Archive for the ‘ Missing People ’ Category

20th anniversary of John Wayne Gacy’s death

It’s been 20 years since John Wayne Gacy was put down, I hope that it has been 20 years of suffering.

There is an interesting article about him here.

Chicago’s most notorious serial killer was put to death at Stateville Correctional Center twenty years ago today. One of his Death Row attorneys still feels the way in which her life and career were altered by him and recalls just what a sick, twisted, and funny son of a bitch John Wayne Gacy was.

Like the time Gacy noted he didn’t enjoy movies like most people—he rooted for the bad guys.

One of the things that makes many serial killers so dangerous is that they know how to get you to like them.

Once when Gacy called their home, Joe Conti answered. “You should request strawberries for your last meal, John, you know why?’’

“No, Joe, why?’’ replied Gacy, happy to play along.

“Because they’re out of season.’’

Yet even a father whose profession is humor can’t prepare you for the comedic stylings of John Wayne Gacy.

Like the joke in which Adamski’s sister died and Gacy sent a card with a sensitive and tender message on the front. Inside was a picture of a naked woman in a casket with her legs spread wide. The caption: “We wanted to remember her in death as she was in life.’’

I have to say that IMO joking about a last  meal and a dead sister is different. Both messed up but…..

By the time Gacy lay lifeless from lethal injection, Conti and Adamski had invested more than $400,000 in billable hours (adjusted for inflation) and a good portion of their mental health.

How did they ever expect to collect? I am sure that they took this case for the experience not the money. They had to know that even if he did not get a death sentence he would still be locked up. The article also states that they offered to represent him again at a later time to try to over throw the DP. i really doubt that they ever expected payment, they just wanted to be the ones to represent him.

They were subjected to death threats (none of which were investigated, Conti notes). For years, an unknown man would send Conti disgusting pictures of mutilated bodies, and they were ostracized by people on both sides of the death penalty debate.

I have to wonder if the person that sent pictures was mad that they were representing Gacy. I think that is a sick way to express that but it is possible that there was no direct link to Gacy.

As Gacy’s execution approached he joked he would be at Adamski’s next birthday, a chronological impossibility. Conti got Gacy to record a birthday greeting and then put it on Adamski’s overnight messages the night before his 44th birthday.

“Hi ho, I told you I’d be at your birthday,’’ Gacy’s voice chirped brightly in Adamski’s ear, only moments after he awoke, but months after the execution.

That would not be funny.

It is really a great article.

John Wayne Gacy

 

His victims:

John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

Known victims

Tim McCoy (the “Greyhound Bus Boy”), 15 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

 John Butkovich, 17 years-old.
He worked for Gacy as a ‘roof carpenter’ his body was buried under Gacy’s garage

 

Darrell Sampson, 18 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

Randall Reffett, 15 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

Samuel Stapleton,  14 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace 

Michael Bonnin,  17 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

William “Billy” Carroll, 16 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

Rick Johnston, 17 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

Gregory Godzik, 17 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

John Szyc, 19 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

 Jon Prestige, 20 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace 

Matthew Bowman , 19 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace 

 

Robert Gilroy, 18  years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

John Mowery, 19 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

Russell Nelson, 21 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 

Robert Winch, 16 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

 Tommy Baling, 20 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace  

David Talsma, 19 years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

William Kindred, 19years-old.
His body was found in the crawlspace

Tim O’Rourke, 20 years-old.
His body was found in the Des Plaines River

 

Frank Wayne “Dale” Landingin, 19 years-old.
His body was found in the Des Plaines River
Investigators found Landingin’s driver’s license in Gacy’s home 

 

James Mazzara, 21 years-old.
His body was found in the Des Plaines River 

 

Robert Piest, aged 15 years-old.
His body was found in the Des Plaines River 

 

The ones that got away

 

Name: Jeff Rignall, 26years-old.
Has written a book. 

 

Name: Robert Donnelly, aged ?? years-old.
Date: sometime in December of 1977

 

Unidentified victims

Eight of Gacy’s victims are still unidentified. It is also believed that there may have been other victims never identified or found who were buried at other locations.

