Killing of Gabby Petito

In August 2021, Gabby Petito, an American woman, was killed by her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, while they were traveling together on a van life journey across the United States. The trip began on July 2, 2021, and was planned to last four months; however, Petito disappeared in late August. After Petito went missing, Laundrie raised suspicion when he drove Petito's van from Wyoming back to his parents' house in North Port, Florida, and refused to talk about her whereabouts. He was deemed a person of interest in the case, and an arrest warrant was issued on charges of making withdrawals using Petito's debit card. Laundrie departed his home in Florida on September 13 and was reported missing on September 17. On September 19, Petito's remains were found at Bridger–Teton National Forest in Wyoming. An autopsy found she was killed by manual strangulation. After a month of speculation around Laundrie's whereabouts, and an extended search of the area around his Florida home, his skeletal remains were discovered in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park on October 20. On November 23, it was announced that Laundrie died due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The FBI later announced that Laundrie admitted to killing Petito in his notebook, which was found near his remains. The Petito case gained national attention due to the couple's social media activity, police body camera video footage, 9-1-1 emergency dispatch call recordings, and eyewitness accounts. Gabby Petito: Gabrielle Venora Petito was born and raised in Blue Point, New York. She was the eldest of six siblings and half-siblings. In 2013, Petito and her step-brothers appeared in a music video to raise awareness about gun violence, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. She graduated in 2017 from Bayport-Blue Point High School in Bayport, New York, where she had met Brian Christopher Laundrie. From September 2017 to January 2019, she lived in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, and worked as a hostess and in the kitchen of a restaurant in Wilmington. She applied to Cape Fear Community College, but did not attend. In March 2019, Petito began dating Laundrie and moved in with him and his parents in North Port, Florida. Petito and Laundrie worked at a Publix location in North Port, she as a pharmacy technician, and he in the grocery department. Both Petito and Laundrie quit their jobs at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In late 2019 and early 2020, the couple embarked on a cross-country drive from New York State to California, and along the journey visited Las Vegas, Yosemite National Park, Pismo Beach and other points of interest. In March 2020, Petito celebrated her 21st birthday in Nokomis, Florida. She and Laundrie visited Sope Creek, Georgia, in June 2020, and the two were engaged the following month. In December 2020, Petito purchased a 2012 Ford Transit Connect van converted into a camper, in which to take their next cross-country trip. She then worked fifty hours per week at Taco Bell and as a nutritionist, while Laundrie worked at an organic juice bar. Petito documented her life and travels on social media sites, including YouTube and Instagram, where she described her interests as "art, yoga, and veggies". Disappearance- Road trip: On June 17, 2021, Petito and Laundrie visited Blue Point, New York, for her brother's graduation ceremony. From there, on July 2, 2021, they departed in the Ford Transit van for their trip. That month, they visited Monument Rocks, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Mystic Hot Springs, and Canyonlands National Park. Domestic disturbance incident: On August 12, 2021, a witness called 9-1-1 claiming that a couple, later identified as Laundrie and Petito, was fighting in front of the Moonflower Community Cooperative in Moab, Utah. The caller told the dispatcher they saw a man slap a woman, and after the two ran up and down the sidewalk, the man hit the woman again, and then drove off. Another witness described the incident to police, saying that Petito and Laundrie were talking "aggressively", and that Petito "was punching him in the arm." The witness said it looked like Laundrie was trying to leave Petito and take her phone with him, before she eventually climbed into the driver's seat, moved over into the passenger's seat, and asked, "Why do you have to be so mean?" before they drove off. Officers from the Moab City Police Department (MCPD) identified the van near the entrance to Arches National Park, and conducted a traffic stop. They found Petito crying heavily in the passenger seat, where she told officers, captured on police body camera footage: Yeah, I don't know if some days, I have really bad OCD. I was just cleaning and straightening up, back in the ... I was apologizing to him and saying, "I'm sorry, that I'm so mean," because sometimes I have OCD and sometimes I can get really frustrated. Not like mean towards him. I just like, I just, my vibe is, I'm in a bad mood. And, I was just saying I'm sorry if I'm in a bad mood. I just ... I had so much work I was doing on my computer this morning. ... And, I just now quit my job to travel across the country and I'm trying to start a blog. I have a blog. So I've been building my website. I've been really stressed and he doesn't really believe that I could do any of it, so, we just been fighting all morning and he wouldn't let me in the car before. Petito first downplayed the physical altercation, but after the officer pointed out marks on her arm and face, and told her to "just be honest," she told him that Laundrie "kept telling me to shut up", and "grabbed my face," which had produced an injury. Laundrie told the officer: I said, let's just take a breather and let's not go anywhere, and just calm down for a minute, she was getting worked up. And, then she had her phone and was trying to get the keys from me. I was just trying to, I know I shouldn't push her. I was just trying to push her away to go, let's take a minute and step back and breathe and see, she got me with her phone. Petito told the officer that she hit Laundrie first, and asked the officers to not separate them. In their report, the officers wrote: At no point in my investigation did Gabrielle stop crying, breathing heavily, or compose a sentence without needing to wipe away tears, wipe her nose, or rub her knees with her hands... The male tried to create distance by telling Gabby to take a walk to calm down ... She did not want to be separated from the male and began slapping him. He grabbed her face and pushed her back as she pressed upon him and the van. Neither Petito nor Laundrie wanted to press charges as a result of the incident, which was characterized by police as a mental breakdown rather than as domestic violence, which would have required an arrest. The police separated the couple, arranging for Laundrie to spend a night at the Bowen Motel in Moab, and for Petito to stay in the van. The MCPD is currently investigating whether or not its officers handled the case in accordance with the department's policies. Its chief of police took a leave of absence amid the investigation. Last reported activities and sightings: On August 17, Laundrie took a flight from Salt Lake City to Tampa, Florida, leaving Petito to herself. Petito stayed several days at a Fairfield Inn and Suites hotel near Salt Lake City International Airport, according to staff, checking out on August 24. It was later explained by the Laundrie family attorney that he made the trip to "obtain some items and empty and close the storage unit to save money as they contemplated extending the road trip." Laundrie returned on August 23 to rejoin Petito and continue the trip. Petito's mother said that she last spoke to her daughter on August 25 and had been told that the couple were traveling from Utah to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. On August 25, the final post was made on Petito's Instagram account, which consisted of photos of herself taken in front of a butterfly mural outside of a restaurant in Ogden, Utah. Eyewitness accounts of the couple thereafter were as follows: -A witness claimed that, on August 27 between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm, she saw Laundrie and Petito together at Merry Piglets, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Per the witness, Laundrie had an argument with the manager, waitress, and hostess, apparently about money, and was "aggressive." The witness said she later saw Petito return to the restaurant, crying and apologizing for Laundrie's behavior. Restaurant staff confirmed via Instagram that the couple were indeed at the restaurant. -Another witness reportedly contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to report the activities and coordinates of a slow-moving white van and a "generic" young white man "acting weird" near the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping area on August 26, 27 and possibly 28. She posted a video to TikTok with her observations. According to the witness, an FBI agent said that her account, with regard to finding Petito's body, "tipped us off to the right place." -A woman claimed in a TikTok video that on August 29, she and her boyfriend gave Laundrie a lift from an area near Colter Bay Village, after seeing him hitchhiking alone. She reported that Laundrie "freaked out" upon learning that they were going to Jackson Hole instead of Jackson, Wyoming, disembarking the vehicle at 6:09 pm near the Jackson Lake Dam, less than thirty minutes after being picked up. The witness found it "weird" that Laundrie offered $200 for the 10 mi (16 km) ride and did not appear to be very dirty, despite claiming that he had been camping for days. -Another witness stated that she picked up Laundrie from the Jackson Lake Dam area at 6:20 or 6:30 pm on August 29, dropping him off at the entrance to the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping area. Laundrie offered gas money for the twenty minute ride, but did not want to be taken further than the entrance of the campground, which was several miles from the van. According to the witness, Laundrie acted "antsy" about getting out of the vehicle before it got closer to the campsite. -On August 27, a text from Petito's phone was sent to her mother which read, "Can you help Stan, I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls." The message raised concerns for Petito's mother, who said Stan was Petito's grandfather and that she never referred to him by his first name. The last message, sent on August 30, said, "No service in Yosemite." Her mother expressed uncertainty about who sent these messages. On September 1, 2021, Laundrie returned alone to his parents' home in North Port, Florida, in the Ford Transit. On September 6 and 7, 2021, Laundrie and his parents went camping at Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County. Investigation- Petito and Laundrie reported missing: On September 11, after not hearing from her daughter since late August, Petito's mother filed a missing person report. Four days later, Laundrie was named a person of interest. Laundrie's parents hired a lawyer, and based on his advice, remained silent, refusing to talk to anyone about the case. Police surveilled the Laundrie home and saw him leave on September 13. On September 15, they saw his car return; police believed the person who exited the car and entered the home was Laundrie. The following day, North Port Police Chief Todd Garrison told reporters, "All I'm going to say is we know where Brian Laundrie is at". On September 17, Laundrie was reported missing by his parents, who claimed not to have seen him since September 13. It was at this time that police realized that they had mistaken Laundrie's mother for Laundrie himself on September 15. After obtaining search warrants, police seized the Ford Transit, an external hard drive, and the Laundrie family's Ford Mustang from the North Port residence. Discovery of Petito's remains: On September 19, human remains matching the description of Petito were found at the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping area in Wyoming, not far from where the Ford Transit was previously observed. Her identity was confirmed and an autopsy determined that the manner of death was homicide by "blunt-force injuries to the head and neck, with manual strangulation", which occurred three to four weeks before the body was found. Search for Laundrie and discovery of remains: On September 23, the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming issued an arrest warrant for Laundrie due to his unauthorized use of Petito's debit card to obtain $1,000 or more between August 30 and September 1. The FBI took material to match Laundrie's DNA from his home. On October 5, in an interview with ABC News, Laundrie's sister encouraged him to turn himself in to authorities. Two days later, Laundrie's father joined investigators in searching for Laundrie at the T. Mabry Carlton Reserve in Sarasota County, Florida, focusing on areas he used to frequent in the reserve and the adjacent Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park. On October 20, Laundrie's skeletal remains, confirmed by forensic dentistry, and some of his belongings were found in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park in an area that had recently been underwater due to flooding. His cause of death could not be determined by an autopsy, and his remains were given to an anthropologist for further examination. On November 23, it was announced that the anthropologist concluded that Laundrie died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and that the manner of death was suicide. Laundrie's admission: On January 21, 2022, the FBI revealed that after examining Laundrie's notebook, they found he admitted to killing Petito, then deceiving people through text message that she was still alive. He was officially blamed for Petito's death by authorities afterwards. The FBI Denver Division closed out the investigation, stating that "The investigation did not identify any other individuals other than Brian Laundrie directly involved in the tragic death of Gabby Petito. The FBI’s primary focus throughout the investigation was to bring justice to Gabby and her family." The text of the note was later released by the Laundrie family lawyer. The note contains an account where he says he killed Petito after she had fallen and injured herself saying "I ended her life. I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but now I see all the mistake I made.". The note ends with his plans for suicide saying “I am ending my life not because of a fear of punishment but rather because I can’t stand to live another day without her.” Experts however, contend that Laundrie's account doesn't line up with investigator's findings. Michael Alcazar of John Jay College of Criminal Justice believed Laundrie was "Someone who doesn't want to own up to what he did. He's trying to find justification for the actions he did." Public interest:The case sparked more public interest and coverage on news and social media than other missing persons and murder cases. This heightened interest was attributed to several factors including: the refusal by Laundrie and his parents to comment on Petito's whereabouts; the amount of content on social media documenting their lifestyle; the video footage of the Utah traffic stop; the audio recording of the 9-1-1 call; the video posts by witnesses which provided a lot of publicly available evidence; the idea that the couple was young and attractive and in a romantic excursion gone wrong; the domestic violence incidents in their relationship; an increase in interest in cross-country van-dwelling trips due to the COVID-19 pandemic; as well as the general increase in interest in true crime-related entertainment in the preceding decade. There was speculation that the case is linked to the murders of Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner, which occurred in Moab around the same time Laundrie and Petito were there. Public involvement in the case included witnesses and others posting their observations and theories on social media, protests outside the Laundrie home demanding answers, a candlelight vigil for Petito in her hometown, and donations to the Gabby Petito Foundation established by her parents to support searches for other missing persons. The increased interest in the search for Laundrie and Petito led to the discovery of five bodies of other missing persons. While some posts on social media regarding the case were helpful in the investigation, many of them have been characterized as insensitive, unhelpful, monetized, motivated by increased exposure, or outright misinformation. The high volume of media coverage in the case was cited among some commentators as an example of missing white woman syndrome, or the over-emphasis of news about individuals based on their race, gender, age, or appearance. In comparing Petito's case to others, several outlets noted the relative lack of media attention towards the roughly 710 indigenous people that were reported missing in Wyoming between 2011 and 2020.

