Sept. 3, 2012

Joan Webster

On Saturday November 28, 1981, Joan Webster, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate student, landed at Logan Airport in Boston aboard Eastern flight #960. Shortly after retrieving a suitcase from the luggage carousel, she disappeared.

by Eve Carson

Joan Webster, a 25-year-old, second-year student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, had everything going for her as she flew back to Boston after spending Thanksgiving with her parents in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Just before she took the holiday break, her presentation of an 11-week auditorium project had been rewarded with high accolades from her teacher and classmates.

At Harvard, she was the dorm proctor at Perkins Hall. Smart, popular, attractive, she was available to anyone who needed her help and friendship. A quote tacked on her dorm room wall read, “It costs so much to be a full human being.”

Her flight aboard Eastern # 960 and several other flights arrived at Logan Airport around 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 28, 1981. As Joan went to retrieve her one stowed suitcase, many passengers crowded around the only luggage carousel in use that night. Shortly after retrieving her suitcase, Joan Webster disappeared.

Dec. 10, 2012

Mary Rogers

 The disappearance and murder of Mary Rogers in 1841 became a major tabloid story for the New York newspapers. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a mystery story about it, but Mary’s murderer was never identified.         

by Doug MacGowan

Sunday, July 25, 1841, was a hot day in New York City. That morning 20-year-old Mary Rogers left the boarding house owned by her mother to attend services at her church. She returned home later that morning and talked briefly with her mother and with one of the residents, Daniel Payne, who happened to be her fiancé. Payne would later testify that Mary had outlined her plans for the day: visiting her aunt until evening and then returning home. The aunt lived nearby, only a quarter of an hour trip by horse-drawn carriage. Mary asked Payne to meet her at the nearest carriage stop that evening and escort her home.

That afternoon, the city was crippled with a severe thunderstorm. When Payne went to meet Mary at the carriage stop, he found that she had not returned from her aunt's. He surmised that she had wisely stayed at her aunt's in order to avoid the storm, and would return the following morning.

By Monday morning the weather had cleared up, but Mary did not return home. This caused her mother and Payne and Alfred Crommelin (another boarder and, coincidentally, a former beau of Mary's) to set up a search plan. The natural starting place was the home of the aunt Mary had visited on Sunday. But the aunt stated she had not seen Mary on Sunday nor had she expected a visit from her.

The three continued their search Monday afternoon, but with no success. Believing the necessary search needed more than three people, they placed an ad in the New York Sun newspaper asking if anyone had seen "a young lady (wearing) a white dress, black shawl, blue scarf, Leghorn hat, light colored shoes, and parasol light-colored." Anyone who had seen a young woman matching this description was asked to contact her mother because "it is supposed some accident has befallen her."

Mary had disappeared once before. In October of 1838, she went missing for several days. Upon her return, she vaguely stated that she had gone to visit relatives in Brooklyn, although she did not explain why she had not told anyone of this journey beforehand. Her mother now wondered if her second disappearance was a similar episode. Perhaps she would reappear soon.

Jan. 24, 2013

“Il Monstro” or “The Monster of Florence” killed and mutilated eight couples in the Italian countryside between 1968 and 1985. Although the crimes took place sporadically over 17 years, there were many distinctive elements, enough to provide a profile of the serial killer who was never caught.

by Dr. Nicola J. Davies

It is one of the most perplexing and fascinating crime sprees in the annals of unsolved murders. “Il Monstro” or “The Monster of Florence” killed and mutilated eight couples in the Italian countryside between 1968 and 1985. Despite numerous arrests and convictions, the true killer or killers remain undiscovered. Various books, films and investigators have theorized on the perpetrator of these brutal crimes, but with no physical evidence being left at the murder scenes, there is little to link the crimes to a perpetrator. However, while the perpetrator/s has never been apprehended, a psychological profile of “The Monster of Florence” can be assembled, providing insight into this killer and his motivations.

March 4, 2013

For survivors, cold case investigators and the public, solving old homicide cases offers the perfect win- win situation. Beyond the altruistic benefits, though, cold case squads provide a goldmine of good ink for law enforcement agencies. So what's the ultimate bad ink? Botched investigations. Lawmen will go to great lengths to hide their dirty laundry – such as Harris County Sheriff's Office Case No. 84-137640.

by James R. Melton

When Joe Floyd Collins awoke on October 12, 1984, he was exactly six weeks shy of his 46^th birthday. Life expectancy tables generously offered him another 32 years on earth. On that autumn evening, as the sun sank over the Southeast Texas prairie, the squeeze of a trigger instantly changed the prospect of a long life into the reality of an early grave.

For the middle-aged man some knew as Floyd and others called Joe, luck was fast running out. But the robber who shot him had the unexpected good fortune to gain the oddest bedfellow — the Harris County Sheriff's Office.       

Fumbling and stumbling from the outset, Texas's largest sheriff's department all but guaranteed a killer would get a free pass and Joe Floyd Collins's murder would wind up quickly — and quietly —in the cold case bin.        

Even a quarter of a century later, Sgt. Eric Clegg said he had searched all of the Harris County Sheriff's Office’s cold cases from the 1980s. He couldn't find records of the one-of-a-kind robbery-murder at a liquor store in Huffman, a mix of suburbs and farms at the county's far northeast corner. In 2009, Clegg was one of two sergeants assigned to the cold case squad.       

A year later, presented with the victim's name, a date, crime details and the actual Harris County Sheriff's Office case number, 84-137640, the sergeant acknowledged the case's existence and reopened the investigation.

May 6, 2013

 From the cold case files: the 1965 murder of Jean Welch in Cumberland, Maryland

by James Rada, Jr.

Jean Welch carried her basket of wet laundry outside to dry on the clothesline behind her apartment. May 17, 1965 was a sunny, spring day in Cumberland, Maryland, and besides warm to hang clothes on the line, Jean had trader her winter clothes for shorts a short-sleeved blouse.

Cumberland had once been the second-largest city in Maryland. Located in the Appalachian Mountains in western Maryland, the city had boomed with the coal and railroad industries. As those industries struggled and declined, the city's population had peaked in 1940 and had been falling since then to around 31,000 in 1965. Because it was such a small city, it contained neighborhoods that looked more as if they belonged in the suburbs rather than a city. Jean Welch and her family lived in one of these neighborhood on Cumberland's south side.

Jean was an attractive brunette and looking at her, one might find it hard to believe she was 33 years old, let alone the mother of three children. And someone was looking at her as she hung the clothes. A witness would later tell police she had seen Jean hanging the laundry around 1:30 p.m.

Someone else most likely saw her, too. This person wouldn’t give a statement to police. The police would never know his name. They would only know what he did.

Jean lived in her apartment on Oldtown Road with her husband, Dale, and their three daughters. Two families lived in apartments on the second floor of the building. No one was home that afternoon in one of apartments, but in the other, a woman was inside going about her day. She noticed nothing amiss.

“One woman from the other second-floor apartment was at home and investigation revealed she had heard a knock on the Welch's side door,” reported the Cumberland Evening Times. The side door was located on New Hampshire Avenue and it was used more often by family and friends than the front door on Oldtown Road.

Neighbors across the street were sitting on their front porch watching the people walk by and traffic zip up and down Oldtown Road. No one would later recall anyone approaching the front door to the Welch apartment. However, they did recall that the drapes in the large picture window of Welch’s apartment had been open when Jean was hanging clothes, but by 3 p.m. someone had closed them. Given that the day was so lovely, it was odd enough for the couple to recall them being closed, though they didn't notice anyone pulling them shut.

Around 4 p.m., Judy Woodson, Jean’s 13-year-old daughter from a prior marriage, returned home from school and entered the apartment. She found it a mess, which was unusual. Her mother was a good housekeeper. Then Judy found her 1-year-old sister Dee Dee strapped to her training potty in the back bedroom. Judy’s other sister, 2-year-old Loy Lee was also in the apartment and crying.

Loy Lee explained what happened next decades later.

“Mom!” Judy called.

No answer.

She looked in her mother’s bedroom but it was empty. The door to the bathroom was closed. If her mother was in there, why hadn’t she answered Judy’s call. Judy knocked on the door.

“Mom?”

When there was no answer, Judy opened the door.

Her mother was inside. The sight would haunt Judy for many years to come. Jean was laying face down in a partially filled tub of water and not moving. Judy screamed.

Dale Welch had spent the afternoon playing golf. He had been at the Cumberland Country Club since noon. He finished his round of golf around 4:15 p.m. and got in his car to head back to Air-Flow Roofing and Siding Company where he was vice president.

“While en route from the golf course to the office, Mr. Welch was advised on his two-way car radio that there was 'an emergency' at his home,” the Cumberland Evening Times reported.

Welch rushed home and was met by police at the apartment who showed him his wife’s body. They then led him to where his daughters were and began questioning him.

The deputy county medical examiner determined that the killer had struck Jean several times with a blunt instrument. Unfortunately, no one could find the murder weapon. Besides striking her, the killer had strangled Jean with a drapery cord and pushed her face down into the tub to drown her. Her time of death was estimated to be around 2 p.m., shortly after she was last seen hanging laundry.

Though Cumberland was a city, it was not plagued by a high murder rate as seen in many cities. The number of murders each year could be counted on one hand, usually one finger.

The case fell under the jurisdiction of the Cumberland Police Department but because of the violent nature of the crime, a multi-agency investigation team was formed. It included Deputy Maryland States Attorney J. Frederick Sharer, Cumberland Detective Lieutenant Thomas See, Cumberland Detective Harry Iser, County Investigator William F. Baker and the deputy Allegany County Medical Examiner.

At least 10 police officers were assigned to the case full time. They began going door to door, questioning neighbors. They also visited with friends and relatives of the Welch's. Within a week, more than 300 people had been interviewed and their statements recorded.

Cumberland Police Detective Captain James Van and other officers stopped cars along Oldtown Road during the time period the murder might have occurred and questioned the drivers if they had seen anything on the day of the murder.

“The residents of Oldtown Road area have been cooperative and many have cut their lawns, trimmed their hedges seeking the murder weapon in an effort to assist police,” reported the Cumberland Evening Times.

Besides the murderer, the murder weapon continued to elude the invesigators. Police searched trash cans, a nearby lake and construction sites. The Cumberland Sewer Department personnel cleaned out catch basins and sewers around the Welch's apartment hoping to find the weapon. City workers also cut grass on nearby open lots, hoping the weapon might simply have been tossed away.

It was never found or identified.

No clear motive was ever established, either, though sexual assault was alluded to in some reports.

Cumberland Police Chief B. Frank Gaffney told the newspaper, “As of now there has been no basic motive established and we are operating on all theories. The murderer could be a friend or stranger, local or transient.”

Jean was buried March 20, but the investigation and rumors were just beginning. The rumor mill was naming the killer even though the police had no evidence to support the accusations, though each one needed to be investigated. The rumors resulted "in some leads, on the other hand, they have necessitated many endless hours of checking for county, city and state officers," reported the Cumberland Sunday Times.

The volume and nature of the rumors became so bad that State's Attorney Donald Mason warned the public, “Persons who start or repeat these false rumors are subject to legal action for civil slander by persons whose names are mentioned. These false rumors also hinder the work of the investigating officers who are working tirelessly on this case.”

The target of many of those rumors was Dale Welch. This is not surprising since the spouse is usually the prime suspect in such a case, but Welch had an air-tight alibi. He had been playing golf miles away from the apartment with a number of other men who testified to that fact.

When the Cumberland Police brought in a lie detector with a trained Maryland State Police examiner to use with some key witnesses, Welch volunteered to be tested, hoping to clear his name. He passed two separate tests, showing he had no knowledge relating to the death of his wife. It was enough for the police, though rumors would always surround him about what he knew about his wife's death.

 A Botched Crime Scene

Despite the diligence of the police during the investigation, they had mishandled the crime scene during the first day. Blood samples and fingerprints had been lost due to mishandling. Though a large number of investigators were needed to handle the searches and interviews, it may have led to a case of having too many fingers in the pie.

“It wasn't that someone committed the perfect murder and got away with it. Things got messed up,” said Loy Capshaw, the adult Loy Lee Welch.

At the investigation's peak, 10 officers were assigned full-time to the case with many other people from different agencies looking at it on a part-time basis. Sylvester J. Smith, president of the Air-Flow Roofing and Siding Company where Welch worked, offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Jean's killer. This only added to the volume of tips and leads that police needed to investigate.

No one was ever arrested and the killer remained at large.

Capshaw noted the fact that the case was never closed haunted her father until his death. He had always hoped that the killer would be found so that he could have closure.

For a short time, it seemed like that might finally happen. Sources familiar with the case were saying that an under-the-radar investigation by the state's attorney office in the early 2000’s had found forensic evidence that indicated a living family member might be the murder. If true, this would not have been Dale Welch because he had already passed away. However, no one was ever indicted and the case was not reopened. It remains unsolved and part of the Maryland State Police's cold case file.

June 1, 2013

Italian Hall, December 1913

by David Robb

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is cold in the winter, with temperatures often dipping below zero, but Christmas Eve 1913 was particularly cold. The region’s 9,000 unionized copper miners – mostly immigrants from Italy, Poland and Croatia – had been on strike against the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company for nearly six months. Times were tough, but they were about to turn tragic.

The strike had been bloody and violent from the beginning. Strikers attacked and intimidated strike-breakers, and local deputies attacked and intimidated the strikers. The National Guard had been called in to keep the peace, but most of them were recalled in August. Mother Jones, the famous labor and community organizer, had joined the picket lines, but the day she left, two strikers were gunned down and killed by local deputies. As the strike dragged on, more and more of the strikers’ wives and children took to the picket lines to keep the company’s guards from beating their husbands and fathers. It didn’t help. During one melee, a 12-year-old girl was shot and nearly killed.

In good times, the little copper-mining town of Calumet was a company town. Now it was like a company prison. Armed thugs hired by the company patrolled the streets, along with members of the Citizen’s Alliance – a vigilante group funded by the company to break the strike.

Fire!

Christmas Eve 1913 promised a brief respite from the daily battles. The union – the Western Federation of Miners – announced that it would hold a Christmas party that evening for the strikers’ children at the Italian Hall in Calumet. They’d decorated a huge Christmas tree and wrapped presents for all of the kids. On the night of the party, 700 people – including more than 400 children – jammed the hall’s large upstairs auditorium for the festivities.

Therese Sizer, the wife of one of the striking miners, was standing on a table near the front of the stage trying to restrain the rush of children toward the giant Christmas tree, when she heard someone yell “Fire!” The room was noisy, but the shout rose loud and clear above the din. She turned instantly and saw who shouted “Fire!” – a man with a mustache, medium height and wearing dark clothes. She’d never seen him before. He wasn’t one of the strikers.

She leapt from the table, ran to the man and seized him by the shoulders.

“Man, man, what are you doing?” she exclaimed, panic rising in her voice.

“There is a fire,” he replied nonchalantly.

“No! No!” she cried, trying to push him down into a chair.

But by this time, the cry of “Fire!” was being repeated excitedly throughout the hall, and in a mad surge, hundreds of people rushed to get out.

The main exit was a narrow stairway at the back of the hall, leading down to the doors at the street. In the scramble, a child fell in the stairway and others fell over her. Within seconds, the narrow stairway became clogged with bodies as people crawled over one another, filling the stairway to the ceiling.

The stairway

There was no fire, but in the resulting stampede, 73 people – including 59 children and 13 women – were killed.    

The scene on Christmas Day, the day after the stampede

The next day, Charles Moyer, president of the miners’ union, charged that the Citizens Alliance had sent one of their men into the hall to yell “Fire!” in order to disrupt the festivities. A few days later, Moyer was beaten up, shot, dragged through the streets of Calumet and thrown onto a train bound for Chicago.   

The local coroner held an inquest and several witnesses testified that the man who shouted “Fire!” that fatal Christmas Eve wore a white badge on his coat signifying that he was a member of the Citizens Alliance vigilante group.

John Burcar, a 15-year-old boy whose 12-year-old sister Victoria died in the stampede, told a coroner’s inquest that he saw the man who did it.

“He hollered ‘Fire!’ and then ran out,” the boy said. “I ran out too. He had an Alliance button on his coat.”

Frank Schaltz, another boy who’d been in the hall that night, said he also saw the man who shouted “Fire!” and recalled having seen him in town a few weeks before the panic, carrying a club.

Mrs. John Koski said she saw the man too. He was wearing a blue coat and a white badge. “It looked like an Alliance button,” she said, “but I was too far away to read it.”

Eric Erickson testified that he saw two men in the doorway wearing Citizens Alliance insignia shortly after the call of fire.

Many years later, folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the tragedy called “1913 Massacre,” in which he laid the blame squarely at the feet of strike-breaking thugs.

     The copper boss thugs stuck their heads in the door,

     One of them yelled and he screamed, "There's a fire!"

     A lady she hollered, "There's no such a thing;

     Keep on with your party, there's no such a thing."

     A few people rushed and there's only a few,

     "It's just the thugs and the scabs fooling you."

     A man grabbed his daughter and he carried her down,

     But the thugs held the door and he could not get out.

     And then others followed, about a hundred or more,

     But most everybody remained on the floor.

     The gun thugs, they laughed at their murderous joke,

     And the children were smothered on the stairs by the door.

The strike was broken; no one was charged and there was never a trial, and to this day the Italian Hall Disaster remains the most deadly stampede in American history, and the nation’s worst unsolved mass murder.

This Christmas Eve of 2013 will mark its 100^th anniversary.

July 22, 2013

A Polaroid photo found in a busy parking lot in Florida gave two families in New Mexico hope that their children were still alive.

by Paul Buchanan

On June 15, 1989, a woman in Port St. Joe, Florida pulled off Route 98 into the parking lot of a Junior Food Store. She parked next to a white Toyota cargo van and entered the air-conditioned market. Moments later, when she emerged, the white van was gone, but in the vacated space beside her car, she found what appeared to be a Polaroid photo lying face down on the asphalt. She picked it up, and turned it over. The image she found was harrowing.

In the photo, a young woman and a younger boy lie on their backs on a rumpled pile of mismatched sheets and pillows. Both look directly at the camera with expressions of tense resignation. Their mouths are covered with duct tape, and their postures suggest that their wrists are bound behind them. The space they occupy is cramped and poorly lit. The only source of light seems to come from behind the photographer. The photo could well have been taken in the back of a windowless van with its side door pulled open.

The woman who discovered the photo immediately notified local police. Roadblocks were hurriedly set up, but they failed to snare the van or the mustached man who had been in its driver’s seat.

The Disappearance of Tara Calico

Patty Doel and her new husband John first became aware of the Polaroid photo more than two months later, on August 23. Relatives called to say they’d just seen a photo broadcast on the television tabloid show “A Current Affair.” The image showed a boy and a girl who seemed to have been taken captive. Had they seen it? Could it have been Patty’s daughter, Tara Calico?

