Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season ten with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

Was she the victim of a random shooting or was Kaitlyn Arquette silenced?

CASE DETAILS

On June 14th, 1989, 18 year-old Kaitlyn Arquette graduated from Highland High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Kait was a popular, outgoing honor student who had recently been accepted at the University of New Mexico, with plans of one day attending med school. Shortly before graduation, using money she received from an insurance settlement, Kait moved in with her boyfriend. Kait’s mother, Lois Duncan, was aware of the arrangement, if not entirely up to speed:

“He was eight years older than her but we thought he was only four years older, because they’d lied to us. She knew we wouldn’t let her date someone that much older. He seemed like a nice guy and he was around the house a lot. We liked him.”

Six weeks later, on July 16th, Kait met with her mother and admitted that she and her boyfriend had been having serious problems almost from the moment they moved in together. Kait wanted her mother to lie to the boyfriend regarding her whereabouts. There was urgency in Kate’s request:

“Kait told us she’d had a big fight with her boyfriend, she was breaking up with him, and she was going to a girlfriend’s house for dinner. She said she would either spend the night there or come back and spend it at our house. She was not going to go back to the apartment.“

Kait visited her girlfriend that night from 9:30 P.M. to 10:45 P.M., then headed east along Lomas Road towards her mothers house. It is believed that while on her way home, a car pulled up alongside Kait and someone inside shot her. A little before midnight, Lois Duncan received a distressing phone call:

“It was a call from the hospital emergency room. They said Kait was there and that she’d been injured. They wouldn’t tell me what’d happened on the phone, so my husband and I drove to the hospita, and learned Kait had been shot twice in the head. She was in a coma.” 

Five hours later, police arrived at Kait’s apartment. Her live-in boyfriend was home alone, seemingly unaware that his girlfriend had been shot and was close to death. Det. Steve Gallegos of the Albuquerque Police Department questioned him on his whereabouts at the time of the shooting:

“Kaitlyn’s boyfriend told me that he had been out with a couple of friends. They had eaten, they’d played pool and they’d had a couple of drinks. I discovered a note on top of the kitchen table. The note read something to the effect of ‘Hon, I’ll be home at a certain time’. He indicated that the note came from Kaitlyn.”

When the police left the apartment, Kait’s boyfriend headed straight to the hospital and joined her family at her bedside. Less than 24 hours later, Kaitlyn was dead.

Six months later, police ruled that Kaitlyn Arquette had been the victim of a random act of violence. Kait’s mother refused to accept that ruling. Following her daughter’s death, she began to uncover dark hints that Kait had somehow gotten mixed up with a major criminal organization. Two and a half months before she was killed, Kaitlyn and her boyfriend took a trip to Southern California. According to Lois, Kait had become involved in a complex insurance scam after her boyfriend rear-ended another car:

“One of our daughters told me that in March, the boyfriend had staged a fake accident in a car that Kait had rented for him with our credit card.”

The scam was reportedly set up by a powerful Vietnamese gang. Everyone involved in the accident complained of soft tissue injuries to the neck and lower back and were later treated by a doctor who was part of the fraud. A law firm in Orange County, California, handled the insurance claims. Kait and her boyfriend received fifteen hundred dollars as their share of the settlement. Lois Duncan learned more:

“It was evidently a major, multi-million dollar insurance scam. And Kait had found out about it.  At the time, we didn’t know how we could fit this in with her shooting. But all of a sudden, there was something that suggested a possible motive. If Kait was breaking up with her boyfriend at that time, maybe she was a danger to the people who had arranged this.”

A few weeks after Kait’s death, her mother made a disturbing discovery: three calls had been made from Kait’s apartment at almost the exact moment of her death. Lois Duncan:

“They were made just minutes after she was pronounced dead, when her boyfriend was with us at the hospital, and the apartment should have been unoccupied. The number turned out to belong to a Vietnamese paralegal in Orange County. It was the same paralegal who set up the car wrecks.”

Lois asked a local crime reporter, Mike Gallagher, to investigate. Mike first spoke to Kait’s former landlord:

“I got the impression from neighbors that Kaitlyn was more afraid of her boyfriend’s friends, rather than her boyfriend. She would get disturbed when they only spoke Vietnamese around her and they tended to make fun of her. Kait did not like her boyfriend’s friends and I think the feeling was mutual.”

Mike Gallagher was able to obtain a copy of the note that police believed Kait had left for her boyfriend on the day of the shooting. He compared it with another sample of her handwriting:

“It was obvious just by comparing the handwriting of the note with Kaitlyn’s writing, that she did not write that note. And that led me to believe that within hours of her shooting, her boyfriend was already lying to police.”

The landlord also told Gallagher that, on the night Kaitlyn died, three of her boyfriend’s associates were in her apartment drinking. Kait’s mother was convinced that one of them made the phone calls to the law firm in Orange County. Det. Gallegos disagrees:

“I don’t think that the Vietnamese connection is related to this case. Thus far, I have not received any information to indicate positively that the Vietnamese are involved in this homicide.”

Kait’s mother remained convinced that her daughter’s death was related to the insurance scam, but the police were going in a completely different direction. Six months after the murder, an informant led police to a young man named Juvenal Escobedo. They discovered that Escobedo had recently sold his brown Chevrolet Camaro. On the night of Kait’s murder, a truck driver had reported seeing a brown Camaro chasing a young woman in a car similar to Kaitlyn’s. In the end, the charges were dropped because police could not connect Juvenal with the gun or the shooting.

Finally, under pressure from Kait’s family, the police questioned her boyfriend again. This time, he admitted that he and a friend had taken part in the insurance scam, but maintained his innocence in her death. Charges have never been filed against him or any of his friends, nor is he considered a suspect in Kait’s murder. Mike Gallagher was unsatisfied with the police investigation:

“I think it’s important for the police and anybody who looks at this case to remember that Kaitlyn’s boyfriend’s friends were involved with large scale organized criminal activity in Los Angeles and multi-million dollar insurance frauds. I don’t think the police ever took that seriously.” 

There seem to be two viable theories about who killed Kaitlyn. She was either the victim of a random shooting, or she was executed to keep her from exposing the insurance scam. Kait’s mother Lois maintains her belief that this was no random act:

“Our family doesn’t have any real idea who pulled the trigger on Kait. The one thing we feel very strong about is that she was not shot randomly by people just out on a spree, having fun, shooting a pretty girl in a red car. We believe Kait was killed because she was going to expose illegal activities involving her boyfriend and his companions.”

UPDATE: In July 2021, Paul Apodaca, who was the first person on the scene that fateful day, confessed to the murder of Kaitlyn Arquette after having been caught for unrelated crimes. In February of 2022, Apodaca was officially indicted for the crime.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A teenage lifeguard is abducted and her mother may have seen the suspect.

CASE DETAILS

For the Bish family, the perfect getaway from the urban violence of their old Detroit neighborhood was Warren, Massachusetts, population 4,800. Molly Bish was only a year old when her family moved here. Fifteen years later, she landed her first real job as a lifeguard at a nearby pond. Magi Bish is Molly’s mother:

“Molly was very proud to be a lifeguard. She worked very hard for that and she did get this position at the Warren Pond. It’s a beautiful location. But it’s surrounded by woods and it is somewhat isolated.”

On June 27, 2000, Molly’s seventh day on the job, her mother Magi drove her to work.
Three hours later, she received an alarming phone call:

“I got a phone call from the local police who said that there had been no lifeguard all day and that Molly’s belongings were on the beach.”

Magi rushed to the pond. She found her daughter’s sandals, chair, and lunch sitting on the beach, but no Molly. Molly’s father, John Bish Sr.:

“It’s hard for me to describe that sinking, hollow feeling you have as divers are looking for your daughter, as dogs are combing the woods and police officers are searching and interviewing people. And I almost immediately began to think that something really horrible happened.”

According to Chief Ronald J. Syriac of the Warren Police Department, no clues were left behind:

“Molly’s chair, her lunch bag, her first aid kit and the 2-way police radio was right there, intact, undisturbed. So we have no clues whatsoever.”

Magi was convinced her daughter had been abducted and suddenly realized she might have seen the man responsible at the pond the day before Molly disappeared:

“We pull up at the pond. And there’s a vehicle parked in the parking lot right next to our car. There’s a man sitting in there smoking. I somehow just feel uncomfortable. I looked at this man. He doesn’t nod and greet me. And I just felt uneasy. I did not want to leave Molly with this man.”

Maggie escorted Molly all the way down to the beach and expected the stranger in the late model white car to be gone when she got back:

“And lo and behold, I think I’ve been gone a reasonable time, but this man who was in this vehicle, is still there. I’m very upset that he’s still there. So I lock eyes with him. I am giving him a stare, trying, I guess, to maybe scare him away. He returns the stare and just boldly stares at me, just, cocky as all… He just squinted his eyes and he stared at me, and just kept smoking and he didn’t seem to care.”

Fearing for her daughter’s safety, Maggie waited for the man to leave. The following day, Magi once again went with her daughter to the swimming hole. This time the man was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a truck unloading sand for the beach.

“When I saw the sand truck I realized that they were businessmen in town and I felt that I could leave Molly and it would be okay.”

But Magi never saw Molly again. The police investigation focused on the man in the white car. The sand truck driver had seen a similar car in the parking lot just moments before Molly and Magi arrived. On the other side of the pond is a cemetery. A worker there also saw a white car later the same morning. A path leads from the graveyard to the swimming hole. Molly’s father suspects this is where his daughter was abducted:

“It’s my fear that this person parked at that path, went to the pond and had taken Molly through that path, into his car and out of the cemetery and down the road.”

A composite sketch based on Magi’s description produced no solid leads. Desperate for information, Magi took action:

“We came up with the idea that an e-mail chain would be a wonderful explosive way to make more than one person, you know, get this picture, and keep sharing it with others.”

More than 35,000 people were e-mailed pictures of Molly. A web site devoted to finding her received thousands of hits. But a year passed without a single solid lead.

Magi contacted a sketch artist, Jeanne Boylan, who had worked on the Unabomber and Polly Klaas cases. Jeanne agreed to try to create a more accurate drawing of the man in the white car. For nine hours, the two women chatted as Jeanne carefully sketched a portrait. Finally, the drawing was complete. But Magi still felt something was missing, and Jeanne worked hard to render it:

“I stayed up fairly late that night using my own hand as a model, creating the image of the hand holding the cigarette and then added that to the drawing. And I think that was just sort of the finishing touch that really brought everything into focus.”

The drawing unnerved Magi Bish:

“When I saw the completed picture with the cigarette I had instant fear. I mean, it was him. You know, the eyes. It was this cockiness. It was this look.”

Update:

Three years after Molly Bish disappeared, her remains were found about five miles from Warren Pond. The case remains open and active. There is a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever took the life of Molly Bish.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season twelve with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

Workplace jealousy may be a motive in the tragic murder of a pregnant woman.

CASE DETAILS

Jodie Bordeaux and her husband, Shawn, had been receiving disturbing anonymous phone calls for weeks at their house on the Kickapoo Indian reservation in Powhattan, Kansas. Jodie was also sure someone was lurking in their yard. Shawn tried to reassure her:

“One night she heard noises outside of the house, and I tried to convince her that it was probably a raccoon or a coyote or something, and that she really didn’t have nothing to be afraid of.”

Not only was the danger Jodie sensed real, it would ultimately lead to her murder.

Shawn and Jodie were part of a management team hired to run the Golden Eagle, the first Indian-owned casino in the area. The casino had huge potential for the tribe, with annual earnings in the millions and job opportunities for the local tribe’s people.

Shawn and Jodie were also looking forward to the birth of their first child, a girl.

Everything seemed to be going Jodie’s way, even at work. She had been promoted to staff supervisor of the slot-machine department. Shawn was thrilled for her:

“To see her in the casino, you would think she was running most things. And even that perception, it can draw jealousy and envy from some of the people who may be in the same position saying, ‘How does she get all the attention?’”

Jodie believed that some of the staff were resentful of her new position. Mary Pierpoint, a reporter for Indian Country Today, agreed:

“There’s some competitiveness when it comes to these jobs. And having two people coming from other, you know, one from another tribe and one from no tribe at all and going into high positions in the casino, I’m sure rubbed a lot of people on the Kickapoo reservation the wrong way.”

According to Shawn, Jodie frequently reported the same employee for his bad attitude and tardiness:

“He kept coming back with more problems for her. And eventually, she had to start writing him up and holding him to the letter of the law, as our policies and procedures mandated.”

When the employee was brought before the casino management board for review, he was reprimanded and put on probation. But the problems continued and the employee was eventually fired. A few weeks later, the employee brought a grievance against Jodie to the tribal council. Shawn saw it as an act of vengeance.

The complaint cost Jodie her job. She spent the next month petitioning the tribal council to re-hire her. The anonymous phone calls began when it was rumored that Jodie might return to the casino:

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think they had anything to do with having to worry for our lives. I had no idea that we were being threatened.”

Late one November evening, Shawn and Jodie were spending a quiet night at home when a noise startled the Bordeaux’s dog:

“The next thing I hear is a popping noise kind of over and behind my head. Jodie got to the bedroom and she turned to see if I was ok. And one bullet went into the bedroom. And that one bullet struck her in the head.”

Shawn had no doubt that Jodie was dead. He quickly dialed 911, hoping to save his unborn baby. It was too late.

Despite an exhaustive investigation, Jodie Bordeaux’s killer remains at large. Kevin Hill was the County Attorney assigned to the case:

“We’ve gone from a point where just about everyone was a possible suspect, to a point where we’re focusing on an individual or a group of individuals that may have been responsible for this. These individuals were not strangers to Jodie Bordeaux. The individuals knew her, and they would have had an axe to grind with her due to employment issues.”

Nancy Bear, a Tribal Council Chairperson, has appealed to anyone with information to come forward:

“If there are members of the Kickapoo tribe that have any information that would help us solve this, they have a responsibility to their fellow tribal members, to their fellow community members, to come forward. This is an unsolved crime here on our lands. Let’s do something about it.”

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eleven with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

The shooting of a real estate agent may have been a contract killing.

CASE DETAILS

On January 11, 1984, at 11:10 A.M., two men entered the real estate office of Jack Brown in the Detroit, Michigan, suburb of Ypsilanti. The men were familiar with the layout of the building. As one stood guard, the other headed towards Jack’s office, entered and shot Jack once in the neck. The intruders then locked the three other employees in the bathroom and walked away. Jack Brown never regained consciousness and died twelve hours later.