Death of Carl Isaacs Jr.

Carl Junior Isaacs Jr. was a formerly unidentified man from Delavan, Wisconsin whose skeletal remains were found alongside Turtle Creek in Bradford, near Clinton, Rock County, Wisconsin on November 26, 1995. He remained unidentified until February 2019, when the DNA Doe Project announced they had made a tentative identification, but his name was withheld until June 14th, 2022. Prior to his 2022 identification, Isaacs was known as the Rock County John Doe and John Clinton Doe. Discovery: His nearly complete skeleton was found by a hunting party at approximately 9:00 AM within private property alongside the creek, in a remote, densely wooded 100-acre area owned by the hunters. His skeleton was mostly complete and articulated, lying on his belly, with his hands over his head, while his head and back were partially covered by a denim jacket. He still wore age-fitting clothes, save for a shoe, and was located on a steep embankment, ten feet from the creek and four feet from the barbed wire fence of the property. It was initially estimated that the deceased died in the fall or winter of 1994, about one year before he was found, but later comparisons with more modern forensic facility research suggested that he may have died in the summer of 1995, around five months before his discovery. The cause of death is currently unknown, as no signs of trauma were found on the decedent: a homicide was deemed unlikely, and no other causes could be determined. Analysis of his hair found no conclusive traces of cocaine, codeine or morphine, making it unlikely that he had a long-term opioid addiction; however, this does not exclude the possibility that he was intoxicated or that he took hallucinogenic drugs before his death. It was commonly believed that he died from hypothermia from getting soaked in the creek, perhaps after getting intoxicated and becoming disoriented as a result. His skull was cremated while the rest of his skeleton was buried in Johnstown Center Cemetery, Rock County, Wisconsin. His DNA and dental records were available. Physical description: The Caucasian male stood approximately 66'', or between 5 feet 4 inches or (1.65 m) and 5 feet 6 inches (1.70 m). His weight was estimated to be approximately 140 lb (64 kg). He was estimated to be between 17 and 20 years old. He had straight teeth and seemed to have received good dental care with only one or two fillings, and still had his wisdom teeth, with two having partially erupted and one being impacted. The decedent wore a T-shirt with the trademarked logo of the British heavy metal group Venom on the back, which contained a golden five-pointed star surrounded by a circle with a goat head at the center and the caption "Welcome to hell" (the shirt was a model sold at their 1987 tour); gray urban camouflage fatigues of small/medium size; a lined flannel red and green jacket with a plaid design; size medium/34 boxer underwear with a Bart Simpson design; and a 1993 size 9-1/2 Black Nike Air Bound basketball shoe. Only one of the shoes were found at the site, lying near the skeleton. The young man carried a distinctive pendant made from a dinner fork, shaped like the head of a goat. Other items found with the body were cigarette butts, a Budweiser disposable butane lighter with the caption "Proud to be Your Bud" printed on it, a tube of Carmex lip balm, and a black Aquatech watch. His clothes, pendant and hair suggest that he was a heavy metal music aficionado and, as such, familiar with metal subculture, but investigations in the local metal circles did not bring conclusive results about his identity. Several facial approximations were publicly released over time. The first reconstruction released by Project Edan in 2013 was considered to be inaccurate by authorities. The second reconstruction released in 2014 by the FBI was considered by official agencies to be the most accurate to date, depicting a 20-year-old youth with collar long, dark feathery hair and high cheek bones. A third, colored and age-regressed version of the FBI approximation, regressed to approximately age 16, was released to the public in February 2016 to help identification. Investigation- "River Guy": Several witnesses remember seeing, on October 16, 1994 around 5:30 PM, a young man in his early twenties near the same area where the body was found. The man, who was wearing similar clothing as found with John Clinton Doe, was seen running and stumbling in Turtle Creek, visibly intoxicated and distraught. Dubbed "River Guy" by local investigators, he was reported by witnesses to have fallen in the water two or three times, trying to climb up the embankment and yelling at bystanders, telling them to get away from him. He also mentioned being wronged by a woman named Mary and being a fugitive. He was then seen sitting on the creek bank after his ramblings. Contrary to the FBI approximation of JCD, the 1994 police artist facial composite of "River Guy" shows him as having a light beard. It was commonly believed by those close to the case that River Guy and John Clinton Doe were the same person. However, this hypothesis was challenged by the later forensic estimations based on body decomposition rates that JCD may have died later than originally determined, as late as May, 1995. As such this new range of the possible time of death (as late as the spring of 1995) did not correspond as closely with the date of "River Guy" sightings. The pendant: In 2010, the distinctive goat pendant was traced by the Rock County Sheriff's detective working the case to a Janesville area craftsman. Active in the local metal scene, the man claimed to have made the pendant as well as sold or given similar items to a dozen people. However none of these people could be traced back as John Clinton Doe. Isotopic analysis: Isotopic analysis of the bones conducted in 2014 with the help of Smithsonian Institution scientists showed that the young man was from or had spent a significant amount of time in the Midwestern area, around the Great Lakes, which includes the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan. This, with the provenance of the goat pendant leads investigators to believe that the decedent was not living very far from where he was found. DNA Genealogy: At the request of the local law enforcement, in 2018 the DNA Doe Project took on case in collaboration with NCMEC, Fulgent Genetics, Aerodyne Research Inc., and Full Genomes Corporation and attempted to identify the body by using autosomal DNA, the web site GEDmatch and genetic genealogy to trace relatives. In February 2019, the DNA Doe Project announced they had tentatively identified John Clinton Doe. His name was not released immediately pending announcement by the Rock County Sheriff's office. Identification: On June 14, 2022 at 13:30 PM CST, the Rock County Sheriff's office held a press conference led by Sheriff Troy Knudson, in which the deceased individual was identified as Carl Junior Isaacs, Jr. Isaacs lived in Delavan, Walworth County prior to his death. He had a criminal history of burglary, petty theft, and destruction of property. In March 1992, Isaacs was sentenced to 5 years in prison for burglary and vandalism of golf carts and other property at the Delbrook Golf Course in Delavan. He was at three different prisons beginning in April of 1992. By the fall of 1993, Isaacs was imprisoned at the Oakhill Correctional Institute in Oregon, Wiscosin. There were periods of time in which he was released to house arrest and to a halfway house on Odana Road in Madison. In April 1995, Isaacs was at his mother's home in Walworth under house arrest. He disappeared from home on April 16, 1995 and was never seen or heard from again. A judge in Walworth County immediately signed an arrest warrant for Isaacs for probation violation. The warrant was renewed up through April 2018. The investigation into the manner and circumstances surrounding Isaacs' death was declared to be ongoing. According to Sheriff Knudson, Isaacs had not been reported missing prior to his death. When asked about a photograph of Isaacs displayed at the press conference, Sheriff Knudson said that Isaacs had contact with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, where the photo had potentially been taken.

