On January 25, 2024, the Hamilton County Coroner's Office of Indiana released a statement confirming Manuel Resendez had been identified as part of a large operation to identify a staggering 10,000 bones that were discovered on an 18-acre estate known as Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, Indiana. Fox Hollow was formerly owned by a suspected serial killer named Herb Baumeister.
It is believed the remains, which appeared to have been burned, could belong to at least 25 victims.
Manuel Resendez was 34 years old at the time of his disappearance and was finally identified earlier this month after his family members submitted DNA samples to be tested against his remains. Resendez was from Lafayette, Indiana, and worked as a children’s counsellor. His cause of death is unknown.
Who was Herb Baumeister?
The I-70 Strangler is the media moniker given to an unidentified serial killer who murdered 11 boys and men in the Indiana / Ohio area between the summer of 1980 and the fall of 1991. The victims would be picked up at local gay bars around Indianapolis and found strangled to death along the I-70. The victims were all male and between the ages of 14 - 32. The I-70 strangler case is not officially solved; however, police believe Baumeister could be responsible as the bodies stopped appearing along the intersection following his purchase of the Fox Hollow property in 1991.
Although married with three children of his own, Baumeister was known to frequent gay bars under his alias, "Brian Smart," where it is believed he would lure men to his home with the intention of harming and killing them. Police believed that they could link Baumeister to at least 16 men who had gone missing since 1980, several of whom were found dead in rural areas of Indiana and Ohio.
In the early 1990s, after a young gay men of similar descriptions began disappearing in and around Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Police Department and the Marion County Sheriff's Department launched an investigation. They received a call from a man named Tony Harris, whose friend, Roger Goodlet, had gone missing. Harris told police that he suspected a man named Brian Smart had murdered Goodlet after meeting him in a gay bar and going home with him.
When asked why he believed this, Tony Harris said he himself was a survivor of Baumiester, and was able to give the police an insight into how Baumiester lured and killed his victims.
Harris said he met Baumiester at a gay bar, the 501 club in Indianapolis, and accepted an invitation to go home with him, arriving at Fox Hollow.
While in the middle of their sexual encounter, Harris said Baumiester attempted to strangle him to death with a pool hose. In order to survive, Harris had to think fast, and acted as though he was unconscious. He then managed to escape the property, as well as the grisly fate Baumiester had likely planned for him that night.
Harris tried to track down the man he knew as “Brian Smart,” but it wouldn’t be until 1995 that he finally spotted the man while driving around, and followed him, so he could write down the licence plate.
Investigators were finally able to identify the man as Herb Baumeister and informed him that he was a suspect in several missing peoples cases. Baumeister denied police requests to search his home and property, however, by 1996, Baumiester could no longer hold himself together, scaring his wife to the point that they separated. She allowed police to search the land and property after the divorce was formally filed, making sure that Baumeister himself was not in town at the time. It was then that police discovered the remains.
The remains of at least 11 different people were turned up in woodland on Fox Hollow Farm on June 24, 1996.
The property was searched again in early December of 2022, turning up twenty potential burial sites.
Although many sets of remains have been recovered over the years, only eight individuals have been formally identified, and several remain unknown, and are all thought to be male murder victims
Baumeister committed suicide in Canada at the age of 49 in the summer of 1996.
Before shooting himself in the head, he penned a suicide note across three sheets of paper, not once mentioning the remains found on his land. He expressed remorse for ruining his marriage and business.
The victims so far are all between the ages of 20 - 45 and went missing between 1993 - 1996.
The Hamilton County Coroner's office is asking that families in the area who have loved ones that went missing between the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties to complete a DNA test to help identify the remaining victims.
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Bradley Jr. allegedly lured the woman out into the isolated area and murdered her, burying he body in a shallow grave on the park. Autopsy revealed that the victim had died due to injuries sustained from blunt force trauma to the head.
It was later revealed that Bradley Jr. had lured Blake out by telling her he was going to dig up some gold he had buried on the land and asking her to come with him. After she stopped communicating with her family, they had reported her missing.
Brandi Blake had recently won $20,000 at a casino and usually carried large sums of cash around with her as opposed to putting it in the bank.
Police believe Blake Jr. knew this and that it was likely the motivation for the crime.
At the time, investigators were unaware that the murder was not an isolated incident, rather one in a string of serial murders at the hands of an accused Kent, Washington serial killer, seemingly motivated to kill for monetary gain.
Police searching the area where Blake’s body was found soon discovered three human ribs belonging to who they would come to find was another victim of the same killer.
These ribs were sent for analysis and linked to a man named Emilio Maturin, who had not been seen since the summer of 2019 and had been officially reported missing by his girlfriend on August 2, 2019. She had tracked his cell phone to the Game Farm Park to look for him, but decided to drive back home after feeling uneasy about being there.
Maturin’s girlfriend later told investigators that she had heard a conversation between Bradley Jr. and Maturin, in which Bradley had asked for help digging up some buried gold in the Auburn area. Although Maturin didn’t seem convinced of the buried treasure story, it seemed he went along with Bradley Jr. anyways, never to be seen alive again.
Maturin’s girlfriend reported that the two had left in Maturin’s new BMW, which was later found off Stuck River Drive, nearby the crime-site. On July 19, 2019, police surveyed the empty vehicle waiting for Bradley to show up. They waited until Bradley climbed into the vehicle before attempting to apprehend him, however he drove off, before abandoning the vehicle and attempting to escape on foot. The vehicle was purported to contain a large amount of Heroin, which Bradley claimed, “belonged to his friend.”
He was charged with eluding law enforcement.
In April 2021, the bodies of a father and son, Michael Goeman, 59 and Vance Lakey, 31, were found shot to death in a rural area just outside of Auburn. Goeman had recently received a large inheritance before he and his son were found dead. They had used $3,500 of the inheritance to buy a brand new vehicle, paying for it upfront in cash. Bradley was likely aware that the family had recently come into money. Media outlets report that before Goeman received the inheritance, he and his son were living in a tent. They then began sleeping in the newly purchase SUV.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that Goeman had died as a result of a gunshot to the head. Lakey was found with multiple gunshot wounds to the head.
Police considered Bradley Jr. as a suspect in their deaths as he had purportedly offered a third-party $1000 in cash to burn Goeman's vehicle after the father and son went missing. The vehicle, a Dodge Durango, was impounded at the time.
Richard Bradley Jr, now 40-years-old, who has been incarcerated for two years at this point on murder and arson and other charges, was charged last month with the murders of Goeman, Lakey and Maturin.
Police determined that Bradley Jr. had killed his victims much in the same way- by luring them out with the story of digging up stashed gold, before killing them and stealing their vehicles and possessions. According to documents Emilio Maturin was driving a brand new BMW containing class A drugs and cash.
Bradley pleaded not guilty at an arraignment on Dec. 14, 2023. He is scheduled to go to trial in January 2024 regarding Blake's murder.
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On Sept. 14, 1974, the body of a young man was discovered in Orange County, California, near a roadside area approximately 3 Miles south of Calle Corta and 4 Miles West of El Toro Rd, in unincorporated Laguna Hills (now Aliso Viejo.)
The discovery was made along a trail by two men who were off-roading on a fire road.
The man was described as being as being between the ages of 18-25, around 6ft tall and 178lbs, "well nourished." He had shoulder length strawberry blonde hair, and since he was estimated to have been dead for an approximately 3 - 5 days, was still recognisable.
Autopsy revealed that John Doe had died as a result of an accidental overdose, as he had both alcohol and diazepam in his system. They took a copy of his fingerprints and dental records, hoping they could be used to identify him later.
His likeness was released to the public in the hope that someone would recognize him, however, nobody ever came forward to identify the young man and he was eventually laid to rest in El Toro Memorial Park in an unmarked grave.
A couple of years later, in 1980, authorities noticed similarities between several other deaths of young men in and around Southern California in 1978. These other young men had also died with both alcohol and diazepam in their systems and their deaths had been determined to be homicides.
Investigators were suspicious that there was a link, but did not yet know to whom.
In the spring of 1983, a man named Randy Steven Kraft was arrested at a traffic stop after a California Highway Patrol officer found him with the body of a dead young man in the passenger seat of his vehicle.
The victim was identified as Terry Lee Gambre, a U.S marine whom Kraft had strangled to death.
A further search of the vehicle turned up alcohol and prescription drugs, and when patrol searched the trunk, they found a list written in code, with over 67 coded entries believed to be the man's victims. It is believed he had been on a killing spree for an entire decade before he was eventually caught red handed with a body in his car.
Kraft was soon discovered to be a rapist and serial killer, and was convicted of the murder of 16 individuals several years later in 1989. He was given the media moniker the "Scorecard Killer,” and although convicted of 16 murders it is believed he may have many, many more- with a potential 61 victims.
He had also been dubbed the “Southern California Strangler”, and the “Freeway Killer,” and was known for raping, torturing, and killing his victims, sometimes keeping pieces of their decapitated bodies in his home. He would sometimes cut off his victim’s genitals, burn them with lighters, and violently beat them.
In the mid-1960s, Kraft worked at a gay bar in Garden Grove, Orange County, and would often drive to Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach in search of sex. He was arrested in 1966 after approaching an undercover officer and charged with lewd conduct. He joined the U.S Airforce after graduating college but was discharged in the summer of 1969 after informing his superiors that he was gay. It is believed Kraft began first assaulting males in 1970, starting with a 13-year-old runaway he found at Huntington Beach and convinced to "live with him" in his apartment. The boy was drugged and sexually assaulted multiple times, managing to escape some hours later while Kraft was at work. It was discovered that Kraft targeted US Marines and would often ask them if they wanted a ride somewhere, offering them alcohol if they accepted. Photographs of victims recovered during a search of Kraft’s home served as evidence that he would sometimes take the victims to his residence to further torture and sexually assault them before killing them and transporting their bodies elsewhere for disposal. He would stuff tissue paper into their nostrils and objects into their rectums, a detail that police believed indicated he could have served in the military, as this technique is often used to stop purge fluid leaking from the body after death.
Kraft is currently 78 years old and is incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.
More than a year ago, the Orange County Sheriff’s department obtained a DNA sample from the Orange County John Doe, and submitted it to Othram Laboratories- a forensic biotechnology company that has aided in the identification of John and Jane Does over the last several years. Othram worked with the OCSD to finally give John Doe back his identity and after entering the DNA profile into genetic genealogy databases, found familial links. Ten months later, John Doe's grandparents were identified, and from there, they were able to track down their living granddaughter. She told investigators that her brother had went missing from Cedar Rapids, Iowa when he was just 17 years old in the spring of 1974. Officers made their way to Kansas City, MO, where a woman they suspected to be John Doe's mother allowed them to take a DNA sample to test it against that of the unidentified victim.
It was a match and investigators were finally able to identify the Orange County John Doe as Michael Ray Schlicht.
Police believe that Schlicht may be one of Kraft’s early victims, as more young men who had died much the same way would be later found several miles from Laguna Hills, where Schlicht’s body was initially found.
Anyone with information regarding the case is asked to contact Orange County Crime Stoppers at 1-855-TIP-OCCS or crimestoppers.org
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Suzanne Kjellenberg was officially named last week in a press conference by the Oskaloosa County Sheriff's Office.
Kjellenberg’s body was found by an inmate work crew in Holt, Florida just off the I-10 in September of 1994.
Although in 1995 Jesperson admitted to killing a woman named “Suzie,” forensic technology was in its infancy in the 1990s, and investigators were unable to make an identification of the victim. The remains were also skeletal by the time they were discovered, making it even more to produce a composite sketch of what Kjellenberg could have looked like.
At the time of her murder, Suzanne Kjellenberg did not have a fixed place of abode, nor a place of employment. News articles describe her as a drifter.
Jesperson, a long haul truck driver at the time of his arrest, told police that he met Kjellenberg at a truck stop in Tampa, Florida, in 1994. He described locking zip ties around the victims neck to stop her screaming. He said he did so because he did not want nearby security guards to notice he had, what he referred to as, "an unauthorized person," in his truck. Strangulation was his method of murder and he killed at least eight women this way.
Suzanne Kjellenberg was recently identified after the medical examiner’s office sent DNA samples to Othram Lab, who created a genealogical profile for the victim. From there, a living relative was tracked down, and helped investigators to put a name to the Jane Doe.
Jesperson has given some insight into his life over the years, describing his childhood in an abusive home in British Columbia with his alcoholic father, and his experience as the target of bullying in school. He eventually grew up perpetuating the same violence towards other kids and animals, capturing wild birds and stray cats and dogs which he would beat, torture, choke and kill.
He once beat another child severely and held another's head underwater. He would later claim that these incidents were murder attempts. Jesperson would have been around 10 or 11 at the time of the attacks.
Before he was known as the Happy Face Killer, he was known as "Igor" due to his large stature of 6"7. He never dated in high school; however, when he was 20 years old he got married, and had two daughters and a son.
Before the murders, Jesperson had been training to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but had to pull out after sustaining an injury. He eventually became a truck driver, which is how he would go on to find his victims and spread his crimes out over the country.
His wife took the children and left at some point in the eighties, relocating to Spokane, Washington while Jesperson was away for work. The divorce was officially finalised in 1990, and there were rumours that Jesperson's wife believed he had been cheating on her as unknown women would often call the home line.
Jesperson's daughter would grow up and go on to publish a book about living with her serial killer father, which recalled a lot of his abuse and killing towards animals that came within the vicinity of their home and the pleasure he derived from it. She would also make appearances on several talk shows to talk about growing up with him.
Keith Jesperson killed multiple women across several states while driving cross-country for work. His media moniker, “The Happy Face Killer,” was given on account of the smiley faces he would sign off with in his letters to authorities and newspapers. He killed eight women between 1990 – 1995. His victims were strangers to him, sex workers or lone women hitchhiking, whom he would murder.
Although his official victim count, at the time of writing, is eight, Jesperson claims that he killed many, many more women. According to the killer, he believes he has killed upwards of 160 women over the years, but this has never been confirmed.
An uninvolved individual falsely confessed to the murder of Jesperson’s first victim, Taunja Bennett. Jesperson, who was hungry for the attention of his crime, wrote a letter to the police and media, with proof he committed the murder.
Jesperson's first arrest came in the Spring of 1995. He was considered a suspect in the murder of Julie Winningham. Despite the fact that there were no grounds for arrest, Jesperson attempted to take his own life two times, before ultimately handing himself over to the authorities.
Jesperson is currently serving out multiple life sentences. He took a plea deal over a death sentence and will remain incarcerated for the rest of his life. He is, at the time of writing, being held at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
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The Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) has been identified as 59-year-old Rex Heuermann, a husband, father and resident of Massapequa Park, Nassau County.