 

Case File 954UMIL

Unidentified White Male

  • The victim was discovered on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois
  • Estimated Date of Death: July 31, 1975 to April 1976
  • Skeletal Remains

Vital Statistics

  • Estimated age: 15 – 17 years old
  • Approximate Height and Weight: 5’7″ – 5’11”
  • Distinguishing Characteristics: Medium brown, curly hair.
  • Dentals: Available
  • Fingerprints: Not available
  • DNA: Not Available

Case History

The victim was located on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois.
One of 9 unidentified victims of convicted and executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were located buried in the crawl space of his home or under his garage. Four were found in the Des Plaines River. There are 33 known victims.
It is suspected that there may be more.

 

Case File 955UMIL

Unidentified White Male

  • The victim was discovered on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois
  • Estimated Date of Death: June to December 1976
  • Skeletal Remains

Vital Statistics

  • Estimated age: 19-21 years old
  • Approximate Height and Weight: 5’11” to 6’2″
  • Distinguishing Characteristics: Dark brown hair.
  • Dentals: Available. Most likely suffering from a bad toothache at the time of his disappearance.
  • Fingerprints: Not available
  • DNA: Not Available

Case History

The victim was located on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois.
One of 9 unidentified victims of convicted and executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were located buried in the crawl space of his home or under his garage. Four were found in the Des Plaines River. There are 33 known victims.
It is suspected that there may be more.

 

Case File 956UMIL

Unidentified White Male

  • The victim was discovered on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois
  • Estimated Date of Death: June to December 1976
  • Skeletal Remains

Vital Statistics

  • Estimated age: 22-28 years old
  • Approximate Height and Weight: 5’2″ – 5’6″
  • Distinguishing Characteristics: Medium dark brown hair.
  • Dentals: Available. Two upper front teeth were missing. Most likely wore a denture.
  • Fingerprints: Not available
  • DNA: Not Available

Case History

The victim was located
One of 9 unidentified victims of convicted and executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were located buried in the crawl space of his home or under his garage. Four were found in the Des Plaines River. There are 33 known victims.
It is suspected that there may be more.

 

Case File 957UMIL

Unidentified White Male

  • The victim was discovered on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois
  • Estimated Date of Death: Undetermined
  • Skeletal Remains

Vital Statistics

  • Estimated age: 18-20 years old
  • Approximate Height and Weight: 5’7 – 5’11”
  • Distinguishing Characteristics: Prior fractured left collarbone.
  • Dentals: Available
  • Fingerprints: Not available
  • DNA: Not Available

Case History

The victim was located on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois.
One of 9 unidentified victims of convicted and executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were located buried in the crawl space of his home or under his garage. Four were found in the Des Plaines River. There are 33 known victims.
It is suspected that there may be more.

 

Case File 958UMIL

Unidentified White Male

  • The victim was discovered on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois
  • Estimated Date of Death: December 20, 1976 – March, 1977
  • Skeletal Remains

Vital Statistics

  • Estimated age: 25 years old
  • Approximate Height and Weight: 5’7″ – 5’11”
  • Distinguishing Characteristics: Dark brown hair. Prior fractured nose.
  • Dentals: Available
  • Fingerprints: Not available
  • DNA: Not Available

Case History

The victim was located on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois.
One of 9 unidentified victims of convicted and executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were located buried in the crawl space of his home or under his garage. Four were found in the Des Plaines River. There are 33 known victims.
It is suspected that there may be more.

 

Case File 960UMIL

Unidentified White Male

  • The victim was discovered on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois
  • Estimated Date of Death: June – December 1976
  • Skeletal Remains

Vital Statistics

  • Estimated age: 17 years old
  • Approximate Height and Weight: 5’5″ – 5’10”
  • Distinguishing Characteristics: Dark brown hair.
  • Dentals: Available
  • Fingerprints: Not available
  • DNA: Not Available

Case History
The victim was located on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois.
One of 9 unidentified victims of convicted and executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were located buried in the crawl space of his home or under his garage. Four were found in the Des Plaines River. There are 33 known victims.
It is suspected that there may be more.

