christine Lott [Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office]

The post Who Killed Christine Lott? Body Of Missing Idaho Woman Found After 12 Years appeared first on CrimeFeed.

ACME, WA — She was an 18-year-old college freshman who came home over Thanksgiving in 1989, went out for a jog — and was never seen alive again.

Timothy Forrest Bass, 50, was just arrested Tuesday morning by the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office in connection with the abduction and murder of Amanda T. “Mandy” Stavik in Washington state. Stavik went missing November 24, 1989, while out for a run near her home on Strand Road in Clipper.

A freshman at Central Washington University, Stavik was home visiting her family for the holiday. She was last seen at about 2:30 P.M. the day she went missing heading out with her dog, Kyra. The dog came home alone later that afternoon — but, chillingly, there was no sign of Stavik.

Bass was a neighbor of Stavik’s at the time, and would have been 22 at the time of the murder. It’s also known that he used to attend basketball games that Stavik used to compete in.

Stavik’s body was found three days later in the south fork of the Nooksack River, around three miles south of the family’s home. An autopsy determined that she had drowned, and the medical examiner also reportedly found a blood clot on the back of her head.

A forensic examination also revealed that Stavik also engaged in sexual activity either before or after her death. Semen was taken from her body and, though a DNA profile was created, testing on several suspects revealed that their DNA did not match that of the DNA taken from Stavik’s body.

Sheriff Bill Elfo said that new DNA evidence led detectives to the arrest of Bass. Although Bass refused to provide a sample voluntarily, a coworker of his turned in a Coke can from which Bass had drank. “The laboratory determined that the match probability was 1 in 11 quadrillion,” he said.

Bass has no criminal history in Washington state, but in 2010 his wife filed for a domestic violence protection order in which she alleged physical and verbal abuse, according to Whatcom County Superior Court records.

Bass’ wife also claimed that Bass watched cold-case television shows, and during one incident, told her, “I wouldn’t get caught, because I’m not that stupid. It would be easy to get away with it,” the court records show. Despite the protection-order filing, the couple later reconciled.

Bass has been charged with first-degree murder, and also faces charges of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree rape. His bail has been set at $1 million.

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Main photo: Amanda T. “Mandy” Stavik [The Bellingham Herald (screenshot)]

The post DNA Leads To Arrest In 1989 Cold Case Murder Of College Freshman Mandy Stavik appeared first on CrimeFeed.

ANTIOCH, CA — Antioch police have arrested a suspect in connection with the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 14-year-old girl that has gone unsolved since 1980.

Mitchell Lynn Bacom, 63, is accused of stabbing Suzanne Bombardier to death in one of the area’s oldest cold cases. Bombardier went missing while babysitting two of her nieces, and investigators later determined that she was taken against her will during the early morning hours of June 22, 1980. Her body was found floating in the Antioch River five days later.

Investigators determined that Bombardier died from a single stab wound to the chest — and also concluded that she had been raped.

Local authorities have credited retired Antioch police Captain Leonard Orman, who was hired back to work on this and other cold cases, with making significant progress in the investigation, according to the Mercury News.

Police at the time were able to obtain physical evidence from the body, but investigators had to wait until technology improved before they could generate a usable DNA profile. The profile was run through a federal database and eventually matched to Bacom who — according to his family — has been employed as a truck driver, a mechanic, and had other odd jobs over the years.

Former lead investigators on the case said that Bacom knew the Bombardier family and had tried to date both Suzanne’s sister and her mother. He had long been considered a suspect in the case.

Bacom reportedly has a violent criminal history. According to Fugitive.com, he was convicted of burglary, assault with intent to murder, and sodomy in 1974, and was sentenced to five years in prison.

In 1981, Bacom was again arrested and convicted of burglary, robbery, rape, and sodomy — and this time, he was sentenced to 24 years in prison. In 2002, he was sentenced to another four years behind bars after failing to properly register as a sex offender.

In the Bombardier case, the murder charge includes enhancements that accuse Bacom of burglary, kidnapping, and sexual assault — which could make him eligible for the death penalty. Bacom did not enter a plea and has waived his right to a speedy trial, so prosecutors have warned that the case could take a long time.

Deputy District Attorney Barry Grove says, “We have reports from 37 years ago and have done and will do more investigation this year.” He added that the case is still in its preliminary stages.