Heuermann, an architect, was charged last week with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in connection with the slayings of Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, and Melissa Barthelemy. He is also the main suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who was reported missing by a friend on July 14, 2007.
Mother of one, Megan Waterman, twenty-two at the time, went missing from the Holiday Inn she was staying at in the summer of 2010. Waterman, a sex worker, was scheduled to meet a client but failed to return. The hotel was no more than fifteen miles from Gilgo Beach. She was from Scarborough in Maine and was last seen getting on a bus to New York on June 6, 2010, before she went missing. Her remains were found 13 December 2010, on Ocean Parkway, nearby Gilgo Beach, where she had been staying when she disappeared.
Amber Lynn Costello also went missing from her home just three months later.
Costello was slightly older than the others, at 27, and resided in West Babylon, Long Island. She was reportedly an addict who worked as an escort to fuel her addiction and, like the other victims, advertised her services on Backpage and Craigslist. After leaving to meet with a client on 2 September 2010, she was never seen again, nor was she reported missing by her roommates, who were also addicts. Her remains were discovered near Gilgo Beach on 13 December 2010.
Melissa Barthelemy's cause of death was long questioned. According to police, the victim had drowned, however it was suspected that she may have been strangled to death.
The victim's mother, Lynn Barthelemy, said that not long after Melissa had disappeared, the family began receiving phone calls from an unknown male, taunting them, and describing how he had raped and murdered Melissa.
The calls were made from the victim's burner phone, and traced back to a location in Midtown Manhattan, which was later revealed to be a work office used by Rex Heuermann. Phone records also indicated that the victims were each murdered when the suspects wife and children were elsewhere in the country.
Burner phones connected to the victims were said to have moved between Midtown and Massapequa Park.
Ms. Brainard-Barnes, 25, whom Heuermann is also suspected in the death of, was a mother of two and an escort, who, like the other girls, advertised her services on Craigslist and Backpage.
Although she had quit escorting for several months, she picked it back up again to make mortgage payments on her house and met with clients at motels around the area. She also worked at a Manhattan motel. Brainard-Barnes went missing on July 6, 2007, after boarding a train to Grand Central. She was never seen alive again and her remains were eventually discovered near Gilgo Beach in late 2010.
Over 2010 – 2011, the remains of eleven individuals were found along Gilgo Beach.
(Please see the previous post on the LISK for more details.)
In early 2022, police began to investigate the Long Island Serial Killer again, and uncovered a significant piece of witness evidence in mid-March that same year regarding the murder of Amber Costello. Police believed they had identified a possible vehicle that the killer may have used in Costello’s death- a Chevrolet Avalanche. Rex Heuermann owned the same type of vehicle around this time.
It was this tip that led police in his direction
Police launched an investigation into Heuermann and were eventually able to obtain his DNA from a slice of discarded pizza. This DNA matched the evidence found on three of the victims. More than three hundred search warrants, subpoenas and other legal processes were executed during this investigation.
It was also discovered that Heuermann had allegedly transferred a strand of his own wife’s hair onto one of the victims.
According to documents, the suspect had looked up pictures of the victims online, as well as pictures of their family members. It appeared he followed the Long Island Serial Killer case closely, often searching online for details and possibly updates. These searches have been described as “compulsive.” He was also reported as having a disturbing search history, as well as images of child abuse. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray, Tierney revealed, at a News conference this week that "depictions of women being abused and being killed" as well as "torture porn" were also found on Heuermann’s computer.
So, who is Rex Heuermann?
Heuermann was born in 1964 and grew up in Massapequa Park, Long Island. He lives in his childhood home on First Avenue. The neighborhood is described as quiet, peaceful and largely uneventful. Heuermann was married in the late nineties and gained a stepson, before having a daughter of his own. As an architect, he ran his own company, R. H. Consultants. He was seen leaving for work in a suit several times per week.
The BBC reports that Heuermann had a large safe packed with guns and had "lisences for 92 firearms."
Heuermann pleaded not guilty to the charges and is being held without bail. If convicted he will face multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Heuerman reportedly broke down and denied all guilt, rejecting responsibility for the murders. Through tears in court, he said, "I didn't do this."
Check back for future updates and details on this case
]]>Gustave Alexander Sapharas, of Stark County, was born in Akron, Ohio on July 23, 1944 and is currently 78 years old.
His crimes span from 1970 – 1991 and, at the time of writing, has two confirmed murder victims.
Of the confirmed victims so far are two local women, Karen Louise Bentz, who was 18-years-old at the time she was brutally stabbed to death in April of 1970, and Loretta Jean Davis, another local woman who was 21-years-old when she was stabbed to death in August of 1975.
Sapharas also has several surviving victims, who were between the ages of 20 – 28 years old, all referred to by their initials only in documents. According to Summit County Common Judge Alison Breaux, Sapharas kidnapped and assaulted multiple women over a span of 20 years, killing those who refused to comply when threatened.
Karen Bentz lived just off East Market Street in Akron and was last seen leaving her parents’ house on Jewett Street at 11:15pm on April 29, 1970. The following day, a motorist spotted her dead body in the Tallmadge Woods allotment and reported it to police. She had been stabbed a total of twelve times and her clothing was found throughout different spots in the local and wider area, with some items found two miles from her body.
Tens of friends and individuals associated with the victim were interviewed and subjected to polygraph tests, but despite their best efforts, police could not identify the killer. In an article titled: Getting Away With Murder, published in the Sunday May 25, 1975 issue of the Akron Beacon Journal, the writer states: "It is unlikely that Karen Bentz' murder will ever be solved." Edward Duvall, Akron Police Sgt. said of the case at the time "It’s not closed, because you're always getting information that you can drop in the file or check out." Little did they know at the time that modern day methods involving DNA and genetic genealogy would aid in solving decades long cold cases.
The body of Loretta Jean Davis, 21, was found off Congress Lake Road in a rural area in Portage County, Suffield Township in much the same condition as Bentz. Davis’s jeans had been pulled down off her hips. The top half of her body was naked with her shirt over her head.
Gustave Sapharas became a suspect in Davis’s case a year after her murder, but when questioned by police in 1976, denied knowing the victim.
Victor Biasella, an investigator on the case at the time, said he recalled seeing a groove in the dirt near her body, suggesting she had been dragged to the location her body was found. She also had red fibres on the soles of her shoes. There was no sign of a struggle at the scene, which further suggested to investigators at the time that she had been killed in another location and her body later transported to Congress Lake Road. She had stab marks near each of her breasts and a small piece of black plastic, theorized to be part of a knife handle, was found caught in her blouse during the autopsy. The cause of death was ruled as a stab to the heart.
On the night she was murdered, Davis went with a friend to a drive-in movie and then out for something to eat. She left a note telling her parents what she was doing that night but never made it home. She was last seen in the early hours of the morning on the night she was killed, in a silver Chrysler Cordova with an unidentified male. The man was said to be parked next to Davis’s Plymouth Duster outside of Tallmadge Auto Parts. Her vehicle was discovered in the same place several days after her murder, unlocked with her purse and personal items on the passenger seat.
In March 1970, Gustave Sapharas was given two years' probation after sexually assaulting a woman he was on a date with. He pleaded to lesser charges of assault and battery and carrying a concealed weapon as part of a plea agreement.
In December 1972 Sapharas was accused of the rape and kidnap of a 22-year-old woman, however, a mistrial was declared.
In January 1973, Sapharas got away with yet another alleged crime against a 20-year-old woman who accused him of offering her a ride in Akron before driving her to a rural area where he then strangled her and forced her to perform oral sex on him. The grand jury returned a no bill.
In May 1975, another Akron woman claimed Sapharas raped her outside of her own home in his car and threatened her with a knife. The woman escaped to a nearby business, however, Sapharas went on to claim that the two had consensual sex.
In June 1975 another woman, 20, accepted a ride from Sapharas, again in Akron. She was driven to a remote area where she was choked until she was unconscious and sexually assaulted. Sapharas pleaded guilty to assault.
In 1977, Sapharas was sentenced to 15-60 years behind bars for the rape of a 28-year-old Cuyahoga Falls woman in the fall of 1976.
He was paroled in November 1990, however, violated his parole when he was accused of rape and assault by a Columbus woman. He was released again in September 2000 and arrested again in September 2019 for the 1970s murders of both Karen Louise Bentz and Loretta Jean Davis.
Earlier this month, a jury found Gustave Sapharas guilty of aggravated murder, murder, murder in the first degree involving an abduction, murder in the second degree and maiming or disfiguring another, for which he could face life in prison without the chance of parole.
The Stockton serial killer took the lives of Juan Vasquez Serrano, 40, Paul Yaw, 35, Salvador Debudey Jr., 43, Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez, 21, Juan Cruz, 52, Lawrence Lopez Sr., 54, and injured Natasha LaTour, 46 who survived her injuries.
Previous post outlining the case and victims can be read HERE<<
In a statement to the public posted to the Stockton PD Facebook page at 23:10 on October 15, Chief Stanley McFadden shared limited details regarding the arrest of a suspect in order to protect the integrity of the investigation.
McFadden stated that the arrest was aided by an influx of tip-offs from the community to the Stockton Crimestoppers line after the reward for information was raised to $115,000 last week. The tips, coupled with police investigation, led to the arrest of the suspected serial killer, who police say was in the process of searching for his next victim when he was apprehended.
Police started following the suspect at his home after he left the premises in his vehicle, and tailed him as he began driving around town.
The suspect was dressed in dark clothing, with a mask pulled down off his face. He fit the description of the killer provided by surviving victim and witness, Natasha LaTour, who was shot ten times by the killer while camping near the train tracks in an industrial area off Park and Union streets. After being attacked on April 16, 2021, LaTour rushed the killer, who fell to a knee, and continued firing at her point-blank as a train rolled by in the background, before walking off.
LaTour, who had been homeless and struggling with drug addiction, said police did not take her seriously or come to interview her after the incident while she was in hospital, adding that it was she who had to contact them again and push to get a detective assigned to the case.
The suspect was apprehended at approximately 2AM around Village Green Drive and Winslow Avenue, Stockton.
During the arrest, police found a firearm tucked into the man’s waistband, and believe he was hunting for his next victim at the time they apprehended him. An image of the firearm released by police shows a black and gray semi-automatic handgun with non-metal elements.
The suspected serial killer has been named as Wesley Brownlee, 43.
On the night of the arrest in the Central Valley city, Brownlee was said to be loitering around in secluded areas, including parks and dark places around town. Police described the suspect stopping to look around before moving on and McFadden believes they prevented what could have been another homicide.
Brownlee’s apartment has been searched for further evidence.
According to the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s office, Brownlee has open charges of: CARRY LOADED FIREARM IN PUBLIC UNDER SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES, CARRY CONCEALED WEAPON IN VEHICLE and MURDER and is being held without bail.
His date of birth is listed as 05/20/1979, with a height of 6"2 and Weight of 165lbs, matching the description provided by a witness and correlating with the likeness of the person-of-interest caught on a surveillance video that was previously shared to the public.
According to the database, Brownlee’s next court hearing is scheduled for 10/18/2022 at 01:30 PM at Stockton Court.
Not much is currently known of Brownlee, but it has been reported that he has a criminal history, although the details of which are, at the time of writing, unknown. Public records show a DUI in 2009, a felony in 2017, and traffic violation in 2021 and 2022.
Brownlee is also said to have lived in Stockton and the surrounding areas over the years.
Stockton Police worked with officers in Chicago to determine whether or not two 2018 killings in Rogers Park neighbourhood could be linked to the Stockton serial killer murders, however, there does not appear to be any link so far.
Stockton Mayor Kevin J. Lincoln released a statement to the public, thanking them for their assistance in catching the suspect, saying: “To the community, thank you for everything that you’ve done. Thank you for stepping up, thank you for exercising your voice, thank you for submitting the hundreds of tips that have come in on a daily basis. This could not have been done, and today would not have been possible without you.”
Although the sole suspect in the murders has been apprehended, the investigation is far from over and Stockton police is encouraging the public to keep submitting tips in what Chief McFadden has deemed a very active investigation.
The Stockton Police Department is encouraging anyone with information to call our tip line at (209) 937-8167. You can also email your information to policetips@stocktonca.gov.
You can submit anonymous tips to Stockton Crime Stoppers by:
TYPE - Submit a Tip online using the Stockton Crime Stoppers website at StocktonCrimeStoppers.org.
TALK - Call Stockton Crime Stoppers at (209) 946-0600.
DOWNLOAD the P3 Tips Mobile App and submit tips anonymously.
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After a cluster of shooting murders in the Stockton area were linked by ballistic evidence, Police announced to the public that they believed they had a serial killer on their hands, with motive unknown.
The first shooting took place in the early hours of April 10, 2021, in Oakland, California and left a 40-year-old man dead.
Less than a week later, at 3:20am on April 16, a woman sleeping in a tent on the streets of Stockton was disturbed by approaching footsteps. Natasha LaTour emerged from the tent to be met with the sight of a gun pointed at her and was shot multiple times as a train rolled by in the distance.
She ran at the shooter and he stumbled, but continued to shoot.
Her attacker didn’t utter a word throughout the ordeal and after shooting the 46-year-old over nine times, the assailant walked away.
LaTour described the man as wearing a surgical mask, the kind worn to protect against the Covid-19 virus, as well as dark clothing and a hooded sweatshirt, with the hood pulled up. He was also described as being on the taller side, between 5"10 - 6", and of slender build.
When she reported the attack to police, LaTour said she felt as though the police didn't care:
"They basically treated me as if it was a drug deal gone bad, as if I knew something that I wasn’t sharing. Throughout this process, ever since April, ever since I got out of the hospital, it was constantly me trying to reach them. I don't know if they believed it or not, but what I do know, and what’s been made very apparent, is that they just didn’t care."
Over a year later, on July 8, 2022, 35-year-old Paul Alexander Yaw was shot and killed in Stockton. This case was linked to the same person, or persons, who shot the previous victims, although investigators could not ascertain why there was such a lengthy period of time between the crimes.
The killer struck again just over a month later on the night of August 11, 2022, when he shot and killed 43-year-old Salvador Debudey. Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez was the next victim; he was shot in Stockton early in the morning of August 30, 2022.
There were two more shootings in September, in which both men died. On September 21, 2022, 52-year-old Juan Cruz was shot and killed at 4:27am and less than a week later on September 27, 2022, 54-year-old Lawrence Lopez Sr. was killed at approximately 1:53am.
Although it was initially reported that the victims did not seem to share any specific traits linking them to one another, it has been noted the majority of the victims, but not all, are Hispanic males and the majority of the victims were in the Stockton area.
Although the killer had every opportunity to rob his victims or take their vehicles- he didn’t.