The murder of Jack Brown appeared to be a cold-blooded contract killing, planned and executed by professionals. But police had no motive. Who would order a hit on a small town realtor, and why?

Jack’s real estate brokering business put him in contact with many members of the community. No one could imagine why he would be targeted by a killer, including Jack Brown’s co-worker, Dutch Jordan:

“There was absolutely nothing in Jack’s background that I was aware of, that would warrant any kind of problem. And surely not the tragedy that happened here. My opinion of the gunmen is that they came here to challenge Jack in some way.”

Dutch was outside of Jack’s office that fateful morning:

“I heard the gunman say, ‘You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?’ And I heard Jack say, in kind of a halting voice, ‘Well, well maybe.’ At that point the gun went off and I really figured that they were going to get rid of us, the three eyewitnesses to a murder. But looking back on it, it seemed that whatever problem they had was with Jack and not the rest of us that happened to be there.”

Ypsilanti Police Department Detective Sergeant Ed Hall investigated the case:

“No one seems to know anything shady about Jack or anything that he might have been involved with, which leads us to believe that maybe he was living a double life and was involved in something that no one knew about.”

The night before Jack was killed, his brother, Norm Brown, saw him on the phone. The conversation seemed to leave Jack extremely agitated:

“I could tell that in this conversation he was getting upset. So when he finally hung the phone up, I asked if there was a problem. He said, ‘It was nothing.’ I honestly feel in my own heart that something about that phone call was involved with what happened the following day.”

Jack’s widow, Ann Brown, has no explanation her husband’s death:

“It’s really strange when someone is murdered or taken from you suddenly. You look back and search your mind for clues. You remember things that someone said that didn’t fit. That night, Jack and I had been to a Christmas party and I was just a little irritated with him because he’d had a bit much to drink and was kind of rambling.”

During the drive home, Jack told his wife that he thought it would be a good idea to make of list of some very powerful people who he knew were involved in illegal activity and put it in a safe deposit box. At the time, Ann thought nothing of it:

“When I tell you these things that my husband said to me, I’m almost embarrassed; it just sounds so unreal. I’m an intelligent person, so why didn’t I find out more about it? I don’t know. I look back and really wished I had, but he told me that it was not something I should not know. And it may sound silly, but I believed him.”

The same day that Jack was murdered, the police conducted a major drug bust in the area. The raid had been triggered by an unknown informant. Det. Sgt. Hall wondered if there might be a connection to Jack:

“It was very possible. There were people in the community that knew more about what happened. But for some reason, either they were afraid to say or he knew something about someone else.”

The gunman was approximately six feet tall and wore a beige jacket and light colored pants. He was armed with a .38 caliber revolver. His accomplice was about 5’10” and was wearing coveralls and a blue knit stocking cap. He was armed with an automatic handgun.

SUBMIT A TIP

A serial killer is suspected in the murder of a young mother.

CASE DETAILS

On the morning of December 12, 1985, Mike Riemer, his girlfriend Diana and their daughter, Crystal, set out for a day in the mountains near Tacoma, Washington. Diana had just turned 21 and had known her 36-year-old boyfriend since she was 17. The couple drove up into the forest south of Tacoma, a scenic region often frequented by campers and nature lovers. They planned on finding a Christmas tree, and as Mike was a trapper, he intended to check his animal traps.

Later that same afternoon, Crystal was found at a department store near Tacoma. She seemed stunned, silent, and her parents were nowhere to be found. After being checked at a local hospital, Crystal was sent to a temporary foster home. Three days later, after being recognized from a news broadcast, Crystal was identified by Diana’s mother, Louise Conrad:

“And as soon as she saw me, she put her arms out and said, ‘Gramma.’ And they put her down and she ran to me and, and I’ve had her ever since.”

Crystal’s parents had vanished without a trace. When Crystal was asked where her parents were, all she could say was “Mommy is in the trees.” Four months earlier, the forest area where her parents disappeared had been the scene of two brutal murders. Initially, police made no connection between the couple’s disappearance and these murders. But soon a connection would prove inescapable. A massive search was launched the same weekend the couple disappeared. Mike’s best friend, Steve Tew, scoured the countryside on the ground and from the air:

“We searched from the spot where Mike would normally start his trap plans and we followed the whole, trap plan. And we searched for probably two or three hours… nothing.”

Then, two months after the couple disappeared, a man walking his dog deep in a forest near Elbe, Washington, discovered the body of Diana Robertson. Crystal was correct when she said that her mother was “in the trees.” Diana Robertson was lying dead in the forest alongside Mike’s truck. She had been stabbed 17 times and a tube sock was tied around her neck. There was no sign of Riemer. When Detective David Neiser of the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department searched Mike’s truck, he found bloodstains on the front seat:

“Unfortunately, after two months and about two weeks, some of the characteristics of the blood were lost. And they were not able to tell us what the blood type was. But they were able to tell us the blood was human.”

Police then found another baffling clue. Displayed prominently in the truck’s cab was an envelope that read, “I love you, Diana.” Diana’s mother Louise believed the handwriting was Mike’s:

“I have cards that he had given to her on different holidays and things… he signed exactly the same way.”

But according to Detective Neiser, the FBI’s analysis of the handwriting came back inconclusive:

“Why did someone put that there? Was it Michael Riemer as a final,’goodbye Diana, I’m sorry?’ Or was it someone who put it there to throw off the authorities and make them think that.”

Police believed that this killing was possibly connected to a double murder that had occurred four months earlier, just 15 miles from where Diana Robertson was discovered. These murders occurred in Pierce County, an area where Mike Riemer was known to set his animal traps. A man named Stephen Harkins was found dead in his sleeping bag, shot in the forehead. His companion, Ruth Cooper, was discovered two months later. She too had been shot to death. And like Diana, a tube sock had been tied around her neck. According to Detective Neiser, the tube sock on Diana had been tied with exactly the same type of knot as in the earlier murder:

“At a later date, I asked to observe the sock, which was used around the neck of Ruth Cooper. And when he dumped it out on a desk in the evidence lab, the evidence technician let out a little whistle, because knowing nothing about the case, he could see that it was the same as the one I had brought with me from Diana Robertson.”

Police considered two theories. One was that an unknown serial killer had murdered both couples, and then hid Riemer’s body. The second theory was that Mike Riemer was the serial killer. Mike Riemer had a history of domestic violence. According to Diana’s sister, Darlene Robertson, Riemer frequently beat Diana:

“He beat her up. He took everything out on her. He blamed her for things that he did. If he was seeing somebody else, he would turn it around like Diana was seeing somebody else and justify it in his own mind.”

Police now had enough circumstantial evidence to issue a warrant for Riemer’s arrest. But according to Detective Neiser, there was one glaring problem:

“We can’t prove he’s alive and we can’t prove he’s dead. If we could show that he was dead, then it would be my belief that there’s an unidentified third party who’s going around killing people out there. However, if we can prove that he’s alive, he immediately becomes a suspect and that changes the situation dramatically.”

Update:

The skull of Mike Riemer was discovered recently by a hiker about one mile from where Diana Robertson’s body had been found 25 years earlier. No other traces of Riemer have been found, and his cause of death could not be determined.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A 15-year-old girl is murdered in a gated community in Connecticut.

CASE DETAILS

The night of October 30, 1975, began innocently in the upscale community of Greenwich, Connecticut. 15-year-old Martha Moxley and several friends went out for an evening of teenage pranks. Early the next afternoon, Martha’s body was discovered in her own backyard. It appeared she had been bludgeoned to death. Her jeans and underwear were pulled down around her knees. But according to Jack Solomon, Easton, Connecticut’s Chief of Police, there was no evidence of sexual assault:

“Martha was struck with a golf club. She received several blows to the head. The head of the club was found 50 feet from the portion of her driveway where we believe she was accosted. It’s believed that the portion of the shaft of the golf club that was used was later used as a weapon to stab her with.”

Initially, everyone assumed that Martha’s murderer had to have been someone from outside the area. However, the broken golf club found at the scene led investigators to a prominent local family. The club turned out to be part of a set belonging to the Skakel family. The Skakel’s lived across the street from the Moxleys. 15-year-old Michael Skakel told police he had been with Martha that night. 17-year-old Thomas Skakel was with her as well. Michael told police that at 9:30, he went with his two oldest brothers, John and Rush Jr., to give their cousin a ride home. Meanwhile, Thomas claimed he went home at 9:30 to do a report on Abraham Lincoln. The police estimated that Martha had been murdered between 9:45 and 10 PM. But if Michael was in the car and Thomas was in his room, what happened to Martha Moxley on her short walk home?

Investigators found yet another suspect in the Skakel household. 24-year-old Kenneth Littleton had just been hired as a live-in tutor for the Skakel children. He told police he heard noises outside the house sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 PM. Before he went outside, Littleton said he checked on the seven Skakel children. According to Detective Solomon, Littleton claimed that the four oldest boys, including Michael and Thomas, were not at home:

“Well, his story was that he heard some noises coming from the bushes on the property, leaves rustling, but he claimed he did not see anything at the time he was out.”

Littleton also said he didn’t see Thomas until 10:25, when Thomas joined him in front of the TV. The other Skakel boys came home within half an hour. Over the next several months, detectives interviewed more than 200 people and gave several polygraph exams. According to police, Thomas Skakel was given two polygraph tests. The first was inconclusive, but Thomas passed the second. Then after months of cooperating with authorities, the Skakels, on the advice of their attorney, refused to answer any more questions. Donald Browne was State’s Attorney of Fairfield County at the time of Martha’s murder:

“No one has an obligation to cooperate with police. But in most instances, individuals who have some knowledge that may lead to the identification of an individual who has committed a violent crime, are more than pleased to contribute that information to the police. So it’s most unusual when an individual possessing information decides that he does not want to give that information to investigators.”

Eventually, attention shifted to Kenneth Littleton, who’d been dismissed by the Skakels after six months. According to police, he was given a polygraph regarding the Moxley murder and failed. Still, authorities felt there wasn’t enough evidence to make an arrest. The case became inactive. But sixteen years later, the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith brought the Moxley case back to life. The connection between the Skakel and Kennedy families served as the catalyst. Within weeks, Detective Solomon and the Greenwich police reopened their investigation:

“The opinion of most of the investigators, who are trained police officers, is that whoever was responsible for this crime probably was in the Skakel home at some time that evening.”

In 1991, the police brought in the well-known forensic pathologist Dr. Henry Lee. Dr. Lee was able to utilize technology that was unavailable in 1975. Among the items examined by Dr. Lee were clothes found discarded in the Skakel’s garbage shortly after the murder:

“We found some hairs and fibers. Some of the hair microscopically similar to hers. Other hair dissimilar to her.”

Dr. Lee determined that the hair belonged to a male Caucasian. The problem was, he didn’t have a hair sample from any of the possible suspects and was unable to make a match. However, after studying the crime scene photographs, Dr. Lee was able to provide a possible motive for Martha’s murder:

“The blood smear on her body indicates somebody tried to use force. It suggests… a sexually motivated homicide.”

Leonard Levitt, an investigative reporter for the Long Island-based Newsday, covered the Moxley case starting in 1982:

“There were no defense wounds, which indicates that she knew her attacker. Merely the fact that she was hit repeatedly with a golf club indicates some kind of rage, which personalizes this thing, which indicates that there was such anger that the two had to have known each other, that it was a crime of passion.”

Time and again, the trail led back to the Skakel family. Then in November of 1995, a full 20 years after the murder of Martha Moxley, Leonard Levitt reported in Newsday that Thomas and Michael Skakel had made startling admissions to the detectives:

“Both Thomas and Michael told the investigators that they had lied to the police about their accounts the night of the murder. Thomas said to them that after 9:30, he went inside his house, and then he went back out and spent another 20 minutes with Martha. He claims now that he and Martha engaged in a sexual act and then he left her at about ten to 10:00. If you go back now and you look at the story that he told, it just doesn’t add up.”

Update:

Tips from Unsolved Mysteries viewers provided new information implicating Michael Skakel in the murder of Martha Moxley. Four years after Martha was killed, Michael had been sent to a school in Maine for troubled teens called the Élan School. Over the course of his stay at Elan, several of Michael’s classmates heard him confess to the killing. Based on this new information, 42-year-old Michael Skakel was charged with murder. Prosecutors argued that the motive was sibling rivalry over Martha’s affections. 27 years after the crime, Michael Skakel was convicted and sentenced to 20 years to life. The Skakel family appealed that conviction, and in May of 2018, the conviction was overturned.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eight with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

Was payback the motive for the murder of a detective’s 7-year-old son?

CASE DETAILS

January 12, 1984, was a rare midweek holiday for 7-year-old Gary Grant Jr. There was no school because of a teacher’s conference. Gary lived with his mother, May. She and Gary’s father, an Atlantic City, New Jersey Police detective, had been separated for nearly a year. According to May, that morning Gary told his mother that he had an appointment that afternoon:

“I was asking him with who and he said it was a secret. So I thought you know, it’s silly. You know, he’s a little boy, something to do maybe with his little girlfriend around the corner or something. So I kind of left it at that. He wanted to go out and play so he got dressed and he went out to play.”

Around noon, Gary left home. He told May he would be back by 4:00 PM, before it got dark:

“It got to be 4:30 and he still hadn’t shown up for dinner and he liked his dinner. He never missed. So I started getting worried. And I went down to see two girls that were friends of his and asked them if they had seen Gary.”

When another two hours passed with no sign of Gary, May telephoned her husband. Gary Grant Sr. proceeded to search the neighborhood for his son:

“I searched until well after midnight, probably until around 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, I walked around. As a matter of fact, I called out from work that night. I was due to go in to work at midnight and I called my sergeant and advised him that I wouldn’t be coming in.”

By the next morning, the Atlantic City Police Department had started an all out search for Gary Jr. Regulations prevented Detective Grant from taking part in the official investigation, but as a father, he was unwilling to stand by and do nothing:

“I started searching every possible place I could think of. I started searching abandoned houses. I started searching underneath the boardwalk. I started searching arcades and questioning people who were working in the arcades… By Friday night, it started getting dark again. And still no sign or no word of Gary. I started then looking in alleyways and trashcans and dumpsters. The streets can be pretty mean for an adult, let alone for a 7-year-old child. And by that time, I was fearing the worst.”