The Antioch Police Department will be working with other law-enforcement agencies to investigate whether Bacom has been involved in other murders or sexual assaults. They ask that anyone with any information contact Detective Leonard Orman at (925) 779-6918.

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Main photo: Suzanne Bombardier and Mitchell Lynn Bacom [Fugitive.com / KRON 4 (screenshot)

The post Repeat Sex Offender Charged In 1980 Cold Case Murder Of 14-Year-Old Girl appeared first on CrimeFeed.

MEMPHIS, TN — Seven years after the body of former NBA player Lorenzen Wright was found in his hometown of Memphis, his ex-wife has been arrested in connection with his murder.

Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings said Saturday that Sherra Wright, 46, has been charged with first-degree murder. She was arrested by federal marshals in Riverside County, California, according to online records.

Wright was a forward and center in the NBA who played for 13 seasons for five different teams. He was beloved in his hometown of Memphis due to his charity work with youth and his father’s involvement as a coach in summer leagues.

His body was found on July 28, 2010, several days after his mother reported him missing. An autopsy revealed that he had been shot multiple times.

Sherra Wright had long been considered a prime suspect, according to media reports — but she always vehemently denied having anything to do with his death.

According to an affidavit, Sherra Wright told police that she saw her husband leave her home carrying money and a box of drugs on July 18, 2010. She said she overheard him telling someone on the phone that he planned to “flip something for $110,000,” before leaving in a car with someone she did not know, according to the document.

But Lorenzen’s former personal assistant Wendy Wilson has revealed that in the early 2000s, Sherra left angry messages for Wright that were so disturbing she reported them to police.

“They were very, very concerning, threatening in nature … very, very off-key. She was very, very jealous and very, very insecure,” Wilson told WREG.

Police got a break in the investigation when the gun that was reportedly used in the killing was found in a lake about 75 miles from Memphis.

On December 5, Billy R. Turner was also indicted on a first-degree murder charge in connection with Wright’s death. According to media reports, Turner, a landscaper, and Sherra Wright attended the same church. A release from the Shelby County District Attorney’s office says Turner and Sherra Wright conspired to kill Lorenzen Wright. The indictment says Sherra Wright and Turner acquired firearms and recruited another coconspirator, who was not named.

Sherra Wright received $1 million from her ex-husband’s life insurance policy, and agreed to a settlement in 2014 in a court dispute over how she spent the insurance money, according to The Commercial Appeal. The couple had six children.

Rallings said police believe that more people may have been involved. The investigation continues.

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Main photo: Sherra Wright [Riverside Sheriff’s Department]

The post Ex-Wife Of NBA Player Charged With His Unsolved 2010 Murder appeared first on CrimeFeed.

MUSKEGON, MI — Moments after he was convicted of murdering a 36-year-old jogger, Jeffrey Willis defiantly left the courtroom — and blew a kiss to his victim’s family on his way out.

Willis fatally shot Rebekah Bletsch, whom he encountered on the side of a Michigan road in 2014. He had attempted to pull her into his van, but she fought back and was gunned down. But investigators didn’t arrest Willis until June 2016, after he was identified in another attempted kidnapping in nearby Fruitland Township.

Before Bletsch’s tearful family members began delivering the victim-impact statements that it is their right to expess, Muskegon County Circuit Judge William Marietti granted Willis’s request to skip hearing them and the sentencing that followed, according to CBS News.

As Willis left the courtroom, he blew the family a kiss. This was met with jeers and screams of “coward” from the crowd.

“I think that was very cowardly to walk out like that, and then to turn around to my family and blow a kiss?” Jessica Josephson, Bletsch’s younger sister, said. “I think that’s his kiss of death. He’s going to get what he deserves in prison.”

She told WXMI that she hoped Willis would “rot in hell.”

Michigan law gives crime victims the right to make a statement to the court during sentencing, but the judge said it was also the defendant’s right not to be present. “This coward should have been here to listen to us,” Bletsch’s mother, Debra Reamer, said. “For him to walk out on us was just horrible.”

Willis may have hoped he got the last laugh in the situation as he spitefully walked out before acknowledging their statements, but his insolent behavior backfired on him. If he had sat in the courtroom and paid attention to the victim-impact statements as they were delivered, he would have only had to have heard them once. But, since he decided to skip out with such a flippant attitude, authorities turned the tables on him a way he didn’t anticipate. Muskegon County Sheriff Michael Poulinas confirmed that as Willis was being transported to prison in a law-enforcement vehicle later that day, deputies made him listen to a CD recording of the victim-impact statements — five times.