"What we seem to have in common is probably complexion -- it has been folks that are different races, but they have a similar complexion …The location, the environments have been consistent: It's very dark locations, it's locations where there's not very many witnesses around," said Chief Stanley McFadden of the Stockton P.D
Four of the victims had been walking by themselves and one had been in his car when he was attacked.
By September 30, 2022, The Stockton Police Department made a public statement in which they said they believed the murders in 2022 were connected. They released an image, a still from security footage, showing the dark silhouette of whom they believed to be a person of interest in the case. It is unclear, at the time of writing, if the individual in the video is a suspect or a witness.
The full video footage was released a few days later and can be viewed here on the Stockton PD Twitter account:
The following text accompanied the video:
Homicide Series Update: Today Chief McFadden released a video of the "Person of Interest" in regard to this series. If you have any info, please call 209-937-8167. There is a $125,000 reward for info that leads to an arrest.
Chief Stanley McFadden of the Stockton P.D asked the public to pay close attention to the uneven stride of the person in the video. The man was present near at least two of the crime scenes
By early October, the Stockton PD revealed that the earlier shootings in 2021 were ballistically linked and the suspect has been described as a “serial killer on a mission” in recent reports. When asked about why the killer seemingly stopped killing for over a year, McFadden answered: “I have absolutely no answer as to why that pistol went dormant for over 400 days.”
The killer's crimes, which saw a total of six dead and one wounded, have spanned over a year and a half and seventy miles, and police are baffled by the assailant’s motivation.
Joseph Silva, a Stockton Police Officer, said: "This person or people who are out doing this, they are definitely very bold and brazen. It seems that this person or persons is very focused on the killing -- and very calm and confident afterwards. This is a person that lurks in the shadows. Our victims are being caught by surprise."
The killer has not yet been apprehended and those in the Stockton area should remain vigilant.
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It was evident from looking at the 23-year-old's body that she had been beaten and sexually assaulted as her face was bloodied and her leotard torn. A strip of tape was also found across her mouth and wrapped around her neck.
Leslie Lukash, the Nassau County Medical Examiner, later revealed that Diane had been sexually assaulted, had died as a result of suffocation and had been raped and murdered between the hours of 10:30 – midnight the night before.
Diane was a dance instructor at the Wakefield School of Dance and a single mother who left behind her four-year-old daughter, Darlene, whom her parents would go on to adopt and raise. Diane and Darlene had been staying with Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Martin at 534 Eighth Avenue in Hyde park after the victim and her husband, Howard, drifted apart and became estranged. When Diane failed to return from her shopping excursion, her parents instantly became worried and went out looking for her, only to make the devastating discovering the following day. Howard didn't show up to his job the following day at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. where he worked as a production technician. Police questioned and released him.
Detectives discovered that the victim was last seen leaving the Wakefield School of Dance the night of her murder. She last had contact with her parents via telephone that night when she called them at around 7pm from the Dance School to inform them of her plans.
Police soon released a description of a suspect in the case whom they described as: "a white male in his late teens or early twenties, about five feet eight-to-ten inches tall, of medium build wearing glasses." He was described as being dressed in a dark “fingertip length” coat and had not only been spotted lingering around the mall and theatre on the night of Diane Cusick’s murder, but also near her car that same night.
Despite police circulating the suspect’s description, the case went cold without any leads, and remained that way until a suspect in the case was finally arraigned this week.
Darlene wouldn't remember much of her mother as she grew up in the bedroom they used to share together. Her grandparents- now her adopted parents, did not talk about their slain daughter, but they sent Darlene to attend dance classes at the studio where her mother once taught. Once she was older, and after hearing about dozens of high-profile cold cases being solved with the help of DNA testing, she penned a letter to the homicide squad in the early 2000's in the hope that they could do the same for her mother Diane. The squad was already overwhelmed with cases, so Det. Pat Bellotti of the Nassau County Police Department took it upon himself to solve the mystery.
The victims clothing was still in evidence storage and they were sent to a lab to be tested for the killers DNA, which was found on Diane’s underwear. Bellotti died in 2005, but the work he did was crucial to identifying Diane’s killer.
Last year Det. Daniel Finn took over Bellotti’s work and entered the killers DNA profile into CODIS, a federal database of criminals. There was a hit.
More than five decades later police were sure they had the man responsible.
Richard “The Torso killer” Cottingham was charged with the 1968 rape and murder of Diane Cusick as he lay in a hospital bed. The convicted serial killer is currently incarcerated at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey and has been behind bars since his arrest on May 22, 1980. Cottingham was arrested at the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn hotel near Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey whilst in the middle of torturing teenage sex worker Leslie Ann O'Dell whose moans of pain were so loud staff contacted the police without hesitation. Several days earlier he had murdered Valerie Street in the same hotel and left her restrained body under one of the hotel beds for workers to discover.
Cottingham is believed to have killed 12+ victims from 1967–1980 and has been convicted (at the time of writing) for eight. He was recently connected to the 1968 crime when DNA evidence linked him to the victim. Although he pleaded guilty to the murders of Nancy Vogel in 2010, the kidnap, rape and murder of Loraine Marie Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor in 2021, along with the murders of three schoolgirls in exchange for legal immunity, he has so far (at the time of writing) denied raping and murdering Diane Cusick despite DNA evidence.
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Elizabeth Redman, or Beth, as she was known to friends and family, was born in Harrisonburg in 1967. She was the mother of two children, and a grandmother to four. She worked at a hotel and a local chicken factory and had lost her husband a few years earlier.
Tonita Smith left behind six children who will now be without their mother on Christmas day.
Although the bodies were discovered within a short distance of one another, it was unclear if the two women were connected. One thing that did connect them, however, was their killer- suspected serial killer Anthony Robinson, 35, of D.C, who has been dubbed “the shopping cart killer” after the method he used to transport his victims.
Redmon is thought to have been killed around October 24, and Smith around November 14.
It is believed Robinson allegedly messaged women on a dating app, whom he met at hotels and murdered. He would then load their bodies into shopping carts and leave them in empty parking lots.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said of Robinson: “He didn’t suddenly turn into who he is three months ago. That’s why we are painstakingly going through his whereabouts, his relationships and employment history to figure out if in fact there are other victims.”
Anthony Robinson has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder as well as two felony counts of concealing, transporting, or altering a dead body.
The suspected serial killer is currently being detained in a Rockingham County jail without bond after being arrested for the murders of Redmon and smith, however, recently he has been deemed the main suspect in the murder of a third and fourth woman. The third victim is suspected to be missing woman Cheyenne Brown.
Although he has not yet been charged in the murder of 29-year-old Cheyenne Brown or the fourth victim, police have found evidence linking Brown to Robinson, including surveillance of the two together in D.C on September 30, 2021. Police obtained Brown's cell phone data to trace her footsteps and discovered that she had been in the vicinity of a hotel in VA, The Moon Inn, Robinson was known to be staying at around the same time. The Moonlight Inn is a budget hotel located in Alexandria, VA, around ten miles from Washington D.C. According to the hotel manager, Robinson checked in to the hotel on two separate occasions, once from August 19 till August 21 and again from September 30 to October 1. Robinson kept his head down and was a quiet guest, according to hotel staff. Police revealed that the killer had been travelling to Harrisonburg for work purposes.
Fairfax County police searched the hotel on December 7, 2021, but found nothing pertaining to the disappearance of Brown. They later returned and branched out their search, eventually stumbling upon Brown's body after an officer on the scene spotted a shopping cart in an unused parking lot near the hotel by Linda Lane in Annandale. As police approached the shopping cart, they saw there was something slumped inside, as they got closer, they realised that the mass was the bodies of two women.
Those following the case have speculated that the fourth victim may be missing woman Stephanie Harrison, who was last heard from on August 19, 2021, and disappeared from D.C. Her family, who have been doing all they can to locate her, discovered that she had checked into the Moon Inn Motel in Virginia before all contact ceased. Harrison's family described her as a vulnerable individual, suffering from Schizophrenia and in need of medication to function.
Although investigators were waiting on the results of a DNA test to confirm if one of the bodies was that of missing woman Cheyenne Brown, her family confirmed that the victim had the same tattoos, including a tattoo of a Lilly and Cheyenne’s name.
Brown disappeared from Washington D.C on the two hundred block of 36th Street, Southeast on September 30, 2021, at around 3:00pm. Brown left behind a child and was said to be pregnant with a second child at the time she went missing.
Family members, including Cheyenne Brown's cousin, Jonathan Willis, said Robinson had been at their home several days before Cheyenne went missing. Willis had demanded the man leave, as he had no idea who he was. Robinson left without resistance or argument. Willis later recognized the killer from a picture released by Harrisonburg police.
Police are working to expedite the DNA results so they can release the victim’s body to family.
Robinson was said to have moved around often, working a string of different jobs over the years. Police are concerned that the killer may have many more victims and have been looking into missing person cases and unsolved homicides in the areas the suspect has lived, worked, and travelled. Robinson has resided in DC, Prince George’s County, Maryland, and New York.
According to authorities, Robinson has no prior criminal record. D.C police revealed that they had run-ins with Robinson in 2012 and 2013, however, he was never arrested or charged, and the incidents involved non-violent domestic disputes and arguments as well as the unauthorized use of a vehicle.
In a recent public statement Chief Kevin Davis said: "He's a predator as all serial killers are and it is our collective effort in law enforcement to do everything, we can with each other and with the community to identify other places where he has been so we can bring closure and ultimately justice. Our shopping cart killer does unspeakable things with his victims."
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When twenty-year-old Sarah Butler failed to return home that night, her friends, LaMia Brown and Samantha Rivera, and sister, Bassania Daley, logged into various accounts on her laptop including her email and Tagged account. LaMia Brown knew Sarah’s passwords and used them to track her missing friend. There, they discovered correspondence between Sarah and a user named LilYachtRock. One of the last messages she sent to him read: “You’re not a serial killer, right?”
Suspicious of the user, they set up a date with him using a fake profile. Samantha Rivera created an account on Tagged and was quickly messaged by LilYachtRock who pressured her into meeting right away. After receiving the messages, Rivera took the information she had to police. While at the station, Wheeler-Weaver called Rivera's phone, and she quickly hit record.
Wheeler-Weaver responded quickly to Rivera’s proposal to meet up at a Panera Bread cafe in Montclair. Unbeknownst to the killer, the women had the local police in tow and officers were waiting in the parking lot to arrest him.
Butler's body was not discovered until December 1, 2016, on the Eagle Rock Reservation in Orange. She had been strangled with a piece of her own clothing and her body had been covered over with leaves.
The former security guard from Orange, New Jersey was sentenced to 160 years last week for the murder of three women, 19-year-old Robin West of Union Township, 33-year-old Joanne Brown of Newark and 20-year-old Sarah Butler. His fourth victim, Tiffany Taylor, escaped after she was kidnapped and assaulted.
Cell phone records placed Wheeler-Weaver at the location of his victims’ disappearances well as the locations of their bodies.
Days before he murdered Sarah Butler, Wheeler-Weaver kidnapped, sexually assaulted and tortured Tiffany Taylor. Taylor said she recognized Wheeler-Weaver and had met him once before at his home in Orange, NJ. He later kidnapped raped, and tortured her before duct taping her head, including her nose and mouth. Although she was cuffed at the wrists, she managed to free one hand and lock Wheeler-Weaver outside her hotel room.
Tiffany Taylor said at the sentencing: "My whole life is different; I don't wear makeup anymore; I don't have friends. I'm always paranoid. But I’m happy to still be here. I hope you don’t show him any remorse, because he’s not showing any remorse."
On the night of 31 August 2016, witnesses saw 19-year-old Robin West get into Wheeler-Weaver's car. Within hours he had murdered the teenage girl and disposed of her body in an abandoned building near his home in Orange which he later set ablaze. West was identified by dental records around two weeks later. She had left home when she was eighteen and was known to struggle with mental health issues.
Joanne Brown was murdered around a month later and her body was also discarded much in the same way as that of Robin West- dumped in an abandoned house in Orange. It took six weeks for her remains to be discovered. All the women had been strangled to death with an item of their own clothing. The known murders took place between September – December of 2016.
During the investigation of Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, police discovered that he had performed online searches related to sleeping medications, date rape drugs, anaesthesia and instructions pertaining to home-made poisons. They also discovered a kit in his car consisting of zip ties, lighter fluid and chemicals commonly used to clean up blood.
Despite the mounting evidence against him, failed alibi and testimony from a living victim, Wheeler-Weaver denied any involvement in the women’s death and said: “I have clear and convincing evidence that I was set up, I was lied on, and I was framed by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.”
In court, Victor Butler, Sarah Butler's father, said of his daughter’s killer: "I hope you suffer, boy, every night."
Prosecutors said Wheeler-Weaver targeted young black women and teenagers who engaged in sex work and were struggling in other areas of their lives, for example with homelessness or mental illness. Although he admitted to meeting the women, he denied any involvement in their murders.
In 2019, Wheeler-weaver was convicted of three murders as well as the attempted murder, kidnapping and sexual assault of Ms. Taylor. He was also charged with aggravated arson and the desecration of human remains.
“The defendant believed these victims were disposable. They were killed and then he went on about his day as if nothing had happened,” said Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Adam Wells.
He was sentenced to 160 years in prison last week, a sentence that ensures he will never walk free. He was remorseless in the court and maintained that he was innocent and had been framed, saying: "I was not the person who committed these crimes."
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Her husband of three months, Ryan Johnston, 21, finished up his shift at a local City Box and arrived home to find his wife wasn’t there. He couldn’t recall if the pair had made plans to go out that night and Tiffany hadn’t left a note like she usually would, so Ryan began asking around to see if anyone had seen her. He asked various friends of the couple if they had seen or heard anything from Tiffany, but they had not. He dropped into local establishments in the area that the couple often frequented, including a club, but she was nowhere to be found. The last time Ryan had seen his wife was earlier that day when she had accidentally locked her keys in her 1995 dodge neon.
At some point during his search, Ryan’s pager buzzed. He retrieved it from his pocket to see he had received a message from the Bethany police.
Tiffany Johnston's 1995 dodge neon was seen outside the Sunshine Carwash in Bethany, just a few blocks from the Johnston's home, at around 11:30pm that same night. During one of his routine checks of the area, police Sergeant John Reid of the Bethany police, spotted Tiffany's car at the carwash. On his drive back, around 15 minutes after midnight, Sergeant Reid noticed that the vehicle was still there and approached it to investigate. When he got closer, he noticed Tiffany wasn’t in her car and didn’t appear to be in the immediate area. The floor mats had been left out of the vehicle, as if to be washed, the doors were all unlocked and the keys were in the ignition, but the owner was nowhere to be found.