Disappearance of Christie Farni

Christie Lynn Farni is an American girl who went missing in Medford, Oregon, after testifying before a grand jury regarding abuse allegations against her biological father. Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas was implicated in her disappearance in 1983, but his alleged involvement was not confirmed. Her case is the oldest unsolved missing child case in Jackson County. Timeline- Background: Christie Lynn Farni was born January 18, 1972 in Los Angeles, California. Disappearance: Christie Lynn Farni, age six, testified before a grand jury against her father, Kenneth Farni, on December 14, 1978 regarding abuse allegations brought against him. After testifying, Farni returned to her foster home where she had been residing for only three days, before departing on foot to Jackson Elementary School. Farni was reported missing that afternoon after she failed to return home from school, and it was revealed that she had been absent from school that day. An alternate report in 1979 stated that Farni was seen playing with another young girl at the YMCA in Medford. Both Farni's father and stepmother reportedly cooperated with law enforcement, and polygraph examinations were given to both. Farni's biological mother had died the year before her disappearance in a motorcycling accident. Alleged Henry Lee Lucas involvement: On December 16, 1983, it was reported that a remote area on the California-Oregon border was being searched, potentially for Farni's remains. Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, a drifter, alluded to having abducted and murdered Farni, but the locations indicated by Lucas where her remains could allegedly be found proved fruitless. At the time, Lucas had claimed to have murdered as many as 165 people in the United States, mainly women, beginning at the age of thirteen. Subsequent developments: Farni's half-brother, who lived with her and her father during the time she disappeared, committed suicide at an undisclosed date. In 1994, Kenneth Farni died in a traffic collision. In 2008, the Medford Police reopened Farni's case, which is the oldest missing child case in Jackson County.

Fall River murders

The Fall River murders were a series of three homicides that took place in Fall River, Massachusetts, from October 1979 to February 1980 allegedly by a satanic cult. It was the onset of a period in American history known as the Satanic panic. The first murder, 17-year-old Doreen Levesque, was committed on the night of October 13, 1979. Her body was found under the bleachers of Diman Vocational High School in Fall River the following morning. No person was ever convicted of the Levesque murder. The second murder, 19-year-old Barbara Raposa, was committed on November 7, 1979, but her body was not discovered until January 26, 1980. Andy Maltais was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the Raposa murder. The third murder, 20-year-old Karen Marsden, is thought to have been committed on February 8, 1980. Portions of her skull were discovered on April 13, 1980. Her body has never been recovered. Multiple individuals were charged in the Marsden murder, but only Carl Drew and Robin Murphy were convicted. Carl Drew was convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Robin Murphy pleaded guilty to second degree murder as part of an agreement to testify on behalf of the prosecution and received a reduced sentence. The Fall River murders are the subject of the 2021 documentary Fall River produced by Blumhouse and directed by James Buddy Day. Doreen Levesque murder: Doreen Ann Levesque was a 17-year-old resident of New Bedford who had left foster care and had no fixed address. On the night of her murder, she had traveled to Fall River to engage in prostitution with another sex worker, "Gail." Witnesses reported seeing Doreen being intoxicated downtown at several establishments and engaging in prostitution on Pleasant Street. At approximately 6:00 a.m. on October 13, 1979, Doreen's body was found under the bleachers of Diman Vocational High School by two joggers, who were using the school's running track. She had been sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death and was identified only after police released a composite drawing to local newspapers. Barbara Raposa murder: Barbara Raposa was a 19-year-old single mother with a history of drug abuse and sex work. She was reported missing on November 7, 1979, by her father after she had failed to pick up her son from a babysitter. She was last seen around 8:15 p.m. by a male friend who had dropped her off in downtown so that she could work as a prostitute. Barbara's body was found by hunters several months later, on January 26, 1980, in a wooded area on the outskirts of Fall River. Autopsy results indicated that she was killed shortly after she had last been seen. Karen Marsden murder: Karen Marsden was a 20-year-old mother and sex worker in the Fall River area who had frequent contacts with police. On the night of her disappearance, police had questioned Karen as a potential witness to the murder of Doreen Levesque. On February 9, 1980, Karen refused to identify Doreen's killer, refused an offer of witness protection, and asked police to drop her off at a church in Fall River. Karen was reported missing the following day by her grandmother. Karen's partial remains were found in Westport, Massachusetts on April 13, 1980.

Disappearance of Ames Glover

Ames Glover disappeared on 5 February 1990 at the age of five months from the back seat of his father's car in west London. No trace of him has ever been found. Disappearance: Ames's father Paul Glover reported to police that he had left his son in the back seat of his car in Southall for approximately twenty minutes while he went to a cashpoint followed by a take-away restaurant. On his return he discovered that Ames was missing. Police investigations- Initial investigation: Over 2,000 people, including both of Ames's parents, were interviewed by police investigating his disappearance, but no charges were brought and there were no solid leads on what had happened to him. Controversy: Police conduct of the case has been criticised at the time and subsequently. Information about Ames's family set-up (his parents were estranged at the time of his disappearance, and he had been on an "at risk register") was passed to the media by police and it seems likely that this led the case to receive a much lower public profile than other child disappearances around the same time. Ingrained racism in the media and public attitudes has also been implicated: writing about the case in the Independent over two decades after Ames disappeared, Philip Hensher reflected that it is "harder to make a good story out of a missing black child than out of one with blond hair and blue eyes." Reopening of case: After pressure from Ames's mother Shanika Ondaatjie, the case was re-opened in 2002 under the control of Scotland Yard's Racial and Violent Crimes Taskforce. In 2003 police officers travelled to Ghana in west Africa after a tip-off that Ames may have been taken there. A reward was offered for information, but enquiries proved fruitless. DNA tests on two young Ghanaian men named in relation to the case were negative. There have been periodic appeals for new information since then but with no significant progress. As of 2020 the case remains open, with Shanika Ondaatjie saying, "Although I have tried to move on, there will always be a part of me that cannot. I need to know what happened to Ames."