Willis was sentenced to life in prison. He also faces charges related to a 16-year-old girl who says she escaped his kidnapping attempt, according to Michigan Live.

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Main photo: Jeffrey Willis [Muskegon County Sheriff’s Department]

The post Convicted Murderer Blew A Kiss To Victim’s Family On His Way Out Of Court appeared first on CrimeFeed.

If you want to help solve the murder of two sisters from Chicago, you don’t have to search far for information. The brutal deaths of Barbara and Patricia Grimes have been in the spotlight for over 60 years. Through all of these decades, the case has never been solved, and the creepy mystery only continues to grow.

According to Chicago Now, it was just a few days after Christmas in 1956 when 15-year-old Barbara Grimes and her 13-year-old sister left their home around 7:30 P.M. Many reports say the pair went to dinner and to see the movie Love Me Tender, starring Elvis Presley.

By all accounts, they made it to the theater. After the show, they were supposed to meet their other sister and brother at a bus stop, but they never showed, NBC News reports. For more than three weeks, NBC says the search to find the Grimes sister was the most labor-intensive missing person cases in Cook County, Illinois history.

On January 22, 1957, both of the girls were found – they were dead, and their naked bodies were discovered off the side of a road. There was no obvious signs of blunt force trauma, gunshots, or stab wounds, reports said, though the older girl was reportedly molested. According to a medical examiner at the time, the girls died from “secondary shock due to cold temperatures.”

Ray Johnson, a former investigator for the West Chicago Police Department, who has studied the case extensively, said at first police did not take the case seriously; they thought the girls vanished on their own. He added it took police about a week to really get going on the investigation, and Elvis Presley himself even spoke out about it, which added a tremendous amount of attention to the case. He said at the time of the sisters’ disappearance, their mother reported the girls missing — she knew all along they didn’t just run away, as there wasn’t a chance they would leave behind all their new Christmas gifts, many of which were left under the tree.

Crime History: 6-Year-Old Adam Walsh Disappeared 36 Years Ago Today

Johnson added this case is still the biggest investigation with the most man-hours ever put into a case by the Chicago police.

As for the girl’s mother, according to Johnson, she received a number of letters and phone calls over this time. He said some of the calls were extremely cruel; some folks were upset that Ms. Grimes would let her young daughters venture out solo on a cold winter night.

Over the years, police said they’ve made only one arrest: a man by the name of Edward “Bennie” Bedwell. Bedwell was a local dishwasher who was interrogated for three days at a local motel. He eventually admitted to the murder, Johnson said.

Bedwell couldn’t read or write, so it would be nearly impossible for him to understand what he was confessing to, Johnson added. After a time, everyone realized Bedwell’s story didn’t add up. There were inconsistencies, including the fact that Bedwell said he was with the girls for a month before they died, Johnson said. The problem with that confession was the girls were dead within four hours of leaving home, reports say.

Over the years, investigators looked into a number of suspects, but no one has been formally charged. Johnson believes there are at least two or three people still alive who may have answers in this case.

Mrs. Grimes died in 1989, Johnson said, and is now buried near her daughters. She went to her grave never knowing who took their lives.

If you want to continue to follow all of the twists and turns in this case, you can follow the Facebook page Johnson created: Help Solve Chicago’s Grimes Sisters’ Murder.

The Cook County Cold Case Unit is also accepting leads in the Grimes case, and you can reach them directly at (708) 865 – 4549. If you are in search of a missing person, make sure to enter their information into the database of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

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The post Who Killed The Grimes Sisters In 1956? Mysterious Murders Still Unsolved After Over 60 Years appeared first on CrimeFeed.

SPRINGFIELD, MO — In June 1992, three women vanished without a trace in Springfield, Missouri — and the mystery of what happened to “The Springfield Three” has haunted the town ever since.

On June 6, 1992, 19-year-old Suzie Streeter and her friend, 18-year-old Stacy McCall, graduated from Kickapoo High School. At around 2:15 A.M. on June 7, the teens left a graduation party and headed to Streeter’s home, which she shared with her mother, Sherrill Levitt, on 1717 E. Delmar.

None of the three women were ever seen alive again.