At the time she disappeared, 19-year-old Tara Calico was a sophomore at the Valencia campus of the University of New Mexico, a 15-minute commute from her family’s home in Belen, New Mexico. On the morning of September 20, 1988, Tara set out from home for a bike ride along Highway 47. The plan was to ride south 17 level miles to the railroad crossing and back again. Tara had a tennis date after lunch, so she told her mother to come looking for her if she wasn’t back by noon. She set out on her mother’s pink Huffy mountain bike (her own bike had a flat). She was listening to a Boston cassette on her Sony Walkman.

A little past noon, Tara’s mother went to look for her. Highway 47 cuts a razor-straight path through barren scrub-dotted clay east of the Rio Grande. There are few cross streets, fewer structures, and no trees. There was no trace of Tara or the pink bicycle she was riding. But her mother did find a Boston cassette on the highway’s dusty shoulder.

Later searches turned up the cracked cover of a Walkman nearly 20 miles east of Belen, close to the remote John F. Kennedy Campground. To her mother, it was as if Tara had been kidnapped and had dropped whatever she could from a moving car, hoping to leave a trail that might be traced to her. That trail dead-ended among the pinion pines and big-tooth maples that pepper the Manzano Mountains foothills.

Tara’s disappearance fell into a legal no-man’s-land of missing persons. As a legal adult, she had the right to vanish if she wanted to, and little could be done without evidence that indicated a crime had taken place. In the following days, investigators, aided by local volunteers, determined that Tara had last been seen at 11:45 a.m. on her return trip, a mere two miles east of her home. Witnesses saw a 1953 Ford pickup, equipped with a homemade camper shell, tailing her closely. Tara may have been unaware of the truck because of her Walkman’s earphones.

That Tara Calico might be the young woman in a Polaroid photo seemed a long shot at best. The photo was found 1,600 miles away from where Tara was last seen and some nine months later – but there were a few significant parallels. The young woman in the photo had the right hair color and complexion. A discolored patch on the young woman’s right calf corresponded to a scar Tara had received in a car accident. A tattered mass-market paperback lay on the rumpled bedding next to the girl. It was My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews, one of Tara’s favorite authors. The girl’s face looked more drawn and narrow than the most recent photos of Tara – the pictures on all the flyers and posters –but long months had passed, and she might have endured them under austere conditions.

Tara Calico

Allowing that her daughter had been missing the better part of a year and that the young woman in the photo wore no makeup, Patty Doel felt fairly certain the girl in the Polaroid was her daughter. “She used to keep herself fixed up, and had a permanent in her hair,” Mrs. Doel told the Associated Press. “Before the perm, without the makeup… I got out the old pictures, and it’s her.”

The Disappearance of Michael Henley

But more compelling than the girl’s similar appearance was the fact that the young boy in the photograph bore a striking resemblance to another child who had gone missing in New Mexico. Michael Henley had vanished a mere five months before Tara, just 45 miles southwest of Belen, in the Cibola National Park. This chilling link between the Polaroid and New Mexico only amplified the mystery surrounding Tara’s disappearance. Had some unknown person or person abducted both children?

On April 21, 1988, Michael Henley of Milan, New Mexico disappeared on a camping trip in the Oso Ridge area of the Zuni Mountains. Henley’s father and a family friend had brought the 9 year old with them to hunt wild turkey. About 20 minutes after their arrival at the campsite, while the adults were busy setting up, Henley vanished. It seemed likely he had wandered away from the campsite and got lost in the rough, craggy landscape.

Henley’s father quickly reported him missing, but the hunt was hamstrung by a sudden high-altitude storm. Snowfall made navigating the craggy and boulder-strewn landscape nearly impossible. To make the search yet more urgent, when last seen in the afternoon heat, young Henley had been wearing nothing more than a flannel shirt, pants and a pair of tennis shoes.

Four hundred volunteers, state police officers, and National Guardsmen clambered through the wilderness within a 10-mile radius of the campsite, scouring every inch. Civil Air Patrol volunteers crisscrossed the sky during daylight hours, coordinated by a cadre of local ham radio operators.

Tennis shoe tracks were found in the snow, but, as the Roswell Daily Record reported, “Several searchers in the area were wearing shoes with soles similar to the boy’s.” There was no way to know if trackers were closing in on the missing child, or wasting crucial time retracing areas that had been searched already.

Attempts to use bloodhounds were also stymied. There were “searchers walking over searchers in some areas,” Roger Robb, the search field coordinator, told reporters. “We have scent over scent over scent.” Rescuers posted signs along every stretch of asphalt in the vicinity—This way, Michael, stay on road—in hopes that they might point Henley to their base camp. The intensive search lasted more than a week but yielded no clues as to what had happened to the boy.

Months passed. The mystery of Henley’s disappearance gradually vanished from the news cycle. It seemed clear that the boy had wandered from camp, become disoriented, and died of exposure. In the final stages of severe hypothermia, incoherent victims often exhibit a behavior called “terminal burrowing,” in which they crawl into a tight, enclosed space for self-protection. This tendency to conceal oneself among boulders or under fallen logs can make the search for missing hikers – especially those in the deepest peril – nearly impossible. In the harsh and isolated terrain where Michael Henley was last seen, his remains might never be found.

But then, more than a year after he went missing, the Polaroid appeared. The boy in that image lies on his left side, in a powder-blue t-shirt, looking afraid. A swath of black duct tape masks his face from nose to chin. His eyes look at the camera plaintively.

 “It’s the best lead we’ve had in 16 months,” Cibola County Sheriff Ed Craig said of the TV segment. He showed a videotape of the episode to Michael’s parents.

“The majority of the family believe that that’s Michael,” the boy’s father said. “Michael’s best friend believes that’s Michael. His sister believes it’s Michael.” But Michael’s father, himself, felt unsure. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s just because I don’t want to see my son like that.”

Building Hope, Renewing the Search

Tara’s mother and both of Michael’s parents flew to Florida to speak with Port St. Joe police and examine the Polaroid first hand. After a couple of hours discussing the case with investigators and scrutinizing the Polaroid, all three came away convinced that the photo showed their children.

That conviction was both a solace and a torment. “He looks scared,” Michael’s mother said of the boy in the photo, “real scared, but he looks healthy and I’m grateful for that.”

Patty Doel was even more effusive: “Strange as it may seem, I would thank him for keeping her alive,” she told the Associated Press. “I would thank him for taking care of her, seeing that she’s fed, seeing that she’s clean. I hope he values her life as much as we do.”

Mrs. Doel and the Henleys returned home to New Mexico, reassured that their children were alive and that someone was at least feeding and clothing them. And, though the situation depicted in the Polaroid was clearly grim, Tara and Michael were together. At least they were not alone.

The Polaroid was forwarded to FBI crime labs to compare facial measurements with other photos of the missing pair. “It was inconclusive,” FBI Special Agent Doug Beldon of the Albuquerque field office told The New Mexican. “The lab was unable to say yes or no.” Similar authentication efforts were later run by Los Alamos National Laboratory, which concluded that Tara was not the girl in the photo, and by Scotland Yard, which concluded that she was. (“[T]hey gave us a definite ID that it was her,” Patty Doel said.)

Despite what might have been a major break in the case, the release of the photo and its frequent airing on “Unsolved Mysteries,” “America’s Most Wanted,” and even “Oprah” stirred up lots of commotion but no solid leads.

Both families organized volunteers, printed flyers, and tried to keep the story alive in the news. Patty Doel and her husband were sworn in as auxiliary deputies, which allowed them to contact other law enforcement offices under the auspices of the Valencia County Sheriff.

Over the following weeks, sightings of Tara were reported in different locations across the South, as if her captor were still drifting from town to town. Michael was reportedly sighted in Arkansas. Each new rumor rekindled the hope that Tara and Michael would someday – miraculously – be returned to their families. At some point, wouldn’t their captor slip up? Wouldn’t the pair of them seize some chance to make a break for it?

Michael Henley Was Not the Boy in the Polaroid

Then, in June 1990, the case took an abrupt and decisive turn. A rancher riding a fence line discovered a scattering of bones in a thick copse of junipers. The remains were those of a child, and they were six or seven miles from the campsite where Michael Henley had disappeared more than two years earlier.

Scraps of clothing found at the scene were consistent with what Michael was wearing when he vanished. Sheriff Craig informed the boy’s parents of his suspicions. “What makes it so hard to identify is he didn’t have enough medical records – broken bones, x-rays. He’d only been to the dentist twice.” One by one, other missing local children reports were accounted for. It took five days for the Cibola County Medical Examiner to make a positive identification: the remains were Michael’s, and his death had been a tragic accident. Michael’s father told reporters that it was no relief to know what had happened to his son.

Michael Henley was not the boy in the Polaroid.

The Henley family now knew what had become of their son, and they could settle into grieving, with a casket and a ceremony and a gravesite; but Patty Doel had no such closure. Whether she was conscious of it or not, Mrs. Doel faced a sort of choice.

Tara’s Mother Will Not Give Up

Once Michael Henley was taken out of the Polaroid equation, the identity of the young woman it showed became problematic. If the boy wasn’t Michael – the only solid link to New Mexico – what were the chances that the young girl was actually Tara? The girl in the Polaroid certainly looked younger than a woman of 20, and her face was narrower than the most recent photos of Tara. The mark on the girl’s right calf was far from distinct as a scar. Thousands of young women read the novels of V.C. Andrews.

Over the years Mrs. Doel’s conviction about the Polaroid was never shaken. In 1997, seven years after Michael Henley had been laid to rest, she weighed in on a website discussion board about the case:

I am Tara's mom and I would like to respond to questions that Crushed Velvet posed. Tara did not have any book with her when she disappeared. We can only guess that the abductor either gave the book to Tara because V.C. Andrews was one of many authors that Tara read. Another other possibility is that the book was placed in the photo because the ultimate subject of that book was brainwashing.

There is no hedging in Mrs. Doel’s language – no “if” or “perhaps” or “seems likely.”  In her mind, the beautiful young woman in the Polaroid was absolutely her daughter. Over the years, the hope that had come with the photo’s discovery hardened into a kind of certitude, and that seemed to leave Mrs. Doel in an impossible no-man’s-land as a parent coping with loss and with uncertainty and with hope.

Patty Doel’s search for Tara never lagged. She made television appearances, sent out hundreds of thousands of fliers, and never seemed to begrudge a press interview that might keep her daughter’s story alive.

Michele Doel, Tara’s younger sister, told me about coming across one of her mother’s old to-do lists recently:

Laundry

Vacuum

Dust

Write letter to FBI

“A moment or opportunity was never missed to find Tara by our mom and dad,” Michele told me. “It is impossible to describe in words – an indescribable emotion. Unfortunately only those who have gone through this can understand the emotions that change from year to year, month to month, day to day and minute by minute.”

Over those years, two other Polaroid photos were discovered, which may or may not be photos of Tara. Neither has been released to the public. The first, discovered at a Southern California construction site, is a blurry image of a girl’s face, her mouth covered with duct tape. The film used was not available until 1989, and the girl seems to be lying on a sheet similar to the blue-striped pillowcase in the original photo.

The final Polaroid shows a woman loosely bound and blindfolded in gauze, wearing large framed glasses. She seems to be riding on an Amtrak train next to an unidentified man. The image is on film that was not available until 1990.

“Mom believed they were Tara,” Michele Doel told me. “They had a striking, uncalming resemblance. As for me, I will not rule them out. But keep in mind our family has had to identify many other photographs and all but those three were ruled out.

Recent history provides us with just enough happy endings – Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, the trio on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland – to keep alive some ember of hope that Tara Calico might someday return, which is why Patty Doel’s situation, and that of the parent of any missing child, is so agonizing to contemplate.

The Toll of Grief

In the early days of psychotherapy, grief over the loss of a loved one was not considered a disorder; it was a normal, fitting reaction to loss. But, over recent decades, therapeutic trends have changed.

Leeat Granek, in Grief as Pathology, traces how, at least in clinical practice, grief has come to be treated as though it were a disorder. It was part of what Granek sees as a trend. What once might have been considered normal shyness is now often diagnosed and treated as social anxiety disorder. What might have been considered “mild malaise” could now be considered a major depressive disorder that demands medication and therapy. In the same way – for good or ill – grief has been “pathologized,” and is now often considered reason enough for professional intervention.

This common practice of conflating the normal with the pathological when it comes to grief has led some clinicians to call for a distinct set of diagnostic criteria for what has come to be called “complicated grief” – or a variety of grieving that is far from the typical.

The Mental Health Desk Reference describes such “pathological grief” as “the intensification of grief to the level where the person is overwhelmed, resorts to maladaptive behavior, or remains interminably in the state of grief without progression of the mourning process toward completion.” The entry goes on to list some of the causes of such grief:

Circumstances surrounding a loss may preclude or make completion of the grieving process difficult or impossible. Uncertainty of the loss, not knowing if a person is truly dead, precludes adequate grieving (e.g., missing children, a soldier who is listed MIA, or disaster victims where whose bodies are not recovered).

This seems to clearly describe Patty Doel’s tragic situation. The Polaroid photo offered her enough plausible evidence that she could never lay Tara to rest – nor could she disown the hope that her daughter was still alive somewhere.

Later in the same online post mentioned above, Mrs. Doel confessed, “In June of 1997 I literally lost what was left of my mind and have been recovering from acute depression, panic attacks, etc., since that time.”

The post is simply signed “Mom.”

In J.W. Worden’s book Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, one of the “clues” he lists that may indicate the presence of complicated mourning reads: “The person who has sustained the loss is unwilling to move material possessions belonging to the deceased. Someone who preserves the environment of the deceased just as it was when the death occurred may be harboring an unresolved grief reaction.”

This was certainly true of Mrs. Doel, who not only kept Tara’s room intact, but also added yearly Christmas and birthday presents to the pile on the girl’s empty bed.

In 2003, Mrs. Doel and her husband finally left New Mexico behind for a new life Port Charlotte, FL.

“Here, there’s not anything I can do that doesn't remind me of Tara,” Mrs. Doel told the Albuquerque Tribune as she was preparing for the move “It will be a good change for us.” But the move was not easy, and it did not represent any abandonment of hope. “It’s really hard to move,” she said. “If she were to come home I could not ever tell her we gave up on her.”

When they moved, Mrs. Doel took Tara’s bed, along with the gifts she still hoped her daughter would someday unwrap. “They,” she told the reporter, “will be the last things I pack."

“Patty Doel became a force of nature,” the Albuquerque Tribune said of her after her death, “hurling all her grit and passion into a heartbreaking search that her husband said eventually contributed to her failing health.” At the age of 64, Patty Doel succumbed after a series of strokes.

By the time Patty Doel passed away, on May 11, 2006, her husband had all but abandoned hope that Tara had survived whatever fate happened to her.

“Patty knew that I felt that way,” John Doel told the Valencia County News-Bulletin, “but she continued to hope to hear from her. We would discuss it frequently, and I would tell her my reasons that if she was able to, she would have contacted us. And being that so much time has gone by, I didn't think it was practical that she was still alive.”

Tara’s sister, though, still nurtures a conviction that the truth will someday be discovered. “We continue to remain suspended,” Michele Doel told me. “Hoping for good news, hoping for the best, keeping faith and not giving up, yet dreading the worst. To this point the worst has been the not knowing.”

It is hard to imagine Patty Doel’s lot as a parent, and harder still to imagine facing that lot with such fortitude and fiber. Even her newspaper obituary reflected her indomitable hope that her daughter was alive somewhere: “Patty is survived by her husband, John; four children; four grandchildren; nieces; and sisters.”

Tara Calico is one of those four children.

Note: In a cruel coda, in June 2009, almost exactly 20 years after the discovery of the original Polaroid photo, police in Port St. Joe, Florida received the first of two photocopied images of a young boy. In one of the images someone had used a marker to cover the child’s mouth with ink – like the duct tape bindings in the original photo. A similar image was sent to the local newspaper, The Star. None of the letters bore a return address. All were postmarked in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Aug. 22, 2013

Sharp family

Cold Case: The most brutal murders in Plumas County history occurred on April 11, 1981 in Keddie, California, a down on its heels resort town that time had passed by. No one was ever charged with the crime.

by Jeni Johnson

Keddie is a small town in the mountains of Northern California, about 87 miles from Reno, Nevada. It was once a thriving resort community that drew people for its natural beauty and the convenience of the railway that transported people between Salt Lake City and Oakland, California. Made up of log cabins, the town was an ideal place to raise a family.

In 1981, Keddie was a tight-knit community where everyone looked after each other’s children and residents never bothered to lock their doors at night. By this time, the town had drastically gone downhill since its formation in 1910 when a hotel and lodge were built for those traveling through Keddie.

By the 1980s, the owner of the resort, Gary Mollath, had no option but to rent his cabins to mostly low-income families. It was also rumored that there was some drug use in the area that consisted mostly of marijuana and hashish. Nevertheless, residents still considered it a decent place to raise a family with minimal earnings. Unfortunately, the murders of four people shocked the residents of Keddie and changed all of that in a matter of hours.

On April 11, 1981 Glenna “Sue” Sharp, a 36-year-old mother of five, was at her home in Cabin 28. She had agreed to let a neighborhood child and friend of her children, Justin, spend the night with her sons Ricky, 10 and Greg, 5. Her 12-year-old daughter, Tina, was also home at the time. Sue’s oldest daughter, 14-year-old Sheila, was just a few feet away staying the night at a neighbor’s house. Sue’s oldest son, 15-year-old Johnny and his friend Dana Wingate, 17, who was known as somewhat of a trouble maker, were in the nearby town of Quincy hanging out with friends for most of the evening. It all seemed to be an ordinary and relaxing night for the Sharp family. But by the next morning news of the murders would rip through Plumas County.

No one knows exactly why or how the murders took place. It is highly believed that Johnny and Dana hitchhiked home and either led the killers to the house or walked in on the killers attacking Sue. What is known is on that night Sue Sharp, Johnny Sharp and Dana Wingate were brutally murdered, Tina Sharp was kidnapped and murdered, and their killers have gone unpunished for over three decades.

Most Vicious Crime in Plumas County History

The crime was the most vicious attack in Plumas County history. The police found stab marks in the walls of the cabin and a large amount of blood on the living room floor. The autopsy reports showed all three victims were tied at the hands and feet, with Sue’s bindings being especially tight. Sue and Johnny were bludgeoned with a hammer and stabbed repeatedly. Dana was strangled to death and also stabbed.

Because the attacks were overkill and seemed personal in nature, many believed that the Sharp family knew their killers. The police concluded that Tina was taken from the house that night. While processing the scene they found a small amount of blood on the sheet of her bed. They also found a bloody fingerprint on a wooden post outside in the backyard. In 1984, three years after she was abducted, Tina's skull was found in Feather Falls at Camp 18, about 29 miles from Keddie, officially making this a quadruple murder. Examination of the skull showed Tina was likely killed the night or soon after she was kidnapped. The manner in which she died is unknown.