 

Case File 961UMIL

Unidentified White Male

  • The victim was discovered on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois
  • Estimated Date of Death: July – September 1977
  • Skeletal Remains

Vital Statistics

  • Estimated age: 18-20 years old
  • Approximate Height and Weight: 5’1″ – 5’6″
  • Distinguishing Characteristics: Brown hair. Fracture of right elbow within 2 months prior to his death.
  • Dentals: Available. Both upper eye teeth extracted prior to death.
  • Fingerprints: Not available
  • DNA: Not Available

Case History

The victim was located on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois.
One of 9 unidentified victims of convicted and executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were located buried in the crawl space of his home or under his garage. Four were found in the Des Plaines River. There are 33 known victims.
It is suspected that there may be more.

 

Case File 962UMIL

Unidentified White Male

  • The victim was discovered on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois
  • Estimated Date of Death: June 13 1976 – December 1976
  • Skeletal Remains

Vital Statistics

  • Estimated age: 20-24 years old
  • Approximate Height and Weight: 5’8″ – 6’0″
  • Distinguishing Characteristics: Light brown hair.
  • Dentals: Available
  • Fingerprints: Not available
  • DNA: Not available

Case History

The victim was located on December 28, 1978 in Norwood Park, Illinois.
One of 9 unidentified victims of convicted and executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Twenty-nine of Gacy’s victims were located buried in the crawl space of his home or under his garage. Four were found in the Des Plaines River. There are 33 known victims.
It is suspected that there may be more.

From Murderpedia

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJCPdZnRc-Y

 

 

Richard Hutton found alive.

Tommy Lynn Sells is finally dead.

I know, I am a bit late to the party but…..

Tommy Lynn Sells was executed by the state of Texas on April 3, 2014.

No tears were shed here, trust me, He was a rapist and a killer who did not care about the age of his victims. He is known to have killed at least 1 four year old boy, a thirteen year old girl and he attempted to kill another young girl, ten years old, but she survived.
He is also suspected to have murdered at least 19 others and he has bragged that he has killed more than 70.

Rot in Hell Tommy.

Wikipedia on Sells

48 Hours update on the Long Island unidentified serial killer

I am glad that there is new information and that the case has not been just let lie. I was worried that since Hurricane Sandy it was just going to lay unsolved.

Sadly there does not seem to be any new leads or information on the 4 girls found murdered in New Jersey. So close to this case.

Joanna Dennehy on trial

Stony-faced serial killer Joanna Dennehy bragged about her killing spree to an alleged accomplice by glibly remarking: “Oops, I did it again.”

A court heard of the chilling admission along with two terrifying accounts of men who survived separate knife attacks by evil Dennehy.

During one of the bloodthirsty assaults, Dennehy told her petrified victim, “I’m going to f***ing kill you” as she repeatedly stabbed him.

A friend of hers also claimed how Dennehy had boasted about killing a total of eight people.

It came to light during the trial of Gary Stretch, 47, and Leslie Layton, 37, who are accused of helping Dennehy, 31.

The twisted mother-of-two has already admitted murdering John Chapman, 56, Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, and her landlord Kevin Lee, 49.

She stabbed the three men in the heart and dumped their bodies in ditches in Cambridgeshire in late March last year.

Full Story here

This woman needs to be put down!

Joanna-Dennehy-mugshot

The ones that helped her need to be put away for life!

MASONS_TALLEST_VILLAIN_02.jpg

Seriously, these are some evil people.

aA retired firefighter told Cambridge crown court how he almost became another victim when she launched an attack on him days later in April.

Robin Bereza told the jury how he had taken his dog for a walk near his home in Hereford when he was targeted at random by Dennehy.

He recalled how a car pulled up behind him and he was stabbed twice.

He added: “I saw the lady with something in her hands. I got worried then, frightened. I said, ‘What are you doing?’

“She said, ‘I want to hurt you. I’m going to f***ing kill you’.”