Investigators later found the womens’ belongings in the residence. They believe that this evidence leads to the conclusion that the teens made it home from the party.

On the morning of June 7, the teens’ friend Janelle Kirby came to the house to look for them, since she said they had failed to show up after planning to spend the day at a water park in Branson. She found Levitt and Streeter’s Yorkshire terrier mix, Cinnamon, inside and agitated. While at the residence she also answered a “strange and disturbing call” from an unidentified male she said made “sexual innuendos.” She hung up.

McCall’s mother, Jannice, later visited the residence, and found the purses belonging to all three women neatly lined up on the floor at the top of the stairs. She called the police to report the three women missing.

In addition to finding their purses inside, including their money, all three of their cars were still parked outside the house, and McCall’s migraine medication was left behind. The case mystified police because, other than the missing women, nothing seemed disturbed in the house. Investigators found no sign of a struggle — with the possible exception of a broken porch light that friends had cleaned up before police were called, and a “strange” answering machine message that McCall had accidentally erased while contacting authorities.

The crime scene was also complicated by the fact that friends and family, who did not yet realize that the women were missing, cleaned up the house.

FBI Missing Poster for Springfield Three

The Springfield Police Department, the FBI, and the media began a manhunt for the missing women, and the case was broadcast on the television show America’s Most Wanted. But despite national publicity, the case turned cold.

Over the years, the case of the Springfield Three, or 3MW, has been assigned to numerous investigators, and police have investigated hundreds of theories and leads. Several names have been mentioned in connection with the case. During the 1990s, Robert Craig Cox, a convicted kidnapper, told police that the three women were dead and that he knew where they were buried. Police say that he remains a person of interest, but he has never been charged in connection with the case.

A few years ago, a theory emerged on internet forums that the women are buried underneath a south Springfield parking garage owned by CoxHealth. Police spokeswoman Lisa Cox said the department first received that tip in 2006, but that the original tipster “provided no evidence or logical reasoning behind this theory at that time or since then,” according to the Springfield News-Leader. Cox said that police have spoken with the woman who made the tip, and even scanned a portion of the parking garage, but found no evidence of the women being buried there.

Image from Missing Persons poster of (left to right) Sherrill Levitt, Suzanne Streeter, and Stacy McCall [Wikimedia Commons]

Police continue to encourage members of the public to come forward with any relevant information, and there is a reward of $42,000 in the case. Following are descriptions of the women provided by the Springfield Police:

Sherrill Levitt: 11-01-44, 5′, 110 lbs., brown eyes, short bleached-blonde hair, naturally curly hair, longer on top and short in the back. Sherrill Levitt has a thin build and has freckles on her neck and upper chest area.

Suzanne (Suzie) Streeter: White female, DOB 03/09/73, 5’2”, 102 lbs., brown eyes, straight bleached-blonde, shoulder-length hair, large teeth with no dental work. She has a 3-1/2” scar on top of her right forearm and a small tumor in the left corner of her mouth which gives the appearance that she has something in her mouth.

Stacy McCall: White female, DOB 04/23/74, 5’3”, 120 lbs., blue eyes, dark blonde hair to the middle of her back with sun-lightened ends. She has freckles on her face and a dimple in the middle of her chin.

To learn more about this case, watch the “The Springfield Three” episode of Investigation Discovery’s Disappeared on ID GO now!

If you are in search of a missing person, make sure to enter their information into the database of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

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The post Where Are “The Springfield Three”? Women Disappeared Without A Trace In 1992 appeared first on CrimeFeed.

A magazine has revealed an alleged “bombshell” confession that could help solve the murder of child beauty pageant princess JonBenét Ramsey — but could it really be true?

January 8, 2018 Star magazine cover

Star reports that convicted child molester and previous JonBenét Ramsey murder suspect Gary Oliva has penned 15 “confession letters,” and sent them, along with pictures of JonBenét nailed to a cross, to his old high school friend Michael Vail. The magazine also claims that an arrest is “imminent.”

“Gary’s account of the murder is actually one of the most logical explanations I have heard in 20 plus years,” Vail told Star. But this isn’t the first time that Vail has claimed that his former friend could be involved in JonBenét’s death.

So who is Gary Oliva?

Oliva was a 32-year-old known sex offender in Boulder, Colorado, who lived just one street away from the Ramsey home at the time of JonBenét’s murder in December 1996.