When Sheila Sharp came home the next morning she opened the front door and found the gruesome sight of her mother’s body lying under a yellow blanket. She also saw the lifeless bodies of Johnny and Dana lying close to Sue. The boys were tied together at their feet with tape and electrical cord.  Sheila noticed what she thought to be a pocket knife lying near the bodies. It was later determined to be a steak knife that was used to kill the victims. The attacks were so savage that the force from the stabbings bent the blade backward approximately 25 degrees.

Sheila ran from the house and yelled at the neighbors to call the police. Incredibly, Justin, Ricky and Greg were unharmed during the vicious attack. Sheila returned to the cabin to help Justin and her brothers climb through the bedroom window. When interviewed, Ricky and Greg claimed to have slept through the ordeal while Justin's statements about that have been inconsistent through the years. At times, he has claimed to have seen the killers, but other times he says he only had a dream about seeing the murders take place. In this dream he said he covered Sue up with a blanket and tried to stop the bleeding by placing a cloth on her chest. In another story, he has claimed to have seen nothing at all that night. Police did believe Justin touched at least one of the bodies because blood was found on the outside doorknob of the boy’s room. The bedroom door of the boy's room was also partially open when the Plumas County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene.

A Person of Interest

The Plumas County Sheriff's Office interviewed a number of people and this did produce a person of interest, Martin Smartt. Marty, his wife Marilyn and her two sons (one of the boys being Justin) lived in Cabin 26 just down the road from Cabin 28. Marty also had a friend staying with the family named Severin John "Bo" Boubede, whom Marty had met a few weeks earlier at the VA hospital where he was being treated for PTSD. It is known that Bo, Marty and Marilyn stopped by Sue’s cabin on their way to the local bar earlier in the evening.

Marilyn claimed to have asked Sue to go for drinks with them but Sue declined the invitation. At the bar Marty became angry over the music that was playing and spoke to the manager about it. The three left with Marty still upset and returned to their cabin. Marilyn claimed to have watched TV and then went to bed. Marty said he made a phone call to the bar to complain about the music once again and then he and Bo went back to the bar.

Soon after the investigation started, the Plumas County Sheriff's Office called in the Department of Justice, which was based in Sacramento, California. Detectives for the Department of Justice questioned all three of them and concluded that they were not involved despite the fact that during the interview Marilyn told the investigators that she left Marty the day after the murders. She also mentioned Marty had a violent temper and often abused her, both emotionally and physically. The Department of Justice administered a polygraph to Marty Smartt on April 17, which he is said to have passed. 

The interviews of Marty and Bo, however, reveal a half-hearted attempt by the DOJ detectives, Harry Bradley and P.A. Crim Jr., to examine the two in any depth, asking each of them a series of easy, leading questions and not following up when discrepancies did arise.  During the interview with Bo, Detective Crim mentioned that Bo was a retired police officer – something he never was. This false assumption seemed to lead the detectives to treat Bo with undue deference.

At the start of the interview, Bo indicated he knew which one of the cabins was the one where the murders were committed, but toward the middle of the interview, he said he did not know. Detective Bradley just said "Oh, I thought you'd know. Well, we'll point it out to you on the way back." For reasons unknown, Bo lied and said Marilyn was his niece when, in fact, they are not related in any manner. Bo told the detectives he had lived in Keddie a month when in fact he’d only been around for 12 days. When Bo claimed Marilyn was awake when he and Marty returned from the bar the second time, the detectives said nothing about Marilyn saying she was asleep when they returned. Bo also lied when he said he had never met Sue Sharp.  In Marilyn Smartt's interview she stated she and the two men had gone to the Sharp house on the night of the murders.

Additionally, Bo stated they arrived at the bar between 9:30- 10 p.m. but later changed this time to 12 a.m. to fit his alibi.

During Marty’s interview with the DOJ detectives, the careless, lackadaisical questioning continued. Marty told the investigators that Sue’s son, Justin, could have seen something the night of the murders "...without me detecting him..." This remark gravely implicated Marty in the murders, but the detectives made nothing of it. Marty followed that incriminating comment up by adding that he had heard a hammer was used to beat the victims before they were stabbed to death.  Then, without prompting, he voluntarily told Crim and Bradley his hammer had "gone missing" before the murders. Marty talks a lot about the victims deaths being overkill. He goes on to describe how he would have killed them fast and gotten out of the house as quickly as possible. Crim and Bradley never questioned him further on this either.

After interviewing Marty and Bo, the DOJ investigators did not do any follow-up interviews and they let Marty – a prime suspect – move out of town and relocate in Klamath, California. Bo went back to the Reno VA hospital. In July, Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas announced his resignation for unknown reasons. In 1976, Thomas became an insurance salesman and a part-time instructor at Feather River College in Quincy, Ca.

The month after the Keddie murders, Marty called a therapist and told the doctor he was being blamed for the killings. Ten years after Marty’s death in 2000, his therapist came forward and told the Plumas County Sheriff's Office that Marty had confessed to killing Sue Sharp. He also told the police that Marty was a friend of Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas and that Marty once let Thomas live with him. The therapist admitted that Marty told him that beating the polygraph was easy. Additionally, Marty said the reason he killed Sue was because she was trying to talk Marilyn into divorcing him. According the therapist, Martin Smartt did not confess to killing Dana, Johnny or Tina and he never said who was responsible for their murders.

The revelations by the therapist caused the sheriff’s office to take another look at solving the case, but with Martin Smartt long dead and Bo having died of natural causes in 1988 nothing came of this.

A Botched Investigation

After the murders of their mother and siblings, the surviving Sharp children went to live with their father. The chatter eventually stopped about the murders and soon no one thought much of the brutal slayings. That is until 2002 when a filmmaker Josh Hancock took on the challenge of making a documentary about what happened in the small town of Keddie. The film included interviews with members of the Sharp family and Wingate family, with Marilyn and Justin and with various members of Plumas County law enforcement. Hancock said his motive for making the documentary was to train a spotlight on a cold case that was apparently swept under the rug. By doing that he hoped to bring justice to the victims and their families. Hancock believes that the Plumas County Sherriff's Office did careless work regarding the investigation of the crime. On his website it states, "Exposing the truth, one liar at a time. Hold Plumas County Sheriff's Office accountable!"

Many questions and rumors abound regarding this murder case. Only one person reported hearing a scream coming from the area of the cabin; yet, all of the cabins in Keddie sat literally feet away from one another.  Why didn't anyone else hear a struggle or screams coming from Cabin 28? Furthermore, how could the children in the house sleep when three people were being brutally tortured and murdered right in the next room? Why was Tina the only one taken that night? Why were the three younger boys left unharmed?

The crime scene was substantially botched. The sheriff's office did not properly secure the scene and failing to call the Department of Justice immediately upon arriving. What may be most damning of all is the Plumas County Sheriff's Office did not realize Tina had even existed or had been kidnapped. Arriving officers refused to listen to Justin even after he told the sheriff's office Tina was taken from her bed on the night of the murders. Because of this discrepancy, the sheriff's office wasted precious hours which should have been spent searching for Tina.

Some believe the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office was too inexperienced for a crime of this magnitude. Others believe the sheriff’s department intentionally bungled and hid information to protect the assailants’ identities.  This belief was bolstered in 2010 when Martin Smartt’s therapist revealed that Marty had once allowed Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas to live with him for a while.

To this day the sheriff’s department refuses to discuss the case and will not look into it further. The sheriff’s department also will not accept assistance from other law enforcement agencies. Regrettably, much of the evidence collected was either lost by law enforcement or destroyed due to a leak in the roof at the sheriff’s office. Furthermore, after three decades nothing has been done with the bloody fingerprint that was collected from the scene. Lastly, many wonder why the sheriff’s department let Marty and Bo go.

Postscript

After the murders, Marilyn married and then divorced Marty's best friend. Reportedly she is still living in Plumas County.

If you were to ask most people, they would probably say they have never heard of Keddie, the small town in Plumas County, California. After the murders, the community lived in shock and fear. The atmosphere had changed. The once quiet and peaceful Keddie was all but abandoned by most.  Cabin 28 became a horror house of sorts. Although at least one family lived in the cabin after the murders, locals say the house sat abandoned for years. In 2004 Cabin 28 was bulldozed to the ground. Today there are only a handful of residents that call Keddie Resort home.

The tragedy of these murders was compounded by the botched investigation that allowed the murderers to escape justice and for the case to grow so cold it will most likely never be solved.

Sept. 2, 2013

An edited extract from Cold Case Files: Past crimes solved by new forensic science– winner of Australia’s 2012 Davitt Award for best true crime book and available for Kindle in the United States on amazon.com. Hard copies available at www.panmacillan.com.au

by Liz Porter

What are the chances of revisiting a crime scene, more than 11 years after a murder – and several years after it has been renovated and repainted – and finding the blood stain that will finally crack the case?

British crime scene expert Andrew Barclay and forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop would both describe the odds of success in such a case as “very low.”

But during 1999 and 2000, the duo was able to revisit a 1988 crime, where most of the blood stains had already been destroyed by earlier testing, and find the stain that would eventually lead them to a killer.

The Murder of Lynette White

By 1999, the murder of sex worker Lynette White, stabbed to death in 1988 in Cardiff, was beginning to look like one of those cases that are doomed to remain “cold” forever.

In December 1988 local police had arrested a group of local men, one of them the boyfriend of the victim. Late in 1990 three of the men, soon known as “the Cardiff Three” were convicted.  But by 1992 all three had been freed after an appeal court found that their convictions had been based on statements and confessions that had been bullied out of witnesses and one of the defendants. Fortunately, the original forensic testing done at Miss White’s apartment, in the dockside area of Butetown, was police work of a far better quality.

The first police on the scene had documented copious blood stains, most of them bloodied fingerprints left on the apartment’s walls. The blood grouping tests in use at the time had alerted investigators to the presence of blood that did not belong to the victim.  But 1988 was the very beginning of the era of DNA testing, and the main police focus had been on extracting useful fingerprints from the stains: a process that rendered the stains useless for future DNA testing.

By 1999, newer DNA techniques had evolved, and scientists were able to produce results from tiny amounts of blood. But new blood samples, undamaged by previous testing, were required.

To find any such untested material, Barclay and Gallop needed to work out exactly where the killer had been in the flat, so they could find places where he might have shed blood that had not yet been found.

The 1988 police had done a relatively thorough job of recording their findings. This enabled Barclay to map the crime scene and locate each of the recovered fingermarks in the position in which it had been found. He could also identify the positions of these prints on some of the flat’s original wallpaper: paper from the hallway wall had spent the intervening decade folded up in a storage cupboard at a police station in Cardiff. Unfortunately the paper from the murder room had been lost, although color crime-scene photos offered a detailed record of the blood stains on the wall.

The crime scene map and photos – and the wallpaper – revealed the existence of several interesting blood stains that had been more or less ignored in 1988, because the investigators had been focused on the fingerprints.

The 1988 investigators had quickly realized why there were so many bloodied finger marks on the walls: there had been no coins in the flat’s pay-as-you-go electricity meter (then a common arrangement for gas and electricity in low-rent accommodation). The room in which White was murdered would have been illuminated at the time by the street light outside the window, but the rest of the flat would have been pitch-black. So after committing the murder, the killer had to feel his way out of the flat. Outside the room was a narrow corridor, which immediately took an unexpected turn towards the flat’s front door. The light in the building’s communal hall was also out, meaning the murderer had to find his way down the staircase by touch, before reaching the door that opened onto the street.

Barclay and Gallop began looking at the bloodied finger marks from the hall and bedroom walls. One of the forensic scientists on the case in 1988 had been certain that the killer had cut himself during the attack, and he had identified some of the wall stains as cast-off blood – drops shed from the murderer’s bleeding hand.

This phenomenon is not unusual in knife murders involving multiple stab wounds: the handle of the knife becomes so slippery with blood that the killer’s own hand slides along it and onto the sharp cutting edge, making cuts – possibly severe ones – on his palm. The crime-scene photos reinforced this theory, with the smears of blood left by the killer becoming more intense as he felt his way along the wall towards the exit, suggesting that his own blood was still flowing as he left the flat. If the blood had been the victim’s alone, the smears would have become fainter.

Back in 1988, the gentrification of the dockside area had only just begun and was temporarily halted by the aftermath of the murder. But by 1999 it was long complete and the murder flat, by then exquisitely repainted and redecorated, bore no resemblance to the slum dwelling in the crime-scene photos. Fortunately, its owner was willing to allow both Gallop and Barclay to visit and inspect it.

Bringing the Murder Narrative Alive

Late on a dark November night in 1999, Dave Barclay made his way up to the flat. He wanted to walk in the killer’s shoes and to do so in conditions as close as possible to the winter dark that would have shrouded the flat in February 1988.

Starting in the pitch black of the murder room, Barclay closed his eyes and took his first steps. Unable to prevent himself from opening his eyes, he wedged a handkerchief behind his glasses and began feeling his way out of the main room. Taking the sharp left turn into the narrow corridor that led towards the flat’s front door, he tried to match his fingers to the places where the killer had been seen to touch the wall. The aim of the exercise was three-fold: to calculate the killer’s height – an estimated 183 cm, some 5 cm shorter than Barclay; to gauge the manner of his exit – most probably a panicked rush; and most importantly, to identify new places where the assailant might have left bloody traces.

Meanwhile Angela Gallop had been supervising the reconstruction of the flat’s main room and passageway in the lab at Culham, just outside Oxford. The salvaged hall wallpaper was mounted on panels representing the passageway. The mocked- up crime scene brought the murder narrative alive, with the blood stain patterns on the wallpaper mapping the movements of someone running down the corridor with blood on his or her hands. A vivid slap mark on the wall opposite the murder room door showed how the killer had rushed out, in darkness, into a corridor with an abrupt left turn. The stain even revealed blood squirting out from underneath the palm. Along the wall, successive smears at hand height documented the murderer’s path along the passageway. A crime-scene photo showed a diagonal smear across the front door, near the catch, deposited as the killer fumbled to find a way to open it and leave the premises.

Gallop also worked through the vast volume of material that the 1988 crime scene officers had collected.  There was a cache of condoms, matches and coins from a cardboard box on a windowsill, along with rubbish from the floor, including biscuit or cake packaging and a piece of trampled cellophane from the cover of a cigarette packet. With the housekeeping standards of the flat, it was impossible to tell whether the cellophane had been dropped by the killer or had been lying on the floor for months. Gallop noticed some smeared blood on it, and, more interestingly, one tiny discrete blood spot. It looked like blood that had been airborne; she’d seen blood spots exactly like it at other scenes involving a frenzied knife attack. Spotting can happen in many ways, one of which occurs when a killer, his or her hand bearing the palm cuts common in such cases, continues to wield the knife, flicking small drops of blood around the room. The cellophane was sent for processing and produced a clear DNA profile. It wasn’t the victim’s. And it was male.

“Cellophane Man”

The scientific team christened this unknown person ‘Cellophane Man.’ All they knew about him was his DNA profile. The sample did not necessarily tie him to the murder; in principle, the blood could have been shed weeks earlier. But if they could find the same blood in the marks on the walls and on White’s clothing, they would know it belonged to the killer. Gallop retested White’s jeans and one blood-stained sock. She could obtain only partial profiles; as far as they went, however, they matched the cellophane sample. But the scientist wanted to try a spread of blood samples that had been taken from White’s body and as close as possible to it, in the hope of getting better results.

Testing blood from cardboard boxes that had been stacked against the wall near to where White’s head had been, Gallop found a partial profile of Cellophane Man. But once again, she needed more. Returning to the crime-scene photos, she studied the blood stains on the walls. One drop of cast-off blood under a window was so large that it had run down the wall. The 1988 tests had shown that it wasn’t White’s. Might some of it have trickled right down behind the skirting board? Although the flat had been renovated, might the painters have merely slapped on a new coat of color over the old without sanding down the surface first? It was a long shot, but worth a try.

At Gallop’s request, police crime-scene officers removed an almost meter-long section of skirting board directly below the spot where the cast-off foreign blood had been identified. They also removed the front door in the hope of unearthing the diagonal smear of blood left as the killer groped for the catch in the darkness and shown in a crime scene photo.

Back at the lab, Gallop’s assistant scraped away at the skirting board paint under the microscope. It was a difficult, delicate procedure: go in too cautiously and you miss what might be there; scrape too deeply and you go through all the layers of paint and miss the hidden forensic treasure altogether. The lab technician got it just right, uncovering blood stains which later yielded profiles of both Cellophane Man and his victim. More cast-off blood was found behind the skirting board; it contained a full profile of Cellophane Man.

The scraping back of paint from the front door revealed no visible blood staining, but the scientists were able to chemically detect blood traces which produced a mixed profile. Its components were from Cellophane Man and Lynette White.

The killer’s cut hands had been on the walls and the door – and in contact with White’s blood. It was time to return to the victim’s clothing yet again and look for Cellophane Man there.

When White’s body was discovered, her jacket and sweatshirt had been soaked with her own blood and twisted around her body in a strange way, possibly as a result of the killer manhandling her into the spot on the floor where she was found. Gallop spent several hours working out precisely how the clothing had shifted during this process and trying to calculate the places where the killer was most likely to have placed his hands while moving the body. She took five samples and found Cellophane Man’s DNA on both the jacket and the sweatshirt.

Gallop had also discovered some crime-scene swabs collected during the original investigation but not analyzed. They were samples of stains from the wall outside the door of the murder room, from the wall opposite that room and from a wall near the entrance. They yielded full or partial profiles of Cellophane Man. In one place, there was a mixture of Cellophane Man’s and White’s blood – the same result as that from the recently tested front door and skirting board.

The same foreign blood had now been found on the victim’s body and at different spots along the killer’s exit route from the flat. Put together, these results spelled out the narrative of the murder.

By January 2002, South Wales Police were ready to go public with the news that they had DNA samples from the scene, including the killer’s. All the original suspects, including those acquitted, had volunteered for DNA testing. The police also began intelligence-led screening: an analysis of the database of 5,000 names that had come up in the original investigation, in order to reduce it to a shorter list of suspects who could be eliminated through DNA testing. In the meantime they were hoping for a tip-off from the public that might help them to give Cellophane Man a name.

The investigators had been repeatedly running Cellophane Man’s profile against the more than 1.5 million profiles on the UK’s national database. New profiles were being added every week, with more than 560,000 added in the 2001–02 financial year. Three hundred samples taken in 1988 were also tested. But there were no matches with either the database or any other suspects identified in the review.

Familial DNA Matching

It was time to consider familial DNA matching: a search of the DNA database for a profile that is a match close enough to the one already found to mean that it belongs to a sibling or close relative of the person sought.

The technique of familial matching had only just been devised, and was still so new that it had to be done manually. To make the search feasible, the scientists looking for Cellophane Man’s relatives narrowed their field to Cardiff, making the slightly risky assumption, given that the murder happened in the area of the docks, that the killer had been local, with a local family.

One of the alleles out of the 20 in the man’s DNA profile was relatively rare, occurring in about one in every 100 people. The scientists used it as a starting point, which enabled them to whittle a list of thousands down to 600. They then looked for profiles that had seven or more alleles in common with the killer’s. That reduced the pool to 70. The scientists looked at all the matching components in the profiles, checked their individual rarity and calculated the relative frequency of the different combinations found in the list.