The next afternoon the body of Gary Grant, Jr. was found in a vacant lot less than two blocks from his home. He had been beaten to death. Nearby, lay a short length of heavy pipe, probably the murder weapon. The police immediately imposed a radio silence until the boy’s family could be notified. At virtually that same moment, Detective Grant, exhausted and on the verge of collapse, came upon the scene:

“I didn’t want to believe that it was him. Being a father, you don’t want to believe it. You don’t want to believe that your kid is lying back there somewhere you know, and he’s never going to get up again.”

The investigation began like all others, with detectives tracing the victim’s final hours and talking to those who knew him best. Carl Mason, nicknamed “Boo”, was a mentally challenged 12-year-old with an IQ of 65. Though Boo was five years older than Gary, he was smaller in height and weight. The two boys were good friends and often played together. According to Rick Murray, an investigative journalist who covered the case, Boo said he was not with Gary on the day of his murder:

“But detectives canvassing the neighborhood kept coming back with stories that he had, in fact, been with Gary. So they didn’t know what to do. There was this conflict. Boo seemed like such a harmless character. He was known as a scaredy cat in the neighborhood. But they just couldn’t reconcile the conflict.”

That night, Boo was driven to police headquarters by his grandmother. Once there, Boo was separated from his grandmother and led into a small room for questioning. But according to Rick Murray, Boo’s stories were inconsistent:

“In questioning Boo… the detectives wrestled around with it until finally… he acknowledged being with the victim at the crime scene and that he had in fact hit him with the pipe. He was telling police details that only the killer could have known and that sort of got everything into high gear because they realized that Boo was now the prime suspect.”

After three long hours, police believed they had an admission of guilt. A confession was drawn up based on the interrogation. Boo signed the document, but insisted he had not murdered his friend. He was charged with murder and sent to a juvenile detention center. However, Boo still maintained he was not with Gary the day he went missing:

“I did not have anything to do with his murder. The one cop said if you admit that you did it, we’ll let you go home. So me at the age of 12, I was so tired, I said, if you say so, but I didn’t, then next thing I knew, I winded up in a home.”

On Sunday, January 15th, Boo was given a polygraph exam. The results were inconclusive. According to Rick Murray, three days later a second test was administered:

“In both the first and second lie detector tests, it was determined that Boo had answered truthfully when he said that he did not kill Gary Grant.”

A month after Boo Mason was arrested, a hearing was held to determine whether his “confession” was admissible in court. The charges against Boo Mason were dropped and police never came up with another viable suspect. But two years later, it became obvious that someone had not forgotten Gary Grant, Jr. At approximately 3:00 AM, on January 4, 1986, a vandal painted a chilling message on the side of an Atlantic City patrol car that read, “Gary Grant’s dead. I am living. Another will die on January 12th if all goes right.” According to Detective Grant, January 12th would have been the second anniversary of his son’s murder:

“From what I observed on the car, it appeared to me that it was written on there by an adult. However as far as ever finding out who did it, we’ve never found that out.”

A few weeks later, a second cryptic message was scratched on a sidewalk: “Gary Grant Jr. lives. I still killed him. Son of a pig officer. Payback is a M.F.” This second message led to speculation that Gary had been murdered as retribution, possibly for an arrest his father had made. To date, no further messages have been received.

But for May Grant and the rest of the family, there is still hope that one day Gary Jr.’s killer will be brought to justice:

“I would like to see the person or persons who are out there and they know who they are, to come forward. So I could have a little peace too, in my mind and in my heart.”

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Robert Stack and in season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A widow is terrorized by the extortionist who murdered her husband.

Roger Dean

The gunman forced Roger to tie up his wife

CASE DETAILS

November 21, 1985, was an ordinary Wednesday morning in the Littleton, Colorado, neighborhood of Roger and D.J. Dean… Except for the strange car parked on the street. Some remembered it as a ’68 Pontiac, others a ’76 Oldsmobile. But everyone agreed the man inside was a stranger. At the time, they thought nothing of it. Because at the time, Roger Dean was still alive.

Roger called his wife into the bedroom around 7:00 that morning. Standing next to her husband was a gun-wielding, masked intruder. He forced Roger to tie and blindfold his wife. Then he took Roger into another room. As D.J. lay helplessly on her bed, she could hear Roger and the gunman talking, but she couldn’t tell what they were saying. D.J. heard the gunman rifling through drawers. Then gun fire erupted.

As Roger tried to flee the house, the intruder shot him five times at point blank range. Roger Dean died before help could arrive.

From the beginning, several aspects of the case puzzled investigators. Roger had twine marks on only one wrist, so it appeared that he had never actually been tied up by the gunman. Also, Roger was wearing contact lenses when he was shot. Yet, strangely, in an upstairs bedroom, his glasses were found covered with duct tape.

Sgt. Anthony Spurlock of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department believed that both the twine and glasses were red herrings, planted to give the impression that Roger had been blindfolded and bound:

“We believe that Roger hired an individual to come over to basically kidnap him, take him to his bank, withdraw $30,000 from their account, and then obviously drop Roger off someplace so Roger could report a robbery and he would have that $30,000 to himself.

During the investigation, police also learned that Roger had taken nearly $30,000 from his business and put it in a secret account.

On most weekdays, Roger left home before 6:15a.m. On the day of his murder, Sgt. Spurlock learned, Roger was seen drinking coffee in his garage at 7 a.m.:

“What we make of that timing is that he was waiting for this individual to come and meet him at his house. We also believe that the individual was probably sitting in his car when Roger lifted the garage door, which was the signal for this individual to get out of his car and walk over to Roger’s home.”

According to D.J. Dean, her husband was not capable of what the police had accused him of:

“In my heart, I cannot believe that Roger had anything to do with this. This is the man I was married to for 26 years. And, yes, there had been personal problems in the last years, especially since the death of our son. But I knew the man too well.”

After Roger’s murder, D.J. and her daughter, Tammy, tried to move on with their lives. Five years later, on July 21, 1990, they received an anonymous letter. Its author claimed to be the man who killed Roger Dean. The letter demanded $100,000. If the money wasn’t delivered, he threatened to kill again. The letter read, in part:

Do you know that I have met your daughter, Tammy, on a few occasions? Do not make me kill her! Your son is dead, your husband is dead. Do not risk your daughter. She is the last one left.

The authorities were convinced that the letter was legitimate and that it was written by Roger’s killer. He wrote that he would call her six days later on July 27.

D.J. and Tammy were given round-the-clock protection. FBI agents moved into the house and set up a wiretap. When the man called as promised, he told D.J. that Roger owed him money and that he wanted to be paid back. D.J. agreed to pay him the $100,000. The FBI traced the call to a phone booth in Denver, but by the time they got there the caller was gone.

Roger’s killer called 12 more times. And then he told D.J. to drive to a supermarket 20 miles north of her home and wait for further instructions. D.J. tried to trap the caller with the help of an FBI agent hidden in her car. Surveillance trucks and a S.W.A.T. team were nearby.

The extortionist finally called and told D.J. to leave the $100,000 in an alley behind an apartment complex in downtown Denver. Later that evening, August 19, 1990, the FBI watched as D.J. made the drop. They waited until dawn, but no one showed up.

Special Agent Bob Pence of the Denver FBI:

“Whether or not he spotted something, whether or not he just took for granted that the law enforcement was involved, or whether or not he got cold feet. And although he didn’t detect any type of law enforcement, he just was too scared to actually make the pick-up. I think all of those are possibilities.”

In his last call, the extortionist told Tammy he planned to kill her. He said he would strike when she least expected it.

Authorities know only that the suspect is white, about six feet tall, and uses an extensive vocabulary. Interestingly, they feel that the extortion letters were written by a man and a woman, working in conjunction.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season four with Robert Stack and in season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

An apartment fire is a cover for an unsolved murder.

Megan Curl

A police sketch of the suspect

CASE DETAILS

On March 26, 2000, the Lufkin, Texas Fire Department arrived at the scene of an apartment fire. As firefighters extinguished the blaze, they discovered a chilling scene. Tied to the posts of the bed was the charred body of a woman. Lieutenant David Young was immediately called in to investigate:

“She had been suffocated with a plastic bag and her throat had been cut very deeply, two different cuts, one on each side. And then the bed had been set afire. This crime was absolutely the meanest thing I’ve ever seen one person do to another.”

Dental records identified the victim as Megan Curl, a 26-year-old woman who had been a Lufkin resident for five years. In the first grade, Megan had been diagnosed with mild retardation, requiring that she attend special education classes. According to her mother, Sherry McClung, Megan’s life was never easy:

“She wasn’t always accepted. People would make fun of her, put her down. And she’d always come back with a kind word for them.”

When Megan was in high school, her family settled in Lufkin, 175 miles southeast of Dallas. When she was 18, Megan got married and moved to Arkansas with her new husband, but the marriage was abusive and the two separated. According to Sherry McClung, Megan returned to Lufkin and insisted on getting her own apartment:

“Because Megan was so trusting and was so outgoing, she tended to be an easy target for some of these men. Men absolutely could tell that Megan wanted to please, that Megan wanted somebody to care for her, and that she was lonely. And I think that that is a part of what happened here.”

On the night of her murder, Megan went to a local nightclub. According to Lieutenant Young, it was there that she was seen talking to a man:

“That man did buy her one or two drinks. No one at the club knew who this man was, and no one reported ever seeing him there before or since. She went to another club, called the Sports Shack, just a little ways down the road from the Electric Cowboy club. She talked to some people there and caught a ride with an employee of the Sports Shack home.”

Megan arrived home just after 1:30 AM. A close friend who lived in the same apartment complex waited up for Megan to hear the details of her night out. Megan’s friend requested that her identity not be revealed:

“Well we were standing out there talking and all of a sudden, there’s this guy in his car, and he was speeding really fast, and he just did a dead stop. I went back into the apartment. And then when I went back out, the car was still there, but neither one of them was there. They were gone.”

Her friend was concerned and went up to Megan’s apartment to check on her. When Megan answered the door, the friend noticed that the driver from earlier was with Megan:

“She said, ‘I was right. It was my friend from the club.’ And I looked down to him, and he just nodded his head slowly and didn’t say a word. And I didn’t speak to him at all, either. I said, ‘Well, are you sure you’re ok?’ And she said, ‘Yes, I’m fine.’”

It was the last time she would see Megan alive. According to Lieutenant Young, Megan’s body was found with the remnants of a nightgown on:

“Most of it had burned off. In interviewing men from her past, we learned that her normal sleeping attire would be something along the lines of shorts and a t-shirt. But if she were going to be romantically involved, she would sometimes wear a negligee or a nightgown. We feel, because of that, she knew this person and was preparing for an intimate evening with him.”

For Megan’s mother, the very thought that her daughter was killed by someone she trusted only added to her grief:

“I believe that Megan knew who the murderer was because she got in the car with this person. Megan would have gotten in the car with a person that she knew. There was not a forced entry.”

Investigators questioned several men with whom Megan Curl was known to have had relationships. However, each man was able to account for his whereabouts on the night of the murder. Police consider the unidentified man in Megan’s apartment as the prime suspect in her murder. The man is white, with blond hair and a light mustache. On the night of her murder, he wore gold-rimmed glasses.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season twelve with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

Was a rancher murdered by his missing girlfriend?

Larry Costine

Larry was found shot in his bedroom

CASE DETAILS

Larry Costine was a southern cowboy. Just before the turn of the century, his great-great-grandfather had homesteaded a stretch of harsh land in Central Florida, near the city of Lakeland. Larry took his ranching heritage seriously. According to his uncle, Earlow Costine, Larry had spent his entire 31 years working with horses and cattle:

“Larry was riding a horse from the time he was two years old. He loved the work, he loved rodeos. He wasn’t the type of person to get into trouble, he stayed away from trouble course if it came along, he no doubt could take care of himself.”

Earlow Costine was the barn manager for the local livestock auction. One of Earlow’s employees was Melissa Jo Sermons, whom everyone called Jo. Unbeknownst even to Earlow, Jo and Larry were romantically involved. They kept their relationship a secret because Larry had just split up with his wife, and Jo, with her boyfriend. The boyfriend often worked at the Auction Market, too. According to Melissa Jo’s mother, June Freeman, the boyfriend wasn’t taking the breakup well:

“He followed her continuously. Jo and my other daughter went to the store. He would follow them. Midnight you’d see him. We even caught him sneaking around under the kitchen window, listening to their conversation one night.”

On Saturday, May 2, 1992, Larry and Jo were in Dade City, Florida, for the weekly rodeo. The events got underway around 10 PM. Larry was one of the local stars, and his favorite event was team roping. That night, Jo stuck by Larry’s side, right up to the minute he and his partner were called into the box. Larry and his partner won the competition that night and split a $350 purse. The rodeo finished late. Around 2 AM, Larry and Jo went to breakfast with a friend. It is believed they arrived back at his trailer around 4:15 Sunday morning. No one knows exactly what happened after that.

When Jo didn’t come home that night, her mother called Earlow Costine. For the first time, he learned of Jo and Larry’s relationship. Earlow called Larry’s trailer, but Larry didn’t answer. The next morning, when Jo didn’t show up for work, Earlow drove to Larry’s trailer. He found Larry’s truck in the driveway and heard a radio on inside the trailer. Earlow’s frantic knocks at the door went unanswered:

“As soon as I got to the trailer a feeling came to me that I knew in my mind, that something was wrong… the smell was unreal. And I knew then, that Larry was dead.”

Larry Costine was found nude on his bedroom floor. He had been shot four times with a handgun—twice in the head. His bed had not been slept in. One of Larry’s guns was missing, however there was no sign of a struggle or robbery. There was also no sign of Melissa Jo Sermons. The Polk County Sheriff’s Department launched an all-out investigation. According to Detective Bob Ore, at first, suspicion focused on Jo’s ex-boyfriend:

“We interviewed him and he was able to give us an alibi for his particular time and location when the actual murder occurred. I don’t feel that the ex-boyfriend has any involvement. I have no evidence to indicate that.”

Soon Jo herself became a suspect. But Earlow Costine was convinced that Jo Sermons did not murder his nephew:

“Somebody watched Larry knew Jo was with Larry and was waiting for him. Personally, I feel like it was somebody real jealous of his actions that particular night, being with Jo, spending the night with Jo. I think that Jo was probably taken at gunpoint, and at a later time, murdered. I think Jo is dead.”