He was arrested after police found a magazine cutout of JonBenét in his backpack when he was apprehended on drug charges in 2000. Though he was released, many people remained suspicious of Oliva.

They included the family’s longtime private investigator, Ollie Gray, who criticized the Boulder PD for failing to consider him as a more credible suspect.

After the arrest, Vail claimed that just six days after the murder, a distraught Oliva had called him on the phone and confessed to his longtime pal that he had “hurt a little girl. I hurt a little girl.”

In 2002, while Oliva was in Boulder jail awaiting extradition to Oregon on a parole violation, he told the Denver Post that he had kept the magazine cutting because “JonBenet’s murder touched me very deeply” and that he “felt the need to build a monument, a shrine, to remember this little girl.”

In March 2017, Vail told InTouch magazine that the knots used to fashion the garrote that strangled JonBenét were similar to those used in an incident where Oliva attempted to choke his mother with telephone cord.

JonBenét Ramsey [Wikipedia]

Oliva aroused suspicion due to his apparent obsession with JonBenét. He also showed up to her memorial in 1997 reportedly wearing Hi-Tec shoes, which were the same type that left a footprint in the basement of the Ramsey family home, and sat in the front row.

He was reportedly cleared by DNA testing, but according to Vail, the testing methods were flawed.

In 2016, 9NEWS and the Boulder Daily Camera reported that Boulder police and prosecutors planned to do new DNA tests on key evidence. These plans came in the wake of a joint 9NEWS/Camera investigation that uncovered serious flaws in the interpretation of previous DNA testing on the panties and long johns that JonBenét was wearing when she was killed.

In 2016, Oliva was charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a child for possessing child pornography. He pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of sexual exploitive material on March 9, 2017, and is currently behind bars. Oliva has consistently denied any involvement in JonBenét’s murder.

According to Vail, Oliva has maintained his disturbing fascination with JonBenét, and asked that a picture of her be sent to his cell. When Vail said that wouldn’t be allowed, Oliva replied, “I don’t see why not, it’s my freedom of religion.”

To learn more about this case, watch Investigation Discovery’s JonBenét: An American Murder Mystery on ID GO now!

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Star Magazine, January 8, 2018 issue

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Main photo: Gary Oliva [Boulder Police]

The post Is This The Man Who Killed JonBenét? Magazine Claims That Murder “Has Been Solved” appeared first on CrimeFeed.

ATLANTA, GA — On June 21, 1981, Atlanta native Wayne Williams, 23, was arrested for the murders of two men whose bodies had been found in the Atlanta river.

But these murders were just the tip of the iceberg: Investigators would later link him to the “Atlanta Child Murders,” a string of killings that took place over a two-year period from the middle of 1979 until May 1981. During this time, Atlanta was a city paralyzed with fear.

At least 28 African-American children — and adults — vanished, before their dead bodies were discovered in isolated areas. Although most of the dead were children and teenagers, six victims were men in their 20s. The youngest victim was seven-year-old Latonya Wilson, who disappeared on June 22, 1980.

Most of the victims were strangled, but some were stabbed to death. Some of the bodies were being dumped in different rivers, so police surveillance teams made a plan to stake out bridges throughout Atlanta.

On May 22, 1981, officers watching a bridge over the Chattahoochee River got a break when they heard a loud splash and saw a vehicle speeding away. The driver was Williams, who told the police that he was a music producer and was on his way to audition a new singer.

Williams was born in 1958, and enjoyed a stable, middle-class home life. He enjoyed radio broadcasting, and his goal was to become a music producer.

Two days after Williams was stopped, the nude body of a 27-year-old man was found near the bridge. Police then looked into Williams’ background and discovered he had previously been arrested for impersonating a police officer.

Williams came in for questioning, and — after he failed a polygraph test — police obtained a search warrant for the residence of Williams’ parents, where he was living, and found hairs and fibers matching those from some of the murder victims.

He was arrested in June, and eventually convicted of murdering the two adults whose bodies were found in the river in the spring of 1981. Police subsequently have attributed a number of the child murders to Williams and closed the cases, although he has not been tried or convicted in any of those cases.

When Williams went to trial, DNA technology was in its infancy. So the case was largely built on circumstantial evidence, such as the fibers and hairs. He was found guilty, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison. Ten other deaths were presented to the jury during the trial, but he was not charged in any of those.