Reid ran a check on the vehicle and discovered it belonged to Ryan and Tiffany. Since they had only been married three months to the day, Tiffany had not gotten around to registering the vehicle under her married name. Reid contacted Tiffany’s mother, explaining the situation, and asked her for a contact number. Tiffany’s mother provided Sergeant Reid with both Tiffany and Ryan’s pager numbers.
Tiffany would never respond.
Her body was discovered the following day in a patch of overgrown grass just off a road in Canadian County. A truck driver and his wife, who were part of another search party looking for a different missing female, accidentally discovered Tiffany’s body. A depressed section in a patch of long grass caught their eye and when they went to investigate, they found the body of Tiffany Johnston, naked except for a floral print bikini top.
She had been raped and strangled to death before her body was discarded by the side of the road.
William Lewis Reece, now 62 years old, confessed to the 1997 rape and murder of 19-year-old Tiffany Johnston. He said he forced the teenage girl into a horse trailer where he raped and strangled her. He was charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping and was sentenced to death in Oklahoma last week. It has been reported that Reece knew the victim’s mother, Kathy Dobry. Kathy Dobry had once driven her daughter’s killer to Oklahoma as a favour to pick up his driving licence. She knew him through his family whom she had done ironing for in the past.
"I believe in God and all that, but I will never forgive him, and I'm glad people can- but not this momma," Kathy Dobry would later comment in court.
Registered sex offender and self-proclaimed serial killer, Reece, confessed to three additional murders in 1997 in Texas. He claimed he was responsible for the murder of Kelli Cox, Jessica Cain and Laura Smither and led police to the remains.
Laura Smither was just 12 years old when she went out jogging on April 3, 1997 and failed to return home. Laura and her family had been making pancakes that afternoon and Laura asked her mother if she could go jogging before she ate. Her mother permitted her to do so but grew concerned when Laura had not returned home by the evening. Despite extensive searches in the coming days, she was not located. Her body was found on April 20 near a retention basin.
Kelli Cox, 20, went missing in July of 1997 after attending a tour of Denton jail in North Texas, a trip that was organised by her university. When she returned to the university car park, she discovered that she had locked her keys inside her car and the spare set she had didn't seem to be working. Kelli called her boyfriend from a gas station pay phone and has been missing since.
Jessica Cain, 17, went missing the following month in August 1997 after leaving a local restaurant in Houston, Texas to drive home. Her unlocked car was discovered abandoned along the I-45 with her personal possessions still inside the vehicle. Although he had been a person of interest in the case, Reece was never arrested in the disappearance of the teenager. Then, in 2016, police began digging in a Southeast Houston field where Reece was photographed overlooking the scene in restraints. Although it took several weeks, police finally discovered Jessica's remains and indicted Reece for her murder.
Reece was incarcerated in Huntsville at the time he claimed responsibility for the disappearance of Kelli Cox, Jessica Cain, and Laura Smither. He informed a ranger of his involvement and was transferred to Friendswood where he would cooperate with police and lead them to the bodies. Jessica's body was discovered in Friendswood and Kelli's remains were discovered in Brazoria County. Investigators believe that Reece confessed to avoid the death penalty in Oklahoma. While held in Friendswood County jail, he confessed to another murder- that of Laura Smither.
Because he confessed and assisted police in locating the bodies of his victims, as per a deal struck with prosecutors, the death penalty in Texas was dropped.
Friendswood police told media outlets that Reece believed he had developed a friendship with the investigators and would even draw pictures of them. One such drawing depicted the main three investigators walking in unison, the words "Justice is coming" written above.
"In some strange way, he thought there was a friendship. He wanted to come off as a good guy. Even though in the back of his mind, he probably knew also, that we knew what he did," commented Detective Doug Bacon.
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Roberto Wagner Fernandez had been the suspect in a handful of cases back in his home country of Brazil. He has also been accused of killing his own wife, however, was acquitted in 1996, after claiming it was a case of self defense. He moved to Miami, Florida in the late-nineties and stayed there until around 2001 before returning to Brazil.
During the time Fernandes lived in Miami, three women turned up dead in South Florida. In the summer of 2000, a woman's body was discovered in a suitcase that had been discarded on a road in Cooper City. The body was later identified as that of Kim Dietz Livesey, who was last seen bidding goodbye to her roommate in El Portal.
She had planned to meet her estranged husband and although the two were supposed to meet at an AA meeting at 10pm that night, Kim never showed up. Her body was discovered at around 8am the following morning by a couple attempting to escape traffic. The pair noticed a brown suitcase and got out to inspect it. When neither of them could lift it, they unzipped it to reveal a grisly contents. Kim Dietz' body had been crammed inside the suitcase, she was naked with obvious injuries to her head and body and dried blood flaking off her skin. The clothes she was last seen wearing were found underneath her. At the time she was murdered, Kim was a sex worker. Previously she managed five branches of General Nutrition Centres and was married to a car mechanic. The couple had lived in Oakland Park with their daughter and were well liked by neighbors. Unfortunately, Kim began using drugs and abusing alcohol following a bout of postpartum depression. Kim had issues with addiction in the past that she had managed to beat with the help of rehab, but she was unable to get clean again and her husband eventually filed for divorce and custody of their daughter in May of 2000.
By June, Kim would be found dead.
A second body would be found in a bag less than two months later. A dog walker happened upon a large black duffle bag in Dania beach. The bag was heavy and looked stuffed to capacity, so she unzipped it just enough to reveal bruised and bloody skin. The woman quickly contacted police who later identified the body as that of Sia Demas, a 21-year-old woman who had also suffered from struggles with drug abuse. She too had a child, a young son with whom she stayed in various drug dens in the South Florida area. Just like Dietz, Demas had been brutally beaten to death before being stuffed into a bag and carelessly discarded.
The following year, in 2001, the body of a woman was discovered in Biscayne Bay, Miami. The body was identified as that of 24-year-old Jessica Good, who just like the women before her, had battled with drug and alcohol addiction and turned to prostitution to fund the habit. Unlike the other victims, however, Jessica Good had been stabbed to death.
When news of the victim’s discovery made the headlines, Roberto Wagner Fernandes made a quick exit from the U.S and returned to Brazil. After police talked to Good’s boyfriend Fernandes had become a suspect in her murder. He was also a suspect in several cases in Brazil and despite cooperation between both nations, bureaucracy made the investigation difficult.
A few years later, Fernandez died in a plane crash while flying to Paraguay.
Roberto Wagner Fernandes' fingerprints, which had been kept on file following the investigation into his wife’s murder in 1996, were matched to the fingerprints found at the Good crime scene. Investigators discovered the match when the evidence was tested in 2011.
Wanting to take a sample of Fernandes' DNA, U.S investigators flew to Brazil, unaware that the suspect had passed. They soon discovered that the suspect had amassed enemies in Brazil, including his deceased wife’s family, who wanted him dead and had allegedly hired hitmen to eliminate him. At a recent news conference about the case, a detective stated that there were a lot of "circumstantial things" discovered during the trip to Brazil that suggest Fernandes may have faked his own death.
U.S investigators were recently able to persuade a judge to exhume Fernandes’ remains so they could collect DNA. The profile proved to be a DNA match to that of the killer’s profile in the murders of the Florida women. Fernandes killed the three women in a short span of time, and it is for this reason that investigators believe he may be responsible for many more unsolved homicides in the state.
“These types of atrocities, as you can imagine, devastate the community and devastates the families because they have no closure. Justice never expires,” said Sheriff Tony of the Broward County Sheriff’s department.
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Andrés Mendoza, a 72-year-old man recently arrested at his home in an Atizapan slum on the outskirts of Mexico City, has confessed to the murder of a female acquaintance, 34-year-old Reyna González, as well as multiple other women. Harrowing details involving serial murder and cannibalism have been detailed across media outlets since Mendoza's arrest, and videos of him peeling off the scalps and faces of his victims and eating their body parts have allegedly been recovered.
The alleged serial killer was arrested at his home in the Lomas de San Miguel neighborhood in the municipality of Atizapán de Zaragoza on Saturday 15 May 2021, after police discovered the decapitated body of 34-year-old Reyna González in a makeshift basement at his home.
González, a mother of two, married to a local police officer named Bruno Portillo, had been reported missing the previous day. She had left to go to Andrés Mendoza’s house at around midday to buy parts for cell phones but failed to return home. Mendoza was a friend and had gotten to know González through her cell phone business. He had gained her trust by bringing her cell phones to fix. When she did not come home Bruno Portillo made his way to Mendoza’s house to question him about her whereabouts. The officer became suspicious when Mendoza refused to let him come inside and returned to the city to report his wife missing and rally together more officers who soon showed up to the residence and gained access. Surveillance footage showed that González entered Mendoza’s residence but did not leave.
Bruno Portillo watched in horror as his fellow officers drilled into the floor to reveal a small basement area with a table that was saturated in his wife’s blood and dismembered body parts.
Police would later discover that Mendoza had stabbed her in the chest before hacking up her body with a butchers saw and knifes and packing her decapitated remains into a series of bags that he left out on a table in his home. The killer was a former butcher in a shop supplying meat to Tlalnepantla de Baz, a municipality located north of Mexico City, which is where he picked up his skills in dissection. Articles state that he was also involved in local politics at one time.
Forensic officers have, so far, unearthed 3,787 pieces of bone from the basement of the killer’s residence, which they believe belong to 17 of Andrés Mendoza's victims. Investigators also discovered possessions belonging to the victims, including necklaces, bracelets, purses, bottles of nail polish, a hair dryer, 8 cell phones, photos and identification cards. The items, which included voter cards from known missing women, were dated years apart, leading police to believe that Mendoza has been killing for at least two decades. 32-year-old Rubicela Castillo and 38-year-old Flor Vizcaino's voter cards were amongst the recovered effects. Castillo was reported missing in the summer of 2019 and Vizcaino was reported missing in the fall of 2016. The house was reportedly messy with trash and items strewn about the place.
The video tapes of the crimes suggested that the killer may have started murdering women as early as 2007. Some of the tapes were recorded on 8mm film and others on VHS.
A notebook was also found in Andrés Mendoza’s home, in it, he had penned the names of 29 women, whom police fear may be victims.
The excavation of the basement has now moved to other rooms in the home as forensic officers consider the serial killer may have buried victims in other parts of the property, including rooms that he rented out to lodgers. Forensic agents have a laborious job ahead of them in terms of identifying which small bone fragment belongs to which of the 17 estimated victims.
“I removed the skin from her face because she was very pretty,” Mendoza, now known by his media moniker El Feminicida de Atizapán, told the court at a recent hearing. Police officers who interviewed the alleged serial killer described him as appearing remorseless for his crimes and said he stated that he “just wanted to tell the truth.”
“What has been done has been done,” he said, adding: “the husband was there, he saw everything.” Mendoza and Portillo knew each other personally.
He went on to explain that he usually met his female victims in Tlalnepantla bars and killed them when they rejected his sexual advances. He was known in the local community for his inappropriate behavior towards women and was described as a drunk by neighbors.
Reports state that Andrés Mendoza has, so far, confessed to the killing of five women. As well as Reyna González, Mexican newspapers have identified the victims so far as:
Flor Ninive Vizcaíno Mejía, a single mother of two children who was working as a hostess in Tlalnepantla when she went missing in late 2016.
Rubicela Gallegos Castillo, a single mother of one from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, who had been working as an Uber Eats driver in Tlalnepantla and went missing in the summer of 2019.
Norma Jiménez Carreón who disappeared from Tlalnepantla in 2011.
Berenice Sánchez Olvera a young bar worker and two women known only as Alyn and Gardenia whom he met at a local bar and allegedly murdered after being rejected.
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Virginia native and software developer, 46-year-old Dave Oranchak, explained that the code is a transposition cipher. According to nrich.maths.org: “A transposition cipher is one which rearranges the order of the letters in the ciphertext (encoded text), according to some predetermined method, without making any substitutions.”
Simple transpositional ciphers are created using rows and columns. The Zodiac killer’s cipher was built on the same principle; however, it was a lot more complex, “a beast” as its defeaters would later describe it.
The Zodiac killer, an unidentified serial killer who sent cryptic notes and ciphers to newsrooms, was active in Northern California in the sixties and seventies. He is officially responsible for five murders, although he attempted seven, with two victims surviving their injuries.
The Zodiac claimed he had killed 30 additional people, but police could find no evidence to confirm the claim.
The killer first struck in the winter of 1968. His victims were a teenage couple on their first date, Betty Lou Jensen, and David Arthur Faraday.
They were parked at a lover’s lane in Benicia, Solano County when they were both fatally shot. The killer pulled up in his own vehicle and demanded the teenagers get out of their car, threatening them at gun point. When Faraday complied, he was executed with a bullet to the head. Jensen attempted to escape; however, she didn’t get far before she too was shot down with several bullets to the back.
His second set of victims, another couple, Michael Renault Mageau and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, were targeted several months later in the summer of 1969, again the two were shot. They were also parked up in their vehicle, this time in Vallejo.
Their killer parked his vehicle behind them, before approaching the car and shooting them both multiple times. Mageau, although riddled with bullets in his torso, neck and head, managed to survive the ordeal.
Ferrin eventually died in hospital while being treated for her injuries. Michael Mageau was able to provide police with a description of his attacker, whom he said was a Caucasian male, with short brown wavey hair.
He approximated the man was between 25 to 30 years old, standing at around 5”8, weighing around 70-90KG.
The Zodiac penned his first batch of letters on August 1, 1969, after the first two set of attacks. The letters, which were the same in content, were mailed to three different newspapers based out of California. They came with ciphers that when cracked contained spelling errors such as “anamals” and “paradice” and described how much he liked to kill people and how he would have slaves in the afterlife.
These errors and themes would present themselves once again in Cipher 340, which would go unsolved for over five decades. The ciphers were printed on the front page of newspapers in response to the Zodiac Killer’s threats to pick off more people if his demands were not met.
This would continue to be a theme for the unidentified assailant, who would go on to introduce himself as The Zodiac Killer.
Two months later, in September 1969, the Zodiac Killer switched up his modus operandi and brutally stabbed a couple, Bryan Calvin Hartnell and Cecelia Ann Shepard, who were having a picnic at a lake in Napa County. He approached them clad in a black hood with glasses with a white cross painted on his chest.
Despite being stabbed multiple times, Hartnell survived the attack. Police later found a reference to the previous attack on Ferrin and Maugeau when they discovered the details of the crime scrawled across the door of Hartnell’s car.
The last confirmed killing came a month later when 29-year-old Paul Lee Stein, a taxi driver, was shot dead by a passenger in a street in San Francisco.
Despite the contact the killer kept with the media through his writings and ciphers, he was never caught or even identified.
The 340 cipher was the last to be solved, and it took 51 years to finally crack it.