The husband and father, 68, explained how Dennehy seemed calm throughout the attack, showing no emotion.

He added: “She appeared to stare right through me.”

Another survivor added to this woman’s creepiness and the need for her to be forever removed from any society.

John Rogers described how he also survived a similar attack where he was stabbed repeatedly in the back and the chest while walking his dog, also in Hereford on the same day.

Recalling his assailant’s expression, the 56-year-old said: “She was very matter-of-fact about it all, as if it was something she had to do.

“She didn’t seem to be showing any emotion at all.

“She didn’t seem that she was enjoying herself, she was just going about her business.”

Once she was done stabbing him she stole his dog! I mean talk about adding insult to injury.

She was and is not insane. She knew what she was doing was wrong and went to lengths to hide her crimes even though she later bragged about killing people.

More disturbing details surrounding the case were also revealed in court , including how Dennehy claimed she had dressed one of her victims up in her black sequined dress and made attempts to “make it look like a sexual act”.

Dennehy and Stretch also told Miss Page they had hidden at least one body in a wheelie bin, but that Mr Lee had discovered it.

Miss Page said: “Jo said when Kevin Lee came back he opened up the bin and saw the body – so she had to kill him.”

They covered another body with bleach before leaving it, which Stretch said made the skin look “cracked”.

This trial is still going on. It is a shame that there is no possibility for capital punishment.
I hope that there is some justice for the victims and their families.

Victims

The Dead Man Talking Project

Hunting for Long-Gone Serial Killers: Inside the Dead Man Talking Project

 

Two California prosecutors are teaming to up to gather the DNA of deceased murderers and use it to close unsolved murders. But tracking down the saliva of a dead man isn’t always easy. Christine Pelisek reports.

By day, she runs the sex-crimes division of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. In her spare time, she tracks down the DNA of dead rapists, murderers, and serial killers.

Carol Burke is on a mission to cross off as many cold cases as she can by matching swabs of known felons with evidence from unsolved-crime scenes. With Anne Marie Schubert, who is in charge of child-abuse cases upstate in the Sacramento D.A.’s office, Burke helps to run a project called Dead Man Talking, which has brought the pair closer than ever to bringing justice to the cases of some of the most sadistic serial killers in California history—even if the culprits themselves are long gone.

“It’s really rewarding,” Burke says of the project. “There is a lot of value to it, even though we can’t prosecute the offenders because they are dead. Families can at least have some closure. They finally know what happened to their loved ones.”

California has a DNA data bank that stores close to 2 million felon profiles. It also contains some 25,000 pieces of crime-scene evidence from murders, rapes, robberies, and burglaries—semen from a bed sheet, or a cigarette butt—that have never been linked to an offender.

Burke and Schubert believe that adding to the list of felon profiles could close countless unsolved cases. But a surprising number of known offenders are missing from the database. Schubert says that since 1984, close to 25,000 inmates have died in a California prison or on parole. Of those, nearly 19,000 were not swabbed for DNA before they died. Over 40 of them were death-row inmates.

Finding traces of these men can be extremely difficult, especially for two women with full-time jobs and no staff. Burke and Schubert are focusing first on death-row inmates and then widening their net to offenders who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Each has their own white whale. Burke is devoted to tracking down the DNA of notorious “Freeway Killer” William Bonin, so called because many of his victims were left by the side of freeways in Southern California. “He’s my No. 1 target,” Burke says. “He was a really bad guy. He was so prolific.”

Image

Bonin was convicted of kidnapping, robbing, sexually assaulting, and killing 13 boys and young men in Los Angeles and Orange counties between 1979 and 1980. After he was arrested, Bonin, who had worked alongside various accomplices, including a factory worker named Vernon Butts, confessed to killing 21 young boys and young men, some of them he had picked up hitchhiking. Police believe his body count is closer to 30.

 Image

However, when Bonin was executed in San Quentin State Prison in 1996 before submitting a DNA sample, any hope of linking him to more killings died with him.

“I originally assumed they autopsied people in San Quentin,” says Burke. “That’s not the case. They were only autopsying people who committed suicide or were killed in prison. So someone who died of natural causes or was executed like Bonin was not autopsied.”