The authorities believed Jo Sermons may be the only person who could’ve gotten close enough to Larry Costine to kill him without a struggle. Is it possible that something happened in the trailer that night? Something that provoked Jo to violence? Detective Ore was convinced Jo was involved in Larry’s murder:

“Based on everything that I have learned, at this time I feel Jo is in some way involved in the murder. Either actually committing the murder, or possibly a witness to it… she has some type of involvement and or knowledge about it.”

Ever since the night Larry Costine was murdered, there have been sightings of Melissa Jo Sermons at truck stops in Florida, Texas, and Kansas. Two witnesses have claimed they saw her behind the wheel of a big-rig, hauling livestock. The authorities believed the sightings were reliable. Earlow Costine, however, did not:

“I feel like by now she might’ve made a move to come back, see her mother and her sisters. I can’t believe that anybody’s ever really seen her. They’ve seen people that they thought maybe was her.”

Melissa Jo Sermons is five feet ten inches tall, blonde and blue-eyed. When last seen, she was muscular and weighed 175 pounds.

Update:

Danny Wayne Cerezo, a former boyfriend of Melissa Jo’s, has been arrested for allegedly lying to a grand jury about the murder of Larry Costine and the disappearance of Melissa Jo Sermons. Keep checking back for the latest information.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A college student is killed by gang violence.

Damien Corrente

Juan Gil Ferrufino, Mario Portillo and German DeLeon

CASE DETAILS

For Pam Corrente of Freeport, New York, it was just another day of running errands. Then, as she was driving her teenage son to the doctor, she passed what appeared to be a terrible car accident:

“I said to my son, ‘Look over there and see what’s going on.’ So he just looked over and said, ‘I don’t see anything, you can’t see anything, there’s just ambulances all over.’ So I passed it. I took him to the doctor’s office. We came back home.”

It was then that Pam received a phone call about her oldest son, 21-year-old Damian:

“And I got a phone call from one of his friends, asking me, ‘Is Damian there?’ I said, ‘No he’s not, he was going to go out and see his friends. Aren’t you with him?’ The caller said, ‘No. Okay, never mind.’ And they hung up. And that was just, the whole thing was odd.”

When Damian didn’t answer her calls, Pam remembered the ambulances and decided to check local hospitals:

“I called South Nassau Hospital and said, ‘Do you have a Damian Corrente there?” They said, ‘Yes, who is this?’ I said, ‘This is his mom.’ I said, ‘Is he there? Is he okay? Why didn’t anybody call me? Why aren’t you, why wasn’t I informed? What’s going on? Just tell me what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘Didn’t the detective come to your house yet?’”

Within minutes, Pam was at the hospital. Her son, Damian, had been involved in the incident she saw earlier. But it was no traffic accident:

Pam became an activist against gang violence

“My son was there on the bed, and he was in a hospital gown, and he looked like a complete angel. And I went to hug him, and I got blood on my hand. When they told me he was shot five times in the head, I couldn’t comprehend it. Everything went crazy at that point.”

Damiano Corrente is Damian’s father:

“I saw my wife crying on the other side of the door with a nurse. I said to her, ‘What’s the matter? She said, “He’s dead.” Just like that. Something died in me that day too.”

Pam and Damiano learned that their son had died in a gang shooting. There were allegations that Damian himself was a gang member. Pamela Corrente said that was not possible:

“Damian was a pre-med student at Stony Brook University. He had an ambition, and that was to go to college and get his degree and become an anesthesiologist. My son had absolutely no gang affiliation. That was proven over and over. It was written in every newspaper. He was absolutely not a part of a gang and had no gang affiliation.”

In the weeks leading up to his death, Damian had returned home from college for winter break and started hanging out with his friends from high school. Det. Brian N. Parpan of the Nassau County Police Department:

“One of those friends was a man by the name of Harold Zambrano. Harold was a 19-year-old member of a local gang called Nientes.”

Harold told Damian that two days earlier, he was jumped by members of MS-13, a violent El Salvadoran street gang originally from Los Angeles. Harold asked Damian for help. Pamela said her son had a hard time saying no:

“Damian had the biggest heart in the world. It was part of his problem. If anybody asked him for anything, he would do it, and he would be there, even if he had his own plans.”

Chief Michael Woodward of the Freeport Police Department suspects that Damian’s naiveté led to his death:

“Damian Corrente, on the day that he died, I’m sure had no idea as to what he was getting involved in. Harold Zambrano, being a gang member, probably never publicized that fact to Damian.”

According to Det. Parpan, Harold and Damian found who they were looking for at a local strip mal: 19-year-old German DeLeon:

“German DeLeon is a known MS-13 member and was wearing the colors, so there was no question in their mind that they had found somebody. They approached German DeLeon. They confronted him with the injury to Harold Zambrano. DeLeon was there at the Laundromat with his girlfriend. DeLeon admitted that he was an MS-13 member and told him that he had nothing to do with that particular incident. Zambrano and those guys indicated that they respected the fact that he was with his girlfriend and they wouldn’t cause him any trouble while he was with his girlfriend.”

Damian, Harold and the others returned to their car. Then, two more members of the MS-13 gang showed up starting firing. Zambrano was shot in the neck. Damian was shot five times in the head.

A police investigation quickly revealed the identity of the alleged shooters: German DeLeon, Mario Portillo, and Juan Gil Ferrufino. But the suspects could not be found.

To help deal with her grief, Pam started a gang awareness program in Freeport:

“I had no choice. I had to fight. It was either that or go crazy with the rage, and the anger, and the hate. So I can’t do that. But I can fight back by trying to educate our children, and trying to find a way for them, and to educate the parents to educate the children.”

Pam finds her new work rewarding, though it will never take away the pain of losing her son. There is only one thing that would help: catching the killers of Damian Corrente.

Although the families of all three suspects still live in Freeport, police have traced German DeLeon, Mario Portillo and Juan Gil Ferrufino to El Salvador. If their specific whereabouts can be determined, the suspects could be extradited to the United States for trial.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eleven with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

Actor Dennis Cole’s son is gunned down for $50.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suspect:

Gender: Male
DOB: 1966 to 1971
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 165 lbs.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black
Remarks: A $25,000 reward is being offered in this case

CASE DETAILS

Actor Dennis Cole has appeared in dozens of television shows like “The Young and The Restless” and “The Fall Guy.” His son, Joe, might have followed in his father’s footsteps. But on December 19, 1991, at the age on 29, Joe Cole was murdered, and his killer is still unknown.

To this day, Dennis Cole is still haunted by the crime:

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. And we’ve always shared things,… and it’s like I have no one to call up and say hey, “Hey Joe, guess what happened?’ And he would do the same thing with me. And it’s like a part of your heart was just taken and pulled out.”

The beachfront community of Venice, California, is the scene of a year-round street party. For decades, the area has been home to writers, artists and musicians. Joe Cole, an actor and a photographer, fit right in.

In Venice, Joe was documenting the lives of homeless Vietnam veterans. Joe’s long-time friend Henry Rollins – a writer and lead singer of the Rollins Band—helped with the project:

“Those men you see talking to themselves, standing next to pay phones on streets, he would bond with these people. Where they wouldn’t give you the time of day, they would tell the story of their lives to Joe.”

Rollins and Cole often shopped at an all-night market just a block from their house. On December 19, 1991, they were returning home, as usual, with their bags of groceries when two men suddenly shoved guns in their faces. One robber pushed Rollins to his knees. The other forced Joe to the ground. Henry Rollins recalls:

“The guy who was on me said, ‘If you yell or if you scream, I’m going to blow your head off.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’”

When the robbers found that the men had only $50 between them, they said they wanted to be taken to their house. Rollins says that he thought that he and Cole were going to be executed while the men robbed their home. As they walked in the front door, Rollins heard gun shots behind him. He ran through the house, out the back door, and down an ally. He found a phone and called police.

The police arrived within minutes, but Joe Cole was dead. The killers had vanished into the night.

Detective Bill Cox of Los Angeles Police Department, Pacific Division, is lead investigator on the case and hopes someone will come forward with information:

“My partner and myself have put in thousands of hours interviewing hundreds of people. Criminals always talk and they talk to other people. Somebody knows something out there that happened to Joe Cole.”

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eight with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina.

SUBMIT A TIP

A young man withdraws hundreds of dollars with his ATM card, then vanishes.

CASE DETAILS

On June 8, 1988, in Los Angeles, 22-year-old Matthew Chase returned from dinner with his roommate, Teresa Dahl. That night, Chase remembered that he needed to deposit his pay check. Teresa lent Matt her car and asked if he could pick up some cat food on the way home:

“It should have taken Matt approximately 10, 15 minutes to run the errand. The bank was about two blocks from our home and normally he walked. And that particular evening, he’d taken my car so at the most 15 minutes would be sufficient.”

But by the next morning, Matt still had not come home. Teresa and their other roommate, Steve, called the bank, pretending to be Matt. They wanted to find out if he had used his bank card the night before. The bank said he had—several times. Steve and Teresa then called the police. Scott Burkhart of the Los Angeles Police Department was the lead investigator on the case:

“A light came on, indicating that this is not going to be a normal, run of the mill case. It’s going to be something that requires some in-depth investigation. And it may not turn out to be a good case, as we call them. When we reviewed the bank records, it indicated that he made a successful deposit of a paycheck, received cash back, and then returned to the same branch approximately 30 minutes later, and attempted to withdraw $280 which he knows is over the amount of cash he can receive per day. The theory there would be that either he was being forced to attempt to withdraw these amounts, or he was signaling to the bank, to the computer for help.”

That same night, two more attempts were made to withdraw cash. The first was for $200. It was refused because of insufficient funds. Then, a minute later, $100 was requested. Since Matt’s paycheck had not yet been posted, this amount was also refused. Only eleven minutes later, the card was used at another branch in a different neighborhood. Again, the withdrawals were unsuccessful. But according to Burkhart, this time a hidden camera took pictures and showed a strange man standing over Matt’s right shoulder:

“According to these surveillance cameras at the branch, the person standing next to Matt was somewhat shorter, somewhat stockier, and overall, he shouldn’t have been in the photograph. No one is going to let someone stand that close to him while they use an ATM machine where they can see the PIN number.”

Police suspect that Matt may have been abducted by the man in the photograph while he was making his first transactions. Then, in an attempt to call for help, they speculate Matt may have deliberately entered erroneous amounts, hoping to attract attention. Over the next day and a half, there were five more withdrawal attempts. By this time, Matt’s paycheck had cleared, so $400 was withdrawn from his account. Finally, the card was confiscated by the machine. But when the card was dusted for prints, none were found. Police believed that either the card was wiped clean or that Matt’s abductor used gloves.

Upon hearing of their son’s disappearance, Matt’s mother and father came down from Oregon to search for their son and for the car he drove to the bank that night. According to Matt’s father Frank Chase, they were initially hopeful:

“At first… I think, that we were going to stumble onto the car somewhere in the near proximity of where they live. I believe, after a couple, three nights of doing this we became very frustrated.”

Police had no immediate answers. An attack might have left Matt injured, abducted or even worse. Undeterred, Matt’s roommate, Steve Dahl, began distributing his picture at a local rescue mission:

“I talked to several of the people there, and a couple of the volunteers that worked at the midnight mission said, when I showed them, just his drivers license, because I’d run out of posters, said, Oh yes, we have seen him. He’s been in here several times eating… They started to describe him to me and they said, he’s very tall and thin, isn’t he, and very lanky? And I said, yes, exactly. And for them to get that from one of those tiny pictures from a driver’s license, is really miraculous. And we thought well, wow, they really have seen him and we thought we were just so close to finding him at that point.”

On June 27th, almost three weeks after Matt’s disappearance, the car he had been driving was finally found. According to Scott Burkhart, the abandoned car was in a close proximity to where he had vanished:

“When they found that car, they ran the license plates… and it indicated that it is associated with a missing person, and I wanted the vehicle held for latent fingerprints. They dusted it for fingerprints, looked at it for other evidence of a crime, and the car was completely void of fingerprints.”

Police found only one clue in the car—a blue bandana. The bandana did not belong to either Matt or Teresa. Investigators believe that the blue bandana may have belonged to Matt’s abductor.

Update:

Three months after he disappeared, the remains of Matt Chase were discovered in a ravine in nearby Pasadena. The cause of death was a gunshot wound.

In 2018, the LAPD cleared Matthew’s case. A member of Matthew’s family said that they feel confident that Matthew’s killer was David “Bear” Meza, who died the day after Matthew disappeared. Although there is still the possibility that Meza had accomplices, the family is grateful for some closure.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season one with Robert Stack and season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

Crime novelist James Ellroy investigates his mother’s brutal murder.

Jean Ellroy

The suspected killer

CASE DETAILS

Novelist James Ellroy’s dark tales of sexual obsession and violence often top the best-seller list. But few of Ellroy’s readers know how much truth there is just below the surface of his stories. When James was 10-years-old, his mother was beaten, raped, and strangled:

“My mother’s crime scene to me is all crime scenes. The crime scene to me is—it’s primal. It’s almost oedipal. The moment of the discovery of her body is in many ways the moment of my birth, because it’s the genesis of my detectives’ obsessions with the murders that they ultimately become consumed by.”

At the time of her murder, Ellroy’s mother, Jean, was a divorcee in her early 40s. She was a staff nurse at a Los Angeles factory and lived close by in the town of El Monte. During the week, Jean had custody of 10-year-old James. Every Saturday James would take the bus to stay with his father. Sundays he would return by cab. The custody ritual ran like clockwork until the afternoon of June 22, 1958. Ellroy remembers the events of that day vividly:

“The yard was full of policemen in uniforms and plainclothesmen. I wasn’t afraid, but I was anxious. I was apprehensive. People were surprised that I wasn’t more overtly emotional right after I got the news that my mother had been murdered. I think they expected me to cry or carry on or display some kind of overt histrionics, but I took the news internally.”