Oranchak and his group, Jarl Van Eycke, a Belgian code-breaking enthusiast, and creator of the AZdecrypt app, and Sam Blake an Australian mathematician, made a five-part YouTube series explaining how they cracked the code. The group used Van Eycke’s software, which they ran for several months, before noticing a result that contained certain promising words and phrases such as “hope you are trying to catch me”, “gas chamber” and “slaves”.
Putting their heads together, they realised the code was written diagonally from edge to edge, split up across three grids. After a lot of discussion, rearranging and processing through the app, a line appeared to Oranchak: “That wasn’t me on the TV show.”
From there, they figured it out.
“I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME THAT WASN’T ME ON THE TV SHOW WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH”
The message refers to a hoax call made to the KGO-TV station, where an individual claiming to be the Zodiac Killer pleaded for help, called himself ill and expressed fear of capital punishment, specifically the gas chamber. The call was made just a few weeks before the cipher was sent. It also contains one of the common misspellings found in several Zodiac notes, the word paradice.
After 50 years the 360 Cipher has finally been solved.
The identity of the Zodiac killer, however, remains a mystery.
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“In my opinion based on what we’ve seen so far, I believe that this is the definition of a serial killer” Chief Reuben Ramirez told the Dallas Morning News.
On Halloween night of 2020, 19-year-old Robert Jaden Urrea was shot dead on the streets of Dallas after a night out at the Opera club. It was 3AM and the freshman, who studied at the Southern Methodist University, was walking alone down Harwood while waiting for a ride-share. CCTV recorded a white Ford Taurus with tinted windows and its lights off approach Urrea and call him over to the vehicle. When Urrea gets close to the passenger side door he is shot a single time and falls to the ground. The teenager died that night in what police believed at the time was an opportunistic thrill-kill. They offered $25,000 for any information pertaining to the arrest of Urrea’s killer.
Around two weeks later on 14 November, Adam Gautreau, a 36-year-old father who had fell on hard times and found himself homeless on the streets of Dallas, was found shot dead at the side of the road near an intersection by North Stemmons Freeway while pan-handling. Gautreau had relocated to Dallas a few years before his murder to be closer to his son, but long-term struggles with drug addiction saw him homeless.
Footage from that night shows Adam Gautreau cautiously approach a Black Chevy Tahoe before turning to walk away. He is shot multiple times. Autopsy revealed there was a total of nine bullet wounds across his body.
Approximately 30 minutes later a 57-year-old Kenneth Hamilton was found shot in his vehicle at a stop-light, less than ten miles away from the Gautreau crime scene. The same black vehicle, a blacked out 2005-2007 Chevy Tahoe, was spotted at the scene. His wife described his death as senseless and random and warned Dallas residents to be careful when walking and driving around town: “I drove home yesterday and every car that pulled up I panicked. The streets of Dallas are dangerous. Be careful when you’re driving alone. Innocent people are being killed for no reason at all. I don’t care where you go, you need to be aware of your surroundings because people are killing senselessly.” She told WFAA News.
Hamilton was rushed to a nearby hospital but died from his injuries soon after. He had just left the house when he was fatally shot, leaving behind his wife of 23 years, children, and grandchildren.
Three were injured in two separate incidents on November 17. At around 9:50PM an individual was shot in Frisco. Fifty minutes later, at around 10:40PM, two 20-year-old women were injured on University Drive, around 45 miles away. Police believe Jeremy Harris may be responsible for the shootings and are investigating his possible involvement.
On November 18, a house fire on Anvil Drive in Celina claimed the life of 60-Year-Old Blair Carter. Emergency services responded to a call at around 11:00AM but were too late to save Carter, whom after extinguishing the flames, they later found dead inside the house. When police canvassed the local area, they were informed by several witnesses that they heard several gunshots being fired and that an individual clad in dark clothing had fled from the scene. It is not yet known publicly if Carter died as a direct result of the fire or by other means.
Other than Blair Carter, Harris’ victims are seemingly random and have no known connection too him. The vehicle he used in the attack of Robert Jaden Urrea was reportedly registered to the suspects girlfriend. Police questioned the woman about Jeremy Harris’ whereabouts on the night of Urreas murder. She told them she and Harris got into an argument and he stormed off, taking her car, a Ford Taurus, and disappearing for several hours. The car was later found crashed with expended cartridges in the passenger side footwell under the seat as well as a gun they believe Harris may have attempted to destroy. Police used the suspects phone to place him at the crimes.
Public documents pertaining to Harris’ criminal history highlight protective orders issued against him in 2015 and 2018. The orders were filed by Amber Adele Carter, the daughter of Blair Carter.
Jeremy Harris is currently being held at Collin County Jail on a murder charge in the death of Blair Carter. His bail is set at $3 Million. Police believe he acted alone.
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Long was one of a handful of women who managed to escape the serial killer, along with a pregnant woman who was attacked in a park when she accepted a ride home from him after leaving a party . Long now lives with a metal plate in her head and a sash of healed stab wounds as a grim reminder of the night Sutcliffe brutally attacked her with a hammer and sharp implement before leaving her bleeding in the street in 1979.
Sutcliffe murdered 13 women and attacked 9 more in the north of England between 1975 – 1980. His victims had little in common, aside from the fact that some were sex workers and that they were all female, striking fear in women across the North who walked the streets with the paranoia that they could be next.
He had been a person of interest in the murders and was interviewed a total of nine times throughout the investigation, however, despite clues and evidence, police were unable to link him to his victims and Sutcliffe remained free to stalk the streets. He continued to pick off unsuspecting women for several years as he put distance between himself and his crimes by moving around the North, attacking and murdering women in Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, Huddersfield, Halifax, Keighley and Silsden.
His modus operandi was to strike women across the back of the head two or three times, usually with a regular hammer that could be purchased at any general hardware store, before stabbing them repeatedly with a sharp instrument, usually a knife or screwdriver. His first victim was hit across the head with a hammer and stabbed around 15 times, his second was also struck over the head and stabbed 51 times with a screwdriver. The first two women were sex workers, leading police to believe the killer was specifically targeting prostitutes- a fact that would later prove to be incorrect and hamper the investigation. A handful of women had described Peter Sutcliffe to sketch artists after reporting being attacked but despite their matching descriptions and the general proximity of the crimes, police neglected to connect the attacks to the killer because the women were not sex workers.
Sutcliffe left boot prints at several of the crime scenes. Forensic investigators determined that he wore a sized 7 (UK) shoe, likely a wellington boot, but they had no idea who he was. Other than the occasional boot print on or near the victim, and tyre marks from his vehicle, the attacker left no trace of himself behind. Forensic investigators were unable to collect even a single hair from the crime scenes or victims clothing. The Yorkshire Ripper was like a phantom who seemingly attacked women at random after finding them alone or luring them into his vehicle.
In 1977 the police caught up with Sutcliffe when he paid one of his victims, a 21-year-old sex worker and mother of 2 from Manchester named Jean Jordan, with a £5 note from his most recent pay packet. He solicited the woman for sex in an allotment behind a cemetery before killing her with a hammer and stabbing her multiple times as per his modus operandi. After fleeing the scene, he feared the note would be traced back to him, so he returned to the body to retrieve it. Frustrated that he was unable to find the £5 note, he proceeded to mutilate the decedent and attempted to cut off her head before leaving. The victim was not discovered until 10 days later. Just as the Ripper suspected, the note lead police right to Sutcliffe.
At the time of his arrest Peter Sutcliffe was working as a lorry driver. He was married to a woman named Sonia Szurma and the two lived in their new home in Heaton, Bradford. When investigators came knocking at 6 Garden Lane, Szurma told them Sutcliffe had been with her at their housewarming party at the time of the murder.
The £5 note wasn’t the only thing Sutcliff left behind at the Jean Jordan crime scene. He also left a set of clear tire marks on the ground. Police had been working through a list of vehicles with the same tires, but abandoned the line of enquiry three-quarters of the way through, an action that would later draw criticism as Sutcliffe was on the list, they just hadn’t reached him yet.
These tire marks would later be linked to those found at the scene of the Yorkshire Ripper’s other victims. Mishandling of the cases and confused lines of enquiry saw Sutcliffe a free man who continued to kill more women.
To make matters worse, an individual claiming to be the Ripper began sending letters and a cassette tape to police, taking responsibility for the murders. Months were spent following the lead that police were convinced could lead them to the Yorkshire Ripper. The hoaxer, who came to be known in the media as Wearside Jack due to his North East accent, was later debunked, but it wasted enough time to take the attention off Sutcliffe, who continued on with his crimes against women.
Wearside Jack eventually called to police to confess to his lies and decades later the man behind the hoax was identified through DNA he left on an envelope as John Samuel Humble. Reports describe Humble as an unemployed alcoholic whom police had to detain for a day until he was sober enough to partake in a formal interview. He was eventually sentenced to 8 years behind bars for perverting the course of justice in the Yorkshire Ripper case. Humble had read up extensively on Victorian serial killer, Jack the Ripper, and incorporated phrases from the Jack the Ripper letters into his own: "That photo in the paper gave me fits" Humble wrote. Jack the Ripper had penned a similar phrase in 1888 when he allegedly wrote to police: "That joke about the leather apron gave me fits".
Sutcliffe was questioned again after his vehicle was recorded going in and out of the Red Light district area in Bradford, but he told police he passed through the area for work and his wife, once again, backed him up. To those following the case it seems astonishing that police neglected to arrest Peter Sutcliffe after the £5 note was traced back to him and he had been caught frequenting the Red Light district, but he kept slipping through the net due to a series of admin errors and unconnected dots.
In April 1979, 19-year-old Josephine Whittaker, a building society clerk, was murdered on her way home from work. Her attacker left behind a bite mark and evidence that told investigators the perpetrator they were looking for was a gap-toothed man with size 7 shoes who may work in a factory or with vehicles.
Eventually investigators turned their attention back to Sutcliffe, who had slipped through the authorities’ fingers over and over. He was arrested on drunk driving charges in 1980 and released yet again, despite all clues pointing in his direction. Two more women were slain before he was eventually caught in Broomhill, Sheffield, while in the company of a sex worker and likely his next victim. He had stolen registration plates a month or so earlier in December 1980 from a scrap yard in Huddersfield and affixed them to his own vehicle. When officers ran the plates, they were registered to a Skoda, however, Sutcliffe was driving a Rover. Police later discovered weapons Sutcliffe had discarded at the time of his arrest when they let him out momentarily to urinate at the side of the road. They would later discover a knife he had hidden in the police station bathroom. He was arrested, his house searched, wife questioned, and after two days of interviews he finally confessed to his crimes.
When questioned about his motives he said God had told him to kill prostitutes and that they were “filth”. He claimed that he heard the voice of God in his head instructing him to kill women and that he had heard this voice since the 1960s, when he worked one of his first jobs as a grave digger.
Sutcliffe was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sent to Broadmoor Hospital where he received treatment . He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release and was incarcerated at HMP Frankland in County Durham.
Peter “The Yorkshire Ripper” Sutcliffe has recently died at the University Hospital of North Durham after allegedly rejecting treatment for COVID-19. He was reported to have other health conditions as well as obesity.
He was cremated at a secret funeral service with only one attendee. His family told the media they were disappointed that they were unable to attend the funeral and that it was not broadcasted via a link as they had been told.
His brother told the Independent newspaper: “Peter, all of your family love you as Peter Sutcliffe, although you ruined all our lives when you became the Yorkshire Ripper.”
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The Siriraj medical museum, referred to informally as “the death museum” in online articles in English, is located in Thanon Wang Lang, Bangkok. The museum is split up into various sections exploring the human anatomy, diseases and forensic science. Lecturers from the connecting hospital university, a male and female, who donated their bodies to the Siriraj museum now lay preserved as wet specimens in cases so that future students may continue to learn from them even after their deaths. The body of Thailand’s most well-known and nationally feared serial killer, Si Quey, was kept in the Songkran Niyomsan Forensic Medicine Museum section along with the preserved bodies of other criminals as well as evidence from various crimes including the skulls and skeletal remains of victims.
Si Quey immigrated to Thailand in the 1940’s where he worked as a gardener and laborer in Noen Phra, a quiet coastal town near the Rayong district.
He was accused of murdering several children between 1954 – 1958 and of removing their organs, specifically the livers, which he is thought to have consumed. In 1958 he was caught in the act of attempting to burn the body of a small boy named Somboon Boonyakan in the Rayong province. The child had went missing after going outside, never to return. Police claimed to catch Si Quey in the act. After his arrest he confessed to the murder but insisted that he did not intend to consume the organs. Despite denying a penchant for eating the organs of children, he was dubbed the cannibal serial killer and after his death the label was hung above the cabinet displaying his body for all to see. The tabloids ran wild with the story, writing tales about an ex-military Chinese immigrant who stalked the streets to eat the hearts and livers of small children at night. At some point he was quoted saying that he found the taste of his victims organs delicious, a sentiment that struck fear into the hearts of the Thai people and whether legitimate or not, stuck in the minds of the general public. Newspapers claimed that Si Quey, who served in the military in World War II, had consumed the flesh of those fallen in battle to sustain himself and survive. They claimed he began to enjoy human flesh and found it so delicious that he had an insatiable desire for it.
Si Quey became something of a bogey man in Thai folklore and parents would often threaten their misbehaving children with the ghost of Si Quey if they did not behave. He became known as Thailand’s first serial killer and is a popular subject in Thai film, literature and comic books.
In recent years the legitimacy of the crimes Si Quey was charged with as well as the ethics of having his body displayed in the museum have come into question. A change.org petition to have his preserved remains removed from display in order to preserve his dignity and for a traditional ceremony and cremation gathered support and collected around 11,000 signatures. People who had known the ethnic Chinese immigrant spoke highly of him, calling him a nice man. The Thai police had a bad reputation when it came to garnering confessions and were known to beat and threaten suspects into confessing to crimes that they often did not commit. They were also partial to shifting the blame to immigrants and non-Thai’s and would often pin crimes on those who were discriminated against in society.
After the initial doubt was cast over Si Quey’s conviction, the University Dean began gathering evidence and information pertaining to the killer’s charges, trial, conviction and execution. Although he is thought to have killed seven children, he only confessed to killing the young boy he was caught burning the remains of. He denied being a cannibal and the term was removed from the plaque that had been displayed above his mummified body for over half a century. Facts began to present themselves, including one of Si Quey’s supposed victims’ organs being accounted for after autopsy despite police claiming he confessed to eating them, giving weight to the theory that the Thai police had beaten false confessions out of the man.
The Dean spent a month attempting to track down the family members of Si Quey in regards to what should be done with his remains and although many people came forward claiming to be relatives of “Thailand’s first serial killer” none of them had the documents or evidence to back up their claims.