Burke says Bonin’s court files and trial exhibits have been destroyed. Nor has she had any luck finding his blood, semen, or saliva with the Los Angeles or Orange County police departments or with the coroner’s office. An attempt to track down the DNA of Butts, who Bonin said was an active participant in many of the murders, almost came to fruition when she discovered that he had committed suicide in a Los Angeles County jail and was autopsied. But, she said, law-enforcement personnel destroyed the forensic evidence in 2010.  

 The dead ends can be frustrating. “Bonin is the most notorious and the one who most likely left unsolved murders in his wake,” Burke says. “It sure would be great to get his sample so we could solve some of the unsolveds out there.”

Recently she found better luck in the case of Roland Comtois, who abducted two teenaged girls in 1987, killed one, and sexually assaulted the other. The 65-year-old inmate died in a prison hospital from an infection in 1994, but was never autopsied. But Burke’s sleuthing uncovered a bloody shirt that had belonged to the killer—left when police shot him trying to escape arrest and stored as evidence. So far, his DNA has not been linked to any new murders.

Schubert, who created Dead Man Talking in 2008, started the project in part to solve some of Sacramento County’s most notorious serial-killer cold cases that date back to the ’70s.

“It was a killing field, and not just here,” she says. “The number of body dumps across the state was enormous.”

One of the killers high on her list is the “Original Night Stalker,” who is believed to be responsible for over 50 rapes that began in Northern California and ended with multiple murders in 1986 in Santa Barbara, Orange, and Ventura counties.
 
“It terrified Sacramento and the region,” says Schuster, who was a child when the attacks began. “We still haven’t solved it. It’s highly likely that he has died in prison.”

 Schubert spent over a year searching for the DNA of serial killer Gerald Gallego, who along with his wife was responsible for the sex-slave murders of 10 young women in California and Nevada in the late ’70s. Gallego, who was sentenced to death in both states, died in 2002 of rectal cancer in Nevada and was never swabbed.
 
Image

Eventually, Schubert says, she found a saliva sample buried inside 14 boxes at a clerk’s office.  

“I can say he was suspected in multiple murders and not just the ones he was convicted of,” she says.

Last year the pair had their first major success when they linked L.A. serial killer Juan Chavez to the unsolved murder of 60-year-old Lynn Penn. Penn was found strangled in his apartment in July 1990.

 Image

Chavez committed suicide three months after he was convicted of killing five gay men. Schubert discovered that Chavez had been autopsied, and a sample of his blood was still in evidence. His DNA was uploaded into the DNA data bank  and last February it was linked to saliva found on a cigarette butt discovered inside Penn’s apartment.

 “I think I screamed,” said Schubert when she learned of the DNA hit. “I remember where I was. It’s like how everyone remembers where they were when Elvis died.”

Schubert is hoping to expand the project statewide and hire a full-time investigator. However, cold-case grants are hard to come by. Last year they were turned down for funding for the project.

“There are probably some people out there that are like, these guys are dead; it doesn’t matter. I don’t think that at all,” she says. “It does matter. It’s about seeking justice for those who were harmed by these people.”

 

I think it matters and I think it is very important to give the families closure. I applaud these two ladies and hope that the criminal justice system gets behind them.

Mother of victim is tortured to the end | Herald Scotland

Mother of victim is tortured to the end | Herald Scotland.

Winnie Johnson, 78, died in a hospice in the early morning hours on Saturday August 18th , tragically unaware of the revelation just 24 hours earlier that Brady may have disclosed the location of Keith Bennett’s body in a supposed letter addressed to her to be opened on his death.

Brady, the killer of her 12-year-old son, has always refused to say where he and his lover and accomplice, Myra Hindley, buried him despite decades of pleading from his victim’s grieving mother.

Brady, 74, and Hindley, who died in jail in 2002 aged 60, were responsible for the murders of five youngsters in the 1960s. Most were sexually tortured before being buried on Saddleworth Moor, with Bennett’s body the only one yet to be found.