Killing of Brittanee Drexel

On the night of April 25, 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel of Chili, New York, United States, left a hotel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she had been staying with friends over spring break. Drexel walked to another hotel a short distance away, and from there, texted her boyfriend to say that she was heading back to her motel. She was never known to have been seen alive again and was soon reported as missing. Police investigated her disappearance, but no developments were made public until 2016, when it was announced that a prison inmate had told them that Drexel had been abducted and killed. The man accused by the informant denied knowledge of any alleged crime. Based on that information, the FBI considered the case a homicide. In May 2022, police arrested a registered sex offender in the area on charges of murder, kidnapping, and first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Drexel's remains were recovered a week later in a wooded area in Georgetown, about 33 mi (53 km) from where she originally went missing. Background: Brittanee Drexel was born in Rochester, New York, on October 7, 1991, to John Kahyaoglu, who was of Turkish descent, and her mother Dawn. The two were teens, and not married. Shortly after Brittanee was born, Dawn married Chad Drexel, who adopted the girl at that time. After Chad's military service ended, the family lived in the Rochester suburb of Chili. Drexel was born with persistent hyperplastic primary vitreous in her right eye, which required several surgeries and rendered the eye blind. To cover the eye's tendency to wander, she wore contact lenses that gave her a distinctive appearance. In April 2009, Brittanee asked her mother if she could go to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, over spring break with her boyfriend and some girlfriends. Her mother refused, since she did not know the other teenagers and there were no accompanying adults on the trip; she also had a premonition that something bad would happen. This led to arguments between the two for several days until April 22, when Brittanee asked if she could go to a friend's house for a day or two to calm down, to which Dawn agreed. That day, Brittanee left for South Carolina with the other students without telling her mother. Three days later, after she and her group had arrived at the Bar Harbor Hotel in Myrtle Beach, Brittanee called her mother once during the daytime and told her mother that she was at the beach. Her mother was not alarmed, as she assumed that Brittanee had been referring to a beach along the Lake Ontario shoreline. A trip there seemed plausible to her since the temperature in the Rochester area had reached a unseasonable high of 83 °F (28 °C) in the area that day. Disappearance: That night, around 8 p.m., Drexel left her friends at the Bar Harbor Hotel beachfront to walk 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south down South Ocean Boulevard to visit a longtime friend who was staying at the Blue Water Resort. Security cameras at the Blue Water Resort showed her arriving. She was carrying a beige purse and wearing a black-and-white tank top, flip-flops and shorts. The cameras captured her leaving around 8:45. Drexel was texting her boyfriend, John Grieco, who had stayed in the Rochester area because of work commitments. They had been texting back and forth but around 9:15 her texts suddenly stopped and Grieco began calling her friends in Myrtle Beach to see if they knew where she was or what had happened. When those efforts failed, he called Brittanee's mother Dawn, who had not known that her daughter was in Myrtle Beach until she was contacted. Dawn called Chad and then the Rochester police, hoping that they could establish communications with their counterparts in South Carolina. Repeated calls and texts to Brittanee's phone went unanswered. Investigation: Myrtle Beach police began looking for Drexel the following morning. They located the security camera footage from the Blue Water Resort and found the friends whom she had visited. The last person who had reported seeing Drexel before she had left was identified as Peter Brozowitz, a 20-year-old nightclub promoter whom Brittanee had known from the Rochester area and who was also vacationing in Myrtle Beach. They had apparently met at a local nightclub the night before. After police interviewed Brozowitz and the men with whom he was sharing his hotel rooms, they said that "no one has been ruled in or out," adding that they did not have any persons of interest. Police searched Drexel's hotel room, finding all of the clothes she had packed, but not her purse or cell phone. The phone's network pings were tracked on a path leading 50–60 miles (80–97 km) south of Myrtle Beach, in an area along U.S. Route 17 near the Georgetown–Charleston county line. The pings had stopped abruptly early on the morning of April 26. Areas near there and around Myrtle Beach where a body might have been disposed of were then searched for eleven days. In 2011, police searched an apartment in Georgetown County, but that effort did not yield any information that helped identify a suspect. Dawn and Brozowitz had several confrontations on the television show Dr. Phil, during which Brozowitz often expressed frustration at the damage to his reputation. Dawn, who had driven to Myrtle Beach the day after her daughter's disappearance, eventually relocated there permanently to be close to where Brittanee had last been seen and better monitor the progress of the investigation. In a 2014 newspaper article on the case's fifth anniversary, she expressed her theory that Brittanee had defied her to go to Myrtle Beach because she had been "promised something" of interest, such as a modeling job. Dawn believed that her daughter had been trafficked, but the Myrtle Beach police did not believe this was a strong possibility due to their claim of little or no trafficking taking place in their jurisdiction. A 2019 report conducted by the South Carolina Human Trafficking task force rated Horry County as the number one county in South Carolina for reported human trafficking victims. Timothy Taylor allegations: In June 2016 the FBI held a news conference during which they stated that they believed that Drexel had been murdered shortly after her disappearance. She had been abducted from Myrtle Beach and taken to somewhere in the vicinity of Georgetown, near where the cell phone pings had ended, before being killed there. The Bureau put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to the resolution of the case. Two months later, the Charleston Post and Courier reported new developments from a bond hearing for Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor, an inmate then serving time in state prison on an unrelated charge. FBI agent Gerrick Munoz testified that earlier that year Taquan Brown, another South Carolina inmate who had begun serving a 25-year sentence for manslaughter, told them that in 2009, shortly after Drexel disappeared, he had gone to visit a McClellanville "stash house" to give money to Taylor's father. As he walked through the house, Brown had told Munoz, he saw Taylor sexually abusing Drexel with others present. He continued to the backyard, where he found Shaun and made his payment. As they talked, Drexel ran from the house but was soon recaptured. Brown said he saw Taylor pistol-whip Drexel, then take her back inside. He then heard two gunshots, which he assumed were the sounds of the young woman being killed. Brown claims to have seen a wrapped body being removed from the house, then dumped in one of many alligator ponds in the area. Brown's statement to investigators, Munoz said, was partially corroborated by information received from another informant who was not identified but was described as having been incarcerated at the Georgetown County jail at the time he had talked to authorities. According to the second inmate, Taylor had picked up Drexel in Myrtle Beach and taken her to McClellanville, where he showed her off to friends and tried to sell her to them for trafficking purposes. Brown said that when the case drew heavy media attention Taylor decided to kill Drexel to avoid arrest. Federal charges: The bond hearing had been held after Taylor's arrest on a federal indictment for interfering in interstate commerce by threat or violence, a charge stemming from his role as the getaway driver in a 2011 robbery of a McDonald's restaurant in Mount Pleasant. Unusually, he had already been convicted for his involvement in the crime in state court and had been sentenced to probation, which he had finished by the time of the federal charges. Taylor's lawyer called the new charge a "squeeze" based on nothing more than the statement of two jailed informants; his mother called them "craziness," since she believed that her son and husband could never commit such a crime. Winston Holliday, the federal prosecutor at the hearing, admitted to the judge that the suspicions in the Drexel case were among the government's reasons for having brought the new charge for the conduct South Carolina had already sentenced Taylor for. In response to questions of whether this amounted to double jeopardy, Holliday cited a federal law that states that the federal government may bring charges for a crime if it believes the state prosecution led to an unfair outcome. In this case, Holliday noted that the other two participants in the robbery had both been sentenced to prison, with the gunman, who shot the restaurant's cashier twice, serving a 25-year minimum term. In June 2017, as part of his plea bargain negotiations, Taylor took a lie detector test. Some answers to the polygraph were labeled "deceptive" by the FBI. According to the Federal government's sentencing memorandum the only possible knowledge of the case, to which Taylor admitted, involved having overheard part of an argument between two people over who had Drexel's cell phone, a discussion that he said had made him suspicious. But when Taylor was connected to the lie detector and asked whether he had seen Drexel after her disappearance, or if he knew who was involved, the examiner determined he was not being truthful. Under the plea agreement he would thus face at least ten years in prison for his role in the 2011 robbery. After reviewing the results with Taylor's lawyer, the examiner attempted to continue but Taylor was too angry to do so. The government's memo recommended the minimum sentence. Before the sentencing hearing was scheduled, Taylor was found to have violated the terms of his bail and was held in Charleston County jail. In August, presiding federal district judge David C. Norton ordered Taylor's bail reinstated on the condition that he remain on house arrest until the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Gamble v. United States, a constitutional challenge to the dual sovereignty doctrine, which allows separate state and federal prosecutions for the same criminal offense. The development pleased activists who had been attempting to draw national attention to what they considered to be a "witch hunt." In June 2019, the Supreme Court decided Gamble in favor of the government, upholding dual sovereignty and allowing the federal government to proceed with its case against Taylor. Six months later, Norton sentenced Taylor to time served, 319 days, after a guilty plea forced by his similar disposition in state court. 2019 interview: In February 2019, Brown gave a telephone interview to Rochester station WHEC-TV from McCormick Correctional Institution, where he was incarcerated. He said he had actually seen Drexel four times after her disappearance. In addition to the first encounter, Brown said he had seen her again a month later, and it was at that time she was killed. Brown said he saw Drexel being sexually assaulted by a group of eight to twelve young men at the McClellandville stash house on April 27, two days after her disappearance. He did not recognize her at the time but realized who she was a month later when publicity arose surrounding the case. Brown's second encounter with Drexel came a few days later; this was the event that he had described to the FBI with the gunshots inside the building, and the body being carried out in a rug. Brown claimed his third encounter was five days later when he saw Drexel on a lightly traveled dirt road near his cousin's residence in Jacksonboro, 80 miles (130 km) south of McClellanville.[17] Brown claimed to have seen Drexel for the last time in late May, once again on his cousin's property, while visiting with another friend. In a wooded area at the rear of the property, Brown claimed to have witnessed Drexel being murdered by a man whom Brown knew only as "Nate," who shot her twice with a double-barreled shotgun. Brown and his friend left immediately, fearing being considered as accomplices if they had remained. WHEC was able to partially corroborate Brown's account. His description of the McClellanville stash house matched the station's own reporting from a 2016 visit. His account of the second visit, when he believed Drexel had been shot, is consistent with his original story as told to the FBI. The station was unable to locate the friend whom Brown said had accompanied him on the last visit. The cousin who owned the property where Drexel was purportedly killed is now dead. Another witness whom Brown had named could not be found. Brown has filed suit against Munoz, Holliday and other federal officials whom he says had identified him publicly or played a role in doing so. By doing so, he alleges, they gave him a reputation as a "snitch" and put his life in danger. Brown says that Taylor has offered a bounty to anyone who kills Brown and that he has already been assaulted. Arrest: In early May 2022, Raymond Moody, 62, a registered sex offender, turned himself in to the Georgetown County Sheriff's Office, on the basis of an obstruction of justice charge. Police had first considered Moody a person of interest in the Drexel disappearance as early as 2012. Moody confessed to the crime on May 4, and provided a location of potential remains. The FBI excavated them over the next three days. By May 11, human remains were located, buried in the woods off a gated private drive outside Georgetown, about four feet into the ground; they were identified as Drexel's through DNA and dental records on May 15. The arrest warrant alleged she had been strangled and then buried by the morning of April 26, 2009. Georgetown County Sheriff's Office, along with Drexel's family, made the information public the following day, May 16, along with the announcement of Moody's arrest. Moody was arrested again and charged with murder, kidnapping and first-degree criminal sexual misconduct, all alleged to have occurred on the day Drexel disappeared. The charges placed upon Moody are currently death-penalty eligible.