After he went to prison, DNA technology improved, and evidence implicated Williams in the death of at least one other victim, 11-year-old Patrick Baltazar. The boy’s body was found dumped down a wooded slope behind an office park on February 13, 1981.

A forensic scientist discovered two human scalp hairs inside the boy’s shirt, and at trial, scientists testified that the hairs were consistent with those of Williams — but there was no way of being 100 percent sure at the time.

The judge allowed the hair samples to be sent to Quantico for testing, and retired FBI scientist Harold Deadman, who testified about the hair findings in Williams’ 1982 trial and later became head of the FBI’s DNA lab, said that the testing done on the hairs pointed to Williams and “would probably exclude 98 percent or so of the people in the world.”

Williams has denied he killed Patrick Baltazar, and maintained his innocence in the other murders.

In 2015, a study released by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, the Innocence Project, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers found that in 96 percent of cases where FBI hair analysis led to a conviction before 1999, the evidence was faulty. 11Alive News revealed that one of those cases was Wayne Williams’. Williams’ attorney stated at the time that he hoped to use the information in an appeal, but several experts disagreed and said that hair analysis played only a small role in the case.

Williams and his family members have also blamed the murders on various others over the years, including the Atlanta police — who they believed were trying to avoid a race war — and the Ku Klux Klan.

Spin magazine investigated the case in 1986, and revealed that a secret investigation discovered and then covered up the fact that a Ku Klux Klan family, the Sanders, may have been responsible for the murder of a young black boy and was possibly linked to the murders of 14 others in an attempt to ignite a race war between blacks and whites, according to court papers. But as the evidence against the Sanders family grew, the committee investigating the killings allegedly became nervous that revealing that the Klan was behind the murders could trigger racial unrest in the city. Members of the committee reportedly decided to terminate the secret investigation and seal its findings — but the controversy continues to this day.

Williams is serving his sentence in Hancock State Prison in Georgia.

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Main photo: Wayne Williams [Fulton County Police]

The post The Controversial Case Of The “Atlanta Child Murders” & Wayne Williams appeared first on CrimeFeed.

WELCH, OK — Newly discovered investigative notes may have given Oklahoma police new clues in the unsolved 1999 mystery of two teenage girls who disappeared following a horrific double murder.

Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible, both 16 years old, were last seen alive on December 29, 1999. They were at a sleepover at Ashley’s home celebrating her birthday.

On December 30, the bodies of Ashley’s parents, Danny and Kathy Freeman, were found inside their burned home near Welch. Investigators later determined that the pair were shot and killed before their home was set ablaze. Detectives found that the cause of the fire was an accelerant that had been placed near the stove.

But there was no sign of Ashley and Lauria, according to the CUE Center for Missing Persons.

Law enforcement has spent years following up on leads that took them to Canada and Mexico, but the case remained cold.

But now, Craig County Sheriff Heath Winfrey opened a closet and found a crate containing “unknown notes and documents he discovered referencing the Freeman/Bible case that was left from the previous sheriff administration,” Gary Stansill, District 12 District Attorney’s Office investigator, told the Tulsa World. Stansill said that the notes have provided additional leads on potential persons of interest.

Stansill said he and an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent have interviewed several people who have knowledge about the shooting deaths of the Freemans and the disappearance of the teenagers. “These notes and documents have proven to be extremely valuable,” Stanstill said. “This information has produced leads that have produced additional leads.”

Police had previously investigated Jeremy Jones, 43, a convicted killer and rapist who once lived in Oklahoma. The suspected serial killer said in a confession to the media that he later recanted that he killed the Freemans over an unpaid debt and then set the home on fire, according to the CUE Center for Missing Persons. Jones also claimed that he shot the teens and left their bodies in a mineshaft.

But police found no evidence of their remains in a 2005 search of the area, according to the Tulsa World. So Jones has never been charged in the case and is currently awaiting execution in Alabama in a separate rape and murder.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) is offering up to $10,000 for credible information, and a private reward of $50,000 also reportedly stands. They have asked anyone with information about the case to call the OSBI hotline at (800) 522-8017, or to email tips@osbi.ok.gov.

If you are in search of a missing person, make sure to enter their information into the database of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

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Main photo: Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible [National Center For Missing and Exploited Children]

The post Could Newly Found Notes Be The Key To Solving 1999 Oklahoma Cold Case? appeared first on CrimeFeed.