In a statement on behalf of the family, Keith’s brother, Alan Bennett, said: “She was a much loved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, and is survived by one younger brother.

“Winnie fought tirelessly for decades to find Keith and give him a Christian burial. Although this was not possible during her lifetime, her family intend to continue this fight now for her and for Keith. We hope that the authorities and the public will support us in this.”

Brady and Hindley were jailed in 1966 for the murders of John Kilbride, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17. In 1987 the pair finally admitted killing Keith and Pauline Reade, 16, and were taken back to the moor to help police find the remains of the missing victims, but only Pauline’s body was found.

RIP Ms. Johnson

,,,,,,

Brady’s mental health advocate, Jackie Powell, told a Channel 4 documentary to be screened tomorrow night that he gave her a sealed envelope containing a letter to pass to Johnson in the event of his death.

That information was passed to police and Powell, 49, was arrested on Thursday at her home in South Wales, on suspicion of preventing the burial of a body without lawful exercise.

She was released on bail pending further inquiries. It is understood she claims she returned the envelope to Brady before her arrest.

A search of Brady’s quarters at Ashworth Hospital has also failed to uncover the alleged letter.

Johnson’s lawyer John Ainley said Brady still held the key to finding the burial spot: “Despite her personal appeals directly to Brady and via my office, he persistently ignored the wishes of a grieving mother.

“She has died without knowing Keith’s whereabouts and without the opportunity to finally put him at rest in a decent grave.

“It is a truly heartbreaking situation that this opportunity has now been irrevocably lost.”

Martin Bottomley, of Greater Manchester Police’s major and cold case crime unit, paid tribute to Johnson for spending most of her life “courageously fighting to get justice for Keith”.

Possible Serial Killer Brandon Lavergne Indicted for 2 Murders

LAFAYETTE, LA — Brandon Lavergne, 33, has been indicted for two homicide cases, but investigators say that may not be the end to this story.

“We’re looking into all of our unresolved cases and we’re looking into other areas as well,” Cpt. Kip Judice, Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office, explained. “Anytime you have a person who you believe to be responsible for multiple deaths, you’re going to review all cold cases. So what we’ve done is established a course of time to determine any missing person cases or homicides that have similarities.”

On Wednesday, July 18, a grand jury in Lafayette indicted Lavergne for the kidnapping and murder of Mickey Shunick. In a surprise twist, he was also indicted for the murder of Lisa Pate, 35, who was reported missing back in June 1999. Unlike Shunick, Pate’s body was recovered three months after she went missing under large boards in a field near Church Point.

“We are confident about Lavergne’s connection to these two cases,” Cpt. Judice, noted. “At this point in time, I am unaware of any other cases that we have such strong evidence.”

Judice noted that Lafayette Parish has roughly two dozen unresolved missing person cases that date back to roughly 1997.

“As much as we’re looking at cases he could have possibly been involved with, we’re also looking to clear him from cases as well,” Cpt. Judice, explained.

Any case that happened between 2000-2008 could not be connected to Lavergne because he was incarcerated for oral sexual battery. He was convicted for typing up, blindfolding and sexually assaulting an 18-year-old woman from Evangeline Parish back in 1999.

“Everyone initially thought that he would be connected to the Jeff Davis murders, but he was incarcerated at the time, so there’s no possible way he could have been connected to those cases,” Cpt. Judice, said. “Also, he worked off shore, so we need to account for that time and find those cases that fit that timeline.”

For now, investigators are not ruling out any possible matches. Lavergne’s past conviction as well as the two homicides for which he’s been indicted, have striking difference.

“I think these are two distinct cases,” Cpt. Judice, said. “I don’t know what his motive is in the two cases we know about.

“We are pretty confident we know how he accomplished Mickey’s homicide,” he continued. “The information is limited in the Pate case. Yes, we have a clue, but we don’t expect an offender to commit the same crime the same way. For example, Pate wasn’t riding a bike, but Mickey was. The girl in Evangeline Parish was an associate of his, so he knew her, but we don’t think that he knew Mickey or Pate. We have a lot to look at.”

