whatsthecrime

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McStay family murders

On February 4, 2010, at 7:47 pm, a neighbor’s surveillance system captured the bottom eighteen inches of a vehicle, thought at the time to be the McStay family’s 1996 Isuzu Trooper. In the surveillance recording, the vehicle’s occupants could not be seen. At 8:28 pm, a call was placed from Joseph’s cell phone to his business associate, Charles “Chase” Merritt, which went to voicemail. Merritt later told police that he ignored the voicemail because he was watching a movie. Joseph’s cellphone pinged a tower in Fallbrook. 

Over the next several days, relatives of the McStays unsuccessfully tried to contact the family. On February 13, Joseph’s brother Michael travelled to the McStay residence and, upon finding an open window at the back, climbed in and gained entry to the home. Michael did not find any of the family at home, and their two dogs were in the backyard. On February 15, Michael phoned the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department (SDSD) and reported that his brother and his family was missing. Officers arrived at the home and requested a search warrant, executed on February 19, 2010. Although a search of the house found no evidence of struggle or foul play, there were indications of a hasty departure: a carton of eggs had been left on the counter and two child-size bowls of popcorn sat on a sofa. During their investigation, the police learned that around 11:00 pm on February 8, the family’s Trooper had been towed from a strip mall parking lot in San Ysidro, San Diego, near the Mexican border. It was believed to have been parked there between 5:30 and 7:00 that evening. The car’s location from February 4 to February 8 remains unknown.

On November 11, 2013, a motorcyclist found four sets of human remains buried in two shallow graves in the desert near Victorville, California. Two days later, two sets of remains were officially identified as those of Joseph and Summer McStay. The deaths were ruled a homicide and San Bernardino County authorities said they believed the family died of blunt force trauma inside their home, but declined to discuss specifics of the deaths or a motive. 

Investigators and the public focused on Merritt as a suspect, who was the last known person to have had contact with Joseph, and the first to notice his disappearance. According to state records, Merritt had felony convictions for burglary and receiving stolen property. His most recent felony conviction, in 2001, was for the theft of $32,000 worth of welding and drilling equipment from San Gabriel Valley Ornamental Iron Works in Monrovia, California. An acquaintance of Merritt’s told a San Diego reporter, “I think police should look at him and anyone associated with him.”

In 2013, Merritt acknowledged he had spent more than an hour with Joseph the day the McStay family went missing. Merritt, who reportedly was the last person Joseph called from his cell phone, also said that he had passed a polygraph test and did not know anything that could help solve the mystery of the family’s disappearance. 

On November 5, 2014, detectives from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department arrested Merritt in connection with the deaths of the McStay family after discovering that his DNA had been recovered from their car. His arrest was announced on November 7, 2014. Merritt was charged with four counts of murder, and the district attorney sought the death penalty. 

According to arrest warrant affidavits filed in the case, autopsies concluded that all four victims had been beaten to death with a blunt object, and investigators believed the murder weapon was a 3-pound sledgehammer which was found in the grave containing the remains of Summer and her son. Investigators testified they believed the victims were tortured before they were killed.

Prosecutors allege that Merritt had a gambling problem, and killed the McStay family for financial gain. They said that he wrote checks totalling more than $21,000 on Joseph’s business account in the days after the family was killed, and then went on a gambling spree at nearby casinos, where he lost thousands of dollars. 

On June 10, 2019, a San Bernardino County jury found Merritt guilty of murdering the McStay family. On June 24, the jury recommended that Merritt be sentenced to death. The court upheld the jury’s recommendation, and Merritt was sentenced to death on January 21, 2020.

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44 Days Of Hell – The murder story of Junko Furuta

TW// very graphic

Junko Furuta was a 16-year-old Japanese girl who attended a high school in Misato, in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. She was a good-looking, active teenager who enjoyed a lot of attention, which made some people jealous. Hiroshi Miyano, had a crush on her but not looking for a relationship, Junko Furuta turned him down. Hiroshi Miyano was the bully in the school and involved with the new generations of the Yakuza, nobody dared to oppose him. And Junko Furuta had the nerve to say “No”.

On November 25, 1988, she was kidnapped by four teenage boys, one of them was Hiroshi Miyano. The boys took Junko Furuta to the house owned by one of the kidnappers’ parents in the Ayase district of Adachi, Tokyo.  While in captivity, the kidnappers forced Junko Furuta to call her parents and tell them that she’d run away and is going to stay with a friend, but insist that she’s not in danger. Not able to realize what was coming and too scared to remain non-compliant, Junko did exactly as she was told, ultimately forestalling a manhunt that would have otherwise followed her disappearance.

Parents of Nobuharu Minato in whose house Junko Furuta was kept visited their son on a few occasions. Still, under a threat of increased violence against her, Junko was requested to pretend that she was a girlfriend of one of the boys. However, even when it became apparent that she was a captive in the house, the parents did nothing for fear of retaliation from Hiroshi Miyano, who was known to have the Yakuza connections.

During 44 days following her kidnapping, Junko Furuta was forced to withstand unspeakable suffering. What she went through before her murder included:

- She was humiliated by being kept naked most of the time - She was raped every day in both the vagina and anus. More than 100 men are believed to have raped her – the captor with Yakuza connections had invited other Yakuza members to join. She’s estimated to have gone through about 500 rapes. At one point, she was raped by 12 different men in one day.

She endured physical beatings included hits with golf clubs and bashing of the face against the cement floor. The 100 men who are believed to have raped her had also reportedly enjoyed urinating on her. Frequently, to turn her rapists on, she was forced to masturbate in front of them and their guests. She had various objects forced into her vagina and anus, including a bottle, an iron bar, scissors, roasting needles, grilled chicken skewers, etc.

Other things she endured were;

Provided with only a limited supply of food or water.

Was forced to eat live cockroaches and drink her own urine.

Had fireworks forced up her ass and set them off, causing severe burns

Had her left nipple ripped off with pliers.

Had dumbbells dropped on her stomach while lying on the floor with hands and feet tied up – this resulted in a loss of bowel control.

Was hanging from the ceiling and used as a boxing bag.

Was kept in a freezer for several hours.

Had eyelids burned with hot wax and lighters

Had breasts pierced with sewing needles

Had her vagina and clitoris burnt with cigarettes and lighters

Had a hot, lit bulb inserted into her vagina and rubbed until it exploded inside.

While she was only one quarter through her ordeal, owing to ongoing beatings, Junko Furuta could not breathe through her nose due to the accumulation of blood in her cavities. Her traumatized internal organs refused to accept food and water, so when she tried to drink, she instantly vomited, which kept her more dehydrated. It also agitated the perpetrators, who punished her with more beating for soiling the carpet.

At one point, when the attackers were resting after drinking, she tried to call the police but was caught and punished by having her feet set on fire with burning lighter fluid. Large bottles the perpetrators forced up her anus caused internal injuries and ugly bleeding. Severe leg burns and badly bruised muscles left her unable to walk after 20 days of her ordeal. She couldn’t handle anything with her hands anymore because her bones were smashed with weights and her fingernails cracked. Since it was winter, she was also forced to sleep on a balcony, exposed to cold temperatures.

After 30 days, Junko Furuta could not urinate properly due to damage to internal organs and vulva from the insertion of foreign objects and burns from cigarettes and lighters. Her hands and feet were damaged severely, and it took her over an hour to crawl downstairs to the bathroom. Her eardrums were also damaged, and her brain size was reduced.

During the 44 days, when she was repeatedly tortured, beaten, and raped, Junko Furuta begged her captors several times to just kill her and be done with it. They didn’t grant her that favor. Instead, on January 4, 1989, they challenged her to a game of Mahjong solitaire. She won, and that pissed the boys off, so they treated her to a beating with an iron barbell and fire by setting her legs, arms, face, and stomach alight after pouring lighter fluid on them. Being already severely beaten, dehydrated, and malnourished, Junko Furuta fell into a shock and died the following day.

The murderers stuffed the dead girl’s body in a 55-gallon drum filled with concrete and disposed of it in Koto, Tokyo.

All four perpetrators were caught and tried. However, because they were all under-aged when the crime was committed, they were tried as juveniles. Eventually, they faced sentences of adults, except that the court withheld their identities. Still, given the severity of their crimes, the sentences they were handed out were relatively low.

Each of them is already out of jail. 

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On 29 July, 1849, Kate Webster was born in Killane, County Wexford, Ireland. As a child, she was often caught stealing and this kleptomania would follow her through to her teenage years and eventually onto adulthood. As a teenager, Webster managed to steal enough money so that she could sail from her home town in Ireland to Liverpool. For the next five years, she survived solely on stolen money and goods. That was until she was caught pickpocketing and sentenced to four years behind bars at the age of just eighteen. 

Following her release, she travelled to London where she was able to land a job as a charwoman. On top of this, she slept with men for money, eventually becoming pregnant and giving birth to a son. After the birth, Webster was back to her old tricks, only this time she escalated to robbing boarding houses. Over the next few years, Webster was arrested numerous times and served a number of prison sentences. 

After her release in 1877, Webster managed to get employed as a maid for Mrs Julia Martha Thomas, a wealthy widow from Richmond, Surrey, who appeared completely oblivious to her criminal history. Initially, the relationship between the two women was a pleasant one but soon enough Webster fell back into her old rebellious ways; she spent more time in the local pub causing havoc than performing her au pair duties. Thomas expressed to her friends that she had become fearful of Webster and her friends urged her to fire Webster.

On 2 May, 1879, Thomas explained that she wouldn’t be needing Webster’s help around the house any more and that she should pack her things and leave. Webster agreed that she would leave the house after she attending church. Enraged by what was taking place, Webster arrived back to the house from church and went up to the bedroom where Thomas was taking off her church hat. Webster burst through the door, armed with an axe, and struck the unsuspecting Thomas. 

In an attempt to escape, Thomas managed to struggle her way to the landing where Webster pushed her down the stairs. Running down after her, Webster struck the final blow into Thomas’ head. She then dragged her lifeless body into the kitchen where she began to butcher the body. She then reached for a large pot and boiled the dismembered body: “I determined to do away with the body as best I could. I chopped the head from the body with the assistance of a razor which I used to cut through the flesh afterwards. I also used the meat saw and the carving knife to cut the body up with. I prepared the copper with water to boil the body to prevent identity; and as soon as I had succeeded in cutting it up I placed it in the copper and boiled it. I opened the stomach with the carving knife, and burned up as much of the parts as I could,” she would later disturbingly recall.

 When the body was boiled, she drained off all of the liquid and put it into jars. She packed the dismembered remains into a Gladstone bag and then a wooden box. Unable to fit the severed head into the box, she buried it under a pub’s stables, where it was miraculously discovered 131 years later when Sir David Attenborough was having construction work done on his home which stood where the pub’s stables once stood.

 Ever the entrepreneur, Webster even attempted to sell the jars of reduced body fat as “best dripping.” Webster then had an old friend, Robert Porter, help her carry the box to the Thames, where she threw it in. The box containing Thomas’ boiled remains was discovered the following day by horrified fishermen. As the police were closing in on Webster, she fled back to Ireland where she was arrested by the Royal Irish Constabulary; she was wearing Thomas’ clothing and jewelry.

 She was charged with the brutal murder and denied any involvement. That was until the day of her execution when she freely confessed to the murder. She was hanged on 29 July, 1879.

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Disappearance of Katrice Lee

On November 28, 1981, which was Katrice’s second birthday, the family decided to go to the nearby NAAFI shopping complex in Schloß Neuhaus to buy things for her birthday party. Katrice’s elder sister Natasha decided that she did not want to go shopping, while her aunt Wendy and uncle Cliff, who also worked for the British Army, had come over from Bielefeld for the birthday party. 

Wendy went to the NAAFI complex with Katrice and her parents while Cliff stayed at home with Natasha. Ritchie Lee drove them to the NAAFI and waited for them in the car-park. The day was the last payday before Christmas, so the NAAFI complex was exceptionally busy. Katrice decided she did not want to ride in shopping cart, so she was carried around the supermarket by her mother Sharon, who placed her down at the checkout. Sharon briefly left the checkout to purchase some potato chips before she realized that Katrice was missing. Her aunt Wendy thought Katrice had followed her mother down the aisle, but she had vanished.

The military police had jurisdiction worked with the West German civil police because the NAAFI building was within a German town located on civilian premises. Both the military and German police believed Katrice had fallen into the nearby River Lippe and drowned, but no body was ever discovered. The German police refused to go to the press, and it was six weeks before an item appeared in the local newspaper. The investigation produced little result, and despite dredging the river and conducting house-to-house inquiries, no trace of Katrice was found. 

Police re-opened the case in 2000, after computer technology helped them to form an image of how she could look now. People came forward who had never been interviewed, including a young man who had been standing behind the Lees at the checkout, and one of the checkout women. 

One line of enquiry followed by the police is that Katrice was intentionally abducted from the NAAFI complex, and has possibly been raised by another family in Germany, the United Kingdom, or elsewhere in Europe, unaware of her true identity. Lee was born with a distinctive condition in her left eye which would have required two medical operations to correct, they were appealing for medical personnel with knowledge of such operations to come forward if they had operated on a child. In April 2018, it was announced that the British Military police, in conjunction with the German police, would spend five weeks undertaking a forensic search on the banks of the Alme river. The search did not uncover any new information. 

Another line of inquiry was a man was seen putting a child in a green car in the same area where she was last seen in 1981.

e-fit of man driving green car

The RMP are appealing for anyone with information regarding Katrice Lee’s disappearance.

The Operation Bute team can be contacted via the following:

UK Helpline telephone: 0800 616 888

Germany Helpline telephone: 0800 184 2222

Facebook: Operation BUTE

Twitter: @operationbute

Email: SIBRMP-OpBUTE-Mailbox@mod.gov.uk

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Women on Death Row - Blanche Taylor Moore 

Blanche Taylor Moore was described as a ‘sweet Christian lady’. A preacher’s daughter who then married a reverend, she was well respected in the community. Blanche had a passion for cooking, but she turned her passion into a method for murder which landed her sitting on North Carolina’s death row.

At just nineteen years old, Blanche married Korean war veteran James Taylor. The couple were married for twenty one years and had two children together. However, on the morning of the 2nd of October 1973, Blanche had awoken to discover her husband unresponsive. At just forty five years old, his death was labelled as a heart attack. Blanche was an attractive woman with bags of charm, but the widow did not stay single for long after the death of her husband. She began dating Raymond Reid, the store’s assistant manager where she worked. The couple had been in a relationship for many years when she met Rev Dwight W Moore, to who she became attracted. Around this time, Raymond was rushed to the hospital for chronic nausea and sickness, but the doctors were puzzled about what was causing his symptoms that seemed to improve during his hospital stay. However, Blanche was constantly feeding him her famous homemade banana pudding at his bedside. Just a week later, on the 7th of October 1986, he died, and it was declared that he died from complications of Guillain-Barré Syndrome. With Raymond out of her way, Blanche could now marry the unsuspecting Dwight. A week after the couple’s honeymoon in 1989, Dwight came down sick with the same symptoms as her previous lovers. Again, the doctors were puzzled until a quick thinking junior doctor suggested a metal test. They soon discovered Dwight had 100 times the normal amount of arsenic in his body. Authorities immediately suspected Blanche, and upon hearing of the deaths of her two previous lovers and her father, they exhumed the bodies. All of which showed elevated levels of the poison.

In 1991, Blanche Taylor Moore was sentenced to death.

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Pictured from left to right: Jewel King (48), Verdell Jefferson (41), and Dorothy Butts (43).

Jewel, Verdell, and Dorothy were three women living in the Washington, DC area when they disappeared during 2006. Jewel was the first of the three women to vanish. She was last seen alive on April 7th, 2006 on Galveston Street. Jewel’s mother reported her missing six days later. Verdell vanished just a few weeks later, on May 1st, 2006–but was not reported missing until August 2006. Dorothy vanished on Christmas Day 2006, after she left home to go to a local store and never returned. She was reported missing later that day. It is unclear if the three missing women knew each other, and initially there was no indication that their disappearances were related. Their cases quickly went cold and there was very little media coverage on any of the women. Over a decade after their disappearances, during April 2018, construction workers began enlarging a crawl space in the basement of an apartment building in Congress Heights. While working on the crawl space, the workers spotted a set of human remains. Police were called, and a search of the surrounding area led to the discovery of two other sets of human remains. Investigators eventually identified the first set of remains as Jewel King. Shortly thereafter, it was confirmed that the other sets of remains belonged to Verdell Jefferson and Dorothy Butts. All three women had been murdered. Jewel and Dorothy had been shot to death, while Verdell had been bludgeoned. Investigators have yet to find a connection between the three women, nor have they announced any suspects. However, the DC police chief stated that he believes the women were all killed by the same person. The murders of all three women remain unsolved today. If you have any information that could help solve their cases, please call (202) 727-9099 or text 50411 to submit an anonymous tip.

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Heather Saul, the Woman Who Shot and Killed a Serial Killer

In July 2015, Heather Saul was working as a sex worker. She met with a client, Neal Martin Falls, who tracked down her address. It is unknown whether he was invited in or forced his way into Heather's home. Falls entered Heather's residence and held her at gunpoint, squeezing her neck and telling her that he would kill her if she didn't do as he said. Helen managed to momentarily get away from Falls and realised the danger she was in at which point she began fighting for her life. Quick thinking from Heather resulted in a struggle during which she managed to take the gun from Falls and shoot him in the head, killing him instantly. The entire encounter lasted only moments.

When police arrived, they found Heather sobbing and injured from the fight. A search of Falls' body found 4 sets of handcuffs. Inside his car, axes, knives, a shovel, sledgehammer, which, trash bags, a bulletproof vest, and a change of clothes were discovered. It was clear he had intended to murder Heather. Police linked the items found and his previous known locations to unsolved murders and the disappearances of nine different women in three different states. During the time he had lived in Nevada, from 2003 to 2004, four sex workers had disappeared; three of whom were found dismembered in various states. Just like Heather, all of the missing women advertised their services on the Internet. Falls was not a suspect until after his death and Heather Saul is thought to have stopped an unapprehended serial killer. The true number of victims will probably never be confirmed.

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Australia's Unsolved Nail Gun Murder: On November 1, 2008, just after 6:00 PM, two children, aged 9-years-old and 14-years-old, were on a canoeing trip when they found the body of a 27-year-old Chinese immigrant, Chen "Anthony" Liu, in a marshland surrounding Georges River in the south of Sydney, Australia. His severely decomposed corpse was wrapped in carpet and bound with electrical wires. The children told their parents about their findings, and the police were called.

Authorities state Chen had been dead for approximately 12 days before being discovered. Investigators of Australia's Homicide Squad had been investigating the case in conjunction with the Hurstville Local Area Command, forming Strike Force Renfree. Despite this, they had few leads to make an official arrest. Officers suggest it's possible the killer worked in construction.

Post-mortem examination reports revealed Chen was shot over 30 times in the head and neck with a high-powered nail gun, firing 85mm (3.3 inches) long nails. Detectives with Strike Force Renfree believe he was murdered in a different location and driven to the marsh in his 2005 model blue Range Rover Sport 4WD. The murder weapon had never been recovered, nor has the vehicle.

Chen had migrated from China to Melbourne on a student visa in 2000. He moved to Sydney, where he married an Australian woman for a short time until they separated. He was reported missing by a friend before being discovered in the marsh two weeks later. Investigators canvassed associates of Chen; however, there was no evidence indicating that he was involved with a criminal group.

Chen "Anthony" Liu's homicide is still an active case, and after all these years, no official arrests have been made.

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Deaths at the Cecil Hotel

- Percy Ormond Cook (1927) due to a self inflicted gunshot to the head

- W.K. Norton (1931) due to ingesting poison pills

- Benjamin Dodich (1932) due to a self inflicted gunshot to the head

- Sgt. Louis D. Borden (1934) due to a slit throat deemed a suicide

- Grace E. Margo (1937) due to a fall from a 9th story window with telephone wires wrapped around her body unclear if it was suicide

- Roy Thompson (1938) due to jumping from the roof

- Erwin C. Neblett (1939) due to ingesting poison

- Dorothy Segar (1940) due to ingesting poison

- Dorothy Jean Purcell’s child (1944) due to being thrown from a window immediately after birth

- Robert Smith (1947) due to jumping from the 7th floor

- Helen Gurnee (1954) due to jumping from the 7th floor

- Julia Frances Moore (1962) due to jumping from the 8th floor

- Pauline Otton and George Gianinni (1962) Pauline jumped from the 8th floor and landed on George killing them both

- “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood (1964) was found raped, stabbed and beaten to death in her room the case remains unsolved

- Jane Doe (1975) jumped from the 12th floor

- Richard Rameriez started staying in the hotel (1985)

- Jack Unterweger becomes a resident (1991)

- John Doe (1992) was found in an ally behind to hotel police determined he had either been pushed, fallen or jumped

- Elisa Lam (2013) was found decomposing in a water tank he death remains a mystery

- John Doe (2015) was found the cause of death remains unclear

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Cleveland Elementary School Shooting

Brenda Spencer was born in 1962 and lived in San Diego, California across the road from Grover Cleveland Elementary School. Her parents had separated and she was said to be living in poverty, sleeping on a single mattress on the floor with her father.

Acquaintances said Spencer had spoken about shooting policemen and doing 'something big' to get on television. She was uninterested in school and was known to not attend at all at times. Spencer also had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain. She was known to hunt birds and had been arrested for shooting out of windows of her school with a BB gun. Following her arrest, her probation officer recommended her admittance to the hospital for depression but her father refused permission. For Christmas, her father gave her a semi-automatic .22 rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition. Asked why he had done that, she answered, "I felt like he wanted me to kill myself."

On the morning of Monday 29th January 1979, Spencer began shooting at children waiting for the principal to open the school gates, she injured eight children. She then shot at the principal as he tried to help, killed the custodian and injured a policeman who had responded to the incident. Further casualties were avoided when her line of fire was obstructed by police moving a rubbish truck in front of her house.

Spencer fired 30 times before barricading herself in her room for hours. While inside, she spoke to a reporter who had been randomly calling phone numbers in the area, Spencer claimed to have shot at people because "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." She told negotiators she was going to 'come out shooting.' But later surrendered reportedly after being offered a Burger King meal.

Spencer was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to two counts of murder, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison. While incarcerated, Spencer was diagnosed with epilepsy and began receiving medication for her epilepsy and depression. She remains in prison.

The Boomtown Rats famously released a song called 'I Don't Like Mondays,' referencing the case. The lead singer Bob Geldof later mentioned that Spencer 'wrote to me saying 'she was glad she'd done it because I'd made her famous, which is not a good thing to live with.'

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The Unsolved Flat-Tire Murders

The Flat-Tire Murders were a series of unsolved murders in Florida between February 1975 and January 1976. The name was due to the investigators' speculation that before committing the first two known murders the killer had deflated the tires of the victim's cars. Some experts have questioned whether all the deaths can be attributed to one offender while others claim the killer may have killed more than 35 women in multiple states.

The first known victim was though

Ronnie Sue Gorlin, who went missing on 22nd July 1975 after leaving her apartment to visit her mother. Her naked body was found in a canal, she had been sexually assaulted and stabbed. Her car was found in a shopping centre car park with a slashed tire. Eight days later, Elyse Rapp, a 21-year-old woman went missing after leaving her apartment to go shopping, her body was found in the same car park Ronnie's was discovered in. Her car was also found in a mall car park with a slashed tire.

After the discovery of the two bodies police suggested a serial killer may be active and linked the cases to 12 young women killed in South Florida.

The suspected murderer was described as a whale male, aged 20-25, well dressed, physically active, with above-average intelligence and a sexual sadist.

After the killings stopped abruptly in 1973, nine similar murders were recorded in Washington the following year but stopped in September. After that similar killings occurred in Idaho, Utah and Colorado. In most cases, the victims, who resembled each other physically, were beaten and raped before death and the bodies were thrown into canals or streams. A total of 35 murders were recorded although it was never definitively proven to be just one person responsible.

Some experts have suggested notorious serial killer Ted Bundy may have been responsible but there is no evidence placing him in Florida at the time of the killings. The murders remain unsolved.

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Septic Tank Sam

April 29, 2021

On April 13, 1977 an unidentified man was found in a septic tank 13 km west of Tofield, Alberta, Canada by a local couple who was looking for a septic tank pump on their abandoned property. The unidentified man was dubbed the name “Septic Tank Sam” and was found wearing a blue Levi shirt with snap buttons, a grey t-shirt, blue jeans and imitation Wallabee shoes. He was medium build with dark hair and had recent dental work done.

His body was found wrapped in a yellow bed sheet and tied with a nylon rope. The couple first saw his leg bobbing in the septic tank and notified the police. Two officers came and spent an hour emptying the tank which was 1.8 m deep with ice cream pails. 

Authorities believe that Septic Tank Sam was not from Alberta himself, but was mostly likely a migrant worker. Some believe he was either a construction worker or a farm labourer based on his clothes. A medical examiner determined Sam to be of European Canadian descent and his bones and teeth showed that he had suffered from some sort of illness at the age of 5. 

Septic Tank Sam’s cause of death was two gunshot wounds to the head and chest, but it was possible that there could have been more due to bullets not touching his skeleton. They also discovered that before his death, this unidentified man had been tortured, beaten, tied up and burned with a small butane torch and cigarettes. He had also been sexually mutilated with farm shears and it was so severe that it took months for the medical examiner to positively identify him as male. 

Sam also had burn marks on the sleeves of his shirt which some thought determined that he may have been tied to a bed during the torture. After he had died, he had been covered in quicklime which his killer likely used to try to speed up the decomposition process.

There was a lack of evidence in the septic tank so many believe that Sam was murdered somewhere else and that his killer dumped his body in the septic tank afterwards. Since the murder had been so brutal it is likely that Sam’s killer(s) knew him personally. It was also suspected that the killer(s) were Tofield locals who were familiar with the area. 

Septic Tank Sam’s body was buried in an unmarked grave in an Edmonton cemetery and has been exhumed twice. The first time Sam was exhumed was in  1979 his remains were flown out to Clyde Snow and Betty Gatliff who were a forensic anthropologist and medical illustrator in Oklahoma. They had been creating 3D facial composites from skulls since 1967. They created a facial composite for Sam and they discovered that he was right-handed, of Indigenous origin and around 35 years old. This contradicted the RCMP’s belief that Sam was European Canadian and between 26 and 32 years old.  

The second time Sam was exhumed and reconstructed was in the year 2000 by Cyril Chan who was the Edmonton medical examiner at the time. The residents of Tofield were horrified to hear of the murder of Septic Tank Sam, with many farmers checking their own septic tanks for bodies. Many thought Sam was sexually mutilated due to committing a sex crime or being unfaithful in a relationship. Septic Tank Sam’s dental records have been sent to over 800 dental practitioners in Alberta and were even published in Canadian dental magazines, but no one has ever come forward to recognize them. A retired medical examiner who worked on the case says he does not believe we will ever find the identity of Septic Tank Sam. 

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Pay them ppl man.

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Richard Okorogheye

The 19-year-old had been missing since leaving his family home in west London on the evening of March 22 2021. He told his mum Evidence Joel that he was “struggling to cope” with lockdown after shielding throughout the coronavirus pandemic due to a sickle cell disease. As someone with sickle cell disease, the teen would only leave the house to go to hospital for regular blood transfusions for his condition. Sickle cell disease - in which red blood cells are not shaped as they should be - is a serious and lifelong health condition. 

The teen said he was going out on Monday, March 22, 2021, and was last seen walking in Kensington, West London, at around 8.40pm.His mother returned home from a nursing shift at around 9pm and assumed her son was in his room. It was only when she knocked on his door after cooking his favourite dinner that she realised something was wrong. After a locksmith helped her gain entry to the bedroom, she found Richard missing with his wallet, bus pass and bank card left behind. None of Richard’s friends saw him that night and they hadn’t seen the teen since he disappeared.

He was last seen on CCTV in Loughton, Essex, in the early hours of Tuesday March 23, walking towards Epping Forest. It was thought the last footage of Richard was from the 23 bus southbound near his home. CCTV shows he was wearing black clothes and carrying a black satchel bag with a white Adidas logo, worn across his lower back. Officers then said he was seen in the area of Epping Forest hours later - and before he was reported missing.

Cops established that Richard took a taxi to Loughton in Essex. He was then captured on CCTV walking alone along Smarts Lane, Loughton towards Epping Forest at 12.39am on Tuesday morning. There were no further confirmed sightings. Police said the teen’s phone has not been in use since his disappearance.

Police divers were seen searching a waterway in the woodland in north-east London. Tragically, a body was found in the forest on Easter Monday and was confirmed to be that of Richard.  The cause of Richard’s death is pending as further investigations are carried out, but the post-mortem found no evidence of physical trauma or assault. 

His mother feared her student son had become depressed during lockdown as he only left the house for regular blood transfusions at hospital. She was also worried that he had met someone through Playstation 5 who “gained his trust”. She added: “I’m shocked he even knows where Loughton is, as I don’t even know where that place is. "I think he went to meet somebody. Definitely. Richard cannot go there. Especially at that time in the morning… someone was waiting for Richard.”

As of right now there are no suspects or clues as to how he died. 

[whatsthecrime]

Amerithrax

After the 9/11 attacks, seven letters were mailed containing actual anthrax spores. Two sets of letters were sent out, the first to ABC, CBS, NBC, AMI and the New York Post. The other set were sent to two Democratic senators—Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Altogether five people were killed and seventeen people were infected.

The notes seemed to indicate that the letters were sent by Muslim extremists because of the message—“death to America and to Israel.” Authorities believe this was misdirection employed by the letter writer.

The FBI believes Bruce Edwards Ivins, a bio-weapons defense expert, was responsible for the attacks. When the FBI asked the National Academy of Sciences to review their work they came to the conclusion that—with the information available—they would not be able to prove that Ivins created the anthrax. There have been many people including senior microbiologists and other Senators and Representatives who either believe Ivins’ is not responsible or he did not act alone. Ivins committed suicide in 2008.

[whatsthecrime]

On July 8th 2014, Lars Mittank sprinted, seemingly in a panic, from a Bulgarian airport. He was never seen again.

The story starts a few weeks earlier, on June 30th, when Lars and four friends arrived at the Golden Sands sea-side resort for a vacation. The trip went as normal until July 6th, when the group of German tourists visited a local bar. They were involved in an altercation with a few locals regarding football. Although it didn’t become physical, Lars Mittank would disappear from his group while waiting for them to order food at McDonalds. His friends looked for him with no luck before returning to their hotel in hopes that Mittank returned there, but he hadn’t.

The next morning, Lars Mittank returned to the hotel room with a badly damaged eardrum and injured jaw, claiming that he had been roughed up by a group of Russians hired by the group they’d fought with the night before, although his friends weren’t sure how believable his story was. Nonetheless, Mittank was injured and needed medical attention. Although his friends offered to stay with him until he was sure he was safe to fly, Lars insisted that his friends leave without him.

On July 7th, one taxi carried the friends to the airport while another carried Lars Mittank in search of medical attention. The doctor he ended up seeing strongly suggested surgery but Lars refused, not wanting to go under any surgery outside of Germany. Instead, he was prescribed 500mg of Cefuroxime, an anti-biotic used to treat bacterial infections. Mittank left the doctor’s office afterwards and found a hotel to stay in.

A little while after midnight, Lars called his mother in a paranoid state, asking if she would freeze his credit card and bank accounts. He also texted and asked her to look up the medication he had been prescribed. He called her again a few hours later and told her in hushed tones that he felt he was being followed. Lars left the hotel in the middle of the night. At some point, he ended up calling his mother once more, asking her to buy him a plane ticket home. During the call, he continued to express that he felt he was being followed by 4 men.  

Lars Mittank was dropped off at the airport at 6 AM in a taxi that he had shared. His co-passenger later stated that he noticed Lars’ pupils were extremely dilated. While this is well known as a reaction to certain drugs, it can also be one of the body’s responses to serious head trauma.

Once entering the airport, Lars sought out the airport doctor and spent 43 minutes in his office. It is unknown what was discussed that would require such a long time spent there but it IS known that the appearance of a maintenance worker (either in the waiting room or exam room itself) frightened Mittank enough to set him into a sprint out of the office.

Lars Mittank is seen on CCTV footage (GIF’d above) eventually making his way out of the airport in a frantic sprint. He runs outside for a while before hopping a fence and disappearing from view. 

This was the last time that Lars was ever seen.

There is speculation as to what caused such paranoia in an otherwise completely stable man. While Lars himself seemed to believe there were outside parties with ill-intent towards him, it is just as likely that Mittank suffered a head injury much more severe than a busted ear drum. The damage could have set in as time went on and damaged his perception of reality. Until he is found, we might never know.

Lars Mittank’s family set up a Facebook page, which you can check out here, where they sometimes give updates and clarify possible sightings.

You can also watch a video that contains the CCTV footage here. 

[whatsthecrime]

The 340 Cypher from Zodiac Killer was solved.