After his mother’s murder, the young James became obsessed with crime novels. The books provided him with a temporary solace and he often read through several at a time. But the comfort was short lived. At the age of 17, Ellroy suffered yet another devastating tragedy—the death of his father:

“I went from bad to worse. I was no choirboy before that time, but, boy, oh, boy, things got worse. I drank, used drugs, broke into houses and stole things, drove around in stolen cars, shoplifted, and did spurts of county jail time from 1965 to 1977. My life was going nowhere and I wanted a real life. I hadn’t been with a woman in years and I wanted to write. I wanted to write dark, evil, well-defined, perverted, powerful, compelling crime fiction. I knew I wouldn’t be able to as long as I drank and used drugs.”

Ellroy sobered up and the words tumbled out. His first novel was published in 1982. More than a dozen followed. Seeping between the lines was a dark legacy of his mother’s rape and murder. It bubbled to the surface in “The Black Dahlia,” his take on the 1947 slaying of Elizabeth Short, one of the most infamous unsolved murders of the 20th century. Ellroy dedicated the book to his mother:

“It’s as if Elizabeth Short became a stand-in for my mother. I wanted to feel the horror of my mother’s death and I used Elizabeth Short as a substitute.”

By 1994, James Ellroy was ready for the real thing. Detective William Stoner of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arranged for Ellroy to examine the official case file on his mother’s murder:

“This was the first time I’d ever been asked by a member of the family of the victim to actually see the crime scene photographs. I was very hesitant to show those to him because they’re very graphic. And so I warned him.”

Physical evidence from the murder scene had been stored in a paper bag, locked away for more than 30 years. James held the nylon stocking used to strangle his mother and touched her silk dress:

“I started sweating, I started shaking. It was locked down, revved in, right on the edge of shell shock. Truly an awe-inspiring moment.”

And then, a face stared back at him from the file—his mother’s suspected killer. Because he had dark hair and an olive complexion, he had become known as “the swarthy man.” Several eyewitnesses saw him with Jean Ellroy just hours before she was slain. Around 10 PM, Jean and the swarthy man pulled into a local drive-in. With Detective Stoner’s help, Ellroy tracked down Lavonne Chambers, the waitress who served the couple that June evening in 1958:

“She had this beautiful dress, pearls around her neck. Her hair was done beautifully. That’s what made me remember her so well because she was beautiful, and she had this dress on… She looked very prim and proper. She was very pleasant. He had no accent. He didn’t talk with any, even a southern drawl. He just talked very normally like you’d expect an average Californian to talk.”

Jean and the swarthy man were next seen at a bar called the Desert Inn. They were with a blonde woman. No one knows her name or how she fit into the evening’s plans. She apparently knew both Jean Ellroy and the suspect and left the bar with them at around midnight. At 2:15 AM, Jean and the suspect returned to the drive-in. According to Lavonne Chambers, the blonde woman was no longer with them:

“This time she was not as neat and prim as she was when I waited on her the first time. She looked like she had been necking or fooling around. Her dress and her hair were kind of messed up. But they didn’t seem overly friendly together. And he wasn’t saying anything. He was just too quiet.”

Shortly before 3:00 AM, Jean and the suspect left the drive-in. According to Detective Stoner, time eventually ran out for Jean Ellroy:

“I think the swarthy man decided that the evening wasn’t over for him. He either knew about a secluded location or came upon it and stopped and forced himself on Mrs. Ellroy.”

For James Ellroy, the unidentified blonde woman may be the only person that knows who killed his mother:

“The blonde woman knows the identity of the swarthy man. The blonde has told people. There are people out there who know elements of this case, who know names, who’ve heard the story, and it’s just a question of tapping into those people.”

Though not a suspect, authorities consider the unidentified blonde woman an important material witness in this case.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eight with Robert Stack and in season seven with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

There is no motive for the murder of a Seattle realtor.

Mike Emert

Mike’s body was dragged down the hall

CASE DETAILS

Mike and Mary Beth Emert of Redmond, Washington, had it all. They were inseparable soul mates. They were also prosperous partners in the competitive world of Seattle-area real estate. Few couples shared a bond so intimate. But on January 4, 2001, their dream life together was shattered. Mary Beth received a call from her mother that Mike had been murdered:

“The realization that he was gone started to sink in while I was still on the telephone with my mom, but still, still hoping that, you know, maybe he was alive and maybe they were wrong, you know. Maybe it wasn’t Mike. And I think it was just shock and disbelief.”

Mike Emert’s murder was as mysterious as it was shocking. It appeared to be carefully planned and meticulously executed. But why would anyone plot to kill an unassuming realtor with an exemplary past? Mike’s killer left behind few clues, but enough to make investigators believe he may have used a most unusual weapon.

On the day he was murdered, Mike wrote in his date book that he planned to meet a prospective homebuyer named Steven. He planned to meet him at 11:30 at a local mall. He told Mary Beth that Steven was in his 50s, carried a cane and spoke with an East Coast accent. Steven was interested in a house Mike had shown him the previous day.

At 12:30 PM, the owner of the house, Gail Garland, returned from her job to spend her lunch hour at home. She entered through the garage and was surprised to find the front door ajar. Then she heard the sound of water running upstairs. A trail of blood, still wet, led toward the bathroom. Mike Emert was dead. He had been stabbed 19 times.

Investigators believed that Steven, the supposed homebuyer, committed the brutal murder. They also think Steven chose this house because it was isolated from most other homes in the neighborhood. James H. Doyon was a Detective for the King County Sheriff’s Office at the time of Mike’s murder:

“It appears that he may have reconnoitered and actually singled out this home as the best place to assault Mike. Now that suggests some sophisticated criminal thinking going on.”

If the mysterious Steven had methodically planned Mike’s murder, it was also possible that his handicap was merely a ruse. Detective Doyon believed this would explain how a man in need of a cane was able to overpower Mike:

“I think it’s possible that the weapon was this cane. And the cane might have been one of these sword canes or a cane with a knife in it. So maybe the initial blitz assault to stun Mike was striking Mike with the cane from behind. The knife portion of the cane was used to kill Mike. Mike was nearly six feet tall, weighed 187 pounds. I think we have an offender here that was able to overcome a man of Mike’s stature and then drag his body perhaps about 18 feet from one room to where he came to rest. The water in the shower was turned on, and the two faucets in the vanity sinks were found running. That, to me, speaks of an attempt to get rid of any trace evidence. Hair, fibers, things like that would be washed down the drain. He’s cleaning his hands off in the sink, cleaning the weapon off in the sink. This was probably not this individual’s first murder, or certainly not his first violent assault.”

But if Steven was a professional hit man, who would have a motive to kill Mike Emert? Investigators considered Mike’s wife, Mary Beth, and his business rivals as possible suspects. But all were eliminated. They also checked Mike’s background to see if he had any enemies who might want him dead. But according to Detective Jon Holland, that probe also proved fruitless:

“While conducting hundreds of interviews with people, even going back 10 years ago, and a prior business that he was involved in, we have not interviewed anybody that can establish why somebody would want to have Mike Emert killed.”

Was Mike Emert the victim of a random killing? Or was his death the result of an elaborate murder-for-hire scheme? To this day, this case remains unsolved.

Update:

Gary C. Krueger was named as a suspect in the murder of Mike Emert. Krueger was a former Seattle police officer who died in 2010.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season twelve with Robert Stack and in season three with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

Forensic students assist police with the unsolved murder of a businessman.

Jian Fang

A forensic science class worked the case

CASE DETAILS

In December of 1993, Jian Fang, a prosperous San Francisco businessman, was stabbed to death. The case is just one of thousands of unsolved murders that plague police departments across the country. With no immediate solution, the detective in charge tried an unconventional approach. He opened his case files to a class studying forensic science. Created by a woman named Brook Stuart, the class had already helped close one murder case in 1992. Perhaps they could help close another.

When Brook Stuart’s class met in December of 1994, the would-be detectives included a ballet teacher, a housewife, and several writers. San Francisco Police Inspector Prentice Sanders briefed the students on the case:

“I had been working on this case for almost a year. And certainly I have believed that once you’ve become stymied you then take the case and look at it from an entirely different angle. Open it up and start all over again and the class gave me an opportunity to do that.”

Inspector Sanders introduced the class to the victim. He was Jian Fang, a 42-year-old businessman who owned two noodle factories. On December 18, 1993, he and an employee were attacked by a pair of assailants. Jian Fang was stabbed to death. A rear window of Mr. Fang’s van was broken and the van’s interior ransacked. No fingerprints were found, but according to Inspector Sanders, the murder weapon was left behind:

“In the van we found a knife that turned out to be a regular cheap kitchen steak knife. One that you would pay 99 cents for at the 99-cent store. And it was very worn, as if it had been washed 100 times or more.”

The evening of the murder, Jian Fang had offered a ride to one of his supervisors, Mrs. Yee Sung. According to Inspector Sanders, Mr. Fang never noticed that the window in his van was broken. After driving for less than a block, Fang was attacked inside the van by two young men who spoke fluent Cantonese. According to Mrs. Yee, the men demanded money from Fang. They then proceeded to strike Mrs. Yee in the back of the head with their pistol and told her not to turn around. Mrs. Yee said the terrifying episode lasted more than half an hour, far longer than most robberies. During that time, the two men ripped apart the van’s interior, repeating over and over their demand for “the money.” When Mr. Fang fought back, he was stabbed directly in the heart. Before fleeing, the assailants threatened to kill Mrs. Yee if she called for help.

The case review provoked a number of insightful questions and Inspector Sanders told the class what he knew about Mr. Fang’s daily activities. At times accompanied by his wife, Fang had personally collected money from his customers. A typical day would net up to $1000 in cash. This fact troubled students. They had a hard time believing that a successful businessman, like Fang, would not hire someone to collect the receipts and money.

Inspector Sanders then informed the students of a mysterious phone call he received three weeks after the murder:

“The informant advised that I should look into the gambling angle with Mr. Fang. That Mister Fang was, in fact, an avid gambler and had connections in the Chinese community for gambling. And that was likely the motive for his murder, rather than petty robbery.”

The informant claimed that on the day of his death, Mr. Fang had collected at least $25,000 dollars in cash. It was an extremely promising lead. However, none of the information could be verified and Sanders found himself back at square one.

By the end of class, each student had heard the baffling mix of evidence, leads, and rumors in the case of Jian Fang. They were given a week to submit a written analysis. Some, like Nick Dalby, believed that Fang’s killers knew he would be collecting a large sum of money but were disappointed and surprised when they found out there was nothing in the van. According to Nick, the killers did not intend to kill Fang, but were left with only that option when he began to struggle inside the van.

Another student, Cara Llewellyn, proposed a scenario that was totally at odds with Nick’s. Cara questioned a friend of hers who had lived in Chinatown for many years. Cara’s friend had told her about a different network of gangs that operated within the Chinese community. She learned that many Vietnamese immigrants were well versed in Cantonese and some would have been eager to prove themselves to long time gang members.

Inspector Sanders was intrigued after hearing both theories:

“Talking to Cara and Nick and the other students was very stimulating. It caused me to think and rethink some ideas that I had entertained during the course of the last year that I’ve been working on this case.”

So, which scenario lies at the heart of Jian Fang’s murder? Soon after briefing the students, Inspector Sanders was contacted by a second, anonymous informant, who argued that the murder was tied to illicit betting. Inspector Sanders believed the tip to be credible, but only time and further investigation will allow police to close in on the elusive killers of Jian Fang.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

When an attorney is gunned down at a political fundraiser, the evidence points to a local police officer.

CASE DETAILS

In the blue-collar community of East Chicago, Indiana, everyday life was controlled by the local political machine. One of the city’s most powerful dealmakers was an attorney named Jay Given. He was a master fund-raiser and a clever behind-the-scenes operator who traded on favors to create strong political alliances. Jeffrey Given is Jay’s son:

“My father was intimately familiar with the politicians and the people in power. He knew all the skeletons in their closest, and that makes you very powerful in a town like this.”

Given had served as city attorney and helped elect Bob Pastrick as mayor of East Chicago in 1970. But within two years, they had a falling out. According to Jeffrey:

“On a number of issues, my father and Mr. Pastrick split. Obviously, my father’s intentions were starting to turn towards electing somebody else other than Bob Pastrick as mayor.”

On May 15, 1981, the Elks Club in East Chicago held a Las Vegas-themed fund-raiser for county commissioner N. Atterson Spann. The city’s best-known black politician, Spann was considering a run for mayor against Bob Pastrick. Jay Given attended the fund-raiser. It was seen by many as an attempt to solidify East Chicago’s white and black voters against the growing political strength of Hispanic-Americans, which was a group known to be supporting Bob Pastrick for re-election.

Given worked the room for two hours. After saying his good-byes, he headed out of the club but never made it through the front door. He was shot once in the back of the head at point-blank range and died in the entryway of the Elks Club. Although the murder occurred just a few yards from more than 400 people, no witnesses have ever come forward, and the police have yet to charge a suspect.

On the night of the murder, detectives found a shell casing in the entryway of the club and a spent .45-caliber bullet in the street. Former Inspector of the East Chicago Police Department, Paul DiCharia, was astonished at the remarkable condition of the evidence:

“The projectile came though the frontal part of his forehead, went through the glass doors, hit the brick building across the street, and bounced back into the street. It was in perfect condition with the exception of the nose of the projectile.”

Inspector DiCharia marked the bullet and locked it in his desk drawer, rather than check it into the evidence vault. According to DiCharia:

“I’ve done it with other evidence. My partner has done it with other evidence. I just wanted the other teams to look at what we had as far as evidence. I said, ‘This is unbelievable.’”

Four days later, the inspector was shocked to discover that the evidence had been tampered with; someone had apparently hoped to prevent investigators from matching the bullet to a gun. Inspector DiCharia said that there was a hole punched through the primer of the shell casing:

“The projectile, someone had taken a sharp instrument and tried to cut the lands and grooves where you couldn’t identify it.”

The only people with access to the evidence drawer worked in the police department. It looked like an inside job. DiCharia sent the bullet and shell casing to the FBI for analysis. Despite the damage, they were able to identify the murder weapon as a rare handgun called a Detonics 1911-style Combat Master. The shell casing was eventually linked to one of only 58 Detonics with a specially modified ejecting mechanism.

One of those guns was traced back to deputy chief John Cardona of the East Chicago Police Department. Cardona had been a member of a Spanish speaking political club that was at odds with Jay Given. Several eyewitnesses placed Cardona at the Elks Club on the night of the shooting. According to Former Special Deputy Prosecutor Joseph Van Bokkelen:

“Mr. Cardona was very active in the Spanish-speaking organization. They were not welcome at this event. He gave two or three different reasons why he was there based on different conversations. He, at some point in time, acknowledged that he was there to watch Jay Given. Given had made it clear that if his people came in power in the city, there were going to be some changes, and Cardona was one of those changes. Matter of fact, the comment that was used was if he got in, Cardona would be walking the beat.”