Elmer McCurdy

Elmer J. McCurdy was an American bank and train robber who was killed in a shoot-out with police after robbing a Katy Train in Oklahoma in October 1911. Dubbed "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up", his mummified body was first put on display at an Oklahoma funeral home and then became a fixture on the traveling carnival and sideshow circuit during the 1920s through the 1960s. After changing ownership several times, McCurdy's remains eventually wound up at The Pike amusement zone in Long Beach, California where they were discovered by a film crew of The Six Million Dollar Man and positively identified in December 1976. In April 1977, Elmer McCurdy's body was buried at the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Background: McCurdy was born in Washington, Maine on January 1, 1880. He was the son of 17-year-old Sadie McCurdy who was unmarried at the time of his birth. The identity of McCurdy's father is unknown; one possibility is Sadie's cousin, Charles Smith (McCurdy would later use the name "Charles Smith" as an alias). In order to save Sadie the embarrassment and shame of raising an illegitimate child, her brother George and his wife Helen adopted Elmer. After George died of tuberculosis in 1890, Sadie and Helen moved with Elmer to Bangor, Maine. Sadie eventually told her son that she, not Helen, was his mother and that she was unsure of who his biological father was. The news disturbed McCurdy who grew resentful and became "unruly and rebellious". As a teenager, he began drinking heavily, a habit he would continue throughout his life. McCurdy eventually returned to Maine to live with his grandfather and became an apprentice plumber. He was a competent worker and lived comfortably until the economic downturn in 1898. McCurdy lost his job and, in August 1900, his mother died of a ruptured ulcer. His grandfather died of Bright's disease the following month. Shortly after his grandfather's death, McCurdy left Maine and began drifting around the eastern United States where he worked as a lead miner and plumber. He was unable to hold a job for an extended period due to his alcoholism. He eventually made his way to Kansas where he worked as a plumber in Cherryvale. McCurdy then moved to Iola, Kansas, where, in 1905, he was arrested for public intoxication. He then moved to Webb City, Missouri. In 1907, McCurdy joined the United States Army. Assigned to Fort Leavenworth, McCurdy was a machine gun operator and was trained to use nitroglycerin for demolition purposes (the extent of this training was likely minimal). He was honorably discharged from the Quartermaster Corps on November 7, 1910. McCurdy then made his way to St. Joseph, Kansas where he met with an Army friend. On November 19, McCurdy and his friend were arrested for possessing burglary paraphernalia (chisels, hacksaws, funnels for nitroglycerin, gunpowder and money sacks). The St. Joseph Gazette reported that during their arraignment, McCurdy and his friend told the judge the tools were not intended for burglary purposes but were tools they needed to work on a foot-operated machine gun they were inventing. In January 1911, a jury found McCurdy not guilty. After his release from county jail, McCurdy's short lived career as a bank and train robber began. His robberies were generally bungled affairs due to McCurdy's ineptitude. Crimes: McCurdy decided to incorporate his training with nitroglycerin into his robberies. This often caused problems as he was overzealous and failed to correctly determine the proper amount to use. By March 1911, McCurdy had again relocated to Lenapah, Oklahoma. On March 24, 1911 He and three other men decided to rob the Iron Mountain-Missouri Pacific train No 104 after McCurdy heard that one of the cars contained a safe with $4,000. They successfully stopped the train and located the safe. McCurdy then put nitroglycerin on the safe's door to open it but used too much. The safe was destroyed in the blast as was the majority of the money. McCurdy and his partners managed to net $450 in silver coins, most of which were melted and fused to the safe's frame. On September 21, 1911, McCurdy and two other men attempted to rob The Citizens Bank in Chautauqua, Kansas. After spending two hours breaking through the bank wall with a hammer, McCurdy placed a nitroglycerin charge around the door of the bank's outer vault. The blast blew the vault door through the bank destroying the interior, but did not damage the safe inside the vault. McCurdy then tried to blow the safe door open with nitroglycerin but the charge failed to ignite. After the lookout man got scared and ran off, McCurdy and his accomplices stole about $150 in coins that were in a tray outside the safe and fled. Later that night, the men hopped a train which took them to the Kansas border. They split up and McCurdy made his way to the ranch of a friend, Charlie Revard, near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He stayed in a hayshed on the property for the next few weeks and drank heavily. Death: McCurdy's final robbery took place on October 4, 1911 near Okesa, Oklahoma. McCurdy and two accomplices planned to rob a Katy Train after hearing that it contained $400,000 in cash that was intended as royalty payment to the Osage Nation. However, McCurdy and the men mistakenly stopped a passenger train # 29 instead. The men were able to steal only $46 from the mail clerk, two demijohns of whiskey, a revolver, a coat and the train conductor's watch. A newspaper account of the robbery later called it "one of the smallest in the history of train robbery." McCurdy was disappointed by the haul and returned to Revard's ranch on October 6 where he began drinking the demijohns of whiskey he stole. By this time, he was also ill with tuberculosis which he developed after working in mines, and with a mild case of pneumonia, and with trichinosis. He stayed up drinking with some of the ranch hands before going to sleep in the hay loft the following morning. Unbeknownst to McCurdy, he had been implicated in the robbery and a $2,000 reward for his capture was issued. In the early morning hours of October 7, a posse of three sheriffs, brothers Bob and Stringer Fenton and Dick Wallace, tracked McCurdy to the hay shed using bloodhounds. They surrounded the hay shed and waited for daylight. In an interview featured in the October 8, 1911 edition of the Daily Examiner, Sheriff Bob Fenton recalled: It began just about 7 o'clock. We were standing around waiting for him to come out when the first shot was fired at me. It missed me and he then turned his attention to my brother, Stringer Fenton. He shot three times at Stringer and when my brother got under cover he turned his attention to Dick Wallace. He kept shooting at all of us for about an hour. We fired back every time we could. We do not know who killed him ... (on the trail) we found one of the jugs of whiskey which was taken from the train. It was about empty. He was pretty drunk when he rode up to the ranch last night. McCurdy was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest which he sustained while lying down. Post-mortem commercialization: McCurdy's body was taken to the undertaker in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where it went unclaimed. Joseph L. Johnson, the owner and undertaker, embalmed the body with an arsenic-based preservative typically used in embalming in that era to preserve a body for a long period when no next of kin were known. He then shaved the face, dressed the body in a suit and stored it in the back of the funeral home. As McCurdy lay unclaimed, Johnson refused to bury or release the body until he was paid for his services. Johnson then decided to exhibit McCurdy to make money. He dressed the corpse in street clothes, placed a rifle in the hands and stood it up in the corner of the funeral home. For a nickel, Johnson allowed visitors to see "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up" (at various times, McCurdy was also called "The Mystery Man of Many Aliases", "The Oklahoma Outlaw", and "The Embalmed Bandit"). "The Bandit" became a popular attraction at the funeral home and drew the attention of carnival promoters. Johnson received numerous offers to sell McCurdy's corpse but refused. On October 6, 1916, a man calling himself Aver contacted Joseph Johnson claiming to be Elmer McCurdy's long lost brother from California. Aver had already contacted the Osage County, Oklahoma sheriff and a local attorney to get permission to take custody of the body and ship it to San Francisco for proper burial. The following day, Aver arrived at the Johnson Funeral Home with another man calling himself Wayne, who also claimed to be McCurdy's brother. Johnson released the body to the men who then put it on a train, ostensibly to San Francisco. It was instead shipped to Arkansas City, Kansas. The men who claimed to be McCurdy's long lost brothers were in fact James and Charles Patterson. James Patterson was the owner of the Great Patterson Carnival Shows, a traveling carnival. After learning from his brother Charles about the popular "Embalmed Bandit" exhibit, the two concocted a scheme to take possession of the body in order to feature it in Patterson's carnival. McCurdy's corpse would be featured in Patterson's traveling carnival as "The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive", until 1922 when Patterson sold his operation to Louis Sonney. Louis Sonney used McCurdy's corpse in his traveling Museum of Crime, which featured wax replicas of famous outlaws such as Bill Doolin and Jesse James. In 1928, the corpse was part of the official sideshow that accompanied the Trans-American Footrace. In 1933, it was acquired for a time by director Dwain Esper to promote his exploitation film Narcotic!. The corpse was placed in the lobby of theaters as a "dead dope fiend" whom Esper claimed had killed himself while surrounded by police after he had robbed a drug store to support his habit. By the time Esper acquired McCurdy's body, it had become mummified; the skin had become hard and shriveled causing the body to shrink. Esper claimed that the skin's deterioration was proof of the supposed dope fiend's drug abuse. After Louis Sonney died in 1949, the corpse was placed in storage in a Los Angeles warehouse. In 1964, Sonney's son Dan lent the corpse to filmmaker David F. Friedman. It eventually made a brief appearance in Friedman's 1967 film She Freak. In 1968, Dan Sonney sold the body along with other wax figures for $10,000 to Spoony Singh, the owner of the Hollywood Wax Museum. Singh had bought the figures for two Canadian men who exhibited them at a show at Mount Rushmore. While being exhibited there, the corpse sustained some damage in a windstorm; the tips of the ears, along with fingers and toes, were blown off. The men eventually returned the corpse back to Singh who decided that it looked "too gruesome" and not lifelike enough to exhibit. Singh then sold it to Ed Liersch, part owner of The Pike, an amusement zone in Long Beach, California. By 1976, McCurdy's corpse was hanging in the Laff in the Dark funhouse exhibition at The Pike. Rediscovery and burial: On December 8, 1976, the production crew of the television show The Six Million Dollar Man was filming scenes for the "Carnival of Spies" episode in Long Beach, CA at The Pike. During the shoot, a prop man moved what was thought to be a wax mannequin that was hanging from a gallows. When the mannequin's arm broke off, a human bone and muscle tissue were visible. Police were called and the mummified corpse was taken to the Los Angeles coroner's office. On December 9, Dr. Joseph Choi conducted an autopsy and determined that the body was that of a human male who had died of a gunshot wound to the chest. The body was completely petrified, covered in wax and had been covered with layers of phosphorus paint. It weighed approximately 50 pounds (23 kg) and was 63 inches (160 cm) in height. Some hair was still visible on the sides and back of the head while the ears, big toes and fingers were missing. The examination also revealed incisions from his original autopsy and embalming. Tests conducted on the tissue showed the presence of arsenic which was a component of embalming fluid until the late 1920s. Tests also revealed tuberculosis in the lungs which McCurdy had developed while working as a miner, bunions and scars that McCurdy was documented to have had. While the bullet that caused the fatal wound was presumably removed during the original autopsy, the bullet jacket was found. It was determined to be a gas check, which were first used in 1905 until 1940. These clues helped investigators pinpoint the era in which the man had been killed. Further clues to the man's identity were found when the mandible was removed for dental analysis. Inside the mouth was a 1924 penny and ticket stubs to the 140 W. Pike, Side Show and Louis Sonney's Museum of Crime. Investigators contacted Dan Sonney who confirmed that the body was Elmer McCurdy. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Clyde Snow was then called in to help make a positive identification. Dr. Snow took radiographs of the skull and placed them over a photo of McCurdy taken at the time of his death in a process called superimposition. Snow was able to determine that skull was that of Elmer McCurdy. By December 11, the story of McCurdy's journey had been featured in newspapers and on television and radio. Several funeral homes called the coroner's office offering to bury McCurdy free of charge, but officials decided to wait to see if any living relatives would come forward to claim the body. Fred Olds, who represented the Indian Territory Posse of Oklahoma Westerns, eventually convinced Dr. Thomas Noguchi, then the Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, to allow him to bury the body in Oklahoma. After further testing to ensure proper identification, Olds was allowed to take custody of the body. On April 22, 1977, a funeral procession was conducted to transport McCurdy to the Boot Hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma. A graveside service attended by approximately 300 people was conducted after which McCurdy was buried next to another outlaw Bill Doolin. To ensure that McCurdy's body would not be stolen, two feet (60 cm) of concrete were poured over the casket.