After 60 years of being displayed at Siriraj medical museum, the body of Si Quey has finally been removed and cremated.
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On January 12th, 1976, Maurer had been visiting a friend in the neighbourhood. When it came time to leave, the teenager decided to head to a nearby McDonalds to buy a soda when she was snatched off the street by her killer. Despite exhaustive efforts, police were unable to identify the perpetrator, and the case remained cold for 44 years until 2019, when the killer was finally identified as Bruce Lindahl, a suspected serial killer who had died in 1981. His body was exhumed, and his DNA was tested against the sample found and preserved from Pamela Maurer’s body. It was a match.
Lindahl died during an attack on another teenager when he accidentally wounded himself during a frenzied stabbing attack on 18-year-old Charles Huber. Bruce Lindahl entered Huber’s residence and began attacking him, stabbing the young man almost 30 times, when he accidentally slashed his own femoral artery with the six-inch blade. Police believe that Lindahl planned to murder the young man so he could get to his girlfriend who was sleeping in another room, but gravely injured himself in the process, eventually bleeding to death from his injuries.
On October 7th, 1980, Bruce Lindahl kidnapped a woman named Debra Colliander from the Northgate Shopping Center. He kept her in his apartment against her will, where he sexually assaulted her and made her pose for naked pictures. He encouraged her to look as if she was there voluntarily, telling her to act like she was enjoying herself.
Colliander managed to escape and was all set to testify against Lindahl in court. Two years later she was found murdered. Police believe that her killer ordered a hit against her.
Investigators now believe that Bruce Lindahl could be a serial killer with as many as 12 victims. After his death in 1981 his house was searched by police who uncovered a stash of photographs depicting nude women, just as Colliander had described. Amongst his collection was a photograph of at least one missing student who vanished without a trace in 1979. Some of the woman look as though they were voluntarily posing, possibly at the forced direction of their captor, while others look scared stiff. It’s now up to investigators to determine which of the women could be Lindahl’s victims.
Bruce Lindahl may have murdered a dozen women throughout the seventies and early eighties and somehow managed to evade the law while doing so. He did, however, have a close call while, presumably, driving one of his victims back to his apartment or a dumping ground. Police pulled over his vehicle during a routine traffic stop only to find a bloodied female in the backseat. When they asked what had happened Lindahl claimed that he was driving the woman, who appeared to have a head injury, to the nearest hospital, despite driving in the complete opposite direction. Police called an ambulance for the injured female, who told hospital staff that she had no recollection of what happened but did remember being at a party with Lindahl and taking a sip of his drink.
Lindahl didn’t have many friends as he had relocated several times over the years, including stints in both Lisle and Aurora. He was considered decent looking and was said to have a silver tongue that enabled him to persuade people to do what he wanted. It seems wherever he went, women would go missing and those cases would dwindle as soon as he moved to another town.
Lindahl’s ex-girlfriends described how the suspected serial killer would ask them the simulate knife attacks on him so he could “show them his defence skills”, however police believe the real reason may be more sinister and that Lindahl possibly wanted to kill the women but needed it to look like it was an act of self-defence.
The “Daily Beast” published an exclusive article featuring the story of one of Lindahl’s living victims (referred to as “Fran” to protect her identity) wherein she recalls the killer constantly hosting parties at his apartment where he would ply young female guests with free alcohol. She goes on to say that he eventually gained her mother’s trust and seemed like an upstanding person. Fran told the media outlet that the suspected serial killer drugged her scotch at one of their regular drinking sessions and that she lost all control of her body. Once immobilized, she said her attacker took pictures of her naked, just like he had done with his other victims, and sexually assaulted her. The article suggests that he groomed and sexually exploited the teen, while trying to maintain a “normal” outwardly appearance. Fran eventually escaped Lindahl when she began working night shift at a new job, but that didn’t stop him from following her and attempting to further exploit the teen. She believes that she narrowly avoided being murdered by Bruce Lindahl.
Police are working to identify the women in the collection of photographs and other possible victims.
Investigation into the slaying would reveal that the market owner, Chaloemchai Ongwisit, had ordered his brother-in-law to assist him in Nuanprang’s murder. After a long stint in prison Ongwisit was released, only to be fatally shot. His wife, who was suspected to have ordered a hit against him, quickly fled the country and moved overseas, never to return to her home country again.
Chaloemchai Ongwisit’s son, Apichai Ongsawit, who inherited the family wealth and estate, made headlines around the world this week when 300 bones were found on his property.
Apichai, 40, showed up on police’ radar when he was arrested for drug charges earlier this month. While being questioned over unrelated drug charges, an acquaintance of Apichai, Chaloemchon Ngabua, 41, confessed to the police that he had seen Apichai murder a young woman on his property. He alleged that the forty-year-old hit the woman over the head with a large stick and shoved her into a metal casket, locking it shut. To muffle the sounds of her screams he played loud music in the house. Chaloemchon was once employed as a security guard on the property and told officers that he and the suspect had done time together in 2012. Once released from prison, Apichai employed him as a security guard on his estate. Ngabua said that he witnessed the murder and said that he was willing to provide a witness statement in return for leniency.
The young woman turned out to be Ongwisit’s girlfriend, Warinthorn Chaiyachet, known to friends as “Kik”. Kik, a pretty 22-year-old who worked as a bar girl, had been reported missing by her worried family. She had been dating the 40-year-old and had recently reported an incident involving him to the local police. When she failed to turn up for her secondary appointment the authorities became concerned about her well-being.
The suspect would later confess to the police that he was so jealous of his girlfriend and so afraid that she would sneak off and leave him in the night that he forced her to sleep in a metal casket. On the night of the murder he said he shoved her into the box, locked it and awoke the following day to find that she had suffocated to death. Ongwisit then rolled her body up in plastic and buried her on his estate. Police believe that he may have tortured his victims before putting them into metal caskets and eventually disposing of their bodies.
After the news broke, members of the community came forward and voiced their concerns, saying they believed Apichai may have murdered others. Ongwisit has a prior criminal record, including illegal possession of a firearm and drug abuse.
In 2011 a twelve-year-old girl who was known to play near the suspects estate went missing. Her family never found out what happened to her.
Police later secured a warrant to search the property at Soi Phetkasem 47, where they recovered bones that they believe may belong to a young female. The bones are currently in the hands of the Siriraj medical museum where they are being tested and examined. Siriraj famously houses the preserved body of another suspected serial killer named “Si Oui”, a Chinese immigrant who was accused of murdering and consuming the livers of several children, spanning several provinces in the 1940’s. Recently, however, there have been issues regarding the legitimacy of Si Oui’s status as a serial killer and a petition to remove his body, which is on display in the “forensic crime” section of the hospital.
Police are reportedly looking into cases of missing females between 15 – 18 to help identify the remains found in the pond.
Neighbors spoke of Apichai Ongwisit filling his pond with carnivorous ray-finned Alligator Gars, a type of fish believed to be capable of breaking down the bodies of his victims due to their big appetites and insatiable hunger. Police reported that they did not find Alligator Gars in the pond, however they did recover around 300 bones and believe the suspect has killed at least 3 females. News reports showed images of black bones being arranged on white sheets as police and forensic teams kneel around the findings.
Ongwisit, who has been nicknamed “The ice casket killer” by the Thai media, has been charged with illegal detention, concealing bodies and premeditated murder. A filtered selfie of the suspected serial killer that accompanies most articles across various tabloids, depicts the 40-year-old killer looking freakishly smooth and paper white. He is bald, dressed in a plaid shirt with a Jack Skellington necklace around his neck.
Investigators found the metal casket that Ongwisit admitted to locking his girlfriend in and later recovered the young woman’s remains buried in the ground just beyond a gate that had been fastened shut with chains and locks and weighted down with a dumbbell. They identified her on-sight by a large Japanese koi fish tattoo spanning the entirety of her back.
The now 73-year-old serial killer, who was active from 1967 – 1980 and has spent almost three decades behind bars at the New Jersey State Prison for the murders of six females, confessed to the murders of an additional three teenage girls between 1968 – 1969.
He claims that he abducted and murdered 18-year-old Irene Blase from Bogota On April 7th, 1969. Her body was discovered the following day face down in a river in Saddlebrook. A website dedicated to the many unsolved murders of teenagers and young women in the New Jersey area, newjerseygirlmurders.org, details Miss Blase’ murder and states the cause of death as ligature strangulation. Investigators weren’t sure what the girl had been strangled to death with but suspected it may have been the chain of a crucifix necklace she was wearing at the time of her murder.
Strangulation as a cause of death fits The New Jersey Torso killers M.O as well as his habit of beating and torturing his victims. The victim was also stabbed through the lung and Cottingham was known for carrying a knife, which he would use to threaten and force his victims into sexual acts, torture as well as to mutilate them post-mortem.
Cottingham also confessed to the murder of 15-year-old Denise Falasca, from Closter, who was abducted from Emmerson on the way to a friend’s house. She too was strangled to death with her crucifix necklace, less than 10 miles from the location Irene Blase was discovered. Similar in age and appearance to Miss Blase, Falasca was Caucasian with dark hair and eyes. She was found in a state of undress and her killers left behind the impression of her own bloody hand print on one of her thighs. Her body was found near a graveyard in Saddlebrook.
The murder of 13-year-old Jacalyn Harp was the third case he confessed responsibility for. Harper was abducted on her way home from band practice on July 17th, 1968. She cut through Middland park where Cottingham abducted and killed her. Her body was found the following day in a state of undress. She was bruised and bloodied, much like the other two girls.
The New Jersey police department have confirmed the girls are indeed victims of Richard Cottingham.
Cottingham, or “The New Jersey Torso killer”, got his morbid moniker from his M.O, which involved (usually) strangling his young female victims and often cutting off their heads and hands post-mortem. He was active between 1967 – 1980 and although he was confirmed to have killed a handful of girls and woman over the years, he claimed the real number was upwards of 85 and possibly even as high as 100, although many believe this number is far-fetched.
Many articles state that Cottingham had a relatively tame criminal record for a secret serial killer. He had a couple of misdemeanors and minor crimes including shoplifting from a department store and driving under the influence of alcohol, but he did in fact, face charges relating to assaults against women on a couple of occasions that were eventually dropped.
Cottingham was married in 1970. By this point he was already torturing and killing young women. He had three children with his wife between 1973 and 1979, but his wife left him and filed for divorce after she found out that he was having an affair. She would go on to drop the divorce and move away with the children. Cottingham kept on killing.
Nancy Shiava Vogel was one of his first known victims. Cottingham murdered her in 1967 when he was just 21 years old. Vogel was found dead in her vehicle several days after a sudden disappearance. Her hands were bound, she was naked and there was trauma to her face and head indicative of a beating.
Two years later in 1969 two headless and handless female bodies were discovered in a burning hotel room in New York City. One of the victims was identified as Deedeh Goodarz, a sex worker from Kuwaiti, the other would never be identified.
Later in May 1980, police made a harrowing discovery in a hotel room in Hasbrouck heights, New Jersey- the bound body of a teenager whose body was Dalmatian with bruises and bite marks. That same month yet another woman in her mid-twenties was found dead near the hotel where Street’s body had been discovered. The cause of death was determined as multiple stab wounds.
That same month, Cottingham attempted to subject yet another young woman, 18-year-old Leslie Ann O’Dell, who like Deedeh Goodarz was a sex worker at the time, to the same nightmarish fate as his previous victims. O’Dell was working on Lexington Avenue and 25th Street when Cottingham approached her and offered her $100 for her time. She agreed and the two went back to the same hotel the killer had previously killed in. He tricked O’Dell into submission by telling her to lay on her front for a massage before quickly snapping a pair of handcuffs on her wrists to bind her hands behind her back. Once immobilized he began to torture her a knife point and when she made muffled cries of pain the killer retaliated with demoralizing language and told her she’d have to endure the suffering “like the rest of the girls”. At one point the victim told police that he bit down on her nipple so hard that he almost bit it clean off. Her cries of pain were heard by hotel staff who quickly alerted the police who showed up in a matter of minutes and arrested the serial killer.
When they searched Cottingham’s residence, they discovered mementos and trophies he had kept from his victims as well as weapons such as knives and replica guns that he would use in his abductions and attacks.
Leslie O’Dell was not the only surviving victim of the New Jersey Torso killer; two others came forward when the case went to trial.
Richard Cottingham tried to commit suicide in his cell while awaiting trial, but his attempts failed. He also tried to avoid his trial by fainting, harming himself and attempting to escape.
There are many unsolved murders of teenage girls and women that took place in New Jersey around the time Cottingham was active. There is a website dedicated to cataloging the cold cases at newjerseygirlmurders.org. Doing a search for the word “ligature”, a key word that would come up in all of Cottingham’s killings, turns up 18 results, 3 of which are now updated as “solved” since the killer’s recent confessions. A handful of them are his confirmed victims but there are a few still unsolved murders from the time detailing candidates that could be potential victims of the infamous New Jersey Torso killer.
The first is Linda Balabanow, who was 17 years old at the time of her murder in March 1969. Balabanow was abducted, bound, beaten, suffered blunt force trauma and died by ligature strangulation. She was found face down in water. Her shoes were also missing.
The second in the list is Carol Hill, who was killed the following summer in June 1970. She was found with bites and bruises on her body, was raped and again had died due to ligature strangulation.
The third possible victim is Doreen Carlucci, who was just 14 years old when she was killed in December of 1974. She too was abducted, strangled with a ligature and was found in a state of undress.
These three crimes happened in new Jersey around the time Cottingham was active and the M.O closely matches that of the Torso killer.
Other possible victims on the list include 14-year-old Suzanne Garden in January of 1974, 18-year-old Cynthia Leslie and Janet Ipsaro Adams, also 18. All three teens were strangled with a ligature, two of the victims were mutilated post-mortem and all had been beaten.
Janet Adams was not abducted and killed outside- she was murdered in her own home. She suffered post-mortem stab wounds and was found face down in a filled bathtub with a pair of scissors protruding from one of her breasts. The M.O is very similar to that of the Torso Killer; however, he usually killed his victims outside or at motels. Adam’s threw a party the week before to celebrate her marriage, it could be possible that the killer knew the victims address for this reason.
Richard Cottingham continues serving out his 200-year sentence in New Jersey state prison. It is unclear if why, when or under what process he confessed to the unsolved crimes.
In the spring of 2010, a 24-year-old online escort named Shannan Gilbert went missing after placing a frantic phone call to 911 while out on a date in the Oak Beach area. She fled from the client’s house and was seen by witnesses running from door to door seeking help. Residents of the neighbourhood were afraid to let the panicked young woman inside of their homes but offered to call 911 on her behalf.
Shannon went missing that night and her skeletal remains were found over six months later, on the North side of Ocean Parkway. The discovery lead police to search the area where they found the bodies of four more women buried relatively close to one another in the marsh on Gilgo beach, leading them to believe that the area was a dumping ground for a local serial killer. Suffolk county police did not believe Gilbert’s death was a murder or was in any way linked to the suspected serial killer and ruled her death as accidental, proposing that the young woman had, in a state of confusion, drowned in the marsh or died of exposure to the elements. A second autopsy was performed on the remains revealing that the hyoid bone in her neck was broken, an injury indicative of strangulation.
The client Gilbert had gone to see that night was later named as Joseph Brewer. He was later cleared as a suspect.
Two days after Gilbert went missing, her mother received a strange phone call from a Dr. Peter Hackett, a neighbour of Joseph Brewer. Hackett told Gilbert’s mother that he ran a home for wayward girls and that Shannon had come to his home that night, so he had given her some medication to calm her down. Shannon’s mother asked him where he had gotten her phone number, to which he told her that any girl who stayed at his home had to provide emergency contact details. He called a couple of days later to deny everything he had previously said and denied running a home for wayward girls. He would go on to tell investigators that he never made the calls but was later presented with phone records showing that he did. He too was cleared as a suspect in the case as police said he often fabricated things and tended to “insert himself” into high profile cases such as Gilberts disappearance. The victims family remained suspicious and Shannon’s mother even told the media that Gilbert’s home was so close to the location of her daughters body that the police actually took her into Hackett’s home and stood her on the balcony to point out the exact spot where they found Shannon’s remains.
One by one the remains of the women were identified as online escorts who had been working in and around the area. One of the women, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, had been missing for three years. The 25-year-old went missing after leaving a motel in New York in 2007 and was never heard from again.
Another victim went missing after walking out of her apartment.
25-year-old Megan Waterman went missing from the Holiday Inn she was living at in the summer of 2010 and Amber Costello also went missing from her home just three months later. All women had posted adverts for their escort services on Craigslist.
A further six bodies would be found after police expanded their search out 16 miles towards the Nassau County border. The additional remains of four women, a mother and child and an Asian male wearing female clothing were discovered. Opinions were split over whether it was the work of a single serial killer or the dumping ground for multiple killers. Some of the remains were linked to torsos and limbs that had washed up on beaches or been discovered years prior, while some of the victims were fully intact and others had been decapitated, dividing opinions about whether it was the work of a single serial killer who had changed his M.O or whether it was the work of two different killers operating in the same area. Over time the theory that the murders were linked to a lone serial killer became the predominant one and earned the killer his nickname: The long Island serial killer, or LISK.
There have been a few suspects over the years, including convicted killer John Bittrolff, who was convicted of the murders of two sex workers in the early 90’s and lived in Manorville, Suffolk County, just a few miles from where parts of two Long Island Serial Killer victims were found. At the time he was working as a carpenter and was later arrested in 2014 thanks to DNA evidence.
The identity of the Long Island Serial killer is still unknown, but those working on the case are confident that he can be identified and that the case will be solved.
The perpetrator was later identified as 34 year old Kenneth Deangelo Martin. Investigators believe that the alleged homeless serial killer began his killing spree in the spring of 2018 and continued kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering women around East Detroit until March 2019. They have revealed that the 34 year old has a long list of sexual assaults and attempted murders on his criminal record.
Police followed a set of footprints leading from the body to what was likely the parking spot her attacker had left his vehicle at. Tire tracks showed her killer pulled out onto the highway to flee the scene of the crime. It seemed as though two sets of footprints lead to the crime scene with only one leading away. Did the victim and her attacker walk along the trail together before he raped and murdered her?
Autopsy later revealed that she had been sexually assaulted before being shot in the head as she was either bending down or leaning over. Various vaccine scars, dental work and what was determined to be evidence of a cesarean section were noted. Fingerprints were taken and ran through a missing people database but no match was found. Unable to identify the young woman who had fell victim to such a cruel and tragic fate, she became known as “The Sheep Flats Jane Doe”.
After finding out that Mary had ties to the New York area her criminal record was pulled up by the Detroit Police Department. It was discovered that she had been arrested for loitering when she was 25 years old and that her fingerprints were still stored in the archives. The police provided the prints to confirm Jane Doe’s identity. It was Mary.
Seventeen year old Tricia Pacaccio was found by her father as he left the house that morning on his way out to work. As he opened the door, coffee in hand, he was met with a sight no father should ever have to see- his daughter had been stabbed to death in a frenzy and her lifeless body was slumped over the steps. Her shirt was saturated with blood and it looked as though she had just been about to put her key in the door when an unknown assailant mercilessly attacked her where she stood. She had been out to a party that night with her friends and returned home at around 1AM. Her father attempted to revive her but tragically, it was much too late.
He was the prime suspect in the case until he pointed the finger of blame in the direction of a friend who lived in the neighborhood. He told police that not long after the murder this friend contacted him to ask for assistance in concealing evidence- a bag that he believed contained the murder weapon, which he hinted was a knife. Police shifted their attention from Gargiulo for a while and concentrated on their new suspect while Gargiulo left town and headed straight for L.A.
Ashley Ellerin was another young adult who was attracted by the Hollywood lights. She was a fashion student who relocated to Hollywood from a small town in Northern California to enroll at the Fashion Institute in L.A. She had aspirations to work in the fashion industry and enjoyed socializing and partying in her free time. She found herself a close group of friends with whom she shared a house. On the night of February 1st, 2001, Ellerin was scheduled to get picked up by actor Ashton Kutcher as they had planned to attend a Grammy party together that evening.
Gibson was approached and detained by transit officers at a subway station in the East Village at around 9:30AM, where he was arrested for the murder of 77 year old Erik Stoker who had been killed in Florida several days earlier. The officers had received a wanted poster featuring the heavily tattooed man and recognized him instantly. Police believe the 32 year old was on the run at the time, but do not know where he was planning to go.
The murder
Alerted by an odor so foul that it was impossible to ignore, Stoker's neighbors went to investigate his home, a ground floor apartment in South beach, Florida. There they discovered his decomposing body and a scene that they could only describe as “gory”. Police estimated that his remains had been there for at least over a week by the time they found him and said it was clear that the victim had been hacked at and stabbed with a large sharp instrument, that was later identified as a samurai sword. His credit cards and cash were missing from his wallet and transactions made on the account lead investigators right to Nicolas Gibson. After killing his ex-roommate with the sword, Gibson fled to New York on a long haul bus using the victim’s stolen credit card to purchase the tickets. Through a series of credit card transactions they followed him to the city where they finally noticed him getting off a subway train and made the arrest. Police believe that Stoker likely allowed the 32 year old man to stay with him after a stint in jail, and that he may even have been assisting the retired stockbroker with daily living before he killed and mutilated the elderly man.
When asked if he murdered 77 year old Erik Stoker, Brent answered: “Yes, with my bare hands. With a big sword. He wanted to go.”
Gibson has a long history of arrests and convictions, all of which are for rapes, sexual assaults and multiple counts of failing to register as a sex offender.
His criminal history goes back decades to when he was just 13 years old. He was convicted of rape in Illinois in the summer of 2000 and was punished with seven years detention at a juvenile prison.
After completing his sentence he went on to reoffend and was charged with the rape and assault of a minor in Pennsylvania in late December of 2007. It was also discovered that he had neglected to register as a sex offender and was sentenced to another 4 years in prison as a result. This pattern would continue to repeat as Gibson continued to reoffend and refuse to register himself across multiple states and counties.
After being released again in early February of 2013 he was arrested another 5 times over several years for failure to register, accumulating an extra 5 years of jail time in total.
After being arrested for killing ex-roommate, Gibson began confessing to multiple murders statewide and told police that he was a serial killer who had been killing since he was just 12 years old. He claimed to have bludgeoned a homeless black male to death with a loose brick in 1999 in a wooded area in Kennesaw, Atlanta where he used to live. He also claimed that he took the life of another victim in the same area, a male adolescent with special needs whom he claimed he threw into a body of water.
The killings, he alleged, stopped when he was arrested for rape in 2000 and was subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison. He told investigators that he went on to kill two more men upon his release, a Caucasian Russian male in Tampa, Florida and an African American male in California. Police are investigating the claims and attempting to connect the confessions to any cold cases that fit the timeline.
The killer also told police that he had drowned a woman in Biscayne Bay, Florida in 2015. Investigators originally believed that he may have been describing the murder of 27 year old Finnish tourist, Essi Puhakka, whose body was found floating in the bay in February of 2015. Although the murders sound similar, according to Gibson’s police record he would have been serving time in Unadilla, Georgia at the time. Police are looking into Nicholas Gibson’s claims in an attempt to figure out if they are disingenuous and attention seeking stories or legitimate confessions.
So far, Nicholas Brent Gibson, or “Brent Savage” as he likes to call himself, has confessed to 32 murders and despite not being from New Zealand, has been talking to officers with an accent. Brent, who is a single dad, split up with his girlfriend in 2016, a year later she died and his mental health was said to decline. He may also have started using drugs.
Many people had taken him in over the years, including a nurse at mental health facility who said she asked him to leave after several days due to the unnerving nature of his conversations and the discovery that he had been twice convicted for rape.
More details to be released as the police continue their investigation.
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Inside the discarded bundle they found the body of a woman who had had wounds indicating that she had died as a result of a gunshot to the head. Autopsy would later confirm this to be true. Her fingers had been cut off in what is thought to have been an attempt to conceal her identity. The woman came to be known as “the maidenwater victim”. Her stats were input into online databases which described her as Hispanic or Native American with dark eyes, dark shoulder length hair, a freckled complexion and tattooed brows.
(Source. The Utah department of public safety released an autopsy photograph in an attempt to identify the victim)
Despite efforts to identify her nobody came forward and she remained nameless for over 20 years- that is until, an online sleuth with an interest in unsolved cases and missing people came across the autopsy images of Jane Doe on an online database for unidentified people. She compared the image of the nameless victim to that of many missing women matching the description of Jane Doe and eventually stumbled upon someone she believed shared a likeness. She tipped off the relevant authorities who then got to work testing the DNA of the unidentified woman and comparing it to the DNA submitted by the missing woman's family members. The results came back a positive match and Jane Doe was finally identified as a woman who had been missing for 20 years named Lena Reyes-Geddes.
The police contacted Geddes’ sister in Mexico who filled in the blanks. She explained that Lena was also from Mexico but had moved to Ohio around 1996, just a couple of years before she had went missing. Because her family expected her to make it to either Dallas or Mexico, they did not consider looking for her elsewhere.
She was married to a man named Edward Geddes and the two resided in Austintown, Ohio. Lena had plans to travel to Dallas, Texas and then on to Mexico to visit family and friends leaving on April 8th, but she never made it. After she failed to make contact with family for several months her husband officially reported her missing to the police.
Her husband was originally considered a suspect in the case right up until his suicide several years later. Police admitted to the media that they no longer considered him a suspect in the case. Although they are elated that the “Maidenwater victim” has been identified after all these years the question still remains- who killed Lena Reyes-Geddes and why?
Convicted killer Scott Lee “Hannibal” Kimball is also considered a possible suspect in the case as he was in the area at the time the crime and he was known for using the same knots as those found to bind Geddes’ body.
Kimball was doing time for various crimes including fraud, when he managed to convince the FBI that he would be useful as an informant. He was released to track a witness in a case revolving around a meth ring, the witness was a 25 year old woman named Jennifer Marcum and the case was being built around her ex-boyfriend Steve Ennis. Ennis and Kimball were prison friends.
Scott Kimball befriended Marcum and convinced her that he could get her a better job, she eventually moved in with him. Later, Kimball informed the FBI that Jennifer had caught a flight to New York City with the intention of killing another witness in the case. Her car was parked in the parking lot but there was no record of her ever catching a flight to NYC. They would later discover that he had killed her.
He would go on to kill three more people (including his own uncle) throughout 2003 – 2004.
He killed 24 year old LeAnn Emry in 2003. Emry told her parents that she had plans to travel with friends to Mexico and go on a caving trip, but in reality she had gotten herself tangled up with Kimball, who was going by the name “Hannibal”. She reportedly got too deep into money laundering and fraud with Kimball and realized her life was in danger. She had a prison boyfriend that no one in her family knew about and was leading a secret double life in the criminal underground. She was eventually found murdered in a Colorado forest with a bullet wound to the head. Her car was found abandoned in Utah. Emry had struggled with bipolar disorder and had suffered at the hands of an abusive partner. She, like all of Kimball’s victims, was vulnerable- just the way he liked it.
19 year old Kaysie McLeod went missing after an argument with her mother. She fell in with the wrong crowd at school and started using meth. Luckily she managed to get clean, swore off drugs and managed to get her life on track and get a job at the local Subway. When her mother found drugs in the house she accused Kaysie of using again, Kaysie denied the drugs were hers, even offering to take a test to prove it. She ran out of the house after the fight and was never seen again. Her parents became worried after she neglected to show up to her shift at Subway, which was very out of character. They reported her missing but since she was an adult the police told them there was nothing they could do and that she had voluntarily left of her own accord.
Kaysie’s parents had split when she was a kid and her mother had recently got into a relationship with Scott Lee Kimball. Although her new boyfriend had been unaccounted for on the same weekend that her daughter went missing, she failed to see him as a suspect and instead thought of him as a valuable asset to finding her teenage daughter. She believed that since he worked as an FBI informant that he had connections that could help her find Kaysie. In reality he strung her along and fed her lies about sightings and witness accounts confirming her to be alive and in the area. The tragic reality was that he had killed her after offering her a lift to her job from the hotel she was staying at. Evidence was later found amongst Kimball’s things, including part of her uniform, shoes and cable ties.
Kimball even killed his own uncle when he came to visit in 2004. After the man went missing Kimball told anyone that asked that his 60 year old uncle had won the local lottery and ran away to Mexico with a stripper. In reality, his uncle had recently divorced and was carrying all of his money in a suitcase that he kept very close to him at all times. It is believed that Scott Kimball murdered his own uncle for money. Police were lead to the body and it was revealed that the man had been fatally shot in the head.
Scott Kimball is considered a potential suspect in the murder of the maidenwater victim because the crime fits his M.O. Check back for updates in the case.
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These days suspected serial killer Felix Vail sits in Louisiana state penitentiary serving out a life sentence for second degree murder, while the families of the women who fell for his charm spend their days investigating, grieving over and searching for their missing daughters.
Mary Horton married Vail in the summer of 1961. jJust one year later in 1962 she fell pregnant and gave birth to a son, William “Bill” Felix Vail Jr. That same year, just three months after the birth of their first child, Mary tragically died in what was believed to be an accident when she fell overboard a boat sailing on the Calcasieu River in Southwestern Louisiana. Vail claimed that they took the boat out at night to lay down some fishing lines, but no such lines were ever found and the lake was deemed generally unsuitable for trotlines.