One profile stood head and shoulders above the others in terms of its similarity to Cellophane Man’s. But it belonged to a 14-year-old boy, who hadn’t even been born at the time of the murder but had been DNA tested after committing a minor crime.

The boy’s father, the police surmised, could be the killer; he was certainly of an appropriate age. Initially, the boy’s mother was DNA tested so the scientists could subtract the parts of the boy’s DNA that came from her and see whether the relevant components were still left. They were. The father was then tested. But, while his profile was very similar to Cellophane Man’s, it wasn’t a match. The man’s brother was tested: again, the result was similar but not a match.

A Lifetime Loser

Questioned again, the family revealed there was another brother. According to his siblings, Jeffrey Gafoor was a lifetime loner who had always had difficulty making friends. In 1990, he had suddenly gone to Germany for a short period. His departure, it could now be seen, had coincided with the conviction of the Cardiff Three, but his family had had no reason to make that link. Three years later, when he moved away from Cardiff and cut himself off from his family, his siblings had assumed that the impetus for his retreat had been the death of their mother. They weren’t to know that his self-imposed exile had followed the Cardiff Three’s successful appeal against their conviction. Around this time, Gafoor had come to the attention of police for the first and, until 2003, only time in his life. After hitting a work colleague over the head with a house brick during an argument, he had been sentenced to 80 hours’ community service. But he was not DNA tested because he was convicted in 1992 – two years before the passing of the legislation that set out procedures for the DNA testing of people convicted and even suspected of criminal offences.

In 2003, Gafoor, then 38, was living half an hour out of Cardiff, working nights as a security guard, rarely leaving his home during the day and avoiding most human contact. His landlord’s front door was only three  meters away from his own, but, rather than pay his rent in person and have to speak to the man, each month he would drive almost two kilometers to the nearest mail box and post his rent check.

On 28 February 2003, police visited Gafoor at work and took a DNA sample from him. They were not going to arrest him until they had the DNA results, but they kept him under surveillance, in case he decided to run. That surveillance saved his life: curious about a series of visits he had made to chemist’s shops, police broke into their quarry’s flat and discovered him in the process of swallowing the 64 paracetamol tablets he had bought. They rushed him to hospital, obtaining a partial confession on the way, in which he reportedly said: ‘Just for the record, I did kill Lynette White. I have been waiting for this for 15 years. I sincerely hope to die.’ Before he recovered, the DNA profile results were in. Jeffrey Gafoor was Cellophane Man.

On 4 July, 2003, Gafoor stood in the Cardiff Crown Court dock and pleaded guilty to murdering Lynette White. Through his barrister, he apologized to his victim’s family, claiming that the murder had happened after he changed his mind about wanting to have sex and White refused to return the £30 he had paid her. According to the barrister, Gafoor had not committed a premeditated sexual killing; rather, he had been carrying a knife because he had been robbed three months earlier in Butetown. During his argument with White, he had threatened her with the knife. She had then grabbed the weapon and a struggle had ensued. ‘He doesn’t know why what followed, followed,’ the barrister told the court. ‘There was shame, panic, and there was a frenzied attack with a knife.’

Sept. 9, 2013

Menzies Hallett

For 33 years, Menzies Hallett got away with murder because a New Zealand law prohibited Hallett’s wife from testifying against him without his permission. 

by Lisa Agnes

By all accounts, Menzies Hallett was an affable, confident family man who got along with everyone. Yet it only took one anxiety-laden night in mid 1979 for this persona to dramatically unravel, revealing a conflicted, angry man.

New Zealand, in 1979, was not a place known for random acts of violence. The volcanic plateau situated in the middle of the North Island offered stable employment opportunities and a relatively idyllic way of life. But crimes motivated by passionate emotions can explode anywhere. On August 16, Hallett received a letter from his estranged wife denying him custody of their two daughters, prompting him to ring her and threaten to "come down and sort it out."

According to a friend who was with Hallett at the house of his girlfriend later that evening, Hallett had a revolver tucked into the waistbelt of his trousers. At one point, he pointed to a ceramic pot in the kitchen and asked his girlfriend, Margaret Culkin, whether she valued it. Before she could answer he had drawn the pistol and fired, missed, then fired again, destroying the pot and leaving his girlfriend reeling. "I remember there was the television there and I think I collapsed over it," she said. "I didn't know what was going on. I was in shock." Hallett then left in his Ford Falcon 500, intent on some kind of showdown.

A Cold-Blooded Murder

At approximately the same time, some 50 km away, Constable Michael Sullivan was drinking a cup of coffee with his Maori friend, 31-year-old Rodney Tahu, at the Turangi Shell station. Tahu was in sole charge of the service station and, when Sullivan left, it was likely he did not have another customer before closing up and activating the alarm at 1 am. As he was preparing to go home, Menzies Hallett pulled into the forecourt, needing oil for his vehicle after noticing a noise in the engine. According to the confession Hallett made to his wife hours later, Tahu told him that the service station was closed. Hallett replied that was "ridiculous," but when Tahu reiterated the fact, Hallett called him a "black bastard," reached for his gun and aimed it at the man.

Tahu ran off between the petrol pumps and Hallett's first shot missed. However, a second shot caught him in the shoulder and he slumped to the ground. Hallett then walked over and fired for a third time, the gun muzzle just centimetres from his victim's head. Leaving Tahu for dead, Hallett turned around and drove off, back the way he had come.

Tahu's friend Constable Sullivan was among the first to the scene, finding him spread-eagled in a pool of blood on the concrete. An ambulance duly arrived and rushed him to Taumarunui Hospital. Despite paramedics' best efforts, Rodney Tahu died at 5.42 a.m.

Within 24 hours, Menzies Hallett had confessed to his wife, Susan Sharpe, describing how he had been angry at her letter, had been on his way to “get the truth” from their daughter in Palmerston North, and that he had been at a “flash point.” He even showed her the pistol he had used in the killing, flinging it onto the bed in front of her. Eventually he left the house and Ms. Sharpe rang her lawyer, who alerted the police. Meanwhile Hallett took a meandering route back to Taupo, where police were already waiting. Upon seeing the police cars, Hallett made a U-turn. The police pursued.

During a stand-off at a road block, where Hallett remained in his stationary car, a shot rang out. Members of New Zealand's Armed Defenders' Squad moved forward en masse to retrieve him, injured from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was then taken to hospital and later charged with murder.  Two months later, he appeared before the courts.

Justice Denied by the Evidence Act

And this is where the story becomes a bit unbelievable. The law at the time prevented a spouse from testifying unless she had permission to do so, meaning Susan Sharpe could not tell the court what she knew. The magistrate thereby ruled that there was not enough evidence to warrant putting Hallett on trial. And, for the next 33 years, Menzies Hallett effectively got away with murder. Adding insult to injury was the fact than everyone in the general area knew he had committed the crime and were dismayed by this travesty of justice. "He strolled around town as if nothing happened, it was like water off a duck's back, but the whole town knew," says a former aquaintence.

Some regarded Hallett as having a screw loose, rather than as a murderer, remembering him as a "good talker,""a colourful character,""a bit loud after a few drinks," and "unhinged.""There was something a bit creepy about him," a former real estate employer said. "He dressed and talked nicely but, if I had known his past, I wouldn't have given him a job." Now, Hallett apparently could not walk into the yacht club of which he had been a member for years without being ridiculed and tormented, according to club member Brian Garlick. This treatment eventually forced him to move to Rotorua, less than two hours' drive from the location of the murder. "I'm surprised he didn't move further away," Mr Garlick said. "We were all intrigued as to why he wasn't brought to justice."

During his years of freedom, Hallett worked around Rotorua as an insurance agent and a real estate agent. He married Shona Watts in the 1980s, but divorced her a few years later. Watts's brother, Gary, has said that there was some indication of Hallett's character before they married. "My nephew, who was from Taupo, he told Shona before they got married that he had a bit of a shady history, so they must have had a fair idea."

Not long after divorcing Shona, Hallett met his current wife, Joan, an ex-pat Englishwoman working as a theater nurse. Joan has consistantly refused to comment to media.

It was the year 2006 before the Evidence Act changed the outdated notion that marital confidences were “so essential to the preservation of the marriage relationship as to outweigh the disadvantages to the administration of justice which the privilege entails” and it was the year 2011 by the time justice caught up with Menzies Hallett.

The Arrest and Trial

Police investigators spent a year building their case, then approached Hallett as he was shopping in Rotorua township. Shortly after his arrest, he told The Dominion Post newspaper that he knew nothing of the shooting, professing to have "no inkling" as to why he had been arrested. "I've had a two-hour battle with police trying to get me to admit all sorts of things, feeding me all sorts of misinformation," he went on. "I have no idea why he (Tahu) was shot. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Police, though, only ever had one suspect from the outset.

At his trial, the now 72-year-old Hallett remained calm and outwardly amenable. In direct contrast to what he had told The Dominion Post, he denied murder but admitted pulling the trigger that killed Rodney Tahu. Yet, in a last-minute about-turn, he retracted that statement, implying that he no longer accepted it was he who had pulled the trigger. This meant that the jury had to decide not only whether the killing was manslaughter or murder, but that the man who pulled the trigger was, beyond reasonable doubt, Menzies Hallett.

However, the prosecution had several people who had learned the truth directly from Hallett over the years to testify against him, including Susan Sharpe. All had the same story. Hallett had confessed in an apparent unburdening of the guilt that had begun to eat away at him. One former colleague who visited him in the court cells during proceedings said that "there was only one word that sprung to mind and that was just that he looked a little resigned."  And resigned he should have been. After nearly 34 years, time and the Evidence Act 2006 had caught up with Menzies Hallett. After a two-and-a-half week trial at Rotorua's High Court, the jury took only two hours and 45 minutes, including a lunch break, to find him guilty of murder.

The police were justifiably pleased. Rex Hawkins, now retired, was one of the men who initially arrested Hallett after the stand-off at the road block. His words echo other officers' sentiments: "Living with the knowledge for 33 years of who the offender was, and not being able to place him before the court, has been difficult. Having seen the pain and hurt the family suffered, it's been very frustrating to know of the admission Hallett made to his ex-wife, knowing that this wasn't able to be used by the prosecution, and me knowing he was the killer. So it's a real relief to see his conviction at long last and I hope it brings some satisfaction to the Tahu family and gives them some closure on this part of the tragic story."

Tahu family spokesman Colin Hair has said that "the hardest part is we've always known who was responsible for this. It was only an anomaly in the law that allowed it to go by, and I've got to say, on behalf of the whole family, a huge thanks to the police for their tenacious work and not just the work of the current people; the original outstanding work that was done by them back in 1979 which enabled this to come together to its conclusion today. We've had wonderful support from a lot of people."

Sentencing

On July 12, 2013, Menzies Hallett was sentenced to life in prison. Although a minimum non-parole term could not be imposed because, in 1979, such a sentence was not allowed under the law, Hallett will serve at least 10 years before becoming eligible for parole.

Jan. 3, 2014

Elizabeth Short

When the severed, mutilated corpse of Elizabeth Short was discovered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles on January 15, 1947, the search for the murderer of the “Black Dahlia” began its futile run. Over the intervening decades many theories have been advanced about who this killer was, but none have given serious consideration that he was a jilted boyfriend who stalked her as she emerged into the night from the Biltmore Hotel.

by Stephen Karadjis

In crime lore, the murder of Elizabeth Short, a/k/a the “Black Dahlia,” has achieved iconic status. Speculating on the murder of the Black Dahlia has turned into a cottage industry, with books and movies advancing a wide array of perpetrators. The truth is it remains the ultimate cold case, but there is the possibility she was murdered by an enraged, jealous boyfriend who stalked her from San Diego to the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

The enigma of Elizabeth Short and her brutal mutilation-murder brings two very
different pictures to mind. The first is a photograph of a vibrant and vivacious young
woman, very beautiful and self-possessed. The second is a horrible image of a defiled and besieged corpse, lying naked, drained of blood, and severed in two on a weed-infested vacant lot on Norton Avenue in Leimert Park, Los Angeles on the morning of January 15, 1947.

The gruesome discovery sent shock waves across the country. About a day and a half later the dead woman was identified by fingerprints. When news broke of the name of the 22-year-old victim a few people came forward to Los Angeles police to say they knew her. Police quickly established the last sighting of Elizabeth Short as being the night of January 9, at the time she left the Biltmore Hotel.

The medical examiner surmised from the extent of bruising spread over a wide area of her corpse that she had been severely beaten. There was no evidence of sexual assault because the killer had washed and scrubbed the body clean.

John Gilmore in Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia and the anonymous author of Infamous Murders– published by Chartwell Books in 1989 – report that the homicide bureau speculated Short had been tied up spread-eagled, either in a standing or supine position or suspended head first by a makeshift system of ropes and pulleys. That she was kept bound in this position for the period of her internment, as in a coarse and crude bondage session. The tell-tale signs being ligature marks at the wrists and ankles and impressions made by rope knots indented on the front of her forehead and neck. Numerous cuts had been inflicted by a sharp-bladed instrument in a criss-cross pattern over her pubic area, and pubic hair was torn out by hand. A knife was used to cut open her cheeks from each corner of her mouth, leaving a gaping injury from ear to ear. She was then cut in half at the waist and her body drained of blood.

No one knows the complete picture of her suffering.

The ‘Black Dahlia” Myth is Born

Overnight Short was dubbed “The Black Dahlia” by a sensation-seeking press. Kenneth Anger in Hollywood Babylon II and Steve Hodel in Black Dahlia Avenger suggest that reporters en masse, in their efforts to learn more of Short’s movements and lifestyle, talked to acquaintances already referring to her with this term.  

When Elizabeth Short first arrived in Los Angeles she lived in Long Beach and frequented a drug store. She wore her hair dyed black and outfitted herself in black garments. She was possessed of a fair complexion and striking, classic looks and the contrast of dark and light accentuated her beauty.

The drug store owner, Arnold Landers, told reporters that customers had already begun calling her the “Black Dahlia.”  A “B” movie, The Blue Dahlia, had opened about 10 days earlier at a nearby theater with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake playing the lead roles. Lake was a voluptuous golden-blonde and patrons of Lander’s shop who became friendly with Elizabeth Short began referring to her as “The Black Dahlia.” When newspapers across the United States began splashing this moniker on their front pages, Elizabeth Short was on her way to an ironic form of immortality.  

Elizabeth Short in Hollywood and San Diego

In the late 1940s, Hollywood resonated images of sunshine and prosperity. With the dark days of war over and the passage of time, a new era dawned. The motion picture industry pulsated. Thousands of people across the vast expanse were beckoned. Elizabeth Short would be one of these, arriving by train at Union Station in Los Angeles in July, 1946.  Like in Nathanial West’s The Day of the Locust, as a newcomer to town, she quickly gravitated to strangers and odd individuals of like-mind for support and company.

According to www.theblackdahliainhollywood.com, Short’s stay in Los Angeles had been a hit-and-miss affair. In four and a-half months she had lived in nine locations, moving eight times. Her first residence was at the Washington Apartments in Long Beach in late July. From there she rendezvoused with Gordon Fickling, an ex-U.S. Air Force pilot she had known from back east. They moved in to the Brevort Apartments on Lexington near Vine Street in Hollywood, but separated soon afterwards. Short then contacted Marjorie Graham, a girlfriend from Boston living in Hollywood and the two women roomed together, sometimes with a third person, at five different locations from late August until October 22, when Marjorie returned to Massachusetts. Their temporary residences included the Hawthorne Apartments in Hollywood, later the Figueroa Hotel in downtown, the private home of Florentine Gardens Nightclub owner Mark Hanson, and the Guardian Arms Apartments, also in Hollywood.

Short’s last residence in Los Angeles was a small and cramped apartment at the Chancellor in Hollywood, where she bedded down with seven other women in one main room, consisting of double-bunk beds alongside each of the four walls. A corridor separated this room from a narrow kitchen at the other end of the apartment, with a bathroom in between, off the small corridor.

On December 8 she took the Greyhound bus south to San Diego. Later that day she fell asleep in the Aztec Picture Theater and was awakened by Dorothy French, a 21-year-old cashier and usherette. Short spent a month living with Dorothy, her mother Elvira, and younger brother Cory in their home in Pacific Beach, just north of the city limits. During this time she dated a number of men, one of whom was Robert “Red” Manley, a 26-year-old travelling salesman from Huntington Park, in Los Angeles. On January 9, 1947 it would be Robert Manley who would drive Elizabeth Short back to Los Angeles and let her off at the Biltmore Hotel.

Short was discovered dead the following Wednesday, January 15. Betty Bersinger, a local resident, was out walking hand-in-hand with her 3-year-old daughter along Norton Avenue, when she came upon the shockingly mutilated remains of a young woman. She gasped in horror as she halted, frozen in fear. Then upon regaining her composure collected the child in her arms and ran to the nearest house, and immediately raised the alarm.

The press and police rapidly descended and soon a crowd of onlookers swarmed, agog to the stark sight that met their gaze. The chilly winter added an eerie and uneasy feeling. The gruesome spectacle that winter’s morning was one that was to go down as America’s most infamous cold-case murder mystery of the 20^th century. What people set their eyes upon that day was the body of a young woman severed completely in half at the waist. The two sections lying slightly at diagonals of each other were drained entirely of blood and grotesquely mutilated.

The Killer Calls the Editor

On the afternoon of Thursday, January 23, 1947, J.H. Richardson, the editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, received a brief telephone call from a man who alluded to himself as the killer. The caller promised to mail Richardson some of Short’s belongings as proof of his claim. (Richardson later in For the Life of Me: Memoirs of a City Editor recounted his conversation with the supposed killer. He perceived the man to be an egomaniac, a “superman” as Richardson worded it, who wanted to show the world what he could do and get away with it. This claim by Richardson was never made public at the time.)

Two days later, the only genuine item of mailed correspondence known to have come from the killer was intercepted by a sharp-eyed employee at the U.S. Postal Service on January 25, 1947.

Letters cut from the pages of a daily newspaper were pasted to the front of an envelope which read, “Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles Papers. Here! Is Dahlia’s Belongings, Letter to Follow.”  The small packet-sized envelope measured 8 inches by 5 inches. It was carefully and delicately pried open by the police.

 Pacios in Childhood Shadows- The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder’ itemizes the contents of the packet as a Greyhound claim-check; Short’s birth certificate; a Western-Union telegram signed “Red”; some snapshots; an assortment of business cards; a hand-sized, leather-bound address-book with the name “Mark Hansen” embossed in gold lettering on the front cover; and newspaper clippings of Mat Gordon’s obituary. Hodel in Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder writes that the envelope was dropped into a public mailbox at a downtown Los Angeles location and franked January 24, 1947 6:30 p.m.