Oklahoma City Butcher

The Oklahoma City Butcher is an unidentified serial killer who murdered three women between 1976 and 1986 in Oklahoma City. The killer targeted young homeless women, dismembered them, and mutilated them. Victims- Cathy Lyn Shakelford: The first known victim was Cathy Lyn Shakelford, a member of Sac and Fox Nation. She ran away at the age of 17 and lived homeless in Oklahoma City. The last sighting of her alive was two months before her death when she was being treated at the Oklahoma City Hospital. She was found in an abandoned house by three oil workers on April 1, 1976, who called the police after they found her head in a popcorn bucket. The rest of the victim's body would later be found around the rest of the home. Her legs, arms, and torso were all spread throughout the abandoned home. Her sexual organs were removed and never found as was one of her hands. These may have been kept by the killer as trophies. Her face had also been mutilated, with a smile carved into her face. She remained unidentified until 1993 after her cousin, Andra Medina, reported her missing to the police. She got in contact with Sargent Norma Adams, who connected the missing Cathy Lyn Shakelford to the unidentified woman. They were later confirmed to be the same person after DNA testing. Arley Bell Killian: On April 19, 1979, children playing basketball in a park discovered a human head. Over the next few days, police found more of her remains scattered throughout the neighborhood. Some of the body parts were wrapped in bags or newspapers. The body parts had an odd absence of blood because the killer had washed them before disposing of them. Her left hand, pelvis, head shoe, and parts of her flesh were found. She was identified as 22-year-old Arley Bell Killian a week later. Killian was homeless due to substance abuse caused by her father beating and raping her when she was 16. She was last seen just four hours before her head was discovered in the park. Over the next 2 months, the police found more body parts. Some speculated that the killer was playing a game, disposing of the woman's body parts to toy with the police. Tina Marcia Sanders: The final victim was 22-year-old Tina Marcia Sanders, a homeless woman. Her torso and left leg were found in an alleyway by a man walking in his backyard. Her head, which was set on fire, was found just a block away in a garbage bin. She was identified quickly due to her tattoos. She was last seen just a day prior to her torso's discovery. Announcement of a Serial Killer: Weeks after the murder of Tina Marcia Sanders, police linked her murder to murders of the previous two victims. Police believe that all of the victims were killed by a single perpetrator. All of the victims killed, dismembered, and mutilated in a similar manner. The first two victims had unique cuts on their lower lip, all of the victims were beheaded, and the victims sexual organs were never found. Furthermore, all victims were young homeless Native American women. Suspect- Henry Lee Lucas: Henry Lee Lucas was a drifter and American serial killer who confessed to hundreds of unsolved murders. One of these murders was Arley Bell Killian. However, it eventually became clear that Henry Lee Lucas was not the perpetrator when it was realized that he was confessing to nearly every unsolved murder he had heard of.