No witnesses saw Cardona when Given headed towards the exit. But one person who was there says that shortly before the shooting he saw Given talking to a man in the lobby. Investigators believe the man could have been John Cardona. Retired Chief of Police for the East Chicago Police Department, Augusto “Gus” Flores, Jr., said that the description of the man in the lobby from the witness was consistent with Cardona:

“He described the man that was talking with Mr. Given as approximately 6’1″, black, wavy hair, in a bluish gray suit. He went into the washroom. As he was in the washroom, he heard a gunshot. When he came out of the washroom, immediately he saw Mr. Given lying face down on the floor, and the other person was gone.”

Cardona insists that he was in the Elks Club bar when Given was gunned down. But witnesses seated at the bar who knew Cardona could not place him there.

Everyone in the police department, including Cardona, was asked to take a polygraph test. Cardona failed the test. When he refused to take a second exam, he was dismissed from the police department. Cardona later moved out of state. All the evidence seems to point to John Cardona as the killer. He fit the description of the man seen talking with Jay Given, and he owned a Detonics handgun, which he claimed had been stolen six months earlier. In addition, Cardona had access to the drawer where the evidence had been kept.

But others questioned whether a case could be made that John Cardona was the killer. Cardona was well known and easily identified. Yet out of the hundreds of potential witnesses at the fundraising event, not a single person had come forward to testify against him. According to Prosecutor Bokkelen, that may have been the reason prosecutors never filed charges against Cardona:

“The local prosecutor could not afford to lose this case. He wanted, basically, a tight case, and he didn’t think this case was tight enough.”

Police believe there are witnesses who haven’t come forward that may help crack this case. In fact, just before the shooting, five people were coming down the stairway of the Elks Club. Three of them, all men, were near the foot of the steps at the very moment Jay Given was shot. Those three men have never been identified. The police hope that one of them saw the killer and will come forward with information. And Given’s son, Jeffrey, hopes for an indictment:

“I’d like to see a trial. And if John Cardona didn’t do it, then fine. Let’s put it to a jury, and if he didn’t do it in the eyes of the jury beyond a reasonable doubt, there you have it. Let’s go after whoever did do it. It’s very frustrating to not have some closure on this.”

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A well-liked repairman is found beaten and shot to death.

CASE DETAILS

On May 23, 1982, in the small town of Hamersville, Ohio, a 15-year-old boy made a terrible discovery. A man’s body, nude and beaten, was dumped on the side of the road. That night, the man would be identified as Permon Gilbert, an appliance repairman who lived just seven miles from the place his body was found. The most puzzling thing about Permon Gilbert’s murder was that he appeared, to those who knew him, to lead such a normal, non-controversial life. But in this small, Ohio town, it was not long before phrases like organized crime, drug trafficking, and jealous husband, began to be heard.

Permon Gilbert was a beloved husband and father of four. His passion was flying his small plane, but he made his living fixing household appliances. During the week, Permon worked for a large company. But on Saturdays, he worked for himself and scheduled his own house calls. According to his wife Joanne, the Saturday of his murder, Permon was hesitant about leaving for work:

“When he left that Saturday morning, it was probably 8:30. And he said he didn’t want to go. And now it bothers me. That’s what I remember about him leaving that morning.”

Permon’s service calls that Saturday morning took him to Mt. Orab, Georgetown, and Aberdeen—all small towns within a few miles of his home. When his work was complete, Permon crossed the Simon Kenton Bridge into Maysville, Kentucky. He stopped at a market where a woman named Ann Breeze worked as a cashier. Ann recalled Permon’s visit that Saturday:

“He was always very neat. Greeted you, you know, very friendly every time you saw him. I never saw the man down or act like he had a care in the world.”

When Permon left the market, he walked into the flower shop next door. But no one can account for Permon Gilbert’s movements after that. He had told his wife, Joanne, that he would be back home around three that afternoon, but never arrived:

“Then it got to be dark and he wasn’t here. And it got to be midnight and I was scared and I was afraid to go out. I had a small child and I was afraid to put her in the car and go out looking. And then I think about 3:00 in the morning, I called one of our friends and you know, have you seen Permon, do you know where he’s at, anything like that and they didn’t.”

Joanne Gilbert called the police. They were unable to turn any leads, until late the next afternoon, when her husband’s body was found. Permon had been shot twice in the chest. Because no cloth fibers were found in the two bullet wounds, police believe that Permon had been naked above the waist at the time he was shot. Although Permon’s clothes were never found, his van was located the next day. According to Sheriff John Van Camp of the Clermont County Sheriff’s Department, the van was located 22 miles away from the spot where his body had been discovered:

“Permon Gilbert’s watch was still hanging on the gearshift lever. His toolbox was in there, parts and supplies were in place in the van. We did an inspection of the van and recovered fingerprints and hair samples. At this time, we’ve not been able to match the fingerprints and hair samples to anyone.”

The investigation into Permon’s murder presented three possible scenarios. The first involved drugs. Permon often flew his small plane from a rough landing strip on his farm. According to Joanne Gilbert, Permon claimed he had been approached to transport drugs:

“And all he had to do was take the airplane and fly it to a certain airport, go in and have a cup of coffee, come back out and there’d be money laying on the seat or under the seat. And it would’ve been easy money but it’s against the law and it was against everything we believed in.”

The second theory involved Permon’s brother, Vernon. Vernon was twelve years younger than Permon and they were devoted to one another. Three months before Permon was killed, Vernon Gilbert had agreed to appear before a grand jury. Vernon planned to testify in a case against organized crime. Permon waited in town while his brother testified. Joanne believed her husband may have been the target of a hired killer:

“Maybe my husband knew too much. Maybe Permon was killed to lure his brother back to a funeral and because they were after him really. But then his brother didn’t come to the funeral.”

According to Sheriff Van Camp, Permon Gilbert may also have been involved in a crime of passion:

“The very nature of Permon Gilbert’s home appliance repair business, placed in many households alone with a family member. What we need now is for someone to come forward and help us trace Permon Gilbert from that flower shop. Anyone that has seen him around the flower shop or in the parking lot with his cream and brown van at that time or later in the day, we’d like to hear from.”

A reward of $20,000 is being offered in this case.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season one with Robert Stack and season eight with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A Texas woman is murdered and her family suspects her husband.

CASE DETAILS

On the morning of February 14, 1986, Marilu Geri, a young, affluent Houston woman, was found in her home, shot four times. She was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead soon after. Marilu Geri had been murdered and her parents are convinced that her husband, Stephen, was the killer. However, Stephen has repeatedly maintained his innocence.

Marilu’s body was discovered shortly after 10 AM. At 8:15 AM, Stephen Geri called Marilu’s mother, Maria Serrato, and asked her to go over and help Marilu prepare for a lunchtime party:

“As soon as I hung up with him, I dialed Mary’s number, and she didn’t answer the phone. And it got me very concerned because I thought how strange, she’s supposed to be already running around the house doing the last things for the party. But where is she?”

Maria immediately drove to her daughter’s house. She searched the back of the house, where she found Marilu lying on the floor:

“She looked like she had fainted or something, and I started to kiss her in her face, and touching her, and she looked like she was dead. And it got me completely, I was just like, a wild person. I thought I was in a nightmare.”

At 10:30 AM, the paramedics tried to revive Marilu. They injected her heart with medication, but she was already dead. This procedure later made it impossible to determine the exact time of death. Marilu had been shot four times with two different guns—a .38 and a .22. But there were no guns found in the house, nor was there any physical evidence of a break-in. In the bedroom, Marilu’s jewelry box was open. Could robbery have been a motive? Marilu’s mother believed it was a well-planned murder:

“There was jewelry lying there, like she had been selected jewelry or something that she was going to wear. Whoever killed Marilu didn’t come in the house to steal anything.”

However, Stephen Geri disagreed:

“Well, there were many things taken. The gross value was about 25 to 30, maybe 40 thousand dollars worth of jewelry.”

Marilu and Stephen had been married for three years. Stephen was an insurance agent and Marilu worked for him. The couple enjoyed vacations in Hawaii and Europe and appeared to be happily living the good life. But according to her mother, Marilu’s marriage was anything but happy:

“It was a torment of a marriage. The last two and a half years of her life, it was nothing but crying about one thing and another. They were fighting over money.”

Investigators viewed Stephen Geri as one of the possible suspects. He owned several handguns, which were tested in the police ballistics lab. However, the results proved that Stephen’s guns were not used in the shooting. Stephen also gave the police a detailed account of his movements on the day of the murder. Normally, he worked in his home office during the early morning. But according to Stephen, on that particular day he changed his routine:

“I woke up at about five that morning, I went upstairs and worked on the computer. I had an extremely busy day, there were some things that I had to finish up. Marilu was still in bed. Told her that I would call her at seven. I know that the security system was on when I left the house, at about 6:25, 6:30. I went down to 7-11 and got another cup of coffee. I left there and went to the post office, picked up our mail for the day. From there, I went to the donut shop, picked up donuts. Then I went to Precision Glass, Don Richardson’s company, and talked with them for a moment. I started to leave, realized that I had forgotten to call Mary. I went back in at the reception desk and called her at almost 7:30. She was up, she said she was busy, busy, busy, so I told her goodbye.”

From 7:30 when he called Marilu, to 10:06 when Marilu’s body was found, Stephen spent most of his time with witnesses who confirmed his alibi. A private investigator, Bill Elliott, hired by Marilu’s parents, examined Stephen’s alibi in detail:

“The witnesses that we interviewed indicated to us that it was not his habit or pattern to leave the house before nine or ten in the morning. And this particular day he claims to have left the house between 6:00 and 6:30.”

When Stephen left home, his first stop was the 7-11, only two blocks away, and less than a five-minute drive. But according to Bill Elliot, there is a conflict as to the actual time Stephen arrived:

“We interviewed the people at the convenience store where he went first, and it was their recollection and very positive recollection that Stephen did not get there until three minutes until seven o’clock. A variation in the alibi that would have given him time to do things as far as getting rid of evidence and that kind of thing. The curious thing is that Mr. Geri had not only gone to these places that morning, but the following day, he went back and reminded these people that he had been there the day before, which is something that I found unusual.”

Bill Elliot also discovered that two years before Marilu’s death, Stephen had purchased insurance policies on both their lives. According to Bill, each policy had a total value of more than $400,000:

“Mr. Geri was a big spender, liked to spend a lot of money and liked to live the high life. At a higher level than his income was capable of supporting.”

Ten months after the murder, Stephen tried to collect on his wife’s policy. Outraged, Marilu’s parents went to court to prevent him from collecting the money. They claimed he had been the cause of Marilu’s death and would attempt to prove it in court. However, Stephen Geri believed there was another reason that the Serratos filed the lawsuit:

“Well there are two things that make the world go round, and that’s sex and money. And it definitely wasn’t sex, was it?”

Strangely, just as the trial was beginning, Stephen Geri and Marilu’s parents reached an out of court settlement. But which side had requested the settlement? Stephen claimed that the Serratos approached him with the offer:

“I was adamant that when my attorney presented this to me, that it would not be as an admission of guilt and that rather that the Serratos would realize that I was not involved, or why would they make the offer? And that we would settle on it. If it had been my daughter and I thought that person was involved, there was no way I would ever take the settlement… but they did.”

The court documents can’t reveal who asked for the settlement, since the judge ordered the records sealed.

The police continue to search for information about the two weapons that were used in the murder. They feel these guns will lead them to the killer. Stephen Geri remains a person of interest. But through it all, Geri has consistently maintained his innocence:

“No, I did not kill my wife. Marilu was the perfect woman for me. We had a wonderful life together, exciting, we traveled, we built one hell of a business, and were a fantastic complement to each other.”

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season one with Robert Stack and season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A San Francisco vice cop is found murdered in his car and witnesses report seeing him with two women just before his death.

Suspect:

Gender: Female
DOB: Approx 1961
Height: 5’6”
Weight: 110 lbs.
Hair: Blonde
Remarks: The mayor’s office in San Francisco is offering $250,000 reward

CASE DETAILS

Walnut Creek, California, is an affluent suburb of San Francisco. On the morning of July 11 th , 1988, a shopping center groundskeeper noticed a Corvette sitting alone in the parking lot. A man seemed to be napping behind the wheel. But the man wasn’t asleep, he was dead.

The victim was identified as Lester Garnier, an undercover vice officer with the San Francisco Police Department, who lived in nearby Concord. Detective Jerry Whiting of the Walnut Creek Police Department:

“The cause of death was determined to be two bullet wounds. This was an extremely cold-blooded, deliberate killing. The sort of person that would do something like this is extremely dangerous. There was very little evidence left at the crime scene that would give us much help in identifying the criminal. We’ve been unable to find any motive at all for the killing of Les Garnier.”

If he was off duty, Lester was usually behind the wheel of his prized 1984 Corvette. He enjoyed the good life, but was also devoted to his parents. Jean Garnier is Lester’s mother:

“Lester was a wonderful son. He always was there for us. He gave us security, knowing that if anything happens, he’s always there for us.”

Those who knew him said Lester had a reputation as a ladies man. His natural charm with women also came in handy on the job. His beat was San Francisco’s Mission District, the neighborhood he was born and raised in and an area with its share of streetwalkers. According to Detective George R. Willis of the Walnut Creek Police Department, Lester often duped prostitutes by posing as a customer:

“We found that he had made numerous arrests for prostitution. We certainly examined that aspect of his life and we weren’t able to find any connection with our case. We interviewed several of the prostitutes that Lester had arrested and found that many of them spoke highly of him, even though he had arrested them.”

Before his murder, one of Lester’s final assignments was to stake out a San Francisco brothel said to be patronized by civic leaders and police officers. After it was raided, Roger Boas, a local mayoral candidate, pleaded guilty to charges of having sex there with underage prostitutes. Several police officers were also investigated, but only one was charged and later fired. Rumors circulated that corrupt members of the police force had Lester murdered in retaliation for his work in busting the ring. According to Det. Whiting, that theory was investigated:

“We did address those issues, but we found no connection at all between Mr. Garnier’s death and the Roger Boas case, or any other case, for that matter.”

On the evening of his death, Lester left his home to meet a friend for a movie in San Francisco. Less than 20 minutes later, according to Det. Whiting, he called from his car with a message:

“During this conversation, he cancelled a meeting with his friend saying it was getting late. After that, we don’t know what happened to him until his vehicle showed up in the parking lot shortly before 11:30 P.M.. That time period is very critical.”

Det. George Willis:

“As a portion of our investigation, naturally, we searched for witnesses and we discovered that there was a carpet layer working in one of the stores late that evening. As he went out to his truck, he heard what sounded to him like firecrackers. It was around the Fourth of July, so he discounted those sounds as firecrackers. Shortly after, he looked up and saw two women walking across the parking lot. The women entered two different vehicles and left.”

The witness described one of the women as being in her late 20s, about 5’6″ and said she weighed about 110 pounds. The other was described as being in her mid 30s, tall, with a slender build. Det. Whiting:

“We also located one witness who was actually driving through the lot. As he drove past the Corvette, he saw a woman open the passenger door and exit the vehicle. He saw her walk around the vehicle and appear to look in the driver’s side of the Corvette. It’s possible that these were just two separate sightings, not associated with each other. However, it’s also possible that they are somehow related.”

Under hypnosis, the second witness helped police create a composite drawing of the blond-haired woman. Her appearance was similar to the other eyewitness description.

Det. Whiting showed the composite to the carpet layer:

“He felt that this sketch closely resembled the shorter of the two women that he saw walking across the parking lot.”

There is one other clue suggesting this woman might be involved in the murder. Police used a fingerprint found in Lester’s car to identify the blonde-haired woman seen by the witness. She is a Scottish national who’s lived in the United States since 1985. Although she’s been named as a suspect, authorities don’t have enough evidence to file charges.

The mayor’s office in San Francisco is offering $250,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in this case.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season one with Robert Stack and season eight with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

Was the director of the Oregon prison system murdered to stop his investigation into high level corruption?

Michael Francke

Francke was acclaimed for his prison reforms

CASE DETAILS

In February, 1980, a deadly prison riot broke out in New Mexico, killing 33 prisoners. State official Michael Francke was brought in to completely revamp the troubled prison system. He did such a good job, that in 1987, the governor of Oregon brought him in to do the same thing there.

Michael Francke told his family that he was going to blow the lid off corruption in the Oregon prison system and implicate several top government officials. But apparently, Michael did too good a job. On January 17, 1989, just after he completed the investigation, he was found stabbed to death outside his office.

The D.A. said Francke’s murder was a botched robbery. But his family thinks that Michael Francke had uncovered a vast conspiracy. Bob Merchant, a former Oregon state prison guard, described the illegal activities he witnessed:

“I was told by my superiors to keep my mouth shut and mind my own business or I’d be looking for a job. The three main criminal activities that I observed working in corrections were the introduction of drugs into the institution, falsifying of records, and thefts of state property. Basically anything that was not nailed down was subject to be stolen. There was a constant flow of drugs being brought into the institutions. One of the most common ways was staff bringing them in their own lunch buckets. There were no searches being conducted on staff as they entered or left the facility.”

Reporter Steven Jackson of the Salem Statesman-Journal believed that Michael didn’t realize what he was up against:

“When Mike came in, he’s got a good old boy system to contend with. A lot of these guys have been here for 20 or 30 years. The system has run the way they want it to run for that many years. So here comes some guy from out of state who has all these high-minded ideas about what he’s going to do and just rubbed a lot of them the wrong way.”

Michael’s brother, Kevin Francke, said Michael knew he was juggling political dynamite and that it could blow up in his face at any moment:

“He had uncovered, he said, an organized criminal element in the system and said that he was going to do a thorough house cleaning immediately after the first of the year, and his quote was, a lot of heads were gonna roll.”

Michael’s sister-in-law, Katie Francke, talked to Michael just a few days before he was killed:

“On January 13, I called Michael and he said that he was going to go before the legislature and clean house the following Wednesday. He was very, very concerned, and I think he had uncovered something far bigger than he expected.”

Four days later, on January 17, 1989, Michael was found murdered on a side porch of his office building. Police began to piece together the last hours of his life.

After the regular Tuesday staff meeting, Michael spoke with one of his employees. Later, two other employees noticed that the light in Michael’s car was on and that the driver’s door was wide open. Two corrections officials searched the building, but Michael was nowhere to be found. The two men left around 9:30 p.m. without calling the police.

Later that night, a security guard found Michael’s body on the side porch of the building that had been searched just four hours earlier. The glass in the side door was shattered. And his briefcase appeared to be missing.

Believing Michael was murdered in a robbery attempt, the police interrogated known drug dealers and street criminals. One of them claimed that he witnessed the murder, and fingered a drug dealer named Frank Gable.

According to this witness, Gable was in the act of breaking into Michael’s car when Michael came out of the office building around 7 p.m.. Gable stabbed Francke, mortally wounding him. Some believe Gable also stole the briefcase. Michael staggered up the stairs of a side entrance to the building and broke the glass door in a desperate attempt to get back into his office.

Frank Gable was tried and convicted of the murder of Michael Francke. But for many people, the evidence simply did not add up. Bruises, abrasions, and other wounds on Michael’s body indicated a struggle with more than one person, leading Katie Francke to conclude that Frank Gable is innocent:

“I think Frank Gable is a scapegoat because I think it goes much higher up in the Oregon government. He’s just being used to take the fall.”

Reporter Steven Jackson believes the police made a rush to judgment:

“From the onset of the Francke investigation, it appeared the police put blinders on as far as what they were most inclined to believe.”

Michael’s family and supporters found discrepancies in the official report of his death. Michael had a state-of-the-art car alarm system. If the killer broke into the car, why was the alarm not set off? And why were there no signs of forced entry?

The police believe Michael was stabbed at the car, puncturing his heart and lungs. But why was there no trace of blood within one hundred feet of the car?

And finally, if Michael was killed at 7 p.m., as police estimate, why wasn’t his body or the broken glass noticed when the building was searched between 8:30 and 9:30 pm?

Some believe that Michael was the victim of a premeditated murder carried out by several men and possibly instigated by high-ranking officials fearful of being named in the investigation. According to reporter Steven Jackson, an eyewitness at the scene backs up this theory:

“At 10:15, 10:20 on January 17th, a young man riding in a car looked over where the scene of the crime was and saw five to six men running toward a Volkswagen van. If Michael Francke had been abducted and then brought back to the building where he was killed, this would fit in with the abduction theory.”

This theory suggests that on the night of his death, Michael unlocked his own car and deactivating the alarm at the same time the men approached him. Michael did not keep regular office hours, except for Tuesday staff meetings, so it appeared the attackers were familiar with his schedule.

Reporter Steven Jackson:

“The abduction theory would have that Michael Francke was later brought back and perhaps going to his office to find whatever paperwork or computer files or these sort of things in his office. Once there, he gets out of the car, perhaps sees his only chance for getting away, tries to make a break for it, perhaps receives one or more of his wounds at that time, goes to the north porch where he is finished off.”

That night, several people reported seeing a man with a pin-striped suit and dark complexion lurking in the corrections building after hours. A composite drawing based on a witness description was made.

One other disturbing fact supports the theory that it was an assassination and cover up. As Steven Jackson points out, incredibly, no paperwork about Michael’s investigation into the Oregon prison system has ever been found:

“Shortly after Michael Francke’s death, some people, some employees, some inmates spotted approximately 23 bags of shredded papers coming out of Michael Francke’s office and some surrounding offices. That’s something you have to wonder about, is who authorized shredding of documents from a murder scene?”

Katie Francke:

“The officials investigating Mike’s murder don’t want it solved, because it goes much higher in the Oregon government.”

E. Patrick Francke:

“My family is dedicated to bringing this to a successful conclusion. We’re gonna find out what the hell happened. And we’re gonna see that the people who are involved receive their full punishment.”

UPDATE: In 2019, a federal judge ordered that Frank Gable be released from prison after finding that evidence was wrongly kept from jurors during Gable’s trial.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season three with Robert Stack and in season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

Can a talented composite artist help catch a killer?

Jonathan Francia

Sketches of the suspect – “Jason”

CASE DETAILS

In the fall of 1993, the entire country was touched when 12-year-old Polly Klaas was abducted from her Northern California home and savagely murdered.  Thousands of copies of a composite sketch of the suspect were distributed by police.  In the end, its stunning accuracy helped confirm the identity of the prime suspect, Richard Allen Davis.  Davis is now in jail, charged with the kidnap and murder of Polly Klaas.  Law enforcement’s secret weapon in the Klaas case was composite artist Jeanne Boylan. Without her sketch of Richard Davis, he might still be on the loose.  These days, the FBI and numerous local jurisdictions compete for Jeanne’s time. They know that her drawings can help solve the most difficult cases.

In the mid-1970s, Jeanne worked at a Sheriff’s Department in Multnomah County, Oregon. The job gave her a close-up look at how suspect sketches were made.  In many cases, Jeanne did not like what she saw:

“I would hear the way that investigators would question witnesses or victims, and I could… hear that they weren’t allowing them to answer. They would cut answers off. It was kind of, ‘Just the facts.’  And that seemed to me to be wrong.”

Jeanne was convinced she could do better, and in 1980, she got her chance.  A supervisor gave Jeanne one of his most difficult cases—an unsolved rape.  According to Jeanne, it was a case that had languished for months with virtually no leads:

“I found that if I used sort of a diversionary system of interviewing where we would kind of circumvent the events of the crime and scenario of the crime, and talk about other topics, I could relax them.  Then periodically, this information would surface.”

Jeanne was right.  As a direct result of her composite, a suspect was arrested and later convicted.  More cases followed and Jeanne’s reputation grew. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the FBI turned to Jeanne in the troubling case of 16-year-old Jonathan Francia.  On January 12, 1994, Jonathan was in his car when he was abducted by two strangers.  Five days later, his body was found in the trunk of his burned-out car.  One of the killers, known only as “Jason,” has yet to be found.

Investigators asked Jeanne to meet with a key witness, Scott Johnston.  Scott had innocently spent several hours with the killers at his home in Winslow, Arizona.  Jeanne instinctively began to assess Scott’s potential as an eyewitness:

“Visual things are very important to him.  He takes some care in the way that he looks, which was the first cue to me that I would be able to work in a visual context with him.  So one thing that I did was I got out some play-doh, something to anchor him in the present, and gave it to him to play with and sort of feel, to keep him in the moment.”

As Scott told his story, Jeanne began to sketch the killer named Jason. Scott had met Jason on January 13, 1994. That day, a friend of Scott’s named Trena Richardson was staying at the trailer, along with her three children. They were awaiting the arrival of Trena’s husband, Paul, who had gone to Alabama. According to Scott, Paul pulled in around 6:00 AM, accompanied by a stranger:

“My first impression of Jason was, oh, boy, this guy dresses like a cowboy.  He had the velvet hat, the long hair and the jacket, and the jeans and kind of worn-out tennis.”

Scott also noticed something strange about Jason’s hands:

“I looked down, I noticed his hand was kind of red, kind of clay type. I thought it was just dirt, but apparently it was blood.”

Scott told Jeanne that he and Trena went out to run errands around 9:00 AM.  When they returned, Paul and Jason were washing the car:

“We came back, pulled up, they saw us, and they shut the trunk. They acted like they didn’t want us to see what was in it.”

At the time, Scott had no idea that the body of Jonathan Francia was in the trunk  An hour later, Trena and Paul said they were leaving to escort Jason to the main highway.  It was the last time Scott would see Jason:

“ I thought he went back, maybe to Dallas, maybe somewhere else, where he told me he was from.”

Four days later, an eyewitness tip led police to a remote corner of the desert, 30 miles from Scott’s trailer.  There they found the burned-out car and Jonathan Francia’s charred remains.  Paul Richardson was arrested two weeks later.  He admitted that he and Jason had abducted and murdered Jonathan.  Two days after his confession, Richardson committed suicide by hanging himself in his jail cell.  It was now up to Jeanne to help find Jason.  Based on Scott Johnston’s descriptions, Jeanne drew three composite sketches.  According to Scott, the sketches were quite accurate:

“My impression of the composite—it looked pretty much like the same person that I’d seen in the trailer. Pretty, pretty close.  I was amazed at how well, you know, it turned out.”

Jeanne’s sketches of the man called “Jason” have provided some hope for Jonathan Francia’s family.  Authorities believe he has relatives in either Pinetop or Payson, Arizona, and also Dallas, Texas.   Jason is described as 5’10”, with a medium build.  He smokes, chews tobacco, and wears western-style clothes, including a horsehair belt.  He should be regarded as extremely dangerous.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Robert Stack and in season three with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A surveillance tape catches a robber killing a store clerk in Ohio.

Brian Foguth

The robber forced Brian at gunpoint

CASE DETAILS

In late November 1994, just after 2:00 A.M., police responded to a silent alarm at the Duke and Duchess convenience store in Brimfield, Ohio. Three minutes later, police arrived on the scene. They saw a man emerging from the store, but he was an innocent bystander who had found the store unattended.

In a back room, police found the body of the store clerk, 23-year-old Brian Foguth. He had been shot to death. Brian was not even scheduled to work that night. He was a last minute replacement for another employee.

Brian Foguth’s murder enraged the community. Finding his killer depends on a surveillance tape recorded during the crime. The tape shows the masked man entering the store at 2:02 A.M. and forcing Brian at gun point into a back office. Chief Robert Burgess of the Brimfield Township Police Department:

“Brian, of course, went in with his hands raised with the gunman behind him, and they spent approximately 60 seconds in that back room, out of camera range.”

At 2:03 A.M., the robber can be seen crouched behind the counter. At gunpoint, Brian empties the cash register. It is during this time that Brian triggers the silent alarm.

At 2:04, the customer pulls up to the gas pump, automatically activating a beeper inside the office. Police believe that to the gunman, it may have sounded like an alarm. Chief Burgess suspects that the robber panicked and pushed Brian onto the floor of the backroom. As they scuffled over the gun, Brian was killed instantly by a single bullet. It happened just three minutes after the robber entered the store. According to Chief Burgess, the customer was just a few feet away when the killing occurred:

The robber may have a hump

“The customer did not hear anything. He did not see anything, standing at the front of the store at the gas pumps.”