Examining those cold cases brings an added level of difficulty when you factor in the surviving loved ones.

“We want to make sure we have a connection before we contact the loved ones of someone who may have been murdered because we don’t want to give them false hope,” Cpt. Judice, said. “The last thing we would want is to make them feel as though they might get some closure and then not be able to give that to them.”

What’s certain is that the strong attention brought by the Mickey Shunick case is what lead investigators to examine Lavergne as a possible suspect in the first place.

“The one good thing that came out of this is that the media did a good job of keeping this guy looking over his should and keeping him at bay,” Cpt. Judice concluded. “It’s not all law enforcement, it’s a community effort, especially in this case. When this case goes to trial, I think there will be many things that come to light that the community will be proud of because they had a part in uncovering that information. The community really stepped up to the plate.”

Article

Serial Killer Elmer Wayne Henley is up for parole

HOUSTON (FOX 26) -An infamous serial killer is up for parole. Elmer Wayne Henley participated in a plot that ultimately took the lives of almost 30 Houston-area teenagers. Many of them vanished from The Heights in the early 1970s. One of them was an 18 year old named Frank Aguirre. One month shy of graduation, Aguirre clocked out of his job at a Heights fast-food restaurant and vanished.”He was fun,” recalled his younger sister, Deborah Aguirre. “He was fun-loving, had a lot of friends. And Henley was one of them.”

Frank Aguirre didn’t know it, but Elmer Wayne Henley was helping an older man, Dean Corll, satisfy his sadistic desires.

 “[Henley] was the one that sought out the boys, brought them there,” said Houston victim advocate Andy Kahan, “knowing full well that they were going to be not only abducted, raped and tortured, but eventually murdered in a horrific manner.”

And so it continued. For three years.

Boys from the working class Heights would go missing. Many of them were friends of Elmer Wayne Henley.

 “Couple months after my brother disappeared, [Henley] actually did come back to our house,” remembered Deborah Aguirre. “[He] asked my mother, ‘Have you heard anything?’ He knew where my brother was. He helped bury him.”

Police eventually found them – bodies stacked upon bodies – but only after Henley shot Corll dead on the heels of an argument.

“Even though he got six life sentences in 1973 — in 1980, because of the way the statutes were written, he was eligible for parole,” said Kahan.

Life needs to mean life!

 It’s unprecedented, says Kahan, but this is the 20th time Henley has come up for parole.

Through a quirk in the law, he adds, while murderers can be set-off up to five years until their next review, capital murderers can only be set-off three years, max.

“Criminal justice and logic sometimes don’t meet. This is living proof of that.”

It’s a joyless hamster wheel for folks like Deborah Aguirre. They’re constantly battling to keep behind bars Henley and his accomplice, David Brooks.

 The victims’ relatives now have a Facebook page devoted to denying the killers parole.

I have tried to friend them.

And Aguirre has just a few questions she wants to ask the panel that will ultimately decide Henley’s fate, this summer.

  • “Would you want this guy living next door to you?
  • Do you have small children?
  • Do you have little boys? Because that’s what he likes.”

She hopes to have her say in August at Henley’s review.

But it will give her no more joy than visiting her brother’s burial plot at Forest Park Lawndale.

Deborah at Frank’s grave

“It’s hard to go there,” said Deborah Aguirre. “That’s all we have left is a headstone.”

The Harris County Medical Examiner’s office told FOX 26 News that two victims of the murderous trio remain unidentified, to this day.

The ME’s office is actively seeking DNA samples from the families of young men who disappeared, here in Houston, between 1970 and 1973.

Read more

Tapes Might Prove More Manson Family Murders

 
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles police detectives are seeking to review old audio tapes of conversations between Manson Family member Charles “Tex” Watson and his former lawyer, hoping they will shed light on any additional murders the cult may have committed.

The eight hours of recorded discussions between Watson and attorney Bill Boyd were made more than 40 years ago and have surfaced as a part of a bankruptcy case involving Boyd’s now-defunct Texas law firm.