Tonks

when i started going to the LDS church i looked like Tonks from the Harry potter series. it was funny. now it's only once in a while

Long Island Serial killer

The Long Island serial killer (also referred to as LISK, the Gilgo Beach Killer, and the Craigslist Ripper) is an unidentified suspected serial killer who is believed to have murdered between 10 and 16 people over a period of nearly 20 years, and to have disposed of their bodies in areas on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. Most of the known victims were sex workers who advertised on Craigslist. The victims' remains were found over a period of months in 2010 and 2011, after the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert resulted in a police search of the area along the Ocean Parkway, near the remote beach towns of Gilgo and Oak Beach in Suffolk County. The remains of four victims, "The Gilgo Four," were found within a quarter of a mile of each other near Gilgo Beach in December 2010. Six more sets of remains were found in March and April 2011 in Suffolk County and Nassau County. Police believe the latter sets of remains predate the four bodies found in December 2010. Gilbert's remains were found a year after the remains of the "Gilgo Four" were discovered. Her cause of death remains contested, with police claiming accidental drowning while an independent autopsy determined possible strangulation. Police investigations: The first discovery of human remains was made by the side of Ocean Parkway in Oak Beach on December 11, 2010. The investigation was prompted by the search for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker who had disappeared in the area in May that year after fleeing from a client's home and making an emergency 911 call saying that someone was trying to kill her. A month after her disappearance, the Suffolk County Police Department's missing persons bureau asked Officer John Mallia to search for Gilbert with his trained cadaver dog, a German Shepherd named Blue. Over the course of summer 2010, Mallia unsuccessfully searched the gated beach community where Gilbert had last been seen. He made a new attempt at a search on December 11, staying close to the shoulder of the parkway. Mallia based his choice of search area on FBI data indicating that dumped bodies are frequently found close to roadways. Despite thick vegetation and a light layer of snow, the cadaver dog alerted to a scent which the pair tracked to a skeleton in a disintegrating burlap bag. The remains were later identified as Melissa Barthelemy's. Police discovered three additional bodies while searching the scene for further evidence. The bodies of the four victims – Maureen Brainard, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello – were found approximately 500 feet (150 m) from each other. In March 2011, the partial remains of Jessica Taylor were found along Ocean Parkway. Eight years earlier, in 2003, Taylor's partial remains had been found in Manorville, New York in Suffolk County. The next month, in April 2011, police discovered three additional sets of remains; an unidentified female toddler, an unidentified Asian person, and Valerie Mack, whose partial remains – like those of Jessica Taylor – had been previously found in Manorville years earlier in November 2000. Two more bodies were found in Nassau County; an unidentified woman whose partial remains had previously been found on Fire Island in 1996, and an unidentified woman with a distinctive tattoo of peaches who was later found to be the mother of the unidentified toddler found in Suffolk. On May 9, 2011, police speculated that because of similarities in the cases, Valerie Mack (who at the time was unidentified) and Jessica Taylor may have been murdered by a second, separate killer.[8] On November 29, 2011, however, police announced that they believed one person to be responsible for all ten murders, and that the perpetrator is almost certainly from Long Island. The single killer theory stems from common characteristics between the condition of the remains and forensic evidence related to the bodies. In June 2011, Suffolk County police announced a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the Long Island murders. Shannan Gilbert's remains were finally located in Oak Beach in December 2011, 19 months after her disappearance. The cause of her death is contested. All of the murders remain unsolved. FBI involvement: On December 10, 2015, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini announced that the FBI had officially joined the investigation. The announcement came one day after former Police Chief James Burke was indicted for civil rights violations and conspiracy. Burke, who resigned from the department in October 2015, was said to have blocked FBI involvement in the LISK cases for years. The FBI had previously assisted in the search for victims but had never officially been a part of the investigation. In November 2016, Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for assault and conspiracy. Bittrolff named as suspect: On September 12, 2017, Suffolk County prosecutor Robert Biancavilla from the county District Attorney's office announced that John Bittrolff, a carpenter from Manorville, Long Island, was a suspect in at least one of the LISK murders. Bittroff had been convicted in May of that year of the murders of two sex workers in 1993 and 1994. 2020 Release of evidence to the public: On January 16, 2020, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart released images of a belt found at the crime scene with the letters "HM" or "WH" (depending on the orientation of the belt) embossed in black leather. The belt had been found during the initial investigation near Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach. Police believe that the belt was handled by the perpetrator and that it had not belonged to any of the victims. The police revealed few details about the belt's evidentiary value and would not comment on exactly where it had been found. It was also announced that new scientific evidence was being used in the investigation and that they had launched gilgonews.com, a website enabling the department to share news and receive tips regarding the investigation. Identification of Valerie Mack through genetic genealogy: In June 2019, a proposal was made to use genetic genealogy to identify the unidentified victims and possibly the killer in the LISK case. On May 28, 2020, "Jane Doe No. 6" was identified as Valerie Mack, who also went by the name of Melissa Taylor. Victims discovered in December 2010: -The Gilgo Four Maureen Brainard-Barnes: Brainard-Barnes of Norwich, Connecticut, was 25 when she disappeared. She was last seen on July 9, 2007, saying that she planned "to spend the day in New York City." She was never seen again. Brainard-Barnes, a mother of two, worked as a paid escort via Craigslist to pay the mortgage on her house. She had been out of the sex industry for seven months but she returned to the work in order to pay her bills after receiving an eviction notice. Her body was found in December 2010. Shortly after her disappearance, a friend of Brainard-Barnes's, Sara Karnes, received a phone call from a man on an unfamiliar number. The man claimed that he had just seen Brainard-Barnes and that she was alive and staying at a "whorehouse in Queens". He refused to identify himself and could not tell Karnes the location of the house. He told Karnes he would call back and give her the address, but never called again. Karnes said that the man had no discernible New York or Boston accent. Like many of the victims, Brainard-Barnes was very petite, at 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m) tall and 105 pounds (48 kg). She had been strangled. Melissa Barthelemy: Barthelemy, 24, of Erie County, New York, went missing on July 10, 2009. She had been living in the Bronx in New York and working as an escort through Craigslist. On the night she went missing, she met with a client, deposited $900 in her bank account, and attempted to call an old boyfriend, but did not get through. Beginning one week later, and lasting for five weeks, her teenage sister, Amanda, received a series of "vulgar, mocking and insulting" calls from a man, who may have been the killer using Melissa Barthelemy's cell phone. The caller asked if Amanda, "was a whore like her sister." The calls became increasingly disturbing, and eventually culminated in the caller telling Amanda that her sister was dead, and that he was going to "watch her rot." Police traced some of the calls to Madison Square Garden, midtown Manhattan, and Massapequa, but were unable to determine who was making the calls. Barthelemy's mother noted that there were, "a lot of calls to Manorville" from her daughter's phone around the time of her disappearance. In September 2017, John Bittrolff, a carpenter from that town convicted of two other murders, was named as a suspect in the LISK cases. Barthelmy was 4 ft 10 in (1.47 m) tall and 95 pounds (43 kg). She had been strangled. Megan Waterman: Waterman, 22, of South Portland, Maine, went missing on June 6, 2010, after placing advertisements on Craigslist as an escort. The previous day she had told her 20-year-old boyfriend that she was going out and would call him later. At the time of her disappearance, she was staying at a motel in Hauppauge, New York, 15 miles northeast of Gilgo Beach. Her body was recovered in December 2010. Waterman was a mother of one and had become a victim of sex trafficking. Waterman was 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) tall. She had been strangled. Amber Lynn Costello: Costello, 27, of West Babylon, New York, a town ten miles north of Gilgo Beach, was a sex worker and heroin user who went missing on September 2, 2010. That night she reportedly went to meet a stranger who had called her several times and offered $1,500 for her services. Born in Charlotte and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, Costello was living in West Babylon, New York when she disappeared. Her family believed that she was in a residential drug rehabilitation center and so she was not immediately reported missing when she stopped responding to messages and phone calls. Prior to moving to West Babylon, Costello had been living with her second husband in Clearwater, Florida, and was working as a waitress. A strong student, Costello's drug addiction began when she was a teenager. She had been sexually assaulted by a neighbor when she was 6 years old. Costello was 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m) and weighed approximately 100 pounds (50 kg). She had been strangled. Victims discovered in March and April 2011: Four more sets of remains were discovered on March 29 and April 4, 2011. All of the remains were found in another area off the parkway, near Oak Beach and Gilgo Beach, within two miles and to the east of those found in December 2010. The newly-discovered victims were Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, an unidentified woman dubbed "Jane Doe No. 3" or "Peaches," and an unidentified toddler who was the daughter of "Peaches." Suffolk Police subsequently expanded the search area up to the Nassau County border, looking for more victims. Two further sets of remains were discovered on April 11, 2011, after the