Learned “True Crime” enthusiasts and aficionados have wondered for years if (and it’s a big ‘if’, too!) “The Lipstick Killer” and the notoriously elusive killer of “The Black Dahlia” (Elizabeth Short-22-DOB—July 29th, 1924) were one and the same Serial Killer. Far more intelligent and sly detectives (real and armchair) than I have planted the durable and fruitful seeds that do indeed possibly link them. Now that these wicked smart sorts have provided us with a rugged foundation and have done most of the investigative work, I see them and raise them double that if 5½-YO Suzanne Degnan and Elizabeth Short (whom I will call “BD” for short (no pun!) from here on in…) were killed by the same psychopathic maniac, another potential victim of the dastardly fiend may be the infamously missing United States Military Academy at West Point Cadet Richard Colvin Cox (21-DOB—July 25th, 1928-Mansfield, OH), who very mysteriously vanished on a cold, New York Saturday afternoon on January 14th, 1950. He’s never been found and he is the only West Point alumni to have ever alluded the U.S. Military and authorities after being designated AWOL.
If you’re well versed in “The Black Dahlia” case you’ve already seen the first clue. The same date. BD’s posed, bisected and naked body was found on Wednesday, January 15, 1947 (three years prior) in a vacant lot in Hollywood, CA but it is likely she died on January 14th, 1947. The sadistic killer had quite the opportunity to keep her alive and torture and dehumanize her in unfathomable and undignified ways (by design) before the day changed over. Her bifurcated cadaver was dumped before 7AM on the morning of the 15th and was found soon after. It’s been 70 years since her heinous murder and her sobriquet still elicits instant recognition of the case. We should also remember she was a nice, harmless, albeit lost, young woman in the city of lights who didn’t deserve the ferocity of death forced upon her by an exceedingly vicious demonic killer. It’s lamentable when one cogitates on her ghastly plight and the photos of her aftermath are heartbreakingly graphic and brutal. Seek them out with caution.
For those not privy to the infamously unsolved case, Elizabeth Short (BD) was a very pretty, young woman born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts (an urban part of Boston, MA) who made her way to California in the mid-forties to find a good husband (preferably military), Hollywood fame or both. She found neither (BD’s fame unfortunately came posthumously).
Some hateful lunatic savagely tortured and ravaged her, slashed her up fiercely, cut her into two pieces, dumped and then posed her flayed remains on Norton Avenue. Norton Avenue happens to parallel DEGNAN Boulevard (imagine a large ‘Y’, with the stem and the right side being Degnan Blvd. and the left side of the remains of the ‘Y’ being Norton Avenue…BD was purposely posed almost mid-point in that small portion designated Norton Avenue). There is your first clue Suzanne Degnan may have been in the mix of the subsequent BD Murder. Degnan Blvd., as in Suzanne Degnan (5½-YO-DOB—April 17th, 1940), who was kidnapped from her bedroom window and killed and cut up (bisected as well) in an adjacent building’s basement bathtub (5901 Winthrop Avenue) and carelessly but methodically thrown into the sewers and alleys of Chicago, IL on January 7th, 1946 (a year before BD). BD was said to have been obsessed with the grisly murder of Suzanne Degnan and there had been much in the press about the slain, little girl since that awful Chicago night. BD had even traveled to Chicago to visit the scenes of the crimes. In February of 1946, Suzanne’s severed and bent arms were found in a sewer on Broadway, which intersected with Hollywood Avenue. BD and Suzanne were both born in Boston, Massachusetts.
The “killer” of Suzanne was a young, petty thief named William George Heirens (17-DOB—November 15th, 1928-Evanston, IL) who was a wayward but intelligent student at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. He also lived at home with his parents in Lincolnwood, on Tuohy Road. For those who read my article in Serial Killer Magazine (Issue #24) on “The Stayner Family Tragedies”, one may recall how Tuolumne County was where California Serial Killer Cary Stayner eventually killed and virtually decapitated 15-YO Juli Sund (who didn’t use an “e” in her first name) after he killed her mother Carole (who had an extra “e” in her first name) and her Argentinian pal 16-YO Silvina Pelosso on President’s Day, February 15th, 1999 in Yosemite, CA. I also discovered, via my research, very strange Steven Stayner references in a possible 2002 (when Cary Stayner was on trial for murder) “Smiley Face Killer” linkage of victims and corresponding graffiti that may also cryptically reference ZODIAC…
• A “Smiley Face Killer” micro-pattern regarding Minnesota and Wisconsin that had possible links to the Stayner tragedies and “The ZODIAC Killer” of 1968 and 1969. Including purposeful ZODIAC related “SFK” graffiti near Chester Creek in Duluth, MN.
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• The dual involvement of famed ZODIAC attorney Melvin Belli. He happened to serve as Steven Stayner’s wife Jodi’s lawyer after Steven tragically died on September 17th, 1989.
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• ZODIAC infamously wrote to Belli on December 20th, 1969, the one-year anniversary of ZODIAC’s 1968 “lover’s lane” slaughter of David Faraday (17) and Betty Lou Jensen (16) in Benicia, CA on Lake Herman Road.
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• The infamous ZODIAC phone call to Vallejo Police on July 4th, 1969 from Tuolumne Street and Cary Stayner killing Juli Sund and disposing her body in Tuolumne County in 1999. William Heirens’ Tuohy Road home sounds a lot like Tuolumne and his dogged prosecutor was William Tuohy. I read that BD also moved to Vallejo, CA in 1943 to live with her father Cleo, but I digress…
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I obviously don’t think poor William Heirens was “The Lipstick Killer”. It would eradicate my premise before my figurative “Swifty” could even clear the gate that the killer of Suzanne (1946) and BD (1947) was the same killer of missing West Point Cadet Richard Colvin Cox in 1950.
Heirens was apprehended and arrested on North Wayne Street on June 26th, 1946 for burglary and was never out of the auspices of law enforcement until the day he died on March 5th, 2012 at the age of 83. He was caught when he was 17…he died when he was 83…that’s some brutal math. That’s a hell of a long time in the hoosegow for three crimes he never committed. Living in the after-life, he must surely converse with and jolt the heavenly sensibilities of the raconteur of catastrophe, Franz Kafka. I won’t go all into the details of his capture and confession but when one does you see his rights were wildly violated top to bottom so law enforcement could quickly close a circa 1940’s Serial Killer case that had Chicago, IL at sixes and sevens and gravely frightened. It’s amazing he was never able to have his false confession (which he reluctantly agreed to so he could avoid the death penalty) overturned since Chicago, IL shattered every shred of his due process. RIP Mr. Heirens. Franz Kafka probably carked it all over again when he heard your sad story. He was also charged with two other murders in 1945 in Chicago…I’ll list them now because they also possibly tie-in with BD’s knife-laden death.
The first victim was 43-YO Josephine Alice Ross (DOB—March 5th, 1902-Hayfield, MN) who was slaughtered in her home on June 5th, 1945 in Chicago, IL. She was stabbed to death in the neck and face and posed ritualistically and naked on her bed, a lot like BD would be on 1/15/1947. The sadistic killer tied her nylon stockings and red skirt around her neck. Like BD she was washed clean in the bathtub but unlike her, Ms. Ross’ wounds were gauzed over with tape. She also had hair in her hands. Most peculiar, indeed.
Josie Ross had an interesting marriage history. If one linked all her names together they read as Josephine Alice Lunde Walsh (Miller) Ross. She married John P. Walsh on October 17th, 1922 and had a daughter Mary Jane Walsh in 1925. She also had another daughter from a union with a Mr. Herbert Miller and gave birth to her daughter Jacqueline Ann on August 2nd, 1927. She was a widow when she was killed because her husband Herbert P. Ross died on July 8th, 1944 (DOB—March 27th, 1901).
The second victim was Frances Brown (33-DOB—March 21st, 1912 Richmond (Wayne County), IN). Ms. Brown lived at the Pinecrest Hotel on Pine Grove Avenue (with a roommate) and she was also ambushed and slaughtered in her home on December 10th, 1945 in Chicago. She was found slumped halfway in her bathtub and her head had been wrapped in towels. She had been shot in the head and arm and had her pajamas tied around her neck (as was Ms. Ross’ nylons and skirt six months prior) with a large bread knife jammed in her neck as well. Her body had also been washed clean. Ross, Brown and BD all were knifed and washed and/or killed in a tub. Suzanne Degnan was dismembered in a tenement basement bathtub. Knives and bathtubs. One, two, three…and four!
“The Lipstick Killer” acquired his moniker because on Ms. Brown’s living room wall he scrawled (in her red lipstick), ‘For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself’. After BD was killed in early 1947, a real creepozoid who called himself “The Black Dahlia Avenger” (BDA) pestered, taunted and mocked the LA cops and newspapers with notes and postcards copping to the murder and just being a snarky wiseacre. Their respective works sound so similar. This dope, BDA, misspelled a lot and used double stampage when he mailed letters…a hell of a lot like ZODIAC would do in the 60’s and 70’s in sunny California.
Suzanne’s killer left an oil-soaked ransom note in her bedroom asking for $20K. Misspellings peppered the oleaginous note…just like those illiterate kooks ZODIAC and BDA and their respective notes. Suzanne’s ransom note read ‘Get $20, 000 reddy (sic) & waite (sic) for word/do not notify FBI or police/bills in $5.’s &…’. After the request for five dollar notes/bills, strange doodles and stray letters were drawn that definitely were hidden clues because law enforcement at the time also noticed that cryptic letters could be seen when the greasy note was held under a light source, such as ‘e-i-r-e’ (Heirens) grouped together. The back of the note said, ‘Burn this for her safty (sic)’…yet more lousy spelling and the comma in $20K was backwards as well, a furtive clue no doubt.
A note regarding the murder was also sent to the Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly (the handwriting matched) that said ‘This is to tell you how sorry I am not to get ole (sic) Degnan instead of this girl. Roosevelt and the OPA made their own laws. Why shouldn’t I and a lot more?’ Suzanne’s dad, James E. Degnan, was an executive at the OPA (Office of Price Administration) and it looks like the killer’s wanted revenge against Mr. Degnan. He sure as heck got it, too. A lipstick printed sign on a post near the tenement the little girl was dismembered in pleaded ‘Stop me before I kill more’. Signs, signs everywhere a sign (or cRaZy note). With Suzanne Degnan, Francis Brown, BD and even with Cadet Cox. I’ll get to that later. Are you with me so far?
So, we have this young, hot-shot, sophomore cadet Richard Cox who vanished without a trace the same day BD was killed three years prior. All the way across the country and close to the Eastern Seaboard. He had a real crass friend named “George” who visited him three times in New York his last week on Earth. The final time was that ill-fated January day Cox vanished. He didn’t really like George at all because he was a brash braggart and boozy bore. George liked to drink and claimed Cox and he were old Army buddies who served together in Germany. George made Cox sick because he loved to go on and on about how when he was in Germany, he killed Germans and hacked off their private parts. He also big-noted about killing some German broad he knocked up because he had no interest in having a kid with the chicks he screwed. Still, Cox met up with George on three days…January 7th, 8th and 14th of 1950. Suzanne Degnan was abducted and killed on January 7th, 1946. The second date in common in the puzzle. Let’s go back to that day in 1950 and look at the very strange behaviour of Cox after he met up with the gargoyle George.
On the 7th, his alleged old Army pal George called North Barracks at 4:45PM looking for Cox and both meet up at Grant Hall around 5:30PM. Cox does return to his dorm by 7PM but he is schnockered from drinking whiskey in George’s car. He falls asleep at his desk while studying until he wakes up with a rapid start from the sudden sound of the “tattoo” bugle at 9:30PM. Cox busted up and rushed out into the hallway to scream over the bannister, ‘Who’s there? Who is down there? Is that you, Alice?’ or ‘Alles kaput!’ (which means ‘All is lost!’ in German) to no one visible to the human eye. No one is quite sure whether he said the German phrase or the English one looking for the phantasmal Alice. When asked who Alice was when he was still blotto, he told his dorm mates that she was a woman his mate George knew in Germany, but Cox also knew an “Alice” too while in Germany and kept her picture in his wallet even though he was happily engaged to Betty Timmons who was waiting for him in Mansfield, Ohio. Cox’s “Alice” was actually a German acquaintance named Rosemary Vogel.
Cox had to meet up with George again on Sunday the 8th and he wasn’t thrilled about it because he didn’t really like the gauche and gross George and he took umbrage that George had insisted he drink whiskey with him the day before in his car. Cox was back by 5PM and hella peeved George had hi-jacked his whole weekend. The next time he would meet up with the unctuous George, Cox would never return.
Now is a good time to introduce the so-called alter-ego of William Heirens. Please meet Bill Heirens’ own personal Mr. Hyde, “George Murman”. Another George! A young Heirens claimed his dark side went by the nom de guerre “George Murman” (if real, the five years older “George” supposedly met Heirens at an Indiana school and then again in Chicago in 1943…after that “George” supposedly hit the south for Mexico…Olé!). Murman supposedly stood for “Murder Man”. George also happened to be Heirens’ middle name and was his father’s name as well. The thing about this spooky, spectral chum of Heirens’ is that he wrote him actual letters signed “George M.” Yet another mysterious note! How do you like that? Here is the May 17th, 1945 letter to Heirens from “George M.” that the police found in his parent’s home (without a search warrant)…
‘Bill…
I haven’t heard from you in a long time. I feel for you being in jail. Tough luck. You’ll know better next time. It seems I am being caught up with and I’ll have to make an exit if I want to enjoy life. Therefore I will entrust you with some of my belongings…
It’s a good thing the police didn’t search your place, I’d probably be in the coop now if they did. I remember once you told me that you wouldn’t take the rap. I appreciate you taking those things off my hands when I was being followed. I could have just as well dumped it but I can’t see me losing all that jewelry. I’ll give you a phone call before I come for the stuff. I’m on my way to Milwaukee for a month and then to El Paso…
I’ll see you soon. If this doesn’t pan out, the gang might be broken up. We aren’t keeping any of our old plans so burn what you have. We’ll burn ours.’
‘George M.’
Wonder what old Georgie wanted burned? He sure likes to burn things. First in Suzanne’s ransom note and now this one he wrote to Heirens. Alter egos do not write notes so who was “George Murman”, really? The things that make you go hmmmmmmm? Was “George Murman” the slick and braggadocious “George” that killed Cadet Richard Colvin Cox in 1950? That’s what I think but what the hell do I know?
I know of a clue that possibly links the two crimes together via the shared name COLVIN. Suzanne’s bedroom, the very one she was abducted from on 5943 North Kenmore Avenue in Edgewater, happens to face the driveway of Historic “Colvin House” on 5940 North Sheridan Street in the same Edgewater neighbourhood. Do you believe in coinkydinks? I do, but just not here. Colvin House was the lovely home of Edwin M. Colvin built in 1909 by architect G.W. Maher (an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright) and designated a landmark in 1994. Colvin was a printer at FW Hall Printing Company. I was already convinced the real killer of Suzanne and Cadet Cox was the same bad-ass motherfucker but this clue gave me some extra pow and exclamation points!!
I knew another weird note was needed to really tie Cox’s bombastic “George” to “The Lipstick Killer’s” “George Murman”. Some very strange notes did litter this case and all are worth reading and ruminating on. It took me a while but I found one that really bridges the bizarre chasm of the two cases and it’s just as whack, hinky and replete with misspellings as the other strange notes previously mentioned and in other high-profile, mysterious murder/cold cases.
On the morning of November 3rd, 1955 (over five years later) Mary Pollay of Wickenburg, Arizona noticed an odd letter on the floor of her family’s electric store. The handwritten envelope was not large and appeared to have smudges of blood (or faded lipstick?) on it and it read…
‘Very Important must get to this place. Police West Point Military Academy’. The rest of the note said, ‘It’s been over five years, but I know where he is, but it will cost a life to fine (sic) him, my life. You see he is my husban (sic). If you know what a red dove means you won’t under any way try to contact me. Please. He needs help so do I badly.’ It was signed ‘Alice Lorraine’. Under the name “Alice Lorraine”, ‘Alles kaput’ was written in German and again, that means “All is lost”. Also scribbled on the page (as an aside) was the plea, ‘Betty forgive him’ and the PS read, ‘If one would know I am writing my life would not be worth a…’. There was more high strangeness written on the back…
‘I am wearing silver bracelet (sic). Have wore (sic) for many years’. A sketch of the bracelet and the layout of the stones was also on the back. Yes indeed, if you’re still with me this type of letter does seem more than familiar. We have the nebulous “Alice” resurfacing and the ever-present cry for help, as seen on…
• The Brown murder wall in 1945.
• The Degnan “post” note in 1946.
• In the ZODIAC December 20th, 1969 letter to famed and noted CA attorney Melvin Belli. ZODIAC begged in neat penmanship, ‘…please help me’…‘I am afraid I will loose (sic) control again’…‘Please help me I am drownding (sic)’…‘Please help me I cannot remain in control much longer’. Take notice of the requisite crap syntax and the poor spelling we are all so annoyed at being toyed with by now.
Is the letter writer referring to Cadet Cox’s old paramour Betty Timmons (married to another by this time) or Betty Short as in BD? Maybe both! You know me, I always let the reader decide. In Christianity, the red dove is symbolic of one’s redemption through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His blood as the sacrificial lamb of God (who was Cox sacrificed for?). This enigmatic letter did make it back to West Point and the Army CID (Criminal Investigation Division) did take it to the wall to try to solve it but they just couldn’t in the end. Cases like this must be worked backwards to be solved. Anyone who looked at it in the 1950’s didn’t have the backlog of knowledge needed to try to circle this screwy square. They sure did try to solve this case but they just couldn’t do it and it never made sense to any investigator who diligently tried.
The Cadet Cox case is indeed a captivating rabbit hole to hurl oneself down if one welcomes a challenging yet open-ended mystery. It is far more satisfying if one has an idea whom “George” may be. The notions and theories begin to satisfyingly click and then “Bob’s your Uncle and Fannie’s your Aunt”!
I can’t bring up Cox’s abstruse brain-teaser of a story without expounding on the mini-mystery within the missing cadet enigma. It is regarding a changed time on his return-to-the-dorm sign-in sheet on Saturday, January 7th, 1950, after his first meeting with “George”. In Cox’s barracks departure book his sign-in time was thought to be ‘1923’ (7:23PM) but when investigators went back to re-check all the investigative work on the confounding case in May of 1952, they noticed his sign-in time had been clandestinely changed to ‘1823’ (6:23PM) when it initially was written as ‘1923’ (7:23PM). Signing in incorrectly would be a minor demerit at West Point, especially if said Cadet realized his mistake. He would simply need to alert the CQ (“Charge of Quarters”) on duty (Cadet Peter Hains). Changing the sign-in time sneakily to 1923 would be a serious offense and could have led to Cox getting absolutely dismissed from the venerable military institution. All cadets were honour and duty bound by very strict rules as representatives of West Point Military Academy. Cox did not play fast and loose with the rules of West Point. Who changed the sign-in time to reflect a shifty return time? The fact is Cox actually did return at the time it was changed to in the log. So, who did the dastardly and purposely murky deed? Oh, I don’t know…now who could it have been…could it have been, “George”?!
We have another unsolved murder done less than a month after BD’s and that is the next case we must look at because many people think BD’s killer also killed Jeanne (Thomas) French (née Jeanne Catherine Axford), “The Flying Nurse”, on February 10th, 1947…also known as “The Red Lipstick Murder” or “The Riverside Phantom Killer” because her killer viciously stomped and beat her to death, wrote obscenely all over her naked body with red lipstick, left a small piece of lipstick under her corpse and then dumped her in a vacant lot (near an airport), just like BD. I happen to agree with those sorts. Before BD returned to Los Angeles/Hollywood CA for the final time, she had been living with a new friend she met on the sly at a movie theatre in San Diego, CA. Her name was Dorothy French. I just don’t think that is yet another coincidence.
Jeanne French’s (44-DOB—October 6th, 1902-Texas) killer wickedly smeared nasty invective upon the dead celebrity’s body with garish red lipstick. The obvious link (other than the red lipstick and vacant lot) was the large ‘Fuck you, BD’ on her abdominal area. The picture is readily available online and it’s cute in a seriously stupid way when law enforcement/sleuths try to say the ‘BD’ is actually a ‘PD’ as in “Police Department”. Puh-Leeze. Even “Mr. Magoo” wouldn’t need a second peek to see it’s obviously a ‘B’. The fact that people let law enforcement get away with such a farce shows how easily the masses could be lulled back into a soporific stupor instead of realizing a stealthy Serial Killer was on the loose in Los Angeles circa mid 1940’s.
Also written on her cadaver was ‘Tex’ as in “Texas”, where she was born but don’t forget Texarkana on the upper-right border of Texas and Arkansas had their own uncaptured and frighteningly phantasmagorical Serial Killer, “The Phantom Killer”/“The Texas Moonlight Murderer” who scared the bee-GEE-zuss out of the twin cities once the sun sunk down from February through May of 1946. The Texarkana fiend’s (very reminiscent of the future slayings of California’s ZODIAC Killer of the late 1960’s) creepy nights of killing stopped in early May 1946 and nine months later French was left dead in LA with clues placed all over and around her nude torso. Is that what ‘Tex’ meant?
On February 11th, 1947, LA Cabbie Charlie Schneider found a very barmy…wait…just wait for it…NOTE to the Los Angeles Examiner covertly put in his taxi’s glove compartment. He was parked at a Columbia Street restaurant, just a mere ten blocks from The Biltmore Hotel (where BD was last believed seen) and when he opened the car’s teeny cubby there it was, another buggery missive. It had a rough doodle of a knife and a pistol on it and it said, ‘Take it to Examiner at once. I’ve got the number of your cab. $20, 000. and I’ll give B.D. up. Is it a go?’ It was signed ‘B.D.’. Oh, no. No way, José! Absolutely not. The violent murders of BD and Jeanne French are no way related…said no intelligent person, ever! The note demanded the same amount of ransom asked for Suzanne Degnan in 1946. What a savage and tragic end for a former nurse and female aviator who used to travel to oil fields in Colombia, South America with other fellow nurses, who eventually learned to fly her own planes and who knew and flew with the world-famous aviator Charles “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh in San Diego, CA in 1927. Que lastima!
Jeanne French wasn’t the only woman to mysteriously die in that area in that era and most of the cold case victims (Evelyn Winter, Laura Trelstad, Rosenda Mondragon, et al. …) are very likely linked via one very sick and sadistic Serial Killer. Oh, but nothing to see here. Move along, please! The “Degnan Blvd.” of this case was Mountain View Avenue because BD was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, CA and Ms. French’s body was dumped adjacent to Mountain View Avenue in LA before she was found dead.
42-YO Evelyn May Winter (DOB—July 3rd, 1897-Nassau, NY) had a very tragic demise and her downward spiral was long and degrading. She was a whip-smart Vassar College Graduate who was once a legal secretary at a Hollywood film studio but alcohol began to erode the best of her. She was the March 12th, 1947 victim of the not-so-admitted-to LA Woman Serial Killer (obvious to everyone but law enforcement (LE) in 1947). She was bludgeoned, stabbed and strangled to death and dragged to an area that could be considered a vacant lot, near railroad tracks/railroad yard, City Hall and close to a riverbank. Her dressing gown and an electrical wire were wrapped around her neck (like Ross and Brown in IL in 1945). Some of her clothing and shoes were found at the intersection of Commercial and Center Streets as she was homeless and she very likely lugged much of her belongings around. Her grisly death reminded many of the still unsolved “Cleveland Torso Murders” of 1935-1938 in Cleveland, Ohio. The last person she was with was a fellow boozer named James Tiernan and he and a 23-YO named Gro-Venor McCubrey were suspects and/or arrested but never charged with the heinous crime. Evelyn and Tiernan were last seen boozing it up at the now defunct Albany Hotel on West 6th Street.
Another woman killed 3 days after BD who also fits the victim profile is 37-YO Mary Tate (DOB-September 15th, 1909—Texas). Mary was black and she was raped, strangled (with either hosiery or a rope) and mutilated in her home at The Weller Hotel on January 18th, 1947. Her murder was not considered part of the unacknowledged Serial Killer’s spree and all around received short-shrift. This was patently unfair to the existence of Mary Tate and her exclusion further muddies the water on an issue where those who paid attention knew someone very sinister was targeting women in LA. Sorry, Mary. You deserved better than that.
We’ve opened a very complex can of worms here so we are going to have to dive in the slimy can of annelids and take notice of another slain women in the LA area who also may have been a victim of the unacknowledged Serial Killer.
Let’s start with the woman who just may have been “victim zero”, Ora Elizabeth Murray (42-DOB—August 11th, 1901-California) a married, out-of-state visitor to Los Angeles. Her July 27th, 1943 slaughter was known as “The White Gardenia Murder” because the killer dumped her semi-nude, mutilated body at the Fox Hills Golf Course parking lot (like the July 4th, 1969 ZODIAC murder of Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin (22-DOB—March 17th, 1947) in the Blue Rock Springs parking lot, also a golf course…Darlene had a pesky “suitor” named George William Waters (aka “Paul the Bartender”) and he isn’t to be confused with the amorphous “George”). She had been bludgeoned and strangled and very oddly ensconced in her ripped dress. A white gardenia corsage had been purposely placed under her mortal remains.
The investigation into the man (“Paul”) she was last seen with at the Zenda Ballroom is very circuitous and convoluted with a weird side of alleged “mistaken identity” so I will spare the vicissitudes of that yarn and say the man ultimately mistaken for “Paul” was a grifter and chiseler who liked to target lovelorn ladies for their money. His real name was Roger Lewis Gardner (34-YO) and he had many aliases but the crooked name he gave to his duped dame prior to the Gardenia death was “Grant Wyatt Terry”. “Terry” had hooked in his latest dowager just a week before and quickly procured a ring, cash and a car from her (it should have been the other way around, especially in 1943!) and pulled the old “I’m so sorry but I gotta leave town, babe” fabrication. He said he had to go to San Diego, CA to meet up with “George”. Yet, another George! The car he “borrowed” from his ladylove was a blue convertible which also happened to be the colour and car type Mrs. Murray was last seen in.
Ora Murray and the “Terry” dupe both received cheap, matching bracelets from the charlatan(s) so it’s quite a grand coincidence if it was a case of mistaken identity. The DA Edwin Myers charged Gardner with murder and he was arrested in March of 1944 in NYC and his CA trial was in October of 1944. The jury was deadlocked and half of them didn’t believe he was “Paul”. His scheduled retrial in 1944 was dropped but he received 1-10 years in San Quentin due to his grand theft conviction (he also had done previous time at Leavenworth Prison because of his scheme of impersonating a federal official).
Speaking of coincidences, it was during the “Golden Age of Radio” when all these ladies were being killed all-across LA and earlier in the month Columbia Square Playhouse put on a murder mystery radio play straight from Hollywood called “The White Rose Murders”, whose plot was quite similar to the macabre end of Ora Murray. One can just imagine the real killer listening to the show with dark anticipation and inspiration. BD supposedly visited the studios the same month she was slew.
Who killed Ora Murray and did the same killer also kill BD, Jeanne French, Evelyn Winters and all the other LA Women cold cases? Maybe. It seems more tangible looking back in 2017. Perhaps you’ll agree if I tell you Ora is pushing up daisies at Mountain View Memorial Park in Lakewood, Washington? Like BD’s resting place at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, CA and Jeanne French’s adjacent Mountain View Avenue dumping ground. I’ll just drop that one on y’all and move on.
I’m going to add two more LA Women to the mix. Motels, money, murder, madness and the mood remains morose with the distressing case of wealthy oil heiress (Heirens?) Georgette Elise Bauerdorf (20-DOB—May 6th, 1924-NYC) who was slew in her own lavish, plush, Spanish-style LA apartment (“El Palacio”) in the early hours of October 12th, 1944 (the very month and year trickster Roger Lewis Gardner was on trial for the 7/27/1943 murder of Ora Murray). Yes, yet another George(tte) which brings us equal to the amount of George’s in George Forman’s family of esteemed George’s. I think they all tie into each other (minus the Forman’s!) but you don’t have to agree.
On the day Georgie was killed, she was to meet with a “Mr. Wade”. No one knew who he was and he was never found. If one approaches the name as an anagram, we can see the name EDWARD, with the “M” standing in for the doubled but missing “D”, but the possibilities are endless if you’re gifted at unscrambling anagrams.
Georgette was a spirited, Catholic gal who loved to help the servicemen of her country so she volunteered at The Hollywood Canteen which fed and gave our World War II boys a good time when they wanted to tie one on in Los Angeles. She left the canteen before 11PM on 10/11/1944. October 12th, the day she was killed, was Pom (British) occultist Aleister Crowley’s 69th birthday (born Edward Alexander Crowley on October 12th, 1875 in Warwickshire, UK) if you believe in the Satanist angle as I do.
Georgette’s killing was quite wretched because she was young and full of life and fun and very much looking forward to traveling to El Paso, TX on October 14th to meet up with her military boyfriend Pvt. Jerome M. Brown (of Chicago, IL) stationed at Fort Bliss. They met at The Hollywood Canteen on June 13th, 1944 and she wrote him enthusiastically and dutifully. I can’t help but recall Bill Heirens had that kooky letter from “George Murman” dated 5/17/1945 that mentioned him traveling to El Paso, TX after June of 1945. Was that a surreptitious clue purposely planted?
Whomever waylaid Georgette that evo made sure to unscrew her outdoor lightbulb that illuminated her flat entrance at 8491 Fountain Avenue. The “El Palacio” flats were very swanky apartments designed and built in 1931 by William R. Hauptman (Marilyn Monroe was a tenant as was Dorothy Dandridge) with soundproof walls and floors.
Once Georgie arrived at home that evo, she had a quick meal of canned string beans and a wee portion of fresh cantaloupe. Like Ross and Brown (1945), Suzanne Degnan (1946) and BD (1947), a bathtub was a central part of this midnight murder mystery. Georgette was found on 10/12/1944 after 11AM face-down in her water-filled bathtub, clad only in her pajama top and with a strange bandage-type cloth shoved down her throat. That is how she died (asphyxiation) and not by drowning…or ‘drownding’ (sic) as ZODIAC incorrectly scribbled in his rambling 1969 Christmas letter to Melvin Belli.
There was, yet again, a strange letter found meant for the Los Angeles Police regarding Georgette’s killing but before I mention that, I’d like to point out the sort of bandage forced down her craw reminded me of the “gauze” (tape) placed on the wounds of Josephine Ross on 6/5/1945.
The odd, typewritten note was found on the street (North La Cienega…cienaga means “slow-moving water”, like a swamp or a bog but remember that Georgette’s bathtub was filled with water and the tub’s faucet was on in a slow-moving mode…) in mid-September of 1945 by 14-YO Fairfax High School student Marelyn Silk (who spelled her name with an “e”) and she delivered it to the LAPD. It read…
‘To the Los Angeles Police--Almost a year ago Georgette Bauerdorf, age 20, Hollywood Canteen hostess was murdered in her apartment in West Hollywood--Between now and Oct., 11--a year after her death--the one who murdered her will appear at the Hollywood Canteen. The murderer will be in uniform. He has since he committed the murder been in action at Okinawa. The murder of Georgette Bauerdorf was Divine Retribution--Let the Los Angeles police arrest the murderer if they can—'
This note had red mercurochrome blotches on it just like the 11/3/1955 Cadet Cox mysterious envelope in Wickenburg, AZ would also have red marks on it. Since the Bauerdorf note preceded the Cox note by ten years I reckon the red may symbolize blood as Frances Brown’s lipstick smeared wall was still three months away from fruition. There were no spelling errors but the dashes, splotches, poor syntax and the “can’t catch me” taunt seem familiar in retrospect and in comparison. Predictably, this letter was seen as a “hoax” but it really shouldn’t have. Oh, LAPD, you’ve done it again!
Georgette’s birthday was May 6th, 1924. There was a ZODIAC note sent to the SFC on 5/6/1986. Some thought it was a hoax but it is indeed dinky-di ZODIAC. It reads, ‘This is the Zodiac speaking I am still out here (illegible) crack proof. I want you to know about my latest slaves that I have collected about two weeks ago up by Sacramento Ca I will give you clue (sic) to help you with the Mystry (sic). They were killed by a freeway. The Blue Meannies (sic) almost caught me. The body count is growing 100+ all over the state of Ca (sic) and Na (sic). SFPD-0 (ZODIAC symbol)-100+’. The requisite scratched out errors are there and those should never be overlooked in ZODIAC or BDA notes. Hidden clues are comprised in and of them.
Georgette’s case, like many high-profile murders, attracted many nutters who falsely confessed or seemed suspicious. One such downhearted gent was 22-YO ex-serviceman John Lehrman (rhymes with “Murman”) Sumpter. He went to FBI headquarters in late December 1944 and confessed to the Bauerdorf slaying but eventually admitted he made it all up (no kidding!) because he was lonely, sad and had nothing to live for and wanted to die in the electric chair. Let’s hope that cry for help jolted him out of his dejected stupor because circa that era you really were put to death quickly if sentenced with the death penalty! Yikes!
So many other women are included in this sadistic string of LA Women murders but I am not writing War & Peace or that blowhard shyster L. Ron Hubbard’s blabbering, banal, pompously pleonastic pile of pap An Alien Affair: Mission Earth, Volume 4 so I can’t include them all but it is likely I will write about them in the future to merge them all together cohesively. So please stay tuned. In the meantime, I’d like to end this link with the curious vanishing of 48-YO widow Mimi Boomhower on August 18th, 1949.
The widow Boomhower was known as “The Merry Widow” because she loved the nightlife before “Disco Queen” Alicia Bridges was even born. We’re slammin’ right into the spooky again because Mimi vanished in Los Angeles on August 18th, 1949…one day away from the sixth anniversary of her Congoleum magnate husband, Novice E. Boomhower’s death on 8/19/1943.
The Bel Air socialite left her Nimes Road home after 8PM to meet a man (“Mr. Wade”?) and she was sporting big-time diamond bling. Mimi was never seen again. Her vanishing also includes a note but it is very strange because it was written directly on her white purse in ink. We know it wasn’t written by a conscientious do-gooder (nice try, though!) because it was left in a Ralph’s Supermarket telephone booth on Wilshire Blvd. It said, ‘Police Dept-(strange doodles appear after this word, most likely a hidden message…like the strange doodles at the end of the 1/7/1946 Suzanne Degnan ransom note) We Found This At Beach Thursday Night’. Her purse was found on 8/25/1949, exactly a week after she went missing. Real lazy and dopey thinkers thought she just jetted off to Texcala, Mexico because she had their health resort travel brochures in her home but even José sez “no way” to that nonsense! Right, Agness Underwood?
I’m going to go somewhere now where I just may lose most of the readers but the links are credible so if I lose you quickly because you’re too lazy to check my facts, you weren’t worth having in the first place so, adios muchachos! Hasta la bye-bye!
A July 24th, 1970 taunting ZODIAC letter to the San Francisco Chronicle (SFC) had two misspelled words for “couple hours”. ZODIAC wrote “coupple howers”(sic)…hours written just like Boomhower. Boom! There it is. Mimi Boomhower!
ZODIAC’s notes and letters were a lot like The Black Dahlia Avenger’s notes and letters, over stamped, double-postage was used and sometimes the handwriting looks alike. The symbol for “and” used (+) by both missive scrawlers matches up. Both included purposeful misspellings, splotches and marks. Both had “lover’s lanes” in common…in ZODIAC crimes heavily and in the LA Woman Murders, lightly.
I believe there are other ties to other murders as well because the 7/24/1970 ZODIAC note I just mentioned was regarding an insanely scary ride from hell ZODIAC took a pregnant 22-YO mother, Kathleen Johns (DOB—May 30th, 1947-Petaluma, CA), on the Palm Sunday evening of March 22nd, 1970. She also had her 10-month old daughter Jennifer with her and they survived his death machine because ZODIAC wanted them to survive. Major dividends were earned by him just by amping up his scare-tactics factor rather than easily killing Kathy and her babies.
Central California was very frightened of ZODIAC by then. Kathy Johns (employed as a psychiatric technician at Pomona State Hospital) lived near Modesto, CA and was on her way to see her sick mum in Petaluma, CA. She traveled at night to get there quickly and have her baby sleep soundly in the car. Her car was torched by ZODIAC once she safely escaped from him after he played a confidence scam on her. When she ID’d him as ZODIAC from the “WANTED” poster she spotted in the Patterson, CA sheriff’s office, the sole cop taking her statement locked up the joint in absolute fear and fright…you bet your sweet bippy he did. ZODIAC was one bad hombre and he took his “Boogey Man” status seriously and that cop sure enough knew it.
ZODIAC also sent a postcard to the SFC’s Paul Avery on 3/22/1971, the anniversary of Kathleen Johns’ 3/22/1970 Modesto terror ride. It is known as the “Peek Through The Pines” postcard and alludes to his September 6th, 1970 slaughter of a Stateline, Nevada nurse employed at the South Lake Tahoe Casino. Her name was Donna Ann Lass (25-DOB—November 3rd, 1944-Sioux Falls, SD). Donna has never been found, like Mimi Boomhower. Donna’s birthday is the same day that the mysterious note regarding the missing West Point Cadet Cox was found at the Pollay Electric Store in AZ on 11/3/1955. She worked in Stateline, NV which is right on the state-line of Nevada and California, a lot like Texarkana which straddles Texas and Arkansas.
• The first victim of Texarkana’s “The Phantom Killer” who survived his attack on February 22nd, 1946 (25-YO James Mack Hollis-DOB—September 25th, 1920-Louisiana) was an insurance agent who worked on North Stateline Avenue and recovered at the now defunct Pine Street Hospital. His date that night, who also survived, was Mary Jeanne (Harris) Larey (19-DOB—January 11th, 1927-Tishomingo, Oklahoma).
• Donna had previously been employed at Letterman General Hospital at The Presidio and that was close to where ZODIAC targeted 29-YO cabbie Paul Lee Stine on October 11th, 1969. Old ZODIAC sure was a “Letter Man”, too!
Tuolumne County (a ZODIAC territory) is not far from Modesto, CA. I already mentioned Cary Stayner dumping the body of 15-YO Juli Sund (DOB—September 21st, 1983-Eureka, CA) in Tuolumne County.
• Juli was found on March 25th, 1999 (an anonymous letter received on 3/24/1999 led law enforcement to Juli’s corpse, too).
• The killer burned the bodies of Carole Sund (42-DOB—April 25th, 1956) and Silvina Pelosso in their rental car, which were eventually recovered on March 21st, 1999 on Highway 108.
• Francis Brown’s birthday was also on 3/21/1912 (“The Lipstick Killer’s” 12/10/1945 victim in Chicago, IL) and the “Yosemite Murders’” rental car was recovered on the eve of the 29th anniversary of the Kathleen Johns terror ride of 3/22/1970.
• Carole Sund’s birthday is also the day after the 4/24/1978 ZODIAC letter to the SFC boasting of his return and his control of all things.
Burned cars, locations, notes and dates thus far are what we have in common here (Cary Stayner was also arrested on 7/24/1999…same day as the previously mentioned ZODIAC “Kathy Johns” letter was sent in 1970). Did I mention that Kathleen Johns’ maiden name was Short, just like Elizabeth Short aka “The Black Dahlia”? Oh, snap! I just did. Kathleen Short married Robert W. Johns on June 2nd, 1968.
I’ll also throw in the 3/24/1946 date for one of the “Texarkana Moonlight Murders” (since I mentioned them regarding Jeanne French in 1947) to go with the 3/24/1999 “Yosemite Murders” anonymous note. The first set (but second attempt) of killings in that weird and wild, Texas killing spree happened in the early morning hours of Sunday, 3/24/1946. A couple in a sporty 1941 Oldsmobile were parked not far from South Robinson/Rich Road in Bowie County. It was known as a “lover’s lane” area (like ZODIAC in 1968 and 1969) and the man in the front seat, Richard L. Griffin (29-DOB—August 31st, 1916) was dead and the girl in the backseat Polly Ann Moore (17-DOB—November 11th, 1928) was equally tot (dead). Polly was a recent graduate of Atlanta High School, in Texas. Richard was a WWII veteran and had lived with his mother Beatrice Cameron Griffin at 155 Robinson Courts. Both victims were shot execution style by the never-found, mask-wearing, flashlight-toting “Phantom Killer”.
Stayner also killed 26-YO German-born naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong on July 21st, 1999 in Yosemite National Park. She was found headless on 7/22/1999 in a creek drainage ditch. Joie’s dad was in the Air Force and that is why she was born in Germany on December 20th, 1972. You remember the significance of 12/20/1968, right? The date of the FIRST ZODIAC killings of 17-YO David Faraday (DOB-October 2nd, 1951) and 16-YO Betty Lou Jensen in Benicia, CA on Lake Herman Road.
• Betty Lou’s birthday was July 22nd, 1952; the same day in 1999 when Joie was found dead on 7/22/1999.
• December 20th, 1969 was when famed attorney Melvin Belli’s ZODIAC Christmas letter was postmarked. The same day Joie was born on 12/20/1972.
• The ZODIAC Christmas card of 1990 (that was a lot like the ZODIAC Halloween card to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Paul Avery (DOB—April 2nd, 1934-Hawaii-December 10th, 2000-Orcas, WI) on October 30th, 1970) was mailed from Eureka, CA in December 1990.
• Juli Sund was born in Eureka, CA on 9/21/1983.
No one knows the day of the postmark of the 12/1990 ZODIAC Christmas card because it wasn’t stamped clearly and the day can’t be seen. This card was never recognized until March 2nd, 2007, seventeen long years later.
There isn’t any writing inside the sardonic card but there was a xerox picture of a set of two U.S.P.S. postal keys that had been enclosed in the card. The meaning has yet to be cracked but I am sure there is deep and vital meaning to them, especially the numbers on each key (#79408 and #55851). I’m as crap at deciphering the cryptograms as a blonde chick is at Chinese arithmetic (or even remedial math!) so I don’t know the meaning completely but I know ZODIAC’s nemesis, SFPD Homicide Inspector Dave Toschi, may have been the main gist of the bizarre taunt. The pronunciation of his Italian surname is “toss-KEY” and the keys look as if they had been tossed, a complex image to illustrate. Toschi had recently retired in 1987 so ZODIAC may have been cheekily asking (since he frequently brought up Toschi in his late 1980’s letters), “That tosser, Toschi, is long-gone, so which “Keystone” blockhead is going to take over what he could never accomplish with me”? Maybe? His name, understandably, was mostly mispronounced so one could only get where I did if they know the proper pronunciation. It’s amazing how one can have a potential “Eureka!” moment from a frequent mistake. I had racked my scrambled brain many times regarding those buggery keys. Even if I am correct there is much more to be deciphered from those keys.
The card went undiscovered at the SFC until an editorial assistant (Daniel King) found it in photographic files on March 2nd, 2007, a day after David Fincher’s 2007 movie ZODIAC was released. March 2nd is also an important day so keep that in mind. I’ll be discussing it shortly.
ZODIACologists well know there is an Atlanta, GEORGIA component to ZODIAC. Georgia being the female parallel to our favourite male name, GEORGE. The fiend sent a few letters many foolishly flaked off as frauds regarding “The Atlanta Child Murders” but they really shouldn’t have.
The first victim of those vicious and heinous crimes profiling mostly poor, young, black children was 14-YO Edward Hope Smith (DOB-August 19th, 1964). He vanished on July 21st, 1979…the same day Joie Armstrong was killed twenty years later in 1999. His birthday was the same day Mimi Boomhower’s husband died in 1943 and the day after she vanished in 1949. Someone anonymously called the Atlanta Police saying they knew what had happened to Teddy Smith (the ACMs had heaps of anonymous tipsters, callers and writers). Smith was found on 1881 Nisky Lake Road S.W. on July 28th, 1970. He was found shot dead and disposed of near the body of the second child victim, Alfred “Q” Evans.
13-YO Alfred James Evans was a Drew Elementary School Student who vanished going to the Coronet Theatre in Atlanta, GA on July 25th, 1979.
• Cadet Richard Colvin Cox’s DOB was 7/25/1928.
• Alfred vanished the day after the 9th anniversary of the ZODIAC “Kathy Johns Letter” postmarked with 7/24/1970.
• Alfred vanished the day before the 9th anniversary of the infamous 7/26/1970 (SFC) ZODIAC letter “A Little List”.
He was last seen on Peachtree Street heading to the Coronet Theatre. When Alfred was found dead on July 28th with the missing Teddy Smith, his cause of death (COD) had been strangulation. Jerome Edelberry had an article published regarding Cadet Cox in the November 1954 issue of the now defunct Coronet Magazine. It was titled “The Mystery of the West Point Cadet”. Coronet Theatre and Coronet Magazine. Alfred did vanish on what would have been Cox’s 51st birthday. “Coincidence is the psycho killer’s way of remaining anonymous”.
There were THREE ZODIAC letters in March of 1981 and they all are significant. The March 8th, 1981 ZODIAC/ACM (“Atlanta Child Murders”) letter’s envelope had ‘ATKID’ (“Atlanta Kids”) and his ZODIAC symbol written on it and it was mailed to WXIA-TV Channel 11 at 1611 Peachtree Street (same street Alfred Evans was last seen on in 1979), S.W., Atlanta, GA 30808 and postmarked in Atlanta, GA. It read…
‘Hello it’s me. Haven’t you people figured out who is killing these little people yet? I’ll give you a hint, I used to be in San Francisco. I used to stalk women, but I like to kill children now. At all my victims bodies I have left certain clues, but I guess it’s too much for you Rebels to handle. So I guess I’ll have to tell you. I’ll (illegible) kill children because they are so easy to “pick off”. Buy (sic) the way if you still have letters from the other murders, I am not writing in the same hand writing (sic).’
‘ZODIAC’
‘Pick off’ is in quotation marks because he is quoting himself from the Columbus Day, October 13th, 1969 ZODIAC letter taking credit for his October 11th, 1969 kill of Taxi Driver Paul Lee Stine (29-YO-DOB—December 18th, 1939). In that SFC letter he stated school kids were nice targets and that he planned on wiping out a school bus and he would ‘pick off the kiddies as they came bouncing out’. ZODIAC didn’t mind killing kids he just killed them under different “nom de slays”. Both letters prove that.
The March 2nd, 1981 “Danbury Mint” ZODIAC letter, postmarked from Cleveland, OH in a postage paid (Danbury Mint) envelope read…
‘PLEASE STOP FORCED BUSSING (sic) OR I WILL KILL 3 MORE BLACK BOYS IN ATLANTA IN MARCH !’
On March 2nd, 1981, another “Atlanta Child Murder” victim went missing.
• The same day the “Danbury Mint” letter was sent.
• The same day the 1990 ZODIAC Christmas card was discovered on 3/2/2007.
• The Zodiac movie premiered on March 1st, 2007, a day before the 26th anniversary of the March 2nd, 1981 letters and when another child would go missing in Atlanta, GA.
• Regarding the 1946 “Texarkana Moonlight Murders”, the last couple to be attacked on May 3rd, 1946 were Walter Virgil Starks (37-DOB—April 3rd, 1909) and his survivor wife Kay Starks (37-DOB—September 25th, 1909). They were married on March 2nd, 1932.
He was 15-YO Joseph E. Bell “Jo-Jo”, (DOB—June 6, 1965…please note that this may be considered a Satanic birthday as 6/6/65) who was last seen working at the carryout seafood restaurant, Cap’n Peg.
• He was also born one day after the 20th anniversary of the 6/5/1945 “Lipstick Murder” of Josephine Ross in Chicago, IL.
• The second couple killed (third attempt) in Texarkana, TX on April 14th, 1946 were Betty Jo Booker (15) and Paul James Martin (17-DOB—May 8th, 1929). Betty Jo’s birthday was 6/5/1930, the same date as the first “Lipstick Murder” in 1945 and one day before Jo-Jo’s birthday 6/6/1965.
Jo-Jo would boast to his boss, Richard Harp, that the Atlanta Child Killer was not going to get him but unfortunately that was exactly what happened to the poor lad and it looks like he was purposely picked. On 3/3/1981 Jo-Jo called the Cap’n Peg and his assistant manager Jerry Lee answered the phone. Jo-Jo chillingly cried to his boss, ‘This is Jo-Jo. They’re about to kill me. I’m about dead. They are about to kill me. Jerry, they’re about to kill me’. The phone then went dead. Jo-Jo’s body was found Easter Sunday, April 19th, 1981 in the South River. He had been strangled to death.
I just mentioned Paul J. Martin, who was killed in Texarkana on 4/14/1946 and was born on 5/8/1929. ZODIAC sent a letter to the SFC on 5/8/1974. It is known as the “Badlands” letter and he is being snarky and ironic about the 1973 movie Badlands based on Nebraska Serial/Spree Killers Charles Starkweather (21) and Caril-Ann Fugate (14) in 1957 and 1958. It read…
‘Sirs-I would like to express my consternation concerning your poor taste + lack of sympathy for the public, as evidenced by your running of the ads for the movie “Badlands”, featuring the blurb-“In 1959 most people were killing time. Kit + Holly were killing people.” In light of recent events, this kind of murder-glorification can only be deplorable at best (not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable) why don’t you show some concern for public sensibilities + cut the ad?’
‘A citizen’
Paul and Betty Jo were young teens but innocents, unlike the young killers in the movie or Starkweather and Fugate. I don’t think it is such a coincidence that ZODIAC wrote such a note on that specific date.
In March of 1981 five young males were killed in Atlanta. Two children and three mentally “slow” (formerly designated as “mentally retarded” at the time of the killings) young adults were killed by the “Atlanta Child Murderer”.
Eddie Lamar Duncan (21-DOB—June 20th, 1969) who vanished on March 20th, 1981 and was found in the Chattahoochee River in his underwear on 3/31/1981. His father was Eddie Lee Duncan and his Grandmother was Sarah Lee Beech.
Michael Cameron McIntosh “Mickey” (23) vanished on March 25th, 1981 and was found naked in the Chattahoochee River on 4/20/1981. His home was behind the Cap’n Peg Restaurant. March 25th, 1999 is also the day Juli Sund was found dead in Tuolumne County, prompted by the 3/24/1999 “anonymous” letter with a map of where her remains would be found.
The last “adult” victim that had mental disabilities was Larry Eugene Rogers (20-DOB—August 26th, 1960) who disappeared on March 30th, 1981 (the same day 13-YO Timothy Hill was found). He was found strangled on 4/9/1981 in an abandoned, ground-floor apartment at 460 Temple Street. He had lived at 1585 Ezra Church Drive, N.W. with his foster father George Hood for 18-½ years.
The other ZODIAC/ACM letter sent in March of 1981 (and not initially released to the public because it would have caused Atlanta, GA to rightly implode) is the ghoulish “Ghost Killer” letter. It is LOADED with clues including the ubiquitous “can’t catch me” taunt. It’s absolutely, chock-a-block, jam-packed with clues!
‘Well you’re all afraid, you’re all upset
Cause none of those cops have caught me yet
I’ve struck again and didn´t leave a clue
Now the whole city doesn't know what to do
You finally found *Lubie
(*Lubie “Chuck” Geter-14-YO—1/3/1981-DOB—6/30/1966)
He's been there all the while
Keep looking you might find another child
You think that the number stops at nineteen
Man, there are some things you haven´t seen
One night some kids got killed in a fire
I struck the match, so the death toll is higher
But you can´t seem to catch me. I wonder why
Thousands of you see me everyday (sic) when I pass by
It´s pathetic to know that I can get away
With first degree murder on any chosen day
Politicians are worried as the plot thickens
Leaders running around like headless chickens
All different cops can´t cooperate with the others
You will never catch me, you bumbling mothers
Go back from the ridiculous to the sublime
And you´ll find that I´ve been with you everytime (sic)
You'd better start looking before it´s too late
Or there’ll be another "50-48" (*dead cop)
So now I leave you with this peice (sic) of evidence
Don´t do something stupid like dust it for prints’
‘The Ghost Killer’
Lubie Geter (14-DOB—June 30th, 1966) is mentioned in “The Ghost Killer” note and he vanished on January 3rd, 1981. He lived at 129 Dahlgren Street, S.E. with his mum, dad and family. He was last seen at a shopping plaza. The “Atlanta Child Murderer” liked to nick the children he’d slaughter from shops and plazas.
Lubie was found wearing only his underwear on February 5th, 1981 in a wooded area off of Vandiver Road and he had been strangled. Vandiver Road is not far from Wolf Creek Golf Course. His belt was found in a creek. It was inside a brown bag. The BDA mailed BD’s personal affects to the Los Angeles Examiner and they were received on January 25th, 1947. They were contained in a brown bag. Suzanne Degnan’s legs were found in a sewer in January of 1946 near a brown bag with red crayon (symbolizing blood?) on it. The infamous JonBenét Ramsey 1996 Christmas Day murder also had a ransom note (with many misspellings, too) that demanded the money requested for her return be put in a ‘brown paper bag’. Suzanne Degnan was the JonBenét Ramsey of 1946 and was killed 50 years before the now infamous child beauty queen. Brown bags and ransom notes. PB& J. The first page (of three) of the 1996 Ramsey ransom note misspells ‘bussiness’ (business) and ZODIAC misspells ‘buss’, ‘bussing’ and ‘bussy’ (bus, busing and busy) in a few of his taunting notes. These misspellings can be found in the 11/9/1969 “Bus Bomb” letter (pages 2 and 6), the 6/26/1970 note and the two previously mentioned 3/2 and 3/8 1981 letters.
The 6/26/1970 ZODIAC letter is the “Buttons/Bus Bomb Map” letter and was sent 24 years after the 6/26/1946 arrest of William Heirens…who was supposed to plead guilty on July 30th, 1946 (same day 11-YO Earl Lee Terrell vanished on in 1980) but withdrew his plea with much drama. He finally plead guilty on August 6th, 1946, which was JonBenét Ramsey’s day of birth in Atlanta, GA in 1990.
Dr. Lee Patrick Brown (DOB—October 4th, 1937-Wewoka, OK), an American criminologist and politician, was the Public Safety Commissioner in Atlanta, GA during the ACMs and he’s sort of like a micro “Kevin Bacon” in True Crime. It’s not shocking he left Georgia faster than a fart in a fan factory for the Houston, Texas Chief of Police job after the bloody horror and controversial ending of the ACMs. There, he was the mentor of the future disgraced Boulder, Colorado (circa JonBenét Ramsey) Police Chief, Tom Koby (a native of Cleveland, TX). Koby was rightfully kicked to the curb by his exasperated Police Union in 1997 for the unmitigated mess that was the high-profile Ramsey murder case. Brown’s career and studies took him all around the USA from Portland, OR; Fresno, CA; San José, CA; Berkeley, CA and even to New York City. He was the Mayor of Houston, TX from 1998-2004. Atlanta certainly did not sully him but he sure knew enough to get the hell out of Dodge.
Another unlucky boy was killed in Atlanta, GA that March of 1981. 13-YO Timothy Lyndale Hill (DOB—January 1st, 1968…the same birthday as the Lake Berryessa ZODIAC victim, Cecilia Ann Shepard 22-DOB—1/1/1947-9/27/1969) who vanished on Friday, March 13th, 1981 (Friday the 13th!). His body was found before Jo-Jo’s on March 30th, 1981 in the Chattahoochee River. He had been strangled, too.
Timothy had been Jo-Jo Bell’s best friend. The seamy underbelly of the city and the plight of poor, black, Atlanta kids was really showing itself with the kidnap and murder of Tim Hill. The deep paedo aspect of the crimes patently showed itself clearly. Tim (and some of the other victims) had been solicited and raped by a number of paedos in the neighbourhood, such as Larry Hill (aka “Larry Marshall” or “Lee Hill”) and “Uncle Tom” (63-YO) Tom Terrell of Gray Street. Sometimes the kids allowed the perverts to rape them for money. Absolutely sad and tragic.
On March 14th, 1981, a white woman supposedly called the Cap’n Peg (or Jo-Jo’s mother Doris, who also did time in prison for killing Jo-Jo’s father) and said she was trying to get Jo-Jo released and for them not to alert the police. It sounds like more nasty shenanigans. A teacher named Theresa Swindall claimed she received two phone calls from a teary Tim Hill in Dekalb County on 3/16/1981. It was most likely legitimate because taunting was part of the vicious killer’s game.
There is also a ZODIAC letter from ten years back that goes with the March 13th date. The March 13th, 1971 letter sent to the Los Angeles Times is postmarked from Alameda County. This is the letter that mentions The Beatles’ ‘Blue Meannies’ (sic) and he claims 17 plus victims. He used 17 words/characters in the 3/2/1981 “Danbury Mint” letter. Was that a clue, too?
The dreadful end of the thirteenth ACM victim Clifford Emanuel Jones (12-DOB—October 22nd, 1967) on August 20th, 1980 takes us back to the “Danbury Mint” letter of 3/2/1981 (sent almost seven months after his slaying) with the alluding of him in it. The note was postmarked from Cleveland, OH which was where Clifford Jones lived. He was only in Atlanta, GA that summer with his family for a vacation/family reunion. He did not live in Atlanta. If one looks at the letter, one will notice a “tic” mark after the newspaper name of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Cleveland, OH is an important clue to the real “Atlanta Child Murderer”.
Hollywood in CA has already been discussed here regarding “The Black Dahlia” (1/14/1947) and Hollywood makes another appearance in the ACMs because Clifford vanished that morning while at the Hollywood Shopping Plaza with his brothers. His body was found the next day (8/21/1980) beside a dumpster on Hollywood Road. He had been strangled to death. The unproven conventional wisdom is that he was repeatedly raped and choked with a yellow rope by paedos Calvin Smith and James “Jamie” Brooks (29-YO…who lived in the back of and ran Hollywood Cleaners, a laundromat in the plaza) but Brooks was never charged with the crime. Brooks went to prison on another charge in 1981 and died of AIDS in 1987 while still incarcerated. By then Georgia was sticking to nailing their scapegoat Wayne Bertram Williams (23-DOB—May 27th, 1958) a DJ, freelance photographer and talent scout who has been in prison since Father’s Day, June 21st, 1981 for crimes he never committed. Just like William George Heirens.
Terry Lorenzo Pue (15) lived on Hollywood Court, N.W. with his parents Clarence and Helen Pue. He vanished in the overnight of January 21-22, 1981 after hanging out very late at a Krystal Restaurant burger joint. He was found on 1/23/1981 in a wooded area near Sigman Road. He had been strangled with a rope. On 1/8/1981, an anonymous caller to the police said a body could be found in that area. None was found and the anonymous agitator rang police again and told them to take another look just before Terry was found. (January 21st may also be the date in 1947 where BDA contacted James Richardson, the Editor of the Los Angeles Examiner asking him if he was interested in BD’s personal affects. They were received on 1/24/1947 or 1/25/1947 via U. S. Mail.)
The Hollywood “marker” also brings us back to the LA Woman (Unacknowledged) Serial Killer of the 1940’s and one of the only two girls killed by the “Atlanta Child Murderer” reminds us of some of those killings…
Angel Latria Lanier (12) left her home on March 4th, 1980 and was never seen alive again. She was found six days later on 3/10/1980 in a wooded, vacant lot on Campbellton Road (which cuts through Niskey Lake Road, S.W.), tied to a tree. White panties that were not hers were stuffed in her mouth. Her small hands were bound with an electrical cord. She had been strangled to death. This sounds like the plight of the vacant lot 1940’s victims. The unknown panties stuffed in her mouth were like Georgette Bauerdorf’s bandage/cloth shoved in hers. An electrical cord had been used in 42-YO Evelyn Winter’s murder in LA on 3/12/1947. Both Lanier and Winter were killed in March of 1980 and 1947, respectively. Chicago’s Josephine Ross’ birthday was on 3/5/1902 and Angel vanished 3/4/1980…one day before Ross’ 78th birthday had she lived.
Patrick Baltazar (12-DOB—April 17th, 1968) had the same birthday as Suzanne Degnan (4/17/1940-1/7/1946). Patrick vanished on Friday, February 6th, 1981 and was found flung down an overgrown, steep embankment in the parking lot of the Corporate Square Office Complex on North Druid Hills Road on Friday, February 13th, 1981 (Friday the 13th!). Patrick’s COD (cause of death) was unknown because he was so decomposed. “Balthazar” is the Biblical name of one of the Three Wise Men who visited and imparted gifts to baby Jesus. It means “Bel Protects the King” and gruesomely fits my Satanic theory. Two victims of the ACM had the surname of “Bell”, too (Yusef and Jo-Jo, unrelated).
Jefferey (extra “e”) Lamar Mathis (11) vanished on March 11th, 1980 going to the store for his mother Willie Mae. He was found in a Suber Road wooded briar patch also on Friday, February 13th, 1981. COD could not be determined because his remains were found almost a year later. Suber Road connects directly to Riverside Drive, S.W. Jefferey and Patrick were found on the same day, the day before Valentine’s Day in 1981. Jefferey vanished one day before the 34th Anniversary of the killing of Evelyn Winters in LA.
Yusef Ali Bell (9-DOB—December 31st, 1969) vanished on Sunday, October 21st, 1979. He was running a store errand just like Jefferey Mathis would five months later. He was found dead on November 8th, 1979. He had been bludgeoned and strangled and thrown down a crawlspace in the abandoned E.P. Johnson Elementary School on 494 Martin Street, S.E. (not far from the Columbia Towers Low Income Housing Apartments). He was barefoot and shirtless when he went to the store and he still had his shorts on when found dead. Masking tape was stuck to his shorts and the soles of his feet had been washed clean. Like the 1940’s victims had been washed and cleaned in bathtubs. Yusef had been a very intelligent little boy and was a student at Dunbar Elementary School.
Curtis Lamar Walker, III (13-DOB—June 14th, 1967) vanished on February 19th, 1981 and was found clad only in underwear and snagged on a log in the South River on April 6th, 1981. He had been suffocated. He lived with his mother Catherine Murray-Leach and family on Wilkes Circle. Curtis also had an Uncle named Stanley Murray (21) who was shot dead in July 1981 near where Curtis was last seen alive. His murderer is still unknown. Wilkes Circle was the same street where the harrowing October 13th, 1980 (Columbus Day) explosion happened at the Bowen Homes/Gate City Daycare Center.
This explosion happened right in the middle of the tormenting “Atlanta Child Murders” so one can see why the city passed it off as a boiler/furnace explosion from a wonky water tube/gas leak. The elementary school across the street received a bomb threat (no bomb was found) the very same day. The overcapacity daycare retained over 80 children and 8-12 adults that traumatizing day. One adult and four little 3-YO boys were killed. I don’t think the truth was told here for the same (possibly legitimate) reason that “The Ghost Killer” letter wasn’t made public…Atlanta would have rightly and gravely shattered into bedlam if the truth had been told.
(Sort of like the explosion of American Airlines Flight #587, out of New York to the Dominican Republic, on November 12th, 2001 (two months and one day after the unforgettable Islamic Jihad attack on America in NYC on September 11th, 2001). It was most likely a successful Islamic Jihadist shoe-bomber attack but the “country” had to play it off as a “mechanical error” (yet if one researches airline disasters they are exceedingly rare) so the country would not disintegrate and degenerate into chaos. I’m not a conspiracy theorist in any capacity…that kind of nonsense just clouds the truth and I have zero patience for it. The very rare ones that do have smoke and fire also happen to be the situations nobody cares about and easily forgets about, unlike the Kennedy Assassination which is totally twisted by stomp-down nutters and forever mired in absurdity, bunk and kookery. I am only interested in the infinitesimal ones that have some “there” there. Only then am I interested in the hidden truth but I do digress…)
The Gate City Daycare Center exploded on October 13th, 1980 and October 13th, 1969 was when ZODIAC sent the SFC a Paul Stine letter after killing him on 10/11/1969 in San Francisco, CA. Both were on Columbus Days and that holiday was significant to ZODIAC, who always claimed he was going to bomb children in his derisive notes.
Charles Stephens, Jr. (12-DOB—July 3rd, 1968) disappeared on October 9th, 1980 after going to visit friends in the now demolished Carver Homes Housing Project. He was found on 10/10/1980 on Norman Berry Drive (not far from the Atlanta Airport) near the Longview Trailer Park. He was missing his shirt and one of his shoes. He had been suffocated and he had strange marks on his nose and mouth and two pubic hairs were found in his underwear. They did not match Wayne Williams. Why would they? Charles also had the same birthday as LA Woman Serial Killer victim Evelyn Winters who was born on 7/3/1897…71 years before Charles and she was murdered on 3/12/1947. He was also born a day and a year before ZODIAC’s slaying of Darlene Ferrell on 7/4/1969 in Vallejo, CA.
Earl Lee Terrell (11-DOB—August 24th, 1969) disappeared on July 30th, 1980 after being kicked out of a local pool. The next day a white male with a southern accent called his home claiming he had Earl in Alabama and wanted $200. by Friday, August 1st, 1980. He never called again. His skeletal remains were found on January 9th, 1981 next to Christopher Philepe Richardson (11-DOB—October 30th, 1968) who vanished on June 9th, 1980 (before Terrell) on his way to a swimming pool in Decatur, GA (Atlanta-Dekalb County). They were found on Redwine Road in Fulton County and a COD could not be determined for either one. Christopher was found wearing a swim suit that was not his. Law Enforcement were actively looking for Lubie Geter at the time who had vanished on 1/3/1981. Christopher’s birthday also happened to be the same day Cheri Josephine Bates (18-DOB—February 4th, 1948) was killed in Riverside, CA on 10/30/1966. She is a suspected ZODIAC victim and ZODIAC took credit for her kill in his Saturday, March 13th, 1971 letter to the Los Angeles Times (‘I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my Riverside activity…’). That is why I pointed out Suber Road (where Jefferey Mathis was found on 2/13/1981) was directly connected to Riverside Drive in Atlanta, GA. Jeanne French’s killer (2/10/1947) was also known as “The Riverside Phantom Killer”. The aggregation of a shared word is not by chance.
Milton Harvey (14) vanished on Tuesday, September 4th, 1979 after going out to ride his yellow, ten-speed bike and pay a bill for his mother. His bike was found seven days later up against a tree on deserted Sandy Creek Road, not far from the Charlie Brown Airport. He was found November 16th, 1979 in a garbage dump. His socks and sneakers were missing. No COD was ever determined as his remains were too decomposed. Milton vanished the day after Labour Day in 1979.
Another Serial Killer who stalked and murdered victims in a particular area for a concentrated number of years and then slipped back into the evasive ether was Virginia’s “The Colonial Parkway Killer” who was also compared to ZODIAC for the “lover’s lane” MO, his elusiveness and even his penchant to kill via “Rope, Knife, Gun and Fire”. Those are not the only variables that match here either.
September 4th of 1989 was Labour Day (Monday) and also the date (or close to it) that the last victims around the targeted Colonial Parkway National Park vanished.
Annamaria Phelps (18) and her boyfriend’s brother Daniel Lauer (21-DOB—August 23rd, 1968) were last seen on 9/4 or 9/5 driving home on I-64. They were returning from Amelia County, VA. Daniel was to move in with his brother Clint and Anna (who lived in Virginia Beach, VA) and Anna was visiting her own family while Daniel packed up for the move.
• If it was on 9/4/1989, it was ten years exactly after Milton Harvey on 9/4/1979 in Atlanta, GA.
• If on 9/5/1989, it was ten years and a day after he was kidnapped and a day after Labour Day (Milton was also abducted the day after Labour Day in 1979).
• On 9/4/1946 William Heirens received his life-long prison sentence in IL and his birthday was November 15th, 1928. Milton Harvey, who vanished in GA on 9/4/1979 was found on 11/16/1971, one day after Heirens’ 43rd birthday.
Even more chilling and creepy is the fact that Annamaria’s birthday was March 24th, 1971. I have previously documented plenty about the significance of 3/24 and 3/25 and how the dates just keep intersecting each other and popping up, such as…
• The deaths of Griffin and Moore in Texarkana, TX on 3/24/1946.
• The days law enforcement received the anonymous note with a map (3/24/1999) and when Juli Sund’s remains were found in Tuolumne County in CA on 3/25/1999.
• The date when Micky McIntosh vanished in Atlanta on 3/25/1981.
What are the odds of all those matching dates? They obliterate any semblance of “The Law of Large Numbers”. The “house”, along with people, were being decimated in this killer’s game.
Dan and Anna’s remains were finally found on October 19th, 1989 on an old, abandoned, logging road and both had been placed and discarded under Dan’s electric blanket (Carole Sund’s torched rental car was first spotted on March 18th, 1999 in Long Barn, CA (Carole and Silvina’s bodies were also inside the car) on an old, logging road in Stanislaus National Forest). Annamaria had been stabbed and there was no COD for Dan as his remains were too decomposed and the rain had been relentless the six weeks they were missing and out in the open. Dan’s Chevy Nova had been found soon after it was purposely abandoned but on the opposite side of an I-64 rest stop (west) area they had stopped at in New Kent County. New Kent County is in West Point, VA and Hopewell, VA is not far away from the Colonial Parkway or West Point, VA (23181). Do you remember the significance of West Point in NY circa 1950?
The first of four Virginia couples had vanished around Columbus Day in October of 1986. Cathleen Marian Thomas (27) and Rebecca Ann “Becky” Dowski (21) were last seen on October 9th, 1986 and were found dead on Sunday, October 12th, 1986 in Thomas’ car (10/9/1980 was also the date Charles Stephens, Jr. vanished in Atlanta, GA).
The car was staged to look like it almost entered the water at a small York River pull-off. Becky was dead in the backseat and Cathy was dead in the trunk (just like Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso in Yosemite, CA in 3/1999). Cathy had hair in her hands just like Josephine Ross in Chicago, IL on 6/5/1945. They had each been tied up and strangled with nylon ropes and their throats had been slashed yonder ear to ear. They were almost decapitated just as Juli Sund was found in Tuolumne County on 3/25/1999.
The killer “tried” to ignite the car with diesel fuel. The conventional wisdom is that the killer didn’t know the ignition point was much greater for diesel but I believe it was a cruel and nasty taunt. This killer knew his stuff. Cold and dirty. Sund and Pelosso were burned up in their rental car and found on 3/21/1999 and Kathy Johns’ car was torched in CA on 3/22/1970. Other match-ups include…
• Georgette Bauerdorf was killed during the Columbus Day week on October 12th, 1944 (42 years before Cathy and Becky were found and also on Aleister Crowley’s 69th birthday…his 111th birthday was on 10/12/1986).
• ZODIAC victim Paul Stine was killed during the long Columbus Day weekend on Saturday, October 11th, 1969 in San Francisco (the eve of Aleister Crowley’s 94th birthday).
• The ZODIAC letter regarding Stine was sent to the SFC on Columbus Day, October 13th, 1969.
Cathy Thomas, like her father before her, was a highly intelligent U.S. Naval Academy Graduate and her mother was a nurse. Becky was a senior business management major at The College of William and Mary. Strangely enough, Cathy and Becky shared a birthday. They were both born on July 21st, 1959 and 1965, respectively. That date has been discussed as much as 3/24 and 3/25 (7/21/1999 when Joie Armstrong was killed in Yosemite, CA and 7/21/1979 when Edward Hope Smith vanished in Atlanta, GA). More repetition and convergence.
I want to highlight a topical March 25th, 1975 cold case that was just conveniently wrapped up in Bedford, Maryland and the Washington DC area because there is much still untold in the double-kidnapping and slaying of two, young sisters in DC in 1975. It was during Holy Week in March of 1975. Palm Sunday had been on the 23rd and Easter was coming up on March 30th (which would have also been Sheila’s 13th birthday in 1975). Sisters Sheila Mary Lyon (12-DOB—March 30th, 1962) and Katherine Mary Lyon “Kate” (10-DOB—March 29th, 1964) were on Easter vacation and had left their home on 3121 Plyers Mill Road and headed to The Wheaton Plaza Shopping Center before noon to check out the annual Easter exhibits. They mysteriously vanished that dreadful day and never made it home. They were seen by their older brother Jay around 2PM having a pizza lunch at The Orange Bowl Restaurant. They were also seen near a stocky, older man with a large recording device (it was 1975) who had asked many local girls to recite a pre-noted (on index cards), answering machine message into his hand-held microphone and portable recorder. The blonde girls’ father, John Lyon, was a well-known radio personality in the area at WMAL. On April 4th, 1975, a creepy guy called their home and demanded father John ransom him $10K in a briefcase and leave it at the Annapolis, MD Court House (the JonBenét Ramsey ransom letter demanded an attache/briefcase, too). The ransom was never claimed because this was just another “cat and mouse” game played by this seasoned Serial Killer. The creep called back just once to say the money wasn’t claimed because too many Police surrounded the Court House that day. Suuuuuuure. It was all crank and yank by design (what kind of moron would want to retrieve a ransom from a Court House anyway?).
From the beginning, there was a person of interest. He was paedophile Lloyd Lee Welch, who was an 18-YO carnival worker at the time but is now 60-YO and just pleaded guilty on September 12th, 2017 to two first degree murder charges regarding the never-been-found Lyon sisters.
Why did it take 42 years to hook this recidivist paedo? Where are the sister’s bodies? They were not found on Taylors Mountain when an extensive search was done a couple of years ago. Welch claimed he incinerated their petite bodies up there in the 1970’s. He claimed he saw his now deceased father and weirdo Uncle Richard Allen Welch kill and dismember the girls. Why wasn’t Richard Allen Welch charged as well, then? Lloyd Lee Welch was to be incarcerated in Delaware until 2026 on other paedo charges. It seems to me he knew what a molesting loser he’d been all his wasted and predatory life and wanted a “no-hoper’s” retirement plan of “three hots and a cot” all courtesy of the “gubmint” via the backs of taxpayers. He never could take care of himself and live like a proper man anyway. The tired paedo knew he would be close to 70 years old when released so why do all the middle work of being an old, pervo ward of the government when he could ride it out on one, wild, entitlement wave? His credibility consisted of a twisted pile of lies that changed often and didn’t always gel cohesively. He’s a paedo yet insists he only helped abduct the girls and didn’t molest, kill or dismember them? Look at the date (March 25th), the locale (at a Shopping Center), the time (around the holidays and during Holy Week, near the coming of Easter when Jesus was crucified and resurrected), the family harassment, the request for a phony ransom (5½-YO Suzanne Degnan and 6-YO JonBenét Ramsey ), the corresponding dates (the March 30th birthday of Sheila’s was also the same day in 1981 that ACM victims were found (Timothy Hill-13) and vanished (Larry Eugene Rogers-20) in Atlanta, GA) as well as the girls’ father being a DJ (like Wayne Williams). We’ve been down this dead-end road many times. In Chicago, IL; in Texarkana, TX; in Atlanta, GA et al.
Why is the finale of this case so similar to Jacob Wetterling’s in 2016? The Minnesota paedo in that case, Danny Heinrich (54), was also an early suspect but why did it take LE almost 30 years to nab this sloppy brain-box? He buggered many kids but never killed one but Jacob, right? Even his explanations about what transpired that day and why he killed Jacob sounded pat and made up. Where is the mask he wore on October 22nd, 1989, the one like “The Phantom Killer” and ZODIAC? He admitted he killed Jacob yet he wasn’t charged with the murder due to his kooky plea deal. The teeth and bone fragments found, supposedly Jacobs, were not even human, why hasn’t that problem been made public? On top of that, the Wetterling Family now want investigation records sealed. Why? Most people would quietly move on but something stinks here. Don’t believe the hype. Don’t let these cases die on a premature vine when the stench is still emanating from the dubious finale.
If “Dear Reader” thinks I am taking a leap too far, I humbly suggest a quick fact-check of a September 2nd, 1974 (Labour Day) vanishing of two sisters in St. Cloud, MN. Mary Catherine Reker (15-DOB—May 19th, 1959) and Suzanne Marie Reker (12-DOB—July 4th, 1962) disappeared in the late summer of 1974 going to their local Zayre’s Department Store for school supplies. Their bodies were finally found on 9/28/1974 at the Meridian Aggregates Quarry (a day after the 5th anniversary of the 9/27/1969 ZODIAC attack at Lake Berryessa in Napa, CA). I have always believed that the killer of the Lyon sisters was also the killer of the Reker sisters. We have a Labour Day holiday kill/vanishing again, another shopping center and Suzanne was born on the Fourth of July in 1962, the same day Darlene Ferrin (22) was killed by ZODIAC in 1969.
The appalling 1986 “Colonial Parkway Murders” (CPM) homicides of Cathy and Becky have also been rightly compared to the 1996 vicious slayings of Laura “Lollie” Winans (26-DOB—March 9th, 1970) and Julianne Marie Williams “Julie” (24-DOB—September 11th, 1971) sometime after May 24th, 1996 at their camping site in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park (Colonial Parkway is also designated as a National Park).
Lollie and Julie were found dead along the Appalachian Trail on Saturday, June 1st, 1996. They had been disrobed, bound and gagged with tape and their throats had been savagely slashed. Lollie was found in their tent fatally gagged and bound with duct tape and Julie was found dead with her sleeping bag down an embankment near a creek. The couple were to end their joyous vacation on 5/28 and their failure to return alerted their families that something went horribly wrong.
I thought I had previously read about this mystery in one of David Paulides’ supremely creepy and addicting Missing 411 books but this sad story had a strong feeling of a Serial Killer all over it and he only documents stories in his mysterious disappearances books he feels are not via Serial Killer. He’s wrong there but only by a very small percentage…a scant few of the stories he highlights have a very firm Serial Killer feel to them and one knows them when they come across them but I concur with those who think the women were all slaughtered by the same killer. Both happened around holiday weekends and in National Parks, too. We now know, thanks to Paulides’ fine work, how sneaky the National Park Services are when it comes to keeping the lid on their vanishing persons problem! Julie was a Geology major with strong Christian and progressive sensibilities and she selflessly did volunteer work in Columbia, MN. She and Lollie were the happiest they had ever been in life. All four women were great human beings and losing them was indeed a great loss for the state of Virginia.
One of the couples in the CPM mystery has never been found. Richard Keith Call (20-DOB—March 8th, 1968) and Cassandra Lee Hailey (18-DOB—May 16th, 1969) vanished after a college party on April 10th, 1988 (they were on their first date that started on 4/9…4/9/1981 was when ACM victim Larry Rogers was found dead in an abandoned Temple Street apartment in Atlanta, GA).
Call’s Toyota had been abandoned at the York River Overlook and was found on the early morning of 4/10. His dad saw the abandoned car the next morning as he was work bound and was so curious he went over to it and checked out the scene. His dad claimed when he checked out Keith’s car that eerie morning he did not see the keys in the ignition or the clothes last worn by and supposedly left behind by Keith and Cassandra in the car. Someone put them there (and perhaps after Mr. Call inspected the car that morning) and it is more than likely they were taken off under great duress.
Keith’s birthday matches the 3/8/1981 date two ZODIAC letters were sent regarding how ZODIAC was now killing little boys in Atlanta, GA. A Georgia boy in the lot of 28-29 killed has never been found either. He was Darron Glass (10) who vanished on Sunday, September 14th, 1980 in Atlanta, GA. He was last seen at an intersection after getting off a church bus that had just returned from a day trip to an Atlanta Braves game. His foster mother, Fannie Mae Smith, had received an emergency call from Darron that evo but the line went dead when she accepted the call. More purposely cruel shenanigans. No one has ever seen or heard from little Darron since that day. It has been 37 years.
David Lee Knobling (20) and Robyn Margaret Edwards (14) were last seen alive on Saturday, September 19th, 1987. David was a cousin to a boy Robin dated that evo and he drove them around in his pick-up truck along with his younger brother, Mike. It was a rainy night so Robin sat in the cab with David on the ride home from the arcade. They may have made a connection of sorts because David may have picked her up at her home later (did she sneak out?) after he dropped her off at 11PM. Truth be told though, no one knows how they reconnected that night. In my humble opinion, none of these couples would have naturally been where they were found (or where the vehicle was found in the Call/Hailey case) the evenings they vanished. The dreadful discoveries of the victims all seem so planned and staged.
David and Robyn did end up together somehow and were both shot in the back of their heads execution style. Their bodies were found along the rough beach of the James River on 9/21/1987 (9/21/1983 was Juli Sund’s birthday). Robin’s bra was found around her neck like “The Lipstick Killer” victims in 1945 and some of the LA Women Serial Killer’s victims like Evelyn Winter in 1947. David’s truck was found abandoned at the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge parking lot.
These two were similar in age to the 1958 Nebraska Serial/Spree Killers Charles Starkweather and Caril-Ann Fugate. ZODIAC alluded to them cryptically in his 5/8/1974 letter to the SFC. One of the other CPM victims had the same surname (Daniel Lauer) as C. Lauer Ward (47-DOB—August 5th, 1910) killed on January 28th, 1958 by Starkweather and Fugate. Was this by design? It was quite odd that these two had got back together that night in the first place. I theorize that these two were forced to this area as part of the killer’s grand, staging design. I feel the same way about the April 14th, 1946 teen Texarkana victims Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin, found dead at Spring Lake Park. Those two shouldn’t have been there. Martin was going to drop Booker off at a “girls” slumber party and she had “friend-zoned” Martin, according to her friends.
Back in Atlanta, Georgia, Patrick “PatMan” Rogers (16) was last seen on November 10th, 1980. His body was the first of a few to be found dumped in the Chattahoochee River. He was found on December 7th, 1980. He was killed by blunt-force trauma and some believe he was thrown from the bridge. His Grandmother died the same day his cadaver was found on Pearl Harbor Day 1980. “Texarkana Moonlight Murder” victim 17-YO Polly Ann Moore’s birthday was 11/10/1928…she was killed on 3/24/1946.
William “Billy Star” Barrett (17-DOB—October 8th, 1963) vanished on May 11th, 1981 after he went to pay a bill for his mother and was found 3 hours later (5/12/1981) on the side of the road in a wooded area on Winthrop Drive (Suzanne Degnan had been chopped up at 5901 Winthrop Avenue in 1946). He had been strangled. He was also stabbed but after he died. He was missing his jacket. He had much trouble with the law so at first LE didn’t think he was an ACM victim.
Eric Antonio Middlebrooks (14) vanished late May 18th, 1980. He loved bikes and was passionate about repairing them. He received a phone call requesting bike help and out the door he eagerly ran. He was found dead the next day next to his bike. The COD was blunt force trauma to his head. He had been stabbed in the chest and arms and his pockets were inside-out. He was dumped behind the Hope-U-Like-It Bar that was next door to the Georgia Department of Offender Rehabilitation. A few weeks prior he had testified against three juveniles in a robbery case.
Aaron Darnell Wyche (10-DOB—October 6th, 1969) was seen at Tanner’s Corner Grocery on June 23rd, 1980 getting into a blue and white Chevrolet with two black men. He was also seen later in the day at Moreland Avenue Shopping Center. He was found dead the next day under a bridge (railroad trestle) on Constitution Road. He was afraid of heights so it is believed he was thrown from the trestle and his broken neck was either from the fall or asphyxiation. Aaron has the same birthday as 2/10/1947 victim Jeanne French…10/6/1902. There was an October 5th, 1970 postcard sent by ZODIAC to the SFC. ZODIAC used newspaper clipping to express himself (like BDA) and there were 13 holes punched in the card. Most remember it by the nasty boast of ‘Some of Them Fought It Was Horrible’.
Jimmy Ray Payne (21-DOB—September 1st, 1959) was an older ex-con who went missing on April 22nd, 1981 and was found strangled on April 27th, 1981 in the Chattahoochee River. His underwear were the only clothes on his dead body. There was a piece of paper in the pocket of his under shorts and on it was an address of an apartment building on Kimberly Road where Teddy Smith (the first ACM victim) and a young thug/punk named Lee Gooch lived.
The dupe, Wayne Williams, was only convicted of Payne’s and Nathaniel Cater’s (27-DOB—May 20th, 1954) murder. Cater vanished on Thursday, May 21st, 1981 (one day after his birthday) and was found naked in the Chattahoochee River on May 24th, 1981. The COD was that he was most likely strangled. He was living in a cheap “down on your luck” hotel at 180 Luckie Street, N.W. Williams was never charged with any of the 20 plus children’s murders. It’s not hard to see why they didn’t dare.
The profiled murders did cease after Wayne was arrested in June of 1981 but not because they had the real killer as the Colonial Parkway Murder victims have showed us. The wrongly imprisoned dupes, like Heirens and Williams, have a fate a lot like the old Black Flag “Roach Motel” commercials used to promise about their vermin curbing product, ‘…they check in but they don’t check out.’ Many of the dupes went in the slammer with paltry evidence and may stay there until they shed their mortal coils. Even when the mitigating proof and evidence to the contrary overwhelms the poor circumstantial evidence that put them in the clink in the first place.