The same day the envelope was posted the black handbag Elizabeth Short was carrying and the black suede high-heeled shoes she had been wearing at the Biltmore were recovered from the Los Angeles dump. Robert Hymans, who operated a cafe at 1136 South Crenshaw Boulevard, a few blocks from the death site, had noticed the shoes jutting out from the handbag where they had been tossed atop a garbage can, then driven away by the garbage truck. The killer had obviously mailed the contents of the handbag as he had told editor Richardson he would then dumped the handbag and shoes.

The small packet-sized envelope seized by police reeked of gasoline, causing detectives to surmise that the killer had momentarily toyed with the idea of burning the envelope, then decided to mail it after all. Other law enforcement reasoned the shrewd culprit soaked the packet to remove fingerprints.

Fingerprints however were enhanced by the LAPD crime-laboratory and despatched forthwith to the FBI for cross-matching, but no match was retrieved from existing files. The public has never been privy to whether the prints were complete and intact or partial, hazy smudges. But with no match on file in 1947, the Los Angeles Homicide Bureau concluded the perpetrator had never, up until murdering Elizabeth Short, been arrested for a crime and had never been fingerprinted and that the crime was a one-off aberration.

As decades passed with still no match forthcoming, detectives further deduced that the person responsible never again fell foul of the law.

A Special Grand Jury Convenes

Despite all the years having elapsed since the discovery of the murder of Elizabeth Short, the LAPD “Black Dahlia” files are still closed to the public. The files are contained in four filing-cabinet drawers. Only one LAPD homicide detective, aptly referred to as the “gatekeeper,” has the exclusive access to these drawers until the privilege is passed on to the next gatekeeper. This secrecy over the files is now obsolete. Almost every person associated with Elizabeth Short has died. Short herself would have turned 90 years old on July 24, 2014.

 In early 1949, the office of the L.A. District Attorney empanelled 12 civilians to form a special grand jury to investigate police corruption throughout the ranks of the LAPD. The other prime-purpose was to look-into the failure of the LAPD to solve the “Black Dahlia” murder and a string of other brutal slayings and abductions of women across the same time period. This monumental undertaking lasted the entire year.

The grand jury findings brought to light an avalanche of corruption at the highest levels. Inter-departmental jealousies and secrecy prevailed and were wide-ranging and it was found that very often information was not passed on. These revelations led to a complete shake-up of the LAPD, throughout the ranks.

Although many positive actions came in terms of bleeding out any festering corruption within the LAPD, there was little forward movement in solving the murder of the “Black Dahlia.”  One result of the grand jury’s deliberations was to cull the list of 22 suspects the D.A. investigators identified as possible suspects to a handful for follow-up investigation.

Profiling the Killer

Two theories prevail about the “Black Dahlia” homicide. One was that Short had never met her killer and the other that she knew him. What supports the second view are the mutilations inflicted on her corpse. To some investigators they are signs of a personal vendetta. Renowned FBI criminal profiler and author John Douglas adheres to this theory.

Douglas formed the view that the killer knew the victim well and held an emotional attachment toward her. He sees the killer as someone who lived alone, had a high school education, engaged in manual labor, and was under great personal and financial strain at the time of committing the murder. Douglas also suggests the murderer was not averse to wallowing in blood and could have worked as a butcher or in a similar profession or perhaps was a person who was accustomed to hunting animals and was likely as a child or youth to have mistreated or abused animals. The killer Douglas believes may also have been burdened by a personal physical defect or disability.

To Douglas, the ferocity and violence perpetrated on Elizabeth Short, the horrific mutilations to her corpse and the disposing of her severed body on public land for passerbys to discover are all telltale signs the killer knew the victim. The message being conveyed is that this was personal and based on a perceived wrongdoing the killer believed Short had done to him.

This personal association or perceived emotional closeness the killer felt he had to Short, coupled with individual criteria known about each suspect can be used as a premise to eliminate suspects from the DA’s 22 suspect list. From this list there were only seven suspects who were proved to have known Short on a social or personal level.

The D.A.’s Short List of Suspects

Of the seven suspects, only one deserves special mention. George Bacos, head usher at NBC Studios at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood, was an ambitious 23-year-old who was employed on a commission basis at a record promotion company, Jay Faber Associates. As another sideline to an already busy schedule, Bacos contracted entertainment talent to nightspots around town, including the Crown Grill located two blocks south of the Biltmore Hotel. Short frequented this establishment and was last seen walking in this direction.

Bacos had met Short while dating Short’s roommate, Lynn Martin. During the four plus months Short lived in Los Angeles, Bacos took Short out 12 times. When Short was identified as the murdered woman, police sought Bacos for questioning. His statements to police contained comments that were both disingenuous and derogatory towards his slain acquaintance. Website www.theblackdahliainhollywood.com provides the following quotes, attributed to him:

            I used to see her with a lot of people. As a matter of fact, for my part I tried to avoid her as much as possible. I was new in radio and made contacts, and she dressed kinda cheaply, you know too obvious and everything... I didn’t want to kiss her because of all that goop she used on her face. I’m used to nice cultured girls.

Photographs of Short taken in Los Angeles during the second-half of 1946 convey a strikingly attractive young woman who was discerning and elegant in the manner she dressed. Her blouses were buttoned to the neckline. There was nothing cheap or revealing. In fact she dressed with a taste for quality, contemporary fashion and outfitted herself in classic black. Her favourite colors were pink and blue.

Bacos says he was used to “nice cultured girls” yet he confessed to dating and having had sexual relations with Lynn Martin who was found to be 15 years old. She had lived with Short and Marjorie Graham at several hotel apartments in Hollywood and downtown. She essentially lived off the generosity of boyfriends and associates and from casual employment. Young women living on the fringes were easy targets for men of means like Bacos.

Jack Egger was head-usher at CBS Studios at Columbia Square on Sunset Boulevard near Gower Street. He liaised with Bacos on a professional level. Egger said of Bacos, to DA investigators, “I don’t like him very well. He is very conceited; I just don’t care for him myself. Never very close to him, just speaking acquaintance.” Egger related that Bacos frequented Brittingham’s Restaurant and Cocktail Bar adjacent to the CBS building. Bacos told investigators in response, “That used to be my hangout. I’d see her in there. I’d say hello, be as nice as possible, try to get away.” Remember this is what Bacos said after Elizabeth Short was found, the victim of a brutal mutilation-murder – a person he had dated a dozen times.

Bacos went on to become a television-writer in the 1960s and 70s. He received critical acclaim for writing a three-episode segment of the “Kojak” television series named “Night of the Piraeus.’ At age 80 in 2003 he wrote the novel Warriors Down. The setting is the backdrop of the Vietnam War with guerrilla fighting and news-reporting rampant. The lead character is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Michael Traynor. Traynor’s forte at journalism is brilliant and raw but far too honest and clean for some in the U.S. government – too close to the brutal truth. Those in positions of high office wanted his reporting contained. Feeling ostracised, alone and betrayed Traynor, now diminished, holds three criteria close to his heart which are worth living for: They are to reclaim his good name and self-respect and last in capital-letters REVENGE.

It is strange and uncanny that Bacos writes a novel late in life that has revenge as its principal theme. Revenge is destructive and insidious and at odds with reclaiming self-respect and one’s good name. Short’s murder is believed by many to be a crime based on incredible anger stemming from revenge.

Both the LAPD and the DA investigation held him to be a good suspect. There was no direct evidence but it is interesting that nearly three years following Short’s murder the DA had him on their condensed list of 22 suspects, aligning themselves with the LAPD.  Bacos is a definite possibility.

Debunking the Black Dahlia Literature

There have been several film adaptations and a number of books written recounting the murder of Elizabeth Short.

James Ellroy’s “The Black Dahlia,” a superbly drafted work of fiction, was published in 1987. Its main thrust was not so much about the murder and Elizabeth Short herself, but about the people around her and those investigating her murder, who become obsessed with Short and what happened to her. This is a theme that continues to the present day. There has been a number of non-fiction books authored afterwards and released onto the market.

Severed - The True Story of the Black Dahlia by John Gilmore is original, daring and masterfully written, depicting late 1940’s shadow-land noir Los Angeles. He builds his case outlaying the known facts with an interconnecting series of cameos or fabled stories coloring the pages. Jack Anderson Wilson is identified as the killer, a petty criminal harboring a long rap sheet, which lists burglary, theft and violence as his mainstay code of offenses. Despite continuing decades of similar activity intermingled with prison time, Wilson restricted his bad deeds never graduating to harder crime.

Severed was the first non-fiction work to be written and when released went down as a resounding success and was triumphantly acclaimed. For example Kenneth Anger is quoted as saying “My God, this is a frightening tale....The most famous murder in L.A., and we suddenly see that we knew nothing before, only the glitter and red of blood. This, now, is Pandora’s Box.”  Charles Higham was quoted as saying “This project stands as the only authentic true-crime book written on America’s most bizarre and haunting murder case.” But in the years since its release in 1994 there have been many detractors.

Gilmore did not provide any footnotes or endnotes, nor an index or bibliography. There is no way to clarify a lot of the things he has written. People have tried. One is Los Angeles Times journalist Larry Harnisch, who in 1997 wrote a story for the Times on the eve of the 50^th anniversary of the “Black Dahlia” murder. Harnisch who did his own research then and in the years since is quoted as saying that Gilmore’s book is 25 percent mistakes and 50 percent fiction. Gilmore expounds a number of cameos within the pages of Severed. Harnisch has said he has never been able to establish the existence of any of these characters Gilmore wrote about.

There is no evidence whatsoever Elizabeth Short ever met or knew Jack Anderson Wilson. None of her associates in Los Angeles ever mentioned him. Neither the Los Angeles Police at the time or the DA investigators mention him or held him to be a suspect.

One of the main selling points of his book was his theory that Short had infantile genitalia and was incapable of having intercourse and was a pseudo-hermaphrodite. This has, since the release of Gilmore’s book been disproven. Detective Harry Hansen and the LAPD found three people who had sexual relations with Short. The coroner’s autopsy report states that Short’s reproductive organs and system were “anatomically normal.”

Until Gilmore wrote his book there was little research or interest on the “Black Dahlia” murder but its releasesparked a renewed popularity and devotees and researchers have since taken him to account. John Gilmore is without doubt a highly talented writer and Severed is spellbinding and chilling, but the pages are cluttered with fairy tales.

Janice Knowlton in Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer asserts that her father George Knowlton impregnated Short in November 1946 and because of this pregnancy murdered her. Don Wolf in The Black Dahlia Files reports that newspaper mogul Norman Chandler, owner of the Los Angeles Times impregnated Short after she had serviced Chandler as a call girl through notorious madam Brenda Allen, and that gangster Bugsy Siegel murdered her on Chandler’s orders and that Gilmore’s suspect Wilson was an accomplice. These claims make great fiction but are preposterous. The autopsy report confirms Short was not pregnant.

Both Knowlton in Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer and Wolfe in The Black Dahlia Files assert that Short was a prostitute. Knowlton even claims that Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Short worked together as a double act. These claims are totally refuted by the DA investigation and by the Los Angeles police. Detective Harry Hansen in charge of the murder investigation stated “there was no record of any solicitation, offering or resorting or prostitution in any way, shape or form. She was no pushover. She’d bait and take all she could get and give out nothing. She did not put out.” 

Steve Hodel in Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder nominates his own father George Hill Hodel as the killer. Dr. Hodel was a very distinguished medical practitioner and highly regarded. But his reputation was totally destroyed when in 1949 his teenage daughter Tamar Hodel accused her father of incest and threw in for good measure a statement naming him as the “Black Dahlia” killer. Following the fallout from these allegations and his trial, even though he was acquitted of the incest charge, his reputation in tatters, he left Los Angeles early the following year, 1950. He was thoroughly investigated by the Los Angeles police and by the District Attorney’s office. Both agencies came to the conclusion that he had nothing to do with Short’s murder. One blundering Hodel makes within his 500-plus pages is to tell readers that two photographs displayed in clear black and white are of Elizabeth Short. Neither bust-shot looks anything like her. Hodel was forced to retract a few years back now when one of the women still alive came forward to say she was one of the young women and that she was a friend of the late Dr. George Hodel.

William T. Rasmussen’s Corroborating Evidence: The Black Dahlia Murder is a thoroughly documented and very informative work. The author makes the case linking the “Black Dahlia” murder to the “Cleveland Torso” murders of 1934-38. But along with Don Wolfe’s Black Dahlia Files he jumps on the bandwagon and backs Gilmore’s suspect Jack Anderson Wilson as the serial killer. There is no evidence of Wilson’s involvement in either case. No evidence he was even a killer at all.

Lastly Childhood Shadows: The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder was written by Mary Pacios, a childhood friend of Elizabeth Short from Boston. A very definitive and well written look at Short’s life prior to her arrival in California, her book provides an invaluable insight into the real person and the private world of Short. Pacios, incredibly, names wonder-boy Orson Wells, the actor and director and star of Citizen Kane, as the killer.  

Over the years several films detailing the “Black Dahlia” homicide have come to the screen. The Blue Gardenia, a 1953 Warner Brothers picture, was the first loosely based adaptation. “Who is the Black Dahlia,” a 1975 made-for-television movie was next starring Lucy Arnaz and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. In 1981 True Confessions followed, starring Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall. Finally 2007 saw the release of The Black Dahlia, based on the 1987 book by James Ellroy.

An Alternative Scenario

There is an alternate scenario never put forward in any books or movies that may explain what happened to Elizabeth Short: She was being stalked by a jealous boyfriend she went out with in San Diego. Of major support to the stalking theory is that no one in Los Angeles knew when Short would return. In fact, after a month in the San Diego area, she even came back a day later than she had planned to.

When Manley gave his statement to homicide detectives following the murder, he revealed a peculiar anomaly that interrupted the drive. He noticed Short craning and twisting her head round to the left as cars were passing in the same direction, and back toward those vehicles travelling south in the opposite direction. The logical explanation for this odd manifestation was that she was concerned someone she knew might be following her. Call it intuition or premonition, but it is not an uncommon occurrence for intensely appealing women to be stalked and this might have happened to her in the past.

Manley also told detectives he had noticed scratch marks on the outside of Short’s upper arms and a trickling of fresh blood. He said Short had told him she had a very jealous boyfriend who was of Italian descent. But the jealous Italian boyfriend she referred to could only have been one person, Sam Navarra.

 From the police investigation of her time in San Diego, a day-to-day time-table of Short’s movements established who she had been out with and how she filled in her time during that month. Website www.blackdahlia.info outlays this timetable.  The only man of Italian descent was Sam Navarra. Short had stepped out with Navarra on the last night she spent at the home of Elvira and Dorothy French at Pacific Beach, January 7, 1947. When LAPD detectives interviewed Navarra he told them that Short had said she was leaving the next morning to return to Massachusetts.

Manley arrived outside the French’s Pacific Beach home the next morning, January 8, and following an exchange of farewells the two were under way. But instead of heading off to a bus station for Short’s announced trip back to Massachusetts, they drove only a few miles before pulling in at the Mecca Motel where they booked a cabin for that night. Manley, working as a travelling salesman, had calls to make the following morning and Short made a decision to bide her time and wait until the next day January 9.

With the whole day in front of them they made the most of it. They had something to eat and drink and went out dancing in the evening. The following afternoon they set off along the Pacific Coast Highway for Los Angeles.

The day had gone and darkness had closed in as they approached the downtown area. Manley pulled in at the Greyhound terminal where Short checked her bags into a locker. Deposited were a suitcase, a small bag and hat box. They drove on a short distance, arriving outside the formidable facade of the Biltmore. It was dusk.

Elegantly attired in a black-collared suit with fluffy-white blouse and white gloves, black nylon stockings, high-heeled black-suede shoes and a full-length beige coat borrowed from her actress-friend Anne Toth, she stepped from the vehicle and walked toward the double-fronted doors which were opened by the hotel doorman.

Over the next four hours Short was seen passing the time, perambulating and loafing about the Biltmore’s marbled interior, every now and again stopping at the period phone booth to make a telephone call.

It is most likely she was soliciting known acquaintances for a place to spend the night. But the people she had met in Los Angeles were short-term associates and not friends of long-standing. Some she knew better than others. It is also possible she was telephoning the same person time and again. This is more likely because following her identification as the murdered woman no one came forward to say Short had telephoned them that night.

Somewhere around 10:30 p.m. she strode out into the night and disappeared into the maze of dark streets. Everything after this point is blackness, like turning off a television set, left to the imagination.

This is pure speculation, of course, but Navarra may have arisen early the morning after his night out with Short and was parked nearby to watch as Manley and Short departed. He perhaps followed them only to see the pair drive onto the grounds of the Mecca Motel. Then later, now incensed with rage, was there to observe the two retire for the night behind closed doors.

He may have been infuriated about her lying to him about going back to Massachusetts.  Perhaps by now he had made up his mind to take revenge and murder her. He stalked them all the way to Los Angeles and waited till she walked from the Biltmore Hotel and surprised her. Perhaps with no place to sleep the night and not having the chance to think she got into his car. He may simply have asked to talk to her. From there he most likely would have driven back to San Diego and then tied her up once inside his home. Navarra was said to have lived on Columbia Street, adjacent to the ocean. But it is possible he had a place in Los Angeles. No one would have seen him as it was late at night.

When Short’s corpse was discovered she had been savagely mutilated, her legs were lying spread-apart and a handful of grass-stalks were found protruding from her exposed vagina. Later during the autopsy the coroner found a hunk of flesh gouged from her left thigh which contained the tattoo of a small rose lodged full-inside her vagina. Her corpse was also dumped alongside a suburban footpath for all to see. The message the killer was conveying was that this was a woman of easy virtue, that she had done wrong by him and he had taken revenge upon her and taught her a lesson. The killer wanted the world to know this.

Navarra probably had an alibi given to police by unsuspecting family members or friends. At the time detectives were focused on someone with medical training and people like Navarra where the alibi checked out were disregarded as potential suspects and rapidly overlooked.

Navarra may not have been the killer but everything seems to fit in-place for it to have happened this way.

There are only three concluding possibilities remaining. The first is that Elizabeth Short eventually got through on the telephone to the man she had been trying for several hours to call and he agreed to pick her up outside the Biltmore Hotel. Then once back at his residence something happened to set things off leading to murder. The second possibility is that Short was abducted by a stranger. The third is that she was being stalked by a very jealous suitor. The Los Angeles Police made numerous inquiries in the San Diego area and must have been thinking along those lines of the possibility the killer came from that city.

Sam Navarra continued to live in San Diego the rest of his life, dying in 2006 at age 84. There is a photograph of Elizabeth Short pictured in a series of three snapshots taken in a photo-booth. The man pictured with her is described as “unidentified boyfriend.” The pictures are found in Gilmore’s Severed- The True Story of the Black Dahlia. These photographs look very much like the photograph of Navarra on www.theblackdahliainhollywood.com . The unmistakable bags under both eyes give away his identification.                   

Doreen Heskett 

When the badly decomposed remains of 5-year-old Doreen Heskett were discovered in a cow pasture eight months after she was abducted from a busy street, the citizens of Napa discovered that living amongst them was a sexual predator responsible for child abduction and murder.  While parents whispered rumors of police cover-ups, children became fearful of a faceless boogieman authorities were never able to unmask.

by Tobi Shields

 The year was 1963 and Napa County had yet to become a tourist trap of wine salons and congested city streets.  The population, an estimated 22,000, was predominantly white, working class families.  Parents allowed their children to walk to school and play outside unsupervised, and children lived without fear of kidnapping, as the potential dangers posed by the predatory sex offender had yet to enter public awareness.

In March 1963, the Heskett family lived at 2309 Main Street.  Marvin Heskett, at home recovering from his second heart attack, worked as a salesperson while wife Dorothy stayed at home and cared for their nine children ranging in age from 17 years to five months.

Doreen Disappears

Monday, March 25, 1963, was a routine day of school and play for 5-year-old Doreen Heskett.  Dressed in a turquoise blue jumper with red decorative stitching on the shoulder straps, a white blouse, stockings and blue tennis shoes, she walked with her siblings approximately one half mile to Lincoln Elementary School for her morning kindergarten class.  When class recessed at 11:30 a.m., the little blue-eyed blonde returned home to eat lunch with her mother and younger siblings.  Fellow classmate Linda Ford arrived at the Heskett residence shortly before 2 p.m., to play with her new friend.

With her husband out of town, Dorothy left her eldest son and daughter in charge of the younger children while she visited the grocery store.  When Dorothy returned, Doreen immediately approached her mother with the request to walk to Linda’s house.  Assuming Linda Ford lived nearby, Dorothy granted Doreen permission.  Unbeknownst to Dorothy, the Fords had recently moved to a new home on Sherman Avenue, approximately one mile to the north of the Heskett residence.

The girls set off for the Ford residence at 4 p.m.  Linda rode her bicycle with the smaller Doreen seated behind her.  The most likely route taken by the girls would have been north down Main Street; left at the corner of Main and Pueblo Avenue; right at Pueblo and Jefferson Street; north down Jefferson to the first street on the left, Sheridan Drive; and left onto Sherman Avenue.  It probably took the girls 15 minutes to reach Sherman.

Mrs. Ford cut the play date short and asked her daughter to escort Doreen home at 4:40 p.m.  Instead of walking Doreen home as her mother had requested, Linda parted company with her friend at the intersection of Jefferson and Pueblo.  At the time, Jefferson Street was a major thoroughfare of the city.  Then only a two-way street, it stretched approximately five miles in a straight line north from Trower Avenue to just beyond the intersection of West Imola to the south where it ended at Earl Stewart’s pasture.

When Doreen continued walking south on Jefferson, instead of east down Pueblo to Main, Linda called out to her friend that she was walking in the wrong direction.  Doreen replied that she wanted to go that way and proceeded to walk south, past the Union Oil bulk gasoline plant toward Napa Union High School. 

As dinnertime approached, Dorothy Heskett realized that Doreen had yet to return home.  At 5 p.m., she began searching her Main Street neighborhood, expecting to see Doreen in front of a house playing with Linda.  Two hours later, unable to find Doreen, she returned home to report her daughter missing to police.  The Napa Police Department logged her call at 7:15 p.m. After a search of the Heskett residence, responding officers ordered a door-to-door canvas of the neighborhood.

Without a clue to the child’s whereabouts, Chief of Police Sherwood Munk contacted the Marin County Sheriff’s Department to request bloodhound assistance.  In recent years, Deputy Michael McLean and his personally trained scent hounds had garnered media attention due to their high success rate of locating murdered and missing persons in the North Bay. 

An hour and a half after receiving Munk’s call, Deputy McLean and his bloodhound Brandy were in Napa.  The bloodhound picked up Doreen’s scent outside the Ford residence and followed it south down Jefferson to the crossing signal located in front of Napa Union High School.  There the trail came to an abrupt end. 

Chief Munk informed the local sheriff’s office and California Highway Patrol unit that he had a possible abduction.  An all-points bulletin broadcast from the Napa Police Department and Napa County Sheriff’s Office catapulted the case to a statewide effort by law enforcement.  Police departments in neighboring states and major cities received a poster bearing a photograph and description of the missing child.  Chief Munk kept Doreen in the public eye by asking newspapers to publish her photo and description with instructions for readers to clip the article for future reference.  Television and radio also featured news coverage of the search, informing neighboring counties of the urgency of the situation.

Thousands of citizens of Napa and surrounding counties contributed to the search.  Local service stations donated gasoline and oil to over 80 radio-equipped cars patrolling the streets.  Homemakers provided hot meals to the volunteers at search headquarters and offered babysitting services to the mothers volunteering in the search.

For five days, county and state agencies aided police in widening the search, eventually covering 100 square miles.  While off-duty law enforcement officers and firefighters from other jurisdictions volunteered their time to the foot search, city crews accessed wells, septic tanks and sewer mains.  Military personnel from Hamilton and Travis Air Force Bases scoured fields while their helicopters conducted aerial searches.

Theories as to what became of Doreen differed among local law enforcement agencies.  After two days without a ransom demand, Chief Munk ruled out the possibility that monetary gain was the motive behind the kidnapping and ordered his officers to question the nearly 100 sex offenders residing within the county.  Officers with the sheriff’s department were of the opinion that Doreen was still in the area, injured from a fall into a hole or a well.  While Chief Munk alerted surrounding agencies to be on the lookout for his kidnap victim, Sheriff Claussen used the local media to direct citizens to search their properties for the missing child.

As for Marvin and Dorothy Heskett, they too preferred to believe that their daughter was alive.  Perhaps not wanting to acknowledge the latest theory that a sex offender was responsible for her daughter’s disappearance, Dorothy had conceived a scenario in which a childless woman had abducted Doreen to raise as her own.  Marvin, on the other hand, trusted the intuition of Chief Munk and thought his daughter’s willingness to talk to people might have contributed to her abduction.  While both parents had cautioned Doreen not to talk to strangers, and if one should offer her a ride, to go to the nearest house and ask for help, the little girl had remained trustful and friendly.

Napans were fearful.  Prior to the disappearance of Doreen, the community was virtually unaware of the prevalence of child molestation by strangers.  The local newspaper would occasionally print an article announcing the arrest or conviction of a man accused of child molestation, but most often than not, such persons escaped the glare of the media.  That all changed when Doreen disappeared.  Front-page articles in the Napa Register alerted residents to the perverts in their midst by including the name, occupation, and address of every arrestee accused of child molestation.

Spurred by a reward fund created by local radio station KVON, daily reports of potential sightings of Doreen flooded the switchboards at the Napa County Police Department and Napa County Sheriff’s Office.  While the majority proved false, three reports from local citizens claiming to have seen Doreen on Jefferson Street that fateful afternoon proved useful to police. The distribution manager of the Union Oil bulk gasoline plant reported seeing a little blond girl walking south on Jefferson.  He recalled hearing another little girl yell to her friend that she was walking in the wrong direction.  During the second day of the search, a woman reported seeing a girl fitting the description of Doreen standing near the traffic signal in front of the Napa Union High School campus late Monday afternoon.  She saw the girl run away from the street, toward the school, as if scared by the traffic.          

A third sighting placed Doreen three miles south of the high school.  Several young men employed at the service stations located at the intersection of Jefferson and Imola Avenue reported seeing a young girl run across busy Imola at 5:45 p.m.  The young men all described the child as blond-haired and wearing a blue dress with matching suspenders.  They lost sight of the girl after she ran toward the River Park Estates construction barricade located at the end of South Jefferson.  In case Doreen had wandered into one of the fields between South Jefferson and the Napa River, Chief Munk ordered another foot search of the area.  To rule out the possibility that Doreen reached the water and drowned, local scuba divers checked the river and sloughs.  Days later, Undersheriff Gardner joined Hamilton AFB aviators for a low survey of the housing development and surrounding fields.

Described by the Oakland Tribune as one of the most massive hunts ever staged in California, the five-day search concluded on Saturday, March 30, 1963.  An estimated 3,000 people volunteered that day making it the most dramatic attempt to find a child in Napa history according to the evening edition of the Napa Register.  At nightfall volunteers assembled in the grandstands behind the National Guard Armory where Undersheriff Gardner thanked them for their tireless search efforts and donations to the KVON reward fund that had exceeded $5,000.

Investigating a Case without Leads

Desperate to find that one critical clue that would break the case, Chief Munk reached out to the State Department’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (CII) in Sacramento to request the assistance of an investigator skilled in kidnap and missing person cases.  In early April, Special Agent Sidney Jones came to Napa and interviewed every person questioned by police in the initial hours of the investigation.  Back at his Sacramento office, he ran background checks on every name in the voluminous case file.  Jones also ran criminal background checks on 290 registered sex deviates in Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.

Chief Munk assigned three officers to the Heskett case full time.  Assistant Chief Blair, Detective Sherman Schulte and Juvenile Officer Earl Randol investigated potential sightings and possible leads from around the North Bay.  Several jurisdictions, including San Jose and Petaluma, extended the courtesy of allowing Napa detectives to question suspects arrested for attempted abductions and molestations of young girls.

Some residents of Napa theorized that police had been unable to locate Doreen because her parents were involved in her disappearance and withholding information from investigators.  However, this was not the case.  Police had interviewed Marvin and Dorothy Heskett early in the investigation and neither parent had exhibited behavior indicative of deception.  In fact, both parents had openly discussed their personal lives and allowed police to search their residence on more than one occasion.  In order to quash the rumors, both parents agreed to undergo polygraph examinations.  Chief Munk announced in the April 18, 1963, issue of the Napa Register that the test results showed both parents were truthful and not involved in the disappearance of their daughter.

At the suggestion of Marvin and Dorothy Heskett, Chief Munk asked Los Angeles-based medium Lotte Von Strahl to examine the case.  Chief Munk and Detective Randol personally showed Von Strahl the route Doreen walked before she disappeared.  The self-professed psychic viewed mug shots of convicted sex offenders but failed to sense a connection to missing Doreen.  Before she left Napa, Von Strahl visited the Heskett home where she received a photo and lock of Doreen’s hair to aid her psychic investigation.

Desperate to know what became of their daughter, the Hesketts made a public plea to her abductor in the September 16, 1963, issue of the Napa Register.  Written by Marvin Heskett, the statement addressed the pain that his family had endured in the past six months as they imagined Doreen murdered and abandoned in some remote location.  The family did not wish any vengeance upon the person responsible; their only wish was to recover the remains of their family member for a proper burial.  While their public plea did not result in its intended outcome, the Hesketts did receive several letters of encouragement from concerned citizens.

Remains Recovered

On the morning of Thursday, November 21, 1963, Earl Stewart stumbled across the skeletal remains of a child in his South Napa cow pasture.  Police were baffled by the location as they had paid particular attention to the field due to its proximity to the South Jefferson/Imola intersection, the last location of a possible sighting of Doreen.  Undersheriff Gardner had participated in an aerial search of the field while law enforcement officers and volunteers had combed the field on three separate occasions.

During their initial observation of the remains, investigators noticed some important details.  There was a gaping hole in the skull; the missing portion lay about a foot from the body.  The body was face down; the right arm under the body, the left arm outstretched with the hand clasped together.  Despite the advanced decomposition of the body, the clothing was intact and only slightly faded.  Investigators theorized Doreen was the victim of a sex crime as the child’s panties were pulled down to her knees.  Missing were Doreen’s stockings and tennis shoes.

Various specialists examined the remains throughout the next eight months.  First, Napa pathologist Houghton Gifford and coroner Charles E. Burchell studied the bones at the pathology lab at Queen of the Valley Hospital.  Gifford found the condition of the remains consistent with a body exposed to the elements for eight months, the length of time Doreen was missing.  At the request of Napa County District Attorney James D. Boitano, renowned criminologist Dr. Paul L. Kirk assisted police in the investigation.  As head of the criminology department at the University of California at Berkeley, Kirk had extensive experience in forensic science and microscopy. 

Prime Suspect           

Confident that Doreen was murdered, Chief Munk focused on the likeliest of suspects: adult male sex offenders with a predilection for female children.  Since their initial questioning of local registered sex offenders in April, police investigators had regarded six as possible suspects.

One particular suspect, Claude Ray Jr., eventually became the prime suspect.  Ray had a history of molesting prepubescent female children.  In 1957, he served a one-year sentence in county jail for committing a lewd and lascivious act upon a 7-year-old girl. 

During the course of the investigation, police discovered information that placed the convicted pedophile in close proximity to Doreen Heskett.  At the time of Doreen’s disappearance, Ray worked as a laborer on the Ghisletta Ranch, property that adjoined that of Earl Stewart.  The Ray family resided in a small house on Lincoln Avenue, within sight of Napa Union High School and three blocks from the Heskett family.  Due to their residential location, the Ray children attended Lincoln Elementary School, the youngest daughter a classmate of Doreen.

Questioned within 48 hours of the abduction, Ray provided an alibi that Assistant Chief of Police Jack Blair was unable to disprove. Eight months later, when police recovered the remains of Doreen Heskett, Ray was again brought into the police department for questioning. Repeating his earlier alibi, Ray failed to convince Detective Earl Randol of his innocence. Unable to make an arrest without an eyewitness account or physical evidence that tied Ray to the abduction or murder of Doreen, Detective Randol was forced to cut his suspect loose.

Ruled a Homicide

The year 1964 brought disappointing news for investigators.  In late March, a year after Doreen’s disappearance, D.A. Boitano officially announced that the examinations, as conducted by criminologist Dr. Paul L. Kirk and pathologist Dr. Houghton Gifford, were inconclusive.  The badly decomposed condition of the body made it impossible to determine if the fractures present in many of the bones had resulted prior to death or as a result of trampling by the cattle that grazed in the field.  Kirk theorized that the discovery of the body three miles from the location where Doreen was last seen, coupled with the position of her underwear, were indicative of foul play.  In his final assessment of the case, Kirk determined the cause of death as homicide.

The final ruling in the matter of how Doreen Heskett met her death came in August.  Before a panel of nine jurors, investigators outlined the circumstances of Doreen’s disappearance and the eventual recovery of her remains eight months later.  Information gleaned from the autopsy revealed a perimortem (at or near the time of death) injury to the jaw.  Jurors officially ruled the death of 5-year-old Doreen Heskett a homicide.

A Suspect Kills

On the morning of Monday, October 4, 1965, Claude Ray Jr., drove to the Mendocino coast with his two youngest daughters, 9-year-old Jeanette and 7-year-old Renay.  Estranged from his wife, Ray had offered to drive the girls to school in order to spend some time with them.  Despite her husband’s recent threats to kill the children if she followed through with divorce proceedings, Mrs. Ray allowed her two youngest daughters to leave with their father that morning. 

When the school called to inform her of the absences, Mrs. Ray chose not to call police until she spoke with her husband.  When Ray arrived at his wife’s apartment later that afternoon, he claimed that he had dropped both girls off at school that morning, and then proceeded to drive to Mendocino to inquire about a job.  Mrs. Ray then phoned police to report her two daughters missing.   

When Detective Sergeant Earl Randol responded to the call, he immediately recognized Claude Ray Jr. as the prime suspect in the Heskett case.  With time of the essence, Randol grilled Ray on the route he drove to Mendocino.  Ray admitted that he had not inquired about a job, but rather drove along the coast pondering his marital problems.  Ray cast further suspicion upon himself when he voiced his concern that a sex fiend had kidnapped his daughters and they had met the same fate as the little girl found in the hayfield.

That afternoon, two dozen deputy sheriffs and volunteers aided police in a search of the area surrounding Westwood Elementary School.  Napa Police Department broadcasted an all-points bulletin to police agencies throughout California.  Randol informed law enforcement in Mendocino County that two Napa girls were missing and possibly met with foul play in their jurisdiction.  Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office immediately launched its own search of the area Claude Ray claimed to have driven on October 4. 

On October 10, six days after the girls disappeared, a man out scouting seashells with his family discovered the body of Renay Ray at Schooner Gulch, two miles south of Point Arena in Mendocino County.  The body was clothed in a pink sweater and gray wool jumper.  A white ankle sock and black Mary Jane shoe were missing from the left foot.  Also missing were the child’s white cotton underpants.  The Mendocino county coroner noted a large welt over the right eye and another that stretched from the bridge of the nose to the upper lip.  An autopsy revealed that the child was sexually assaulted prior to death or shortly thereafter.  Observing bruises around the neck, the coroner determined cause of death as manual strangulation.  The lungs, absent of water, supported the theory that Renay had been thrown into the ocean after death.

Mendocino County Sheriff Reno H. Bartolomie directed Sergeant Randol to arrest Claude Ray Jr., on the suspicion of murder and deliver him to the county jail in Ukiah for booking.  As Randol transported his prisoner, members of the Air Force and Coast Guard searched the stretch of beach between Gualala and Point Arena for the body of Jeanette Ray. After two weeks of combing the beaches and county roads failed to produce a clue to the whereabouts of the missing child, Sheriff Bartolomie, resigned to the fact that Jeanette had been swept out to sea, called off the search.

In Napa, D.A. Boitano and Assistant Police Chief Blair informed the press that detectives planned to question Claude Ray Jr., in relation to the Heskett case, as there were similarities between the cases that warranted further investigation.  However, detectives were unable to uncover any new information that might link Ray to the unsolved murder.

Ray Sentenced to Life in Prison

Mendocino County Superior Court found Claude Ray Jr., guilty of the first-degree murder of his daughter, Renay, on January 27, 1966.  Authorities were unable to charge him with the murder of his daughter Jeanette as their search had failed to recover a body.  Two days after his murder conviction, Ray received a sentence of life imprisonment. On July 11, 1983, he committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.

Renay Ray is interred at Tulocay Cemetery in Napa.  The inscription on the headstone reads, “My precious daughters, Renay M. Ray, July 10, 1958-October 4, 1965; In Loving Memory of Jeanette L. Ray.”  Three rows to the north lay the headstone of another little girl who lost her life to a depraved murderer.  Her headstone simply reads “Doreen Heskett, 1957-1963.”

A Fifty-Year-Old Cold Case

For 47 years, the Doreen Heskett case remained unsolved and virtually forgotten as Napa investigators focused their attentions on new, solvable cases. The case resurfaced in late 2010 when Napa County received a $500,000 federal grant for the funding of a cold case unit. 

Comprised of Napa Police Detective Todd Shulman and Napa County Sheriff’s Office Detective Pat McMahon, the two-man cold case unit reviewed 39 unsolved homicide and sexual assault cases, the oldest case being that of Doreen Heskett.  In the hopes of locating foreign DNA, detectives submitted the tattered remnants of the clothing worn by Doreen on March 25, 1963, to the Department of Justice criminal lab in Sacramento.  In June 2012, the federal grant expired and detectives disbanded the cold case unit.  As of this writing, there has yet to be a public announcement of the DNA results.

During the 18 months that the cold case unit was in operation, the Napa Register published several articles related to the Heskett case. Comments posted to the online edition of the newspaper reveal suspicions passed down through generations.  Napans who were children during the time of Doreen’s disappearance revealed an old rumor that the “good ol’ boys” of Napa had concealed the crime. Other comments addressed the long-standing question of whether searchers could have failed to locate the body in the hay-covered field, or whether someone familiar with the property had placed the remains there much later.  These suspicions are still evident today 50 years after Doreen Heskett tragically lost her life to a vicious child murderer who then dumped her in a cow pasture.

Fifteen years after the rape and murder of high school senior Noa Eyal, a man was arrested on a charge of domestic violence and was forced to provide a DNA sample. A year later, in 2014, that sample led Israeli investigators not to arrest the man, but to charge his son with premeditated murder, sodomy, and rape.

by Deborah Rubin Fields

February 1998 found middle class Israeli senior high school students cherishing their last month or two of relative freedom. The pressure to study for multiple spring matriculation tests had not yet fully begun and tests for post-graduation compulsory Israeli military service were not quite yet in high gear. So Noa Eyal and her boyfriend Eldad Bribrom decided to take in an evening movie at Jerusalem's Cinematheque theater. When the film (Wild at Heart, curiously about a couple on the run) ended, they took a bus to the center of town to catch buses back to their respective neighborhoods; Noa to the north Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot and Eldad to the close-by town of Maale Adumin.

Just after Eldad boarded his bus by the Davidka Square, things went bad. Noa apparently missed the last Egged Bus Number 36 back to Ramot. [Sidebar: In Judaism, the science of assigning numeric value to Hebrew letters is called gematria or numerology. In Hebrew, the number 36 equals or translates into the word chai or“life,” times two. (Chai is made up of the Hebrew letter het which is equal to eight and the Hebrew letter yud which is equal to 10. Hence, the sum 18 forms the word for “life.” The number 36 would therefore symbolically mean life, multiplied by two.) Thus, in a symbolic way, bus number 36 would have been Noa's lifeline.]

Maybe she considered the parental instruction many gave their adolescent children: "Don't take rides with anyone you don't know. If you don't make the bus, take a taxi or call home. We'll come for you with the car." Or maybe she used the magic words “nothing will happen to me” to envelope herself in a bubble of security. We'll never know what Noa was thinking because the next day a large search party consisting of friends, volunteers and police found her brutally raped and murdered in a wooded area of her neighborhood. Her attacker had apparently hit her on the head with a rock and knifed her to death. Her hands and mouth were found taped. Her clothes, including the bra one of her girlfriends found, were scattered. 

Despite 15 years of intensive police work, Israeli investigators could not find a match for the DNA semen sample extracted from Noa's body. All this changed, however, in the past year. And the way they found Daniel Nachmani, the suspected killer, was a bit of serendipity.

In 2013, the father of the accused was arrested on charges of domestic violence. Following standard procedures, Israeli police fingerprinted the suspect's parent and took a DNA sample for the offender index. Unexpectedly, the sample revealed a similarity to the database (known as the forensic index) DNA sample taken from Noa's body.

This prompted police to look for murder suspects within the father's family (Note: One half of a person's DNA profile comes from the person's father, the other half is inherited from the person's mother.) Police put the currently accused individual under surveillance, a decision likely reinforced by the discovery that four years prior to Noa's murder, the suspect--while still considered a minor--had apparently raped an 11-year-old tourist. However, because of his then juvenile status, his conviction was ascribed to indecent acts rather than rape. For this “lesser” crime, he was convicted to serve a minimal jail sentence.   

When the watched suspect spat on the sidewalk near downtown, the Jerusalem's police investigation unit’s undercover police managed to collect a saliva sample for DNA testing. This DNA sample was later compared with a DNA sample taken from the water cup the suspect used during his subsequent investigation. These samples matched the crime scene DNA sample.

Armed with this information, on November 11, 2014, the State Attorney officially charged the present suspect, Daniel Nachmani, with premeditated murder, sodomy and rape. According to Yehudah Shoshan, lawyer of the accused, while Nachmani is cooperating with police investigators, he nevertheless denies the charges against him.

Nachmani was now 38 years old.  He has been married for several years. His two daughters were already in their early teens. He still lived in Jerusalem and worked in a local garage as a car electrician. Ironically, the vice-president of Jerusalem's Magistrates' Court judge spotted the suspect at the courthouse and expressed astonishment at finding his Honda car electrician in police custody.

Nachmani's friends likewise have been shocked by his arrest. They immediately set about to raise money to help his unemployed wife. 

When Noa was killed, Nachmani was living in another section of Ramot, a few blocks from her family's home. The suspect's cellphone number was one of those listed as being in the geographic area of the murder scene.

In addition, soon after the murder, a taxi driver came forward to inform police he was parked near the Davidka Square bus stop on Sunday night, February 22, 1998, the night of the murder. Under hypnosis, he was able to produce (unfortunately out of sequence) the numbers of the license plate of a small white car in which Noa apparently accepted a ride. The cab driver said the back of the car had stickers, including the sticker of an elite Israeli army unit. The cabbie maintained the car was a white Ford Escort. Much to the chagrin of both the police and the family, a newspaper leaked this story. In any case, there has been some thinking that the car was actually a similar looking Renault.

In the early investigation, police looked for two witnesses the cab driver claimed were standing close to where Noa stood waiting for her bus. These two witnesses were supposed to be young, ultra-orthodox students. Although police checked numerous synagogues and religious schools (yeshivot), these two were never found and never came forward.

Over the years, a few other stories related to the murder investigation have been released to the public. Early on, for example, a person unknown to Noa's father called him claiming he'd seen passengers scrapping stickers off the back window of a white Ford Escort. The father referred this information to the police, but nothing concrete came of it.

Two women in a Tel Aviv bar informed the police that a young male had come into their favorite bar and had begun talking about the murder in a way that made them suspicious. However, he never returned to the bar.

In a further attempt to close in on the murderer, an Israeli television station even ran a program re-creating the details of the killing. But this unsolved murder show did not bring in any more leads.

If this Israeli murder story has a familiar ring to it, it might be because the familial DNA testing Israeli police used resembles the testing administered in the sensational American Grim Sleeper case. In the Israeli case under discussion, the “sins of the father” led to tracking down the son. In the California-based case, by contrast, it was the DNA of the son that raised suspicions when the dates of a series of California murders were applied. The son Christopher Franklin had his DNA tested following his conviction on a felony weapons charge. His DNA sample eventually led police to follow his father. They managed to get a DNA sample from a piece of pizza the father had thrown away. Lonnie Franklin's DNA matched DNA from the crime scenes. Based on this match, police arrested the father at his home. He was charged in the Grim Sleeper murders of 10 south Los Angeles women. Franklin has been held for several years already, as his defense lawyers continue to get trial delays.

The Knesset, Israel's parliament, only enacted the DNA data bank law in 2007. In preparing the legislation, Israeli lawmakers first looked at the data banks which already had been legally established in Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Ireland, UK, Canada, Australia and the United States. Israel's law most closely resembles the UK precedent.

Armed with academic degrees in biology and biochemistry, Israel police Commander Ashira Zamir began work on establishing Israel's national DNA data bank in 2003, four years before the data bank was made into law. DNA information had been collected since 1996, but had not been computerized. Samples were recorded in individual files. Today, Chief Superintendent Aliza Raziel heads Israel's DNA laboratory. Working for her are three female senior officers each of whom has a master degree in either pharmacology, biology or chemistry.

Once the law went into effect, these file samples were entered into the computerized data bank. After that step was completed, police began collecting biological samples from jailed prisoners, suspects, accused and convicted individuals. Each year, 55,000 DNA samples are entered into the Israeli database. The current database is said to contain 300,000 samples.

Israeli law does not allow DNA sampling in all cases. Moreover, if an individual does not want to give a sample, police may overrule the person's objection by taking a hair sample. Permissible situations include murder cases, attempted murder cases, drug cases, sexual offenses, property or state security. As the law stands today, police are not allowed to take a sample in cases involving knife possession, theft, fraud, threatening and gambling.

In the case of Noa Eyal, the disqualification of knife possession worked against the police, as

the current accused, Daniel Nachmani had previously been arrested for possessing a knife.

In 2002, the National Institute of Justice stated, “Criminal justice professionals are discovering that advancements in DNA technology are breathing new life into old, cold, or unsolved criminal cases” (Using DNA to Solve Cold Cases). In this regard, Noa's father Dr. Avi Eyal recently commented, “The evil now has a face.”

A trial date has yet to be set for the accused, Daniel Nachmani.

The brutal murder of Ted Brown and his teenage son would have been a capital crime had Brown Sr. not been a sex-offender in Burlington, Kansas, for years, a fact authorities tried to keep under wraps by giving lenient plea deals to two young men he had abused.

by Kim Walker

Early on a frigid February morning in 1983, smoke is seen by a Colorado state patrolman billowing from a concrete underpass near the Kansas state line. 

Local police are radioed, and they go to the home of Ted Brown to tell him his car has been stolen and left burning just outside of town. 

But Mr. Brown is dead on the floor of his trailer.  He is found face down, bound and stabbed repeatedly.  His son, “T-Bud” Brown, is strangled to death in the next room.  His head lies gently on a pillow, as if he could be sleeping.  

The phone is jostled off the hook where the old man died, and two blood trails streak the rugs from back to front of the house trailer.

In less than a week the Hutchinson News (Kansas) reports that two young men from the area are in custody. 

A farmer witnesses one young man walking away from Brown’s 1977 two-toned Cadillac (white over red).  The coupe de ville is scorched black and filled with guns and TV’s stolen from the Brown house trailer still in the backseat.  

“It appeared the two had been killed during a robbery,” said the sheriff.

Bruce Duffield,18, of Burlington and Randy Wilson, 20, of nearby Ruleton, Kansas, were arrested, and both were held in Kit Carson County jail by Chief Carrol Johnston on suspicion of killing 51-year-old Ted Brown Sr. and his 18-year-old so, Ted Jr.

The paper said Duffield and Wilson had been “guests” in the Browns’ Burlington home before the slayings, and were now the only suspects in the killings of a local “businessman” and his son.   

And all of that is true, as far as it goes.    

Crime Procedural

Three-hundred-and-sixty-four days later another article appears in the Hutchinson News, with a headline saying simply “PAIR SENTENCED.” 

Justice “swift and sure,” but around the bodies of the two dead Ted Browns, everything had changed. 

The two young suspects confessed, or turned on one another, and faced the death penalty by lethal injection. 

But, District Court Judge Carl Absmeier sentences Duffield to only 12 years for his guilty plea to second-degree murder.  And Wilson receives six years with possible parole in three.  From the death penalty, to three years in a light security prison. 

The Role of the Press, Public Defenders and The Plea Bargain

Five weeks after sentencing, an in-depth article appears in The Denver Postby a young reporter, Bill McBean.  It says a local jury never heard the whole story of what happened to the Browns.  What they missed was a story with the power to scar everyone involved forever. 

The newspaper outlined a litany of rumors, gossip, and “black little secrets” held tight by the small town of Burlington. The  innuendo makes Capote’s In Cold Blood (25 years and two hours across the Kansas prairie), sound modest by comparison.

When state police radioed Burlington cops to investigate the stolen car of a local businessman, nobody knew the nature of Browns'“business.”  Duffield and Wilson weren’t “guests,” in the traditional sense, and robbery was never their only motive.  

Although Ted Brown Sr. had avoided arrest, almost everyone in town knew him to be suspicious.  He ran Brown’s Sewer Business, and was a “turd herder” by trade.  But for years, school kids told stories of Brown trading alcohol and drugs for sex with underage kids.

Burlington became the sort of bell-jar justice system that provides leniency for killers charged with capital murder.  They made the offer and acceptance of a plea deal seem easy.  Local D.A., Doyle Johns, initiated proceedings for both young men to avoid both a jury trial, and the death penalty.  It seemed like the right thing to do.  So, 10 months into custody, Bruce Duffield pled to second-degree murder and Randy Wilson, 21 at the time, pled guilty to accessory to murder and aggravated robbery. 

When a father and son are slain in their own home by guests, how is it Duffield become eligible for release in five years, and Wilson in as little as three? 

Maybe the plea would be easier to make, than to live with.   

Small Town, Big Reaction

The McBean article documents Burlington citizens as split between those who felt the sentences were either too easy or too harsh.  And even, over who was the “victim” in the events which transpired.

But those closest to the case saw mitigating , extenuating  and even vindicating factors in the slayings of Brown and his son. Truman, the public defender representing Wilson, said the plea was actually “a great bargain,” saving taxpayers money and “everyone a lot of hardship.”  According to the DenverPost, “the trial would have produced some explosive evidence and testimony.” 

But the hidden costs would be paid, and “the truth” served, one way or another. 

The plea deal was easy, because if the case made it to court, reports from the Colorado State Patrol would show Ted Brown Sr. was involved in auto theft.  But that was the least of it.  Underage witnesses were ready to testify that they’d been given drugs by Brown and his son, “T-Bud,” in exchange for sexual favors. 

Long-held fears around town would be confirmed.  Brown would be exposed as a homosexual and sexual predator. 

Brown would be unable to defend or ingratiate himself, as he often did, by handing out a wad of hundred dollar bills.  And, “the elder Brown’s homosexual lovers would have been required to take the witness stand,” and many would be revealed as clearly underage. 

And Brown’s recent sex partner now on trial for murder, 19-year-old Duffield, was poised to tell a similar story.

If the plea deal failed, what was private would go public.  And much of it would be raw and unfiltered.

And, frankly, Burlington could do without that.  But what villagers were trying to avoid was now coming out in a major newspaper, and not some sleazy tabloid either.  Even that version was cleaned up, compared to the truth. 

Public defender Truman outlined his defense strategy "proving" that Bruce Duffield had an ongoing sexual relationship with the elder Brown.  Truman states the 51-year old Brown was "blackmailing" Duffield, by threatening to tell the entire town details about their sordid sexual affair. 

Anyone with change for a paper could now see all the news fit to print, and imagine the rest.  

The plan to avoid spending taxpayer money on a more “public trial,” was looking like less of a bargain.  At least in court, there were rules of evidence.  And no attorney would allow the badgering of Brown on the stand.  But from the front page of the Sunday section, the article outlines parents, school officials, and leaders in positions of trust who knew what was going on at the Brown trailerhouse. 

Those with suspicions did nothing.  So, the trading of sex for drugs and liquor had been going on for years.

And libel laws don’t protect dead perverts. 

Private Investigators

You can watch TV all your life and never see an episode of "Mayberry, RFD," where Andy’s office fills up with reporters and investigators uncovering the town’s hottest sex crime.  Maybe because TV had a code of decency, or because Andy handled everything himself.  But if Mayberry was real, it had sex crimes.

“I do not believe they (Duffield and Wilson) were convictable of first-degree murder,” Truman said.  A wild and scandalous trial would’ve ended in a split-decision or even an acquital, and serve nothing.  Because, by now, investigators had found other victims around Burlington, some prepared to come forward and testify that Brown was a sex offender who should’ve been locked up long ago. 

It was anyone’s guess why he’d never been caught. 

When one young man tried to break off his relationship with Brown, the old man threatened to tell everyone in town they’d had a “homosexual affair.”  If the young man stopped having sex with Brown, the old man was ready to expose himself and everyone else.  “He seemed kind and helpful but he was really a liar.” 

Private investigators got to the bottom of what really happened in Burlington. Their notebooks provided many of the most damning quotes, “He tried to appear honest, but he was not. He was a blackmailer. He was evil.”

And, Brown wasn’t exclusively homosexual, saying “anything between 16 and 60 is fine with me.” 

What could possibly go wrong?    

The Power of Truth

According to The Denver Post, Brown may have blackmailed as many as 20 young males and females with whom he had sexual relations.  Brown was “obsessed” with appearing as youthful as possible. The majority of the men and women he dated were under 25, and he talked often about getting a hair transplant to be more attractive. 

But his urges went beyond that.  Hanging out at under-age clubs in Colorado Springs and Denver, Brown passed out money in big bills, and bragged about keeping cocaine stashed in the back of his TV’s. 

Around party time on a cold night, Brown knew how to mix drinks and drugs with equal parts teen insecurity and jealousy, then shake the mixture till it erupted in explosive drama.   Perhaps someone exceeded their dosage, because lives were ended that night.  Others were broken long before. 

And now, Ted Jr. was dead, perhaps for reasons as simple as living with his demented dad. 

Ken Bishop, owner of the local building supply in Burlington explained how Ted Brown’s murder divided the town, because the old man led a deviant lifestyle.  “My secretary felt these boys got off scot-free. My attitude is we should have pinned a badge on them and called them champions of justice,” Bishop said.

Lots of people in Burlington agreed that what Brown did, and what he represented, was “just sick thinking.”  Whether evil or sick, or just illegal, authorities had resisted doing anything.  The one undercover investigation targeting Brown had failed to find enough evidence to bring charges against him.

But that was while Brown was still alive, and while those in charge were bound by search warrants and the letter of the law.  Private investigators arriving in Burlington had no such qualms, and publishers knew libel was more difficult to prove when you’re dead.   

If this were the comic books, a new breed of super-heroes would be called, dedicated to bringing sex-offenders to “justice” where needed.  A beacon would shoot across the sky near the water tower, and the call for help would echo across the train tracks.  Because without it, someone might take the law into his or her own hands, and be justified in doing it. 

Burlington’s best-kept secrets had the power to bring out the worst in everyone.    

Some remained in denial, clinging to the notion that Brown’s kid, Teddy Jr. (T-Bud), was innocent.  His mother, Betty (now Franklin), said nobody could come up with “anything bad” to say about her little Teddy.  Consider the source.  Betty was married to Brown for 25 years, until they divorced in 1979, four years prior to his death.  According to reports, this was a full decade after Brown was first suspected of selling, or giving, drugs to school kids. 

When questioned, Betty recounted how Ted Sr. would leave her for days at a time with two small children.  He gave them money, but no emotional security. 

In a small trailer, it’s hard to deny that Junior saw things—bad things -- and did nothing.  The same could be said of his mother.  Maybe neither of them felt things were that bad or serious.  It’s not clear why Betty eventually got out. 

The Browns’ neighbor, who must’ve witnessed more than most, felt the two young killers should be given every “break” the law would allow.    

But Betty’s latest husband, Dale Franklin, was angry that Colorado laws allowed “plea bargains” to be made for any reason.  “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Why even go through the motions if you’re not going to penalize someone? What deterrent does anyone have from killing somebody?  What’s the use of taking them to trial in the first place? It makes no sense.”

Maybe Dale missed the point of that week’s sermon, and every sermon on conscience delivered since the dawn of Chistiandom.     

 “Brown was very, very charming…and he was very, very nice to me, but he was a rotter, there is no getting away from it.”  Peggy Bishop, Burlington Building Supply.

It was becoming clear to everyone that lots could go wrong.  Lives were broken because secrets were kept.  And whether T-Bud was dead because he lived with his dad, or had strange peccadillos of his own, the private investigators served another purpose.

If one travels the world and The Seven Seas, few things are so powerful or baffling than the clout of truth-telling.  The whole truth and nothing but…so help you, God.  The passages of John 8:32 were familiar to Bruce Duffield.  He’d gone to church with his father the night he killed the Browns. 

Which proves “truth” is elusive, even to those who act like they know it.  We all believe we can tell the authentic from the false, and are capable of serving on juries, in judgment of others.  Due process is what separates American justice from Islamic Law (among other things), and that’s fine for the courts.  But what about the press?  And the harsher court of public opinion?

At this point, Duffield’s public defender was tasked with convincing authorities that Ted Brown Sr.’s corpse was rotting in that “special place” reserved for monsters and sex offenders. 

Prior to their arrival, there were no witnesses.  So investigators went to work on Duffield and Wilson.  At first, Duffield hedges over details demonstrating that the deaths were brutal.  He ignores the fingernail gouges left on Brown’s body, deep and extended from his neck to his crotch. 

Duffield isn’t ready yet.  He denies abusing others, or wanting to be abused. 

For the sake of his family, Bruce seems ready to live with the story of what happened as a robbery gone wrong.  With guns all over the Brown house, why scratch someone into submission?  And if Bruce Duffield were to do time in prison, it might be better to have the reputation of a “killer” than a “queer.” 

But Randy Wilson has a different version of events when he’s questioned a week after the killings.

Another Night in Paradise

When the car is found burning beneath a bridge, a farmer witnesses a young man walking away.  There is no full moon, but the farmer is also a tracker and trapper and he follows the trail. 

In B’town the night before, not all the teenagers are experimenting with sex and drugs as if the Sixties have just arrived to the Great Plains.  Some are still playing basketball, or hanging out at the Sinclair gas station smoking cigarettes. 

The night of his death, T-Bud is playing basketball at a nearby gym and there is talk of driving to Colorado Springs, normally two-and-a-half-hours away.  The drive is half Interstate 70, and half two-lane county road, where speeds often exceed 100 miles-an-hour.

Play turns physical and someone undercuts T-Bud, slamming him to the floor.  Words are exchanged but no blows are thrown.  When play ends and the boys leave the gym, it is snowing. 

T-Bud wants to see his girlfriend in nearby Goodland, Kansas, but decides to call her instead because the snow starts coming down harder.  Her name is Bambi, and she was once a runner-up for the Little Miss National Talent Contest.   Her class ring is taken from Teddy’s finger at the autopsy.

Across town, Randy Wilson and Bruce Duffield buy four packs of cigarettes.  They argue about how much money they can make selling guns and electronics in pawn shops in Colorado Springs.  It’s a conversation they have all the time.  But they agree to head toward Ted Brown’s trailer instead of making the drive, where there is always beer and a large liquor cabinet that never runs out. 

When they arrive it’s a little after nine o’clock, and Ted Brown is watching “Dynasty,” a nighttime soap opera on Thursdays.  The show features the Carringtons, a wealthy family set in Denver, starring John Forsythe as a rich oil magnate and Linda Evans as his hot new wife, Krystle.  A lot like “Dallas,” Dynasty is known for “putting the nasty” back into the CBS lineup.  The boys join Ted Senior leering at Linda Evans, and drinking. 

Wilson begins throwing back beers, and 18-year-old Duffield is quaffing vodka and Sprite, Ted’s drink of choice in the winter of ’83.  One drink leads to another.  Randy Wilson isn’t drunk, but he feels Duffield is fast reaching his limit.

Wilson’s brother, Richard, owes Ted Brown money.  But Randy is looking to leave Burlington “for good,” so he asks Ted to lend him some money for gas.  Ted refuses, but in a nice way, almost apologizing for being unable to front Randy because he’s a little short just now.

When Ted says he has to go to bed, he gets up from the couch and asks Randy if he’d like to sleep over.  Ted says it’s getting late, but it’s perfectly okay if the boys want to stay.  So, the old man gets some pillows and blankets and both boys settle in. 

The CBI (Colorado Bureau of Investigation) report states that around midnight, as Randy falls asleep on Brown’s couch, a drunk Bruce Duffield leans over him (Wilson), and tries to kiss him on the mouth.

Wilson resists, kicking Bruce off him, and explains to cops later “I’m not into that.”  But Randy’s clearly angry, and his shouting wakes the old man, who comes out and settles both boys, saying “We’ll talk this all out in the morning.” 

They fall asleep, but Randy Wilson hears a loud thump in the night that wakes him.  The noise is Duffield, binding the hands and feet of Teddy with an electrical cord.  In the room right next to where Wilson is trying to sleep, Duffield is strangling T-Bud with two pairs of socks, one light and one dark blue. 

According to the coroner brought in from Denver for the autopsy, Ted Jr. was dead for hours before the old man is scratched and stabbed several times.  If there is a problem with Wilson’s chronology, no one seems to notice. 

Then, as Wilson tells it, Duffield fills the Cadillac with guns and two TV’s (earlier containing cocaine).  Bruce backs out T-Bud’s pickup to clear the driveway, so that together he and Randy can head out. 

They end up four miles east of town, near the Peconic overpass. 

According to Burlington police files, the Browns own nearly 50 firearms, but fewer than five are taken. 

At this point in the night, Randy and Bruce go to pick up Wilson’s car, which has trouble starting in good weather, let alone a frigid February night in Colorado.   Randy and Bruce then argue, and Bruce starts hiking back to town in his blue nylon “moon boots.”   Bruce returns sometime in the night and snuggles under covers in the car, where Randy is again, asleep.

The next day, the farmer is able to identify the moon boots as distinctive. 

When Randy Wilson’s affidavit is signed a week later, it is Bruce Duffield who does all the killing, all of the stealing, and is responsible for burning the Cadillac belonging to Ted Brown. 

Wilson’s version remains fairly consistent.   

It’s hard to know what really went on that night, or what Ted Brown wanted to talk out the next morning.  Was it about being gay?  About being attracted to, or loving, another man?  Or maybe about how all young men experience “natural urges”?     

Whatever…  Because this was not Ted’s first sleepover, he might’ve been “helpful” in processing what was going on between these young men.  No shame and no blame.  But that conversation would never occur, and the score would be forever settled…sort of.

Case Files - 30 Years Later

On a Monday morning in late September of 2014, the current Burlington Police Chief, Barry Romans, hands over the original files for CASE #83CRI.  No FOI (Freedom of Information) request is offered or needed.  Chief Romans provides coffee and a conference room, and then casually asks what will be done with the information in the files. 

The chief explains he was only 11 at the time of the Brown murders and will be of limited help, just as a younger cop walks through and explains he was only 3 in 1983.   Hours later, hundreds of files (including photos), once crammed in two large accordion files, will fit on a thumb drive. 

Chief Romans says that local knowledge of the Brown double homicide has always been explained to him as a “simple robbery gone wrong.” 

The robbery angle works, but simple doesn’t.  Except perhaps in the sense of “blood simple,” a term from Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest, whose setting is a corrupt town in the middle of a gang war.  Blood simple describes a confused and paranoid state of mind, used again in the Coen brother’s 1984 film of the same title. 

Exposed to ongoing violence, an investigator reduces chaos to simple terms—kill or be killed.  In the corrupt little town, and in the neo-noir film, there is no redemption, and no moment where one of the characters realizes that he’s done something wrong.
“This damn burg’s getting to me.  If I don't get away soon I'll be going blood-simple like the natives."

--Continental Op    

Maybe Bruce Duffield is surprised in that exact moment while he’s stealing guns, TV’s, and Ted Brown’s Cadillac.  He wants to run off to Mexico with Wilson, a man he’s just tried to kiss.  In that instant, Duffield decides he can’t leave witnesses, so he kills both Browns.  Standard criminal behavior.

So, why kill the old man brutally, and the young boy gently? 

Perhaps because only one of the Brown’s was a true sexual predator.  The creepy, old, sex offender will pay the ultimate price for blackmailing Duffield. 

Duffield is driven simple.    

By Reason of Insanity

Burlington would like to forget any darker motive for killing the old man, one more primal than drugs or money.   It’s easier for the town to recall that the “bad guys” in this story were punished.  The rotter is dead.  His killers were convicted and punished. 

But just that quickly, Chief Romans adds another dimension.  Both Bruce Duffield and Randy Wilson are now dead. 

Randy Wilson died in what Romans calls “a straight up murder,” believed to have happened while he was still in prison.  

Duffield served his time, then died in a car “accident” that many say resulted from a conspicuous “brake failure.”  The chief then mutters something about “mob ties” and “possible retaliation” for the death of Brown.  There were rumors Brown had organized crime connects, but a Burlington “Cosa Nostra” sounded untrue.  But hearsay like that, in towns like this, has its own life.  It’s not a rumor if it refuses to die in 30 years.    

The files reveal that Wilson could not correctly spell his own middle name, and suffered from severe dyslexia.  They also show a thorough crime scene investigation, and a tight timeline of “justice served swift and sure.”  

Locals deserve credit for freighting the process of law and order, with one exception.  The first time Bruce Duffield is interviewed, he speaks with policeman, Wayne Mills, but there is no record of that exchange.  More important, there is no record of Mills reading from the little card Burlington police carried at that time, containing Bruce Duffield’s Miranda warnings (i.e., you have the right to remain silent…the right to an attorney, etc.).  

It’s not clear what Duffield admitted, or is later claimed to have said in that meeting.  There is no record of how or when he changed his story, or what caused him to admit to killing Brown.  Later, it is a legal sticking point.     

Within weeks, a court order finds both defendants indigent, and appoints public defenders for Wilson and Duffield (David D. Wymore and Brian D. Shaha respectively ).  All hearings are ordered closed to the press, and Judge Absmeier refuses a request from reporter Steve Gray from KCNC-Channel 4 (Denver), preventing any cameras—video or still--into the courtroom.  Judge Absmeier says cameras would lead to a “circus-like atmosphere.”.  Having seen the depositions, he would know.

Poor, confused, and Wilson illiterate, both young defendants are then denied bail.  The judge places a limit on “fees” for a psychiatrist or psychologist at $2,000.  A social worker is granted, but limited to only $250 in billable hours. 

In April of 1983, Bruce Duffield files a hand-written request, asking if he may remain in Kit Carson County Jail to be near his family and his minister.  The judge approves. 

Over 20 motions are filed by spring, including one arguing that any and all statements made by Duffield are inadmissible as evidence “due to the defendant’s mental and physical conditions, and (because) such statements were involuntarily obtained in violation of due process.”

The public defenders hire private investigators, who spend the summer of 1983 interviewing young people in and around Burlington.  And by August—within five months of the slayings—both young men have entered pleas of Not Guilty—Duffield’s “by reason of insanity.” 

In September, the judge approves an order for payment of $2,054.85 in “fees” to Troy K. Zook, a Colorado Springs PI with Zook and Curry Legal Investigations.  It includes 824 miles at 20 cents a mile and 71.75 hours of time. 

The trial of Randy Wilson is scheduled for right after New Year’s, 1984.  Duffield will be tried immediately after, commencing January 23, 1984.

Then, on Halloween, public defenders for Bruce Duffield file a motion to strike the death penalty from consideration “in that death in the gas chamber constitutes cruel and unusual punishment contrary to the United States Constitution and the Colorado State Constitution.”

Duffield’s “insanity” will not have to be proved (further), and even though Colorado no longer has gas chambers, the judge allows both boys to escape the threat of lethal injection.  

Six weeks later, Randy Wilson files a new plea of “guilty.”  And three days before Christmas in 1983, Duffield is allowed, or encouraged, to plead guilty to second-degree murder “with restitution.”  Restitution is limited to burial expenses for the Browns. 

One day from a year since the original killings, the following appears in a nearby Kansas paper.

Hutchinson News Thursday, February 2, 1984

Swift and sure. 

In May, 1984, Randy Wilson writes a hand-written letter to Judge Absmeier in a wide, barely readable scrawl.  Sent from Buena Vista medium security prison, the looping and canted script explains how Randy has thought “long and hard” about what happened since going to jail. 

Wilson confesses to watching or seeing Ted Brown Jr. die, and that’s all, but that he will have to live with that “day in and day out till God comes back and the rest of my life.”  It is a gut-wrenching letter, made sadder still when Wilson misspells his own middle name. 

The judge writes back right away, saying he is pleased Wilson is in close contact with his parents, “and that you (Wilson) realize that we are all responsible to a higher authority.”

And in closing, “I believe that God can forgive any transgression if we are sincere in repentance.”

The judge affixes a very small sticky note to the original, “file with Wilson case.”

Very soon, also postmarked from Buena Vista, Bruce Duffield sends a four-page hand-written letter to the judge, addressed “Dear Brother Carl.” Duffield explains how he prayed throughout the four-hour bus ride to Buena Vista “to get in the Lord’s hands.”  He tells of his plan “to take the Lord’s word to all the lost souls in prison.”

Then the letter confides that Duffield’s oath was immediately tested. 

“Anyone who goes to church or Bible study is a baby raper or snitch—an informer for the man.”  But when inmates realize he (Duffield) is a convicted murderer “they began to respect me.”  At times when Duffield finds the courage to attend Bible study, other inmates sit back and watch “to see if God is really real they watch my diligence.  I just tell them God has a master plan and they are part of it.  The plan is to show God’s love and Glory to all man kind.” (sic). 

At Christmas, Duffield sends Brother Carl a colorful card with a wintry scene of a young boy dragging a fresh-cut pine tree home through deep snow.  “God Bless You” is written in one-inch-high letters across the top.  “I write this to my Brother in Christ and to show you that God is in control and to tell you that I love you as my brother in the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

It is a long letter concluding in the margin:  “p.s. Write back if you can I would enjoy hearing from you.”  Signed, Your Brother in Christ’s Name, Bruce Duffield.  

The judge does not write back.

Months later, in early February of 1985, Randy Wilson writes again, this time from Delta Honor Camp in southern Colorado.  Wilson asks the judge whether he is “getting credit” for his time spent as a trustee while housed in Lincoln County Jail, because his sentence is becoming harder to serve.  There is no mention of Randy’s progress toward his GED, or what he’s been able to learn about himself in prison.

In August, yet another letter arrives from Wilson, this time asking the judge how to get back 160 acres of family farmland.  It relates how in 1976 the United Bank of Denver foreclosed on his mom and dad.  In November of 1983, while Randy was in jail awaiting trial, his parents attended a “hearing” in Goodland, Kansas.  While there, the bank went to their farm house, removed everything, and changed the locks on the house and barn. 

Wilson went on to explain, “After the hearing Mom and Dad were thrown in jail… Anyway’s, I just wanted to ask you how to go about getting it back?” 

A simple eight-line letter was sent in reply from Judge Absmeier, saying “by statute, judges cannot give legal advice.”  It concluded, in effect, get a good lawyer.  It is Wilson’s last known correspondence. 

Postscript

In September of 1983, investigators Troy Zook and Andrew Dennison were each paid a few hundred dollars, after expenses.  It is an innocuous detail in the overall telling. 

Thirty years later, both men tell (independently) the story of a tormented kid, not yet in his twenties, who was “turned” by an old man.  That man, Ted Brown Sr., remains a sexual predator in both their minds.

When Zook and Dennison originally arrived in Burlington, nobody wanted to share, though everyone had stories to tell.  Wilson wanted the world to know Duffield was the killer.  Duffield was careful to avoid sounding like he might be gay.  

Some “secrets” Bruce struggled to maintain to the grave, and many of the “explosive details” of Burlington in 1983 are now gone.  Some lost to memory.  Others dependent upon handwritten notebooks since destroyed by a basement flood, in the case of investigator Troy Zook, or just plain lost in the case of Andy Dennison.

But both investigators agree, Bruce Duffield was a hapless pawn of the older Ted Brown.  Brown regularly paid young people to strip for drinks and for drugs and for money.  Brown then took Polaroid pictures of their youthful, naked skin. 

Both investigators believe Duffield was straight.  Both said Bruce just liked the money and the drugs, and “the attention.”  And there is no record of gay men ever wearing “moon boots.” 

It’s believed the Polaroids were sold to pornographers in Denver, but there is no evidence that actually occurred.  It’s true Brown would disappear for hours at a time in Denver, where even the friends didn’t know his whereabouts. 

But that doesn’t make him a pornographer, or a pedophile. 

One of the missing notebooks is thought to hold a jailhouse confessional, in which Duffield describes the young people of Burlington acting like rats in a skin lab, run by an old mad man with gobs of money for those willing to pose nude.    

Once incarcerated and encouraged by his family to join Chuck Colson’s Christian ministry, details start spilling from Duffield, easing his strain and torment, and doing a great deal to get his “great deal” from prosecutors. 

The PI’s wait, they canvas neighborhoods, they network and they build trust until the inevitable truth comes out.  The stigma against “homos” in 1983 Burlington is as strong as a military parade, so the story requires listening without judgment.  Dennison and Zook give “witness” to testimony, documenting the depravity, leading to the deaths, reported in depth in The Denver Post.

No video recording equipment is recovered from Brown’s house trailer and “pleasure dome,” but at this time, the field was only being invented.  Authorities in positions of trust didn’t see it happening in Burlington, because they weren’t looking for “it.”  

If the old man was gay, as many in town suspected, he didn’t deserve to die for it.  But with shame as a catalyst, blackmail explains the anger and raging evident in Brown’s slaying.  When the old man threatens to make public a private part of him, “outing” and implicating him in a “relationship” with a 50-year old pervert…it may’ve been too much for Bruce to bear.  Perhaps Duffield wanted to spare his god-fearing parents the pain of it all. 

Blood simple…

Troy Zook says, to this day, he uses the case as “a good example of how people can be driven to kill.”  Ted Brown was originally driven out of Denver, for what Zook believes were sex offenses.  Burlington was the perfect place for him to prey on kids who were “less worldly.”  Zook calls Brown “a very bad man” and a “devil,” who did “heinous things” to kids in that town.  No doubt.      

It’s not hard to imagine the carcass of Ted Brown covered in flies when police arrive.  The police files contain a single Polaroid found in Brown’s drawer.   It may be one who got away.          

Bruce Duffield was at the nexus of a “sex crime” and a “hate crime..  Brown was the evil lynchpin tying it all together.  And maybe that “evil” died with Brown, but that’s hard to know. 

What is known is that, within only a few years, homosexuality would become much more accepted and commonplace. 

And, it is known that Duffield’s parents and sister still live in Burlington. 

Ted’s Brown’s first wife (and Junior’s mother) Betty Franklin, still lives in town with her husband, Dale.

The first cop on the scene, and the first to interview Bruce Duffield (sans Miranda), Mr. Wayne Mills, still resides in Burlington with his wife, Sharlene, who was the first to supply files for this story (Case #83CRI) from the Kit Carson Combined Courthouse.

A search for “Randy Garfield Wilson” from Ruleton, Kansas, produces zero results on Google, while a search for Bruce Kerry Duffield produces only this:

Twenty-two-year-old grad student, Betsy Aardsma, was stabbed to death among the book shelves of the Pattee Library at Penn State University in 1969. Her murder remains unsolved.