Felix Vail was a suspect in his wife’s death for the get-go. He was arrested but was not found guilty of murder at the time as the case never made it to court. Felix Vail was let off and remained a free man, able to cruise the streets in search of his next love affair. His Son, Bill, remained in his care and would later suffer abuse at the hands of his own father.
(Felix Vail. Source)
Six years later in 1969 he began dating Sharon Hensley, who, just like several of his future wives and girlfriends-to-be, would go missing after just a few years of being together.
Bill, then 8 years old, claims that he heard his father admitting to killing his mother, Mary Horton, in 1962. He informed the local police about what he had overheard and confessed that his dad had been giving him drugs and was sent to live with his grandparents on Mary’s side of the family while Felix senior went directly to prison on drug charges. He spent six months behind bars.
By 1973 Sharon Hensley was no longer in contact with her friends and family and they had no idea she was missing until a year later. Vail spun her loved ones a fantastical story involving a mystery Australian couple who had invited Sharon on a sailing trip around the world. He told them that she wanted a new start and a new identify and burned all forms of identification to run off with them. In his original story he claimed the couple were called John and Vanessa and that he didn’t know their surnames. In later tellings of the story he gave different names.
Sharon Hensley would never return and was never seen again.
From 1975 – 1981 Felix Vail had a string of short lived marriages. A serial marrier, he found himself another teenage bride in 1975, just two years after his last wife went missing. His young new wife quickly split with him after discovering medical instruments in his car and got a bad feeling about him and his intentions.
The same thing happened again in 1977 when another woman (known only in documents as “Carolyn”) married and quickly divorced Vail- a decision that likely saved her life. Felix Vail didn’t give up on marriage and that same year went on to marry a woman named Alexandra Christiansen in Mexico, the short fling also ended in a swift divorce. In later interviews Christiansen said that Vail was still married to Carolyn when they met, but after a night of drinking in Mexico they tied the knot. When she asked him about it he was angry and told her that his first wife had died and that he "could have saved her, but I chose not to" which Christiansen took as a threat.
There seemed to be a break in Felix Vail’s activities until 1981 when he spotted 15 year old Annette Michelle Craver browsing items at a local garage sail in Houston, Texas. Forty years old at the time, he pulled up beside the teenager on his motorcycle in an attempt to impress her and laid on the romantic conversation thick. Annette was a free-spirited girl with a penchant for poetry and music and was charmed by the exciting older gent on his motorcycle who likely promised her an exciting life if she were to court him. Within 3 years the two were wed. True to the Felix Vail M.O Craver dropped off the map after just one year of marriage. To quash the curiosity of neighbors who wondered where Annette had gone, he told them she had taken a trip to Colorado to see friends. When friends and family were unable to contact her and pressed Vail for answers he told them that he had indulged her in her dreams of pursuing a dream trip to Mexico and purchased a bus ticket for her. The couple were supposed to go and visit Vail’s family in Sulphur, Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, but only Felix returned. He told police that she’d ran off to Mexico with thousands of dollars and was mentally ill.
Annette had recently come into money after receiving an inheritance.
Felix Vail was never short on far-fetched stories to excuse his long list of lost lovers. The gaping hole in his story about Annette, however, was that the bus station he claimed to drop her off at didn’t actually exist. After several days of no-contact Annette’s mother filed a missing persons report, stating that Annetet’s husband, Felix Vail was the last person to see her.
Annette’s mother, Mary Rose, was not convinced that her daughter had took off on a solo trip to Mexico without letting anyone know. She was suspicious of the story from the moment it rolled off Vail’s tongue and she spent decades wondering what had become of her daughter.
Mary Rose had every reason to believe that foul play was involved, after all, her daughter was not the first of Vail’s romantic partners to meet with mystery or misfortune. Mary did some detective work of her own and managed to track down Felix Vail’s younger sister who informed her that a couple of his previous girlfriends had gone missing in the past and that one had even died.
Armed with enough information, Mary Rose made a phone call to someone she believed could help her connect the dots.
Mary Horton’s brother, Will Horton, had always suspected that his sister’s death had been a homicide and his suspicions only grew after he received a phone call from Annette Craver’s mother in the early 2000's. He listened as Mary Rose explained that her daughter had also dated and eventually married Felix Vail in the eighties and that she had mysteriously vanished.
Over five decades after Mary’s death, a full investigation into Vail’s possible involvement was launched and an autopsy revealed bruising around Mary’s head, neck and face and a scarf stuffed into her mouth indicating she had been strangled and thrown into the river. If the discoveries made by the pathologists weren’t already damning enough, it was also revealed that Vail had even taken out a life insure policy on Mary which he quickly cashed in on after her death. It was a double indemnity policy clearing stating that the insurance company would pay out double if the insured party was to die accidentally, but due to the confusing nature of Mary's death, the company only ended up paying out a fraction of the insurance (around $10,000). Felix Vail went to trial in 2013 and was sent down for 2nd degree murder.
Felix Vail’s son, Bill, passed away in 2009. He made sure to make a video tape about his father and the confession he had made in 1970 where he admitted to killing Mary Horton. Although the cases of the other women were brought up during Mary Horton's case there was not enough evidence.
Felix Vail is now a suspected serial killer and will break his silence in a series of interviews expected to air this week,
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When interviewed by the media, those in the local community had only negative words to describe the man, such as “creepy” and “unnerving”. One neighbor described how Weldon would walk around the local area wearing a dark colored hoody with the drawstrings pulled so tight that they could barely see any of his facial features until they got up close. The distrust the community had towards the 40 year old was not entirely unwarranted, as the world would later come to discover.
On the 27th of May, 2018, Stewart Weldon was signaled to pull over by police who wanted to question him about a broken taillight. Weldon refused to do so and instead lead officers on a chase through the streets before eventually crashing into one of their cruisers.
Police quickly discovered a woman, who although distressed and clearly injured, was still alive and claimed that she was being held against her will.
She had bruising all over her body, various healed and open wounds, injuries to her jaw, a severe infection from a lesion on one of her legs and multiple stab wounds to her abdomen. A later medical examination would reveal that she had likely been beaten with a blunt weapon. The woman claimed that Weldon had beaten her with a hammer.
The victim is thought to have been held captive for over a month. She thanked the officers profusely for rescuing her from being murdered; “You saved my life!” she told them, “He was going to kill me!”
This online article in the Daily Mail states that the woman is 25 years old; however she has not yet been officially identified.
According to this article in the Independent Weldon was arrested on charges of kidnapping, possession of a dangerous weapon and intent to commit a crime. Three days later investigators searched Weldon’s home where they made a shocking discovery. The remains of three individuals were found in and around the residence. The case is being investigated as a potential homicide, as the three bodies are suspected to be victims of murder. The bodies will undergo postmortem examination to determine cause of death and identity.
According to Mass live reports, the bodies were found in the basement and garage and although only three have been confirmed, the backyard is currently being excavated under the suspicion that more remains may be discovered.
In a statement given to the local media, Hampden County District Attorney, Anthony Gulluni, stated that the investigation was in its early stages and that although they can confirm that they have so far found three bodies at the Weldon house, they cannot confirm that they are dealing with a serial killer at this stage. Weldon’s own mother, who is the owner of the house on Page Blvd is said to be the one who made the call to police to report a “foul odor”. This has left many people online wondering if she had any idea about what was going on at the house.
One of Weldon’s neighbors told the Boston Globe that Weldon appeared to be living with a young woman who he never talked to, and only saw when she was darting from the house to a vehicle. He stated that a teenage boy was also staying at the residence.
At his court hearing on the 29th of May, Weldon pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Steward Weldon Jr. is originally from Jamaica, Queens, New York and has previous convictions and a long criminal history dating back decades, with crimes being committed across various states in the U.S. In Springfield he committed assault with a weapon in the mid 2000’s, for which he did a time behind bars and was released in 2008. He landed himself back in prison in 2010 when he broke into a civilian’s home at night carrying a weapon with the purpose of committing a felony but was released in 2012. Although he was supposed to be wearing an ankle monitor, he had managed to cut it off. He also ignored the ban on driving.
The rest of the charges and arrests are traffic, weapon and assault related, including resisting arrest and battery against an officer. This report states that he even once threatened to shoot the patrons of a bar he was at.
NBC New York has dug even deeper into his past and discovered that this is not the first time Weldon has held a woman against her will and sexually assaulted her. Apparently when he was a teenager he was arrested for sexual assault and keeping a teenage girl captive in his apartment.
With Weldon’s extensive rap sheet, Springfield residents are beginning to question why he was able to walk free in their neighborhood. Those who have family members who have recently went missing are understandably concerned that the three bodies found at 1333 Page, Blvd could belong to their missing loved ones.
The Daily mail recently interviewed the auntie the alleged serial killer, who provided more information about Weldon, informing reporters that he has a baby girl who lives with him and a son back in New York.
Various reports indicate that a child has been taken from the property while the investigation continues and although the child has not officially been identified, it is a possibility that it could be Weldon’s 6 month old daughter.
Weldon’s aunt, Hannah Weldon, 63, claims that Stewart is mentally ill and has refused to take his medication for years. She neglected to go into detail about Stewart’s mental illness and claims that she doesn’t know his diagnosis. She stated that he was officially unemployed but dealt drugs.
Weldon has yet to be officially charged in connection with the bodies found at his home. The investigation continues.
He is currently being held on $1M dollar bail.
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]]>Three people have been killed in the street over the last 10 days by an unknown assailant whom the media has dubbed “the Tampa serial killer”. It’s important to note that, at the time of writing this, there has been no official statement that Tampa is dealing with a confirmed serial killer; however the murders are thought to be possibly linked to one individual.
Enzo Yaksic, founder of SHEISC (the Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative) who has over a decade of experience with profiling serial and mass killers, gave his insight on the case in this article with WFLA news. Yaksic believes that the killer is local, between 20 – 30 years of age and works during the day. He theorizes that the murders may be some sort of gang initiation exercise or a hatred for “wealth and status” however there are officially no known motivations for the crimes at this time.
The first victim was a 22 year old African American man named Benjamin Mitchell. He was a business management student who attended the local community college and had no previous criminal record. He was a graduate of Middleton High School, where he was involved with sports such as football and basketball and he also played music.
Mitchell was shot dead in the street on the 9th of October while waiting for a bus at 15th Street and East Frierson Avenue. Mitchell had relocated to Tampa, Florida, because his family deemed it to be safer than the previous cities he’d lived in.
The second victim was a 32 year old Caucasian woman named Monica Caridad Hoffa.
According to this article, Hoffa was discovered on Friday 13th of October in a grassy patch of land just off East New Orleans Avenue and North 11th Street.
Monica was a server at a restaurant called “Suki sushi”. She was fluent in Spanish and sign language and had several friends who were members of the deaf community. She loved her family and extended family and always made sure to visit and spend time with them and make sure they knew that she loved them dearly. She also enjoyed sketching and writing and taking walks and was described by her family (in this very touching tribute) as a bright and happy girl who was very much in love and had a lot of plans for the future that was stolen from her.
A criminal record online details an incident in September of 2016 where Hoffa was charged with "leaving the scene of a crash with injury" and "leaving the scene of a crash with property".
The only other thing I could find online was a short quote from her step mother to the media stating:
“I spoke to her eight months ago. She seemed to be having problems, and I told her she could come move in with us. This is so awful”. There doesn’t seem to be any elaboration on this comment anywhere else in the news but this incident is not thought to be in any way linked to the murder of Monica Hoffa who was taken from this life far too soon.
Monica’s Facebook profile (now a memorial) is active for those who wish to drop by and includes older status updates showing Monica smiling with a pet and updating about how much she loved her significant other.
The third victim was a 20 year old Hispanic man named Anthony Naiboa. He was Autistic, worked at a food plant packing hurricane relief supplies and was recent graduate of Middleton High School. On October 19th, Naiboa had mistakenly taken the wrong bus home, a small error that would result in fatality as he was shot several times from behind while walking to another bus stop in the Seminole heights neighborhood.
When he failed to return home, his family reported him missing. The police were later on their doorstep to deliver the unfortunate news that Naiboa had been shot dead in the street.
According to this article, police who were on patrol in the area that night had actually heard the shots being fired. Frustratingly, they were unable to catch the killer, despite utilizing dogs, a SWAT team and a search helicopter. This indicates, to me at least, that whoever is responsible for the murders knows the area well.
The only lead the police have so far in the case is this individual who was captured on CCTV. (Stills from this clip) He was walking around alone around the time of crimes and is a suspect.
You can view the footage here.
All three victims were killed within a mile of each other.
In all three murders the killer used a hand gun.
This makes the murders both less intimate (suggesting that the victims are likely unknown to the perpetrator and are “random” as the media implies) and safer for the perpetrator who is able to defend himself with the firearm and leave little evidence regarding his identity on account of his distance from the crime scene. In the case of the “Tampa serial killer”, it seems as though he is just picking off his victims at a distance before expertly slipping away.
All three victims have been murdered along the same bus route. This has provoked some theories that the killer may be an ex-employee of the bus company or maybe just someone who lives somewhere along the bus route.
The media has been drawing a possible similarities between the “the Tampa serial killer” and the “beltway snipers”. If you’re not familiar with the beltway snipers case (also referred to as the “D.C. sniper attacks”) this is a case from back in October 2002 where two men, seventeen year old Lee Boyd Malvo, and the considerably older 41 year old John Allen Muhammad, went on a violent spree shooting and robbing over two dozen victims over the course of three weeks. They ended up fatally wounding 10 of their victims, and injuring a further 17. (You can listen to the Generation Why podcast episode on the case here)
Although in the case of the “Beltway snipers” the victims seemed random, they were apparently part of a bigger plan that Muhammad had concocted. Apparently his main aim was to murder his wife, but since it would have been obvious to authorities if she wound up murdered that he was responsible (due to the couples past tumultuous marriage which included him kidnapping their children for a year and half) he decided to murder other people sporadically to make it look like she was a random victim of the shooting spree.
Until the assailant is caught, undercover police and police in uniform are patrolling the area and children are being escorted to their bus stops on the way to school. Residents have been warned not to walk around alone at night and to keep their lights on. Buses have changed up their routes and some stops are being monitored for both the safety of civilians and in an attempt to catch the killer.
Bus surveillance footage has been handed over to the authorities to aid them in an arrest, and local investigators are hoping that they can rely on locals to give up the culprit if they know anything about the crime. Perhaps the $25,000 reward would tempt anyone in the know to do so.
Stay safe, Tampa.
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