The real killer had his kind of sicko fun with the Reverends of Atlanta, too. Reverend Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference received a letter from a Florida man who claimed to be a Klansman and perhaps the Atlanta Child Murderer. He made sure to turn the letter and info over to the FBI but of course they did nothing with it. Good, old “Famous But Incompetent”. On February 14th, 1981, Reverend Earl P. Paulk of the Chapel Hill Harvester Church pleaded with the real killer to contact him. A man claiming to be the killer did call him that February and March, at least 8 times, but he stayed on the line no more than 40 seconds at the most. He knew how to yank the Reverend’s crank. We know bodies of two of the slain children were found in Atlanta, GA on 2/13/1981 (Jefferey Mathis and Patrick Baltazar), the day before Saint Valentines’ Day.
The Valentines’ Day date brings us back to the unacknowledged LA Woman Serial Killer because on February 14th, 1948 after 4:30PM, a 42-YO Real Estate Agent named Gladys Eugenia Kern (DOB—September 2nd, 1905-Kansas) went missing in Los Angeles, CA. She was last seen on Valentines’ Day in 1948 on her way to show an empty house for sale on Cromwell Avenue in Los Feliz to an interested male client. She was found dead on Tuesday, 2/17/1948 in that home. She had been stabbed in the back in the empty kitchen.
The Police received a strange note written in pencil (before Mrs. Kern was found) by a so-called new “assistant” to the racketeer thug she was supposedly showing the home to. He claimed to have witnessed the aftermath of the kill by his goon boss. ‘Hurry To Police’ was the familiar kind of plea written on the envelope (which was mailed on 2/14 or 2/15/1948 from the same mailbox a BDA note/package was mailed from on January 24th, 1947). The letter was filled with the usual “cat and mouse” nonsense and typical misspellings but was accurate regarding the murder. The writer of the note claimed to have entered the scene of the crime just after the thug had killed Mrs. Kern and claimed that the killer had tied him to the sink. Once free, the perfidious acolyte moronically stated he picked up the hunting knife, washed it and left it in the sink. The knife was found in the sink (along with a handkerchief…a handkerchief was also found near the Degnan kidnapping site and Jeanne French’s corpse). The altruistic acolyte then claimed he was going to stay in hiding until he heroically found the killer himself. Puh-leeze. We know the plot by heart now and the song remains the same. Second verse, same as the first.
Gladys Kern’s 9/2/1905 birthday is the same day in 1974 that the Reker sisters vanished in St. Cloud, MN and was just one day off of Jimmy Ray Payne’s 9/1/1959 birthday.
On February 14th, 1974, ZODIAC also sent the SFC a snarky postcard referencing the infamous Patty Hearst kidnapping. It read, ‘Dear Mr. Editor, Did you know that the initials SLAY (Symbionese Liberation Army) spell “sla” an old Norse word meaning “kill”.’ ‘a friend’ and it was sent 26 years after Mrs. Kern was killed. There was also a January 31st, 1947 BDA note signed ‘a friend’. It was constructed with newspaper cut-outs and included a defaced wallet picture of a 1/10/1947 robbery victim named Armand Robles. It read, ‘Here IS (sic) the photo of the werewolf” (sic) killer’s (sic) I (sic) saw him kill her’ ‘a friend’. If one studies both the Black Dahlia murder and the ZODIAC killings, how the hell can one not see the glaring similarities, especially in the notes?
I’ll throw this find in as well…many taunting BDA notes were mailed to the Los Angeles Herald Express on January 29th, 1947. ZODIAC also sent a letter to the SFC on 1/29/1974 which is just flipping the year 1947 to 1974. The ZODIAC 1/29/1974 letter was known as “The Exorcist” letter and it read, ‘I saw and think “The Exorcist” was the best saterical (sic) com-idy (sic) that I have ever seen. Signed, yours truley: (sic) He plunged himself into the billowy wave and an echo arose from the sucide’s (sic) grave tit willo tit willo tit willo (sic) PS. if I do not see this note in your paper, I will do something nasty, which you know I’m capable of doing.’ ‘Me-37 SFPD-0’.
There are strange and cryptic markings and glyphs towards the bottom of the page. They are definitely cryptograms but those are not my bailiwick, I must humbly admit. This 1974 letter is alluding to a suicide note left on Venice Beach (LA) on Friday, March 14th, 1947 (“Pi Day” and two months exactly after BD’s gruesome murder). The craven letter writer claims to having been BD’s killer and he supposedly killed himself by dramatically walking into the ‘billowy waves’ of the unforgiving ocean (leaving all his clothes on the beach and the fugazi suicide note in his shoe). Not bloody likely, but ‘A’ for effort, Herr Serienmörder! The Los Angeles Times reported this bizarre pantomime on March 15th, 1947 (The Ides of March) with the headline, ‘Suicide’ Revives ‘Dahlia’ Inquiry’. On 3/13/1971 ZODIAC sent a note to the Los Angeles Times (postmarked from Pleasanton, CA) even though he usually sent his notes to the SFC. He claimed in the note he sent it to the LA Times because they ‘don’t bury me on the back pages…’, but I’d bet the “Funhouse” it was to commemorate his little 3/14/1947 kabuki theatre posturing 24 years later.
I started the death chain with Suzanne Degnan and I want to finish up with her as well. I want to tie her January 7th, 1946 kidnapping and killing to a Canadian child killing ten years later in London, Ontario (Canada).
London, Ontario was mind-bogglingly the Serial Killing Capital of the World from 1956-1984. It’s a long and very interesting story I intend to tackle soon but let me just pull the bow off of the strangely ironic phenomenon first with the probable “victim zero” of that long and unfortunate Serial Killer run.
Susan Cadieux (5-DOB—December 21st, 1950, the eve of the 1968 ZODIAC attack at Lake Herman Road) was kidnapped, raped and cold-bloodedly left to die slowly into the very frigid winter night of January 7th, 1956 (same date as Suzanne Degnan in 1946 and same day as “George’s” first visit to Cadet Cox in 1950).
Around 8PM on Friday, 1/6/1956 she was playing outside with her brothers and her upstairs neighbour. The Cadieux’s lived across the street from St. Mary’s Catholic Church so they were all happily playing in the church’s snowy yard. A young, male stranger happened along and chatty Susan talked to him with exuberance and ease. He lied and said he had a 9PM meeting with Father Wilfrid O’Rourke. He effortlessly led her away with another ruse of having something to show her. She was found dead the next day. She had been raped and she froze to death in the bitter cold. Tears were still frozen to her moribund and sullen face when she was found at 10AM near the CP Railroad tracks at the Ray James Construction and Farm Supply Warehouse on Williams Street. Her underwear had been torn and her blue jeans were missing under her snowsuit. Her rapist/killer was never caught. This horrible death started the almost thirty years of Serial Killer horror that grippingly plagued London, Ontario. I will expound on most of those years in a future article but before I end this concatenation of execrable cold cases I want to coda out with a case that brings us right back to our gruesome beginning of Suzanne and BD.
Cynthia Rae Cadieux (16) of Roseville, Michigan was abducted walking home from a friend’s house after 8PM on January 15th, 1976. She is an unofficial “Oakland County Child Murder” victim but she should probably be an official one because these Michigan Serial Murders play out like the reverse “Atlanta Child Murders” (older/teen victim’s first, then younger children…).
The “Oakland County Child Murderer” was yet another vicious and elusive Serial Killer. One should recognize the 1/15 date and the significance (the same day BD was found 29 years prior in 1947 for those punchy from the copious amount of dates to recall). Roseville, MI is in another country than London, Ontario (Canada) but it is less than 115 miles away and less than a 3-hour drive away (the travel is almost 700 miles less than a drive from El Paso, TX to Texarkana, TX).
Cynthia had been abducted, raped and bludgeoned to death. Her nude and battered cadaver was found near a rural road and in the snow on 1/16/1976 just after 1AM.
Her death may be the start of the 1976-1977 “Oakland County Child Murders”. Her last name matches up with Canadian Susan Cadieux’s and they were killed twenty years apart. Cynthia Cadieux was killed thirty years after Suzanne Degnan, who was killed ten years before Susan Cadieux.
Cynthia was found not far from where documented OCCM victim Kristine Marie Mihelich (10-DOB—April 25th, 1966…same birthday as Carole Sund in 1956) would be found dead on Friday, January 21st, 1977, the same day ACM victim Terry Pue (15) vanished on 1/21/1981 in Atlanta, GA. Kristine vanished on Sunday, 1/2/1977 in Berkely, MI (think of Berkeley, CA minus an ‘e’) on her way home from a 7-Eleven convenience store. Her body was found on a rural, dead-end (Bruce Lane) in Franklin Village, MI. She had been suffocated and laid out in a pile of snow. Kristine’s eyes were closed and like Juli Sund (at Lake Don Pedro in Tuolumne County on 3/25/1999), her hands had been purposely folded on her chest, piously, by the killer. Her body and clothes had been cleaned as all documented OCCM victims eerily were. Can you recall the other dead but cleaned bodies I previously discussed?
I opened the creaky OCCM door so I may as well tie other matched dates discussed to the three other victims because there are some.
Mark Douglas Stebbins (12-DOB—September 13th, 1963, on a Friday the 13th!) was the first “official” victim and he vanished in Ferndale, MI on Sunday, February 15th, 1976. He was at the American Legion Hall with his mother Ruth and wanted to go home to watch TV. His body was found 2/19/1976 in the Southfield Office Building/Fairfax Plaza parking lot in a snowbank (Marelyn Silk was the Fairfax High School (LA) student who found the mysterious Georgette Bauerdorf note in September 1945 on La Cienega Blvd.). Mark had rope burns on his neck and hands and had been raped and smothered to death. His body was cleaned as all victims in this spree were. The day he vanished was also the date in 1948 the LAPD received the weird letter from the “altruistic” acolyte of Gladys Kern’s mobbed-up “killer” and the day in 1999 Carole Sund, Juli Sund and Silvina Pelosso were slaughtered in Yosemite National Park. It was also the day after Valentine’s Day.
The next victim was 12-YO Jill Robinson who vanished on Wednesday, December 22nd, 1976. Her abduction and death are hard to reconcile because she ran away/was kicked out of her home in a silly fit of pre-pube pique we can all sheepishly relate too. Her argument with her mum was about dinner preparation and she packed a backpack and out the door she went. Her bike was found on 12/23/1976 behind a hobby store on Main Street in Royal Oak, MI. Jill was found in Troy, MI near I-75, in a snowbank on 12/26/1976, the day after Christmas (like JonBenét Ramsey) and was not far from the Police Department. She had been shot dead with a .22 caliber gun. She had been cleaned just as Mark and Kristine were. The day she was found was also the day in 1990 that Cary Stayner’s Uncle Jesse Jerrold Stayner (42) was found shot to death with a .22 in his home in Merced, CA. His killer has never been found either.
Timothy John King (11-DOB—July 9th, 1965) vanished on March 16th, 1977 in Birmingham, MI. He went to a local drug store for candy and was kidnapped on his way home. Timmy was found dead on 3/22/1977 in a ditch in Livonia, MI (Wayne County) on Gill Road. He had been bound, raped, suffocated and cleaned. Those who are familiar with the OCCM cases grimly remember and never forget his tragic story because his parents pleaded on local TV for his return and promised to serve him his favourite meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken. When autopsied, it was found Timmy’s last meal had been KFC. The day Timmy vanished was the same day in 1981 Timothy Hill in Atlanta, GA phoned his teacher Theresa Swindall. All she could hear was his crying. March 22nd repeats itself yet again in this article regarding the day Timmy was found dead in 1977. The same date as ZODIAC’s CA terror ride with Kathleen Johns in 1970 and a year later with ZODIAC’s note to the SFC’s Paul Avery in 1971.
There is much more madness, murder and mayhem in between because indeed, the devil is in the details, but this blood-soaked, Satanic Circle has closed for now. From Hollywood, CA via London, Ontario (Canada) to Boston, MA and back. Everything you think you know is wrong and it is up to you to see what and who was directly in the open the whole time or just push it all aside in blissful ignorance as most will indeed do. When one comes upon the two divergent trails in the deep, dark, wooded, black-forest path, taking the path everyone ignores just may make a difference in how one sees all the evil in the world and how far, deep and wide one believes it can firmly lock itself into this mild equator we are all captives on.
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