“We are trying to get our hands on a copy of those recordings,” Los Angeles police commander Andrew Smith told Reuters on Friday. “We are doing this to be extraordinarily thorough. We think it’s good police work to continue to pay attention to these cases.”

Smith said the recordings were made in 1969 or 1970, following Watson’s arrest for murders carried out at the direction of Charles Manson that were among the 20th century’s most infamous crimes.

But detectives had no access to the tapes until Watson, now 66 and serving a life prison term in California, waived his attorney-client privilege so that they could be sold to satisfy unpaid legal fees. Boyd died in 2009.

In a letter to a U.S. Department of Justice trustee obtained by local KNBC-TV, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck requested that the recordings be given to his detectives.

“The LAPD has information that Mr. Watson discussed additional unsolved murders committed by followers of Charles Manson,” Beck said in the March 19 letter.

A bankruptcy court hearing has been scheduled for next week in Plano, Texas, to determine if the tapes should be handed over to Los Angeles police investigators.

Read more

I am not so sure that there would be any incriminating information on the tapes since Watson waived his rights. He comes up for parole and knows that they will charge him if they can. Still, he was pretty brain-dead back then and he might not remember all that he said.

We can hope.

A Serial Predator Haunts Fayetteville, NC

Hiding in plain sight: A serial predator haunts Fayetteville, NC

By Maurice Godwin

Nested among pine trees Ramsey Street is dotted with townhouses, apartments and a number of nice subdivisions, where most enjoy a quite standard of living. The Ramsey Street area has seen a huge growth over the past 10 years primarily due to the recent influx of military personnel from the Defense Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC).

Ramsey Street is located in North Fayetteville. Some refer to Ramsey Street as 401 North or Raleigh Road. The road is the major artery that runs from Fayetteville to Lillington, NC and on to Raleigh, North Carolina. The area has some established businesses like Methodist University and the Goodyear tire plant but there have been a lot of new businesses which have opened in recent years.

With the transient population of military families moving in and out of the area many newcomers to Fayetteville are not always aware of past crimes in their neighborhoods. For example, between 1987 and 1999 there were seven murders of prostitutes in the Fayetteville/Cumberland County area. Another example are the over fifty unsolved murders in the Cumberland County/Fayetteville area since the late 1970s. Like most murder cases the crimes make the local headlines and are the focus of police investigators but then disappear from the headlines. The lack of continued media pressure and police not publicly talking about unsolved crimes allows violent predators to hide in plain sight while committing more crimes.

Has a serial predator been targeting women for years on Ramsey Street?

In 2010 seven women reported rapes and sexual assaults in the Fayetteville area. A number of the crimes occurred near Glenwick Drive and Radford Road. The attacks were similar. Also, between 2006 and 2008, a series of five rapes or attempted rapes were reported along Ramsey Street. The rapes to date have not been solved. Police investigators indicated early on that they didn’t see any links between the attacks.

Sometime on the evening of March 31, 2012 around 9:00 p.m. a lady was jogging in a wooded area off Carvers Falls Road near Ramsey Street when she was attacked and raped. The crime remains unsolved.

In the early morning hours on Saturday April 14, 2012 Kelli Bordeaux, 23, left the Froggy Bottoms bar, which is located at 6326 Ramsey Street, Fayetteville. She has not been seen or heard from since. Pfc. Bordeaux is a combat medic with the 44th Medical Brigade at Ft. Bragg, NC.

The distance between Carvers Falls Road and the Froggy Bottoms bar where Pfc. Bordeaux was last seen is approximately  0.7 tenths of a mile.

Bordeaux remains missing.

Has a serial predator been hiding in plain sight?

Note: This article is not about the Kelli Bordeaux case. Rather, the article’s purpose is to point out that there has been a violent predator operating in the Ramsey Street area for a number of years.

Continue reading on Examiner.com

If you or someone who you know lives in this area be very aware of your surroundings. Pay attention to cars parked or driving, pay attention to faces, and pay attention to your neighbors. Notice if someone you normally see is not around and report it to the police.

Even if there is not a serial predator being a little more aware and keeping an eye on your neighbors is never a bad thing.