Police believe the killer was a white male, age 18 to 30, 5’9” in height. The suspect may have had head or facial injuries around that time, a result of his struggle with Brian.

In addition, police observed what appears to be a hump on the robber’s back. It may be a physical characteristic or perhaps a concealed ponytail.

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eight with Robert Stack and in season four with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A war veteran is gunned down in the parking lot of a computer company.

Matt Flores

A co-worker heard the gunshot

CASE DETAILS

Matt and Denise had it all—a loving marriage, a beautiful daughter, dreams of a full, happy life—dreams that vanished in an instant when Matt Flores was gunned down in cold blood. He was just 26.

When Matt married Denise LePage, their friends called it the wedding of the century. Matt was a second lieutenant in the Army, who later served with honor in Operation Desert Storm. Once Matt came home to Fort Stewart, Georgia, he and Denise started a family. In July of 1993, their daughter Danielle was born. Eight months later, Matt began a promising career with a computer company based in California’s Silicon Valley. According to Denise, he traveled there for a brief training program:

“It was our new start in life as a family—us making decisions instead of the military. This was his dream come true. He finished with the military. He’d done everything right, and now he had landed the job of his dreams.”

March 24, 1994: Matt’s ninth day of training for his new job. That morning, he arrived at work and parked in the middle of the lot. Nearby, another employee sat listening to a talk show on her car radio. When a gunshot rang out, she moved to investigate. According to Sergeant George Teal of the Santa Clara Police Department, the female witness called 911 after realizing someone had been shot:

“Approximately four or five uniformed officers responded immediately, including a field supervisor. Paramedics and fire also responded immediately, but they were not able to revive him. He was pronounced dead at the scene.”

Matt Flores had been shot once in the back of the head at point-blank range. He probably never even saw his killer. And incredibly, no one else did either, even though there were more than 20 people in the parking lot at the time. Matt’s Mother, Ellen Mauro, was dumbfounded as to why someone would want to kill her son:

“He was never involved in anything in terms of drugs, gambling, fooling around—any of the things that you would think would lead to being murdered. Nothing.”

Almost immediately, the investigation was hampered by a terrible piece of bad luck. Despite the presence of several security cameras in the parking lot, the killing itself took place in a blind spot—just out of view. However, one of the cameras did give Sergeant Teal his most significant lead:

“About 20 minutes before the shooting, there was a two door sport model Ford Explorer that came into the parking lot and parked in one of the parking stalls facing directly into the camera lens. A few seconds later, a two door white Ford Probe came in the same lane that Matt would take later. The Explorer backed up, followed the white Probe. The Ford Probe could look something like Matt’s rental, which was a white Chevy Corsica. About four minutes before the shooting, we see that same Explorer exiting the parking lot, and then about three minutes before the shooting, we see the vehicle come back into the parking lot and go in the direction of where the shooting occurred.”

At 8:12 AM, two minutes before the shooting, two cars entered the lot. One was driven by the female eyewitness—the other by Matt Flores. At 8:14, the murder took place just out of camera range. According to Sergeant Teal, just 20 seconds later, the Ford Explorer was seen leaving the parking lot for the last time:

“If somebody were to watch the videotape and see the activities of the vehicle that morning and to see it leave right after Matt was shot, they certainly could say the vehicle was stalking Matt that morning.”

Because the Explorer initially followed a car that looked like Matt’s, Sergeant Teal believed the murder may have been a case of mistaken identity:

“Perhaps somebody went to that parking lot that morning to do harm to somebody else, and they got the wrong person.”

For Denise Flores, the reality of her husband’s murder continues to haunt her:

“Whoever did this to him, I want them to know what they’ve taken. One minute, life was great. We had everything. And the next minute, it was shattered. I don’t think she remembers him anymore. She was too little. I plan on showing her all the videos that we have so she knows what kind of a daddy that she had. But she won’t know what it feels like for Daddy to hug her. I lost everything that day.”

The case is still open and authorities hope that someone will come forward with a new lead. To date, the authorities’ most substantial clue is still the Ford Explorer videotaped in the parking lot. The vehicle is a two door sport model manufactured between 1991 and 1994. It has a distinctive black trim on its lower panels.

New info:

In May of 2016, $100,000 reward has been reissued to help solve the murder of Matt Flores. Read more: http://patch.com/california/milpitas/100000-reward-offered-1994-santa-clara-shooting-0

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eight with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A prison guard disappears amidst allegations of corruption and murder inside Frontera Prison.

Jesslyn Rich

Frontera Prison for Women

CASE DETAILS

Frontera Prison, in California, is one of the largest penitentiaries in America for women. Its maximum-security wing houses some of the state’s most dangerous female offenders. But it’s the alleged criminal activities of some guards and administrators that have drawn the most attention.

It began with the mysterious disappearance of Frontera guard, Jesslyn Rich, in 1984. Some former prison employees believe that Jesslyn was silenced because of what she knew about a prison drug ring run by other guards.

Jesslyn Rich was a 35 year-old divorced mother of two. While working at Frontera, she had maintained a straight “A” average in criminology classes at night school. At the time of her disappearance, Jesslyn had reportedly grown concerned about drug dealing inside the prison walls.

Jesslyn was last seen at a country-western bar on November 11, 1984. She and a friend, Marilyn Ault, were joined by two male acquaintances. Marilyn recalled what happened that night:

“All of a sudden she sits very still and looks almost past me to the front door. And I look at her and her eyes drew wide and fearful looking. But I didn’t look to the door. I just for some reason just didn’t turn around.”

Marilyn said that when Jesslyn suddenly excused herself to go to the bathroom, she noticed something suspicious:

“A gentleman appears to me out of the side of my eye going directly behind her. And that’s the last I seen her. Ever.”

Jesslyn Rich literally vanished without a trace. To her family and friends, it seemed out of character for Jesslyn to abandon her children and to scrap her career aspirations. Her family believed that Jessica had been kidnapped and possibly murdered. But police investigators said they had no evidence to support that theory. Jesslyn’s brother, Gary Muntz, wasn’t buying it:

“They made light of it, called us just ‘distraught relatives’, suggested that my sister had just ran off on a fling with some person, which is totally absurd. It just was unheard of.”

Gary tore apart his sister’s house, searching for clues. When he sifted through Jesslyn’s trash, he said he found evidence that her knowledge of illegal activities at the prison put her life in danger:

“Inside the plastic bag were many, many pieces of paper torn up very, very small. I picked up a few of these and I could tell that it was my sister’s writing or printing. And they were apparently notes or letters to a friend of hers, a co-worker. And I figured that I would take them home and sort them out later.”

The letter had been written to another guard at Frontera. Scrawled on the margin of the last page was Jesslyn’s haunting recital of an apparent threat she had received from the co-worker — that anyone interfering with his drug activities would be taken care of. At the time, this letter was the only concrete evidence indicating that Jesslyn had met with foul play.

The case eventually went cold. Three years later, in 1987, an inmate named Terry Lucas, told a guard that she had information about Jesslyn Rich. She said she was being threatened by other guards to keep quiet. Betty Thompson, a former Frontera prison guard, recounted a conversation she had with Terry:

“She tells me that she’s got information. She’s got evidence. She knows who was involved in the disappearance of Jesslyn Rich.”

The next morning, Betty Thompson went to see Terry in the prison infirmary, where she was recovering from a cancer biopsy. Betty described what she found:

“When I walked over to touch her, I noticed that Terry was dead. I went out of the cell and I went down to the nurses’ station and I told them what I had seen and what I knew and the coldness of the room, that she was not covered, her breakfast tray had not been touched and the nurses told me they would take care of it.”

Betty said that Terry’s body stayed in the cell for a full three days, before the county coroner’s office was called. According to Thompson, an official from the coroner’s office was mystified by what he found. Betty says there were blades of grass in Terry Lucas’ hair, and multiple bruises on her face, ears, neck, and lower arms. Her right arm appeared to be broken. According to Betty, the official came to a disturbing conclusion:

“He is saying that he sees evidence that she was suffocated with the pillow that had been under her arm that appeared to be broken.”

Betty Thompson said that after the official met with prison administrators in Lucas’ cell, he had a sudden change of heart:

“He told me that we were not going to call it murder. And we were not going to say that she was laying there dead for three days. We were going to, in fact, say that she was actually laying there only two hours and that the cause of death was actually complications due to diabetes.”

Thompson says that one of her superiors demanded that she change her report on Terry Lucas’ death. According to Thompson, she was subjected to threats and intimidation for six hours:

“There was one high administrator that even made the comment that the same thing that happened to Jesslyn Rich, could easily happen to me. At that point in time, I broke down and cried. I hadn’t told anything what Terry Lucas had said. And for him to bring up Jesslyn Rich and her disappearance, it said why Terry Lucas had died. It definitely had something to do with that.”

Thompson says she finally gave in and signed a false report that had been typed for her:

“But I added on the bottom that I had signed the document under duress and the document was untrue. To my knowledge, that document was ripped up, another one was retyped saying the similar things that were on the first document and that my signature was forged.”

Betty Thompson claims she later received a threatening phone call. The caller told her that if she didn’t learn to do things in a proper manner, she might end up in a muddy ditch. The following day, a prison officer casually asked her if she had received a call alluding to her being found in a ditch. Betty recalled her reaction:

“The hair on the back of my neck just stood straight up. I was absolutely petrified because I knew that she knew that they were saying to me and that she was part of whoever was threatening me.”

Betty says the menacing calls continued for seven months. Then, in June of 1988, Betty was shot at from a moving car outside her home. Thankfully, she was unhurt. Betty said she immediately called the police, who arrived at her home moments later:

“As I was upstairs filing a police report, a phone call came in and I picked up the phone. It was a male voice and he said, ‘Next time we won’t miss.’ The police officer saw my face and saw how upset I was. He included that in his report.”

Eventually, the scandal was the subject of several front-page articles in the Orange County Register. These articles supported insider accounts of drug dealing and corruption. That year, Betty Thompson and five other guards testified before State Senate hearings on the alleged offenses at Frontera Prison.

Officials at Frontera declined to be interviewed for this story. However, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections did tell Unsolved Mysteries:

“I’m not saying the things people are alleging didn’t happen. There’s just no evidence to support them.”

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP

A woman is abducted by a man who pretends to be a Good Samaritan.

Alicia Showalter Reynolds

Composite of the abductor and murderer

CASE DETAILS

On March 2nd, 1996, Alicia Showalter Reynolds of Baltimore, Maryland, said good-bye to her husband and left her home. It was a Saturday at about 7:30 A.M. Alicia planned to drive more than 150 miles to spend the day shopping with her mother in Charlottesville, Virginia. She left early, giving herself plenty of time to be at the mall by 10:30. Alicia’s mother arrived on time, expecting her daughter at any moment. But when Alicia was late, Sadie Showalter became worried:

“Right about 11:00, she wasn’t there, and I said, ‘This is not like Alicia. I wonder what’s going on?’ But I made myself wait until 11:15, and I then finally called her husband, Mark.”

Mark Reynolds:

“At that point, I said, ‘You know, the weather is kind of bad this morning. You know, there was a little fog, there was a little drizzle. It could’ve been some slick roads. Maybe she just slowed down a little bit, so give her a little while and give me a call back.’”

Sadie continued to wait. An hour passed, then two, but Alicia never showed up. At 6:00 that evening, a Virginia state trooper found Alicia’s car abandoned along a highway near Culpepper, Virginia, 50 miles from the shopping mall. A white paper napkin had been tucked under the windshield wiper, a commonly used signal of car trouble. When the car was examined, however, there were no mechanical problems.

The next day, the local news began broadcasting reports of Alicia’s disappearance. Police set up a roadblock where Alicia’s car was found, hoping to track down people who may have seen something. At least three people claimed they saw Alicia talking to a clean-cut white man with a dark-colored pickup truck. Close to 20 women called to say that they had recently been approached on the highway by a man fitting that exact description. Police began to realize that whatever had happened to Alicia might have been a plot that had been evolving for weeks. According to Special Agent Thomas Carter with the FBI in Fredericksburg, Virginia:

“Most of the witnesses talked about a man who would come up behind them or beside them in a dark, small pickup truck flashing his headlights, honking his horn, looking in any way he could to attract their attention. Most of the women that did have some concern for their vehicle did manage to pull off to the side of the road. He immediately jumps underneath the vehicle, conducts an examination, comes out, and then engages them in a very polite conversation about the mechanical difficulties that he has allegedly uncovered.”

At that point, the helpful stranger usually offered to drive the woman to the nearest phone. At least two women accepted his offer and nothing happened to them. Other women found the stranger to be anything but courteous. Agent Carter:

“Some of the women would not pull over for him, but merely went to the next exit or to their destination and had someone else look at their vehicle. The only instances where we have found the individual became agitated were those instances where women either refused his assistance or refused to pull over for him. And in those instances, there was a display of anger by him such as pounding his fist on the steering wheel or murmuring things under his breath.”

Rick Jenkins with the Virginia State Police believes the stranger was performing dry runs:

“Looking at all of the stops he made, I think we pretty much all agree that he was getting his courage up, if you will. He was practicing, getting comfortable at what he was doing with stopping these ladies, until he found someone that trusted him enough for him to carry forth what he intended to do.”

One week before Alicia disappeared, a woman driving in a neighboring county apparently fell for the same trick. Master Det. Leo J. McDonnell with the Prince William County Police spoke to her:

“She said from the first moment she met him, he was soft-spoken. He seemed to be trustworthy. She had no problem with it at all. And she knew that she needed a ride home. She didn’t know how to get home. So she accepted the ride. As they were going along the road, he would slow down, and make the excuse that he couldn’t see because of the vehicles behind him. And he pulled off the road. He did this three times. We believe that he was trying to establish a place to do something. She became very frightened. She fought him, and he decided he didn’t want to fight with her, so he pushed her out of the car.”

The woman broke her ankle, but she got away. Seven days later, Alicia Reynolds was not so lucky. On May 7th, 1996, two months after she disappeared, her body was found in a wooded area 15 miles southeast of Culpepper. She had been murdered, perhaps on the same day she disappeared. Rick Jenkins with the Virginia State Police suspects Alicia’s killer may be doing the same thing somewhere else:

“It is possible that the individual has fled this area, possibly the state, and may be in another community now, where he may be preparing to start this same type of behavior again.”

---

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season nine with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

SUBMIT A TIP