search expanded into Nassau County. They were found about one mile apart, approximately five miles west of those found in December. One set of remains belonged to a victim now thought to be a trans woman. Dubbed "Asian Male," police said the victim had been dead for between five and ten years. The other remains were those of "Jane Doe No. 7," whose partial remains had been discovered on Fire Island in 1996. Identified- Jessica Taylor: Taylor was 20 years old and living in Manhattan when she went missing on July 21, 2003. On July 26, 2003, her naked and dismembered torso, missing its head and hands, was discovered 45 miles (72 km) east of Gilgo Beach in Manorville, New York; these remains were identified by DNA analysis later that year. Taylor's torso was found atop a pile of scrap wood at the end of a paved access road off Halsey Manor Road, just north of where it crosses the Long Island Expressway. Plastic sheeting was found underneath the torso, and a tattoo on her body had been mutilated with a sharp instrument. Further remains found on March 29, 2011, at Gilgo, including the remains of a skull, a pair of hands, and a forearm were matched to Taylor. She had worked in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan as a sex worker. Valerie Mack / Melissa Taylor / "Manorville Jane Doe" / "Jane Doe No. 6": Mack, 24, also known as Melissa Taylor, was living in Philadelphia and working as an escort when she went missing in 2000. Like many of the victims, she was small in stature at approximately 5 feet (1.5 m) and weighing approximately 100 pounds (50 kg). Mack's partial remains were discovered in Manorville on November 19, 2000, but were not identified until 2020. Her torso was found wrapped in garbage bags and dumped in the woods near the intersection of Halsey Manor Road and Mill Road, adjacent to a set of power lines and a nearby power line access road. A head, right foot, and hands, found on April 4, 2011, were at first determined to have belonged to an unidentified victim, dubbed "Jane Doe No. 6"; it was later determined that they belonged to the same woman whose torso had been found in 2000. Her right foot had been cut off high above the ankle, possibly to conceal an identifying mark or tattoo. On May 28, 2020, police announced that the remains had been identified as Valerie Mack, who had last been seen by family members in the spring or summer of 2000 in the area of Port Republic, New Jersey. The dismembered remains of Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor were both disposed of in a similar manner, and in the same part of Manorville, suggesting a link. Unidentified: On September 20, 2011, police released composite sketches of two of the unidentified victims (dubbed "Asian male" and "Jane Doe No. 6") whose remains had been found in March and April 2011, as well as photos of jewelry found on the remains of a female toddler and her mother, "Jane Doe No. 3," found on April 4 and 11, respectively. One of the sets of remains found in Nassau County on April 11 was later identified as the mother of the toddler. "Peaches" / "Jane Doe No. 3": On April 11, 2011, police in Nassau County discovered dismembered skeletal human remains inside a plastic bag near Jones Beach State Park. The victim was dubbed "Jane Doe No. 3." DNA analysis later positively indicated that the remains belonged to a woman whose torso had been found in Hempstead Lake State Park fourteen years earlier. On June 28, 1997, the dismembered torso of an unidentified young African-American woman was found at Hempstead Lake State Park, in the town of Lakeview, New York. The torso was found in a green plastic Rubbermaid container, which was dumped next to a road along the west side of the lake. Investigators reported that the victim had a tattoo on her left breast of a heart-shaped peach with a bite out of it and two drips falling from its core. In December 2016, "Peaches" and "Jane Doe No. 3" were positively identified as being the same person. DNA analysis also identified "Peaches" as the mother of "Baby Doe;" she was found wearing gold jewelry similar to that of her daughter. "Baby Doe": A third set of remains – the skeleton of a female toddler between 16 and 24 months of age (or, by another account, 1 to 4 years of age) – was found on April 4, 2011, about 250 feet (80 m) away from the partial remains of Valerie Mack. The body was wrapped in a blanket and showed no visible signs of trauma. DNA tests determined that the child's mother was "Jane Doe No. 3," whose body was found 10 miles (16 km) east, near Jones Beach State Park. The toddler was reported to be African-American and was wearing gold earrings and a gold necklace. "John Doe" / "Asian male": The body of a young Asian person who had died from blunt-force trauma was also discovered on April 4, 2011, at Gilgo Beach, very close to where the first four sets of remains had been discovered in December 2010. The victim was determined to be biologically male but was found wearing women's clothing, suggesting that they may have identified as female. The unidentified victim was between 17 and 23 years of age, 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) in height, missing four teeth, and may have had a musculoskeletal disorder which would have affected their gait. They had been dead for between five and 10 years. In September 2011, police released a composite sketch of the victim. "Jane Doe No. 7" / "Fire Island Jane Doe": A human skull and several teeth were recovered on April 11, 2011, at Tobay Beach. These remains were linked through DNA testing to a set of severed legs found in a garbage bag on Fire Island 15 years earlier, on April 20, 1996. Jane Doe No. 7's remains were the second set to be discovered in Nassau County on April 11, 2011. Jane Doe No. 7 had a surgical scar on her left leg. Discovery of Shannan Gilbert's body: On December 13, 2011, police announced that the remains of Shannan Gilbert had been found in a marsh about half a mile from where she had disappeared. A week earlier, some of her clothing and belongings had been discovered in the same vicinity. Gilbert was last seen banging on a resident's door and screaming for help before running off into the night. Gilbert made an emergency 9-1-1 call that night, saying that she feared for her life. Police have stated that the death of Gilbert, an escort whose disappearance triggered the search during which the first set of bodies was found, is not related to the Long Island serial killer case. Gilbert's now-deceased mother Mari Gilbert, however, strongly advocated for the theory that Shannan Gilbert had been murdered by a serial killer. Timeline: 1996- -April 20, 1996: “Fire Island Jane Doe” / “Jane Doe No. 7”’s partial remains found on Fire Island 1997- -June 28, 1997: “Peaches”/ “Jane Doe No.3”’s partial remains found at Hempstead Lake State Park 2000- -Spring/summer 2000: Valerie Mack last seen by family members -November 19, 2000: Valerie Mack’s partial remains found in Manorville 2003- -July 2003: Jessica Taylor last seen -July 26, 2003: Jessica Taylor’s partial remains are found in Manorville 2007- -July 9, 2007: Maureen Brainard-Barnes last seen -July 2007: A friend of Brainard-Barnes's, Sara Karnes, receives a phone call from a man claiming that he had just seen Brainard-Barnes and that she was alive and staying at a "whorehouse in Queens.” 2009- -July 10, 2009: Melissa Barthelemy last seen -July - August 2009: Amanda Barthelemy, sister of Melissa Barthelemy, receives a series of "vulgar, mocking and insulting" calls from a man using Melissa Barthelemy's cell phone. The caller eventually tells Amanda that her sister is dead. 2010- -May 2, 2010: Shannan Gilbert makes a panicked phone call to 911 at 4:51am after fleeing a client’s house in Oak Beach. She bangs on the doors of several neighboring houses and disappears -June 6, 2010: Megan Waterman last seen -September 2, 2010: Amber Lynn Costello last seen -December 11, 2010: Melissa Barthelemy’s remains are found. -December 13, 2010: Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes’s remains are found. 2011- -March 29, 2011: Jessica Taylor’s further partial remains found at Gilgo -April 4, 2011: Valerie Mack’s further partial remains found -April 4, 2011: “Baby Doe,” the 16-24-month-old daughter of “Peaches,” found -April 4, 2011: "John Doe" / "Asian male" found -April 11, 2011: "Peaches" / "Jane Doe No. 3"'s further partial remains found near Jones Beach State Park -April 11, 2011: “Fire Island Jane Doe / Jane Doe No. 7”’s further partial remains found at Tobay Beach -December 13, 2011: Shannan Gilbert’s remains are found in a marsh at Oak Beach 2016- -December 2016: "Peaches" and "Jane Doe No. 3" are positively identified as being the same person 2017- -September 2017: John Bittrolff, a carpenter from Manorville convicted of the murders of two other sex workers, is named as a suspect in the LISK cases. Biltroff had been convicted of murdering Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee, whose bodies were found in 1993 and 1994 respectively. 2020- -May 28, 2020: Confirmation announced of forensic identification of formerly unidentified remains of Valerie Mack. Other possible victims- Identified: Tina Elizabeth Foglia: 19-year-old Tina Foglia was last seen alive in the early morning hours of February 1, 1982, at the Hammerheads rock music venue on Sunrise Highway, West Islip. She had hitchhiked from her home to the venue to see a friend performing with a Queens-based band, Equinox. Her remains were discovered by Department of Transportation workers on February 3 on a shoulder of the Sagtikos State Parkway in Suffolk County. Her dismembered body, which had been placed in three separate plastic garbage bags, was found a few miles north of the Robert Moses Causeway, which leads to Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach. A diamond ring that Foglia was known to wear was missing, and the DNA of an unknown male was found on the garbage bags. Police have not ruled out the possibility that Tina Foglia was an early victim of the Long Island Serial Killer but have stated that a connection is, "not an active avenue of the investigation." Shannan Maria Gilbert: Shannan Maria Gilbert was an escort who may have been a victim of the Long Island serial killer. She left for a client's residence in Oak Beach after midnight on May 1, 2010. At 4:51 in the morning, 911 dispatchers received a panicked phone call from Gilbert who can be heard saying that there was someone "after her" and that "they" were trying to kill her. She was last seen a short time later banging on the front door of a nearby Oak Beach residence and screaming for help before running off into the night. After nineteen months of searching, police found Gilbert's remains in a marsh, half a mile from where she was last seen. In May 2012, the Suffolk County medical examiners ruled that Gilbert accidentally drowned after entering the marsh. They believe that she was in a drug induced panic, and have concluded that hers was "death by misadventure" or "inconclusive." Her family believes she was murdered. On November 15, 2012, a lawsuit was filed by her mother, Mari Gilbert, against the Suffolk County Police Department in the hopes of getting more answers about what happened to her daughter the night she went missing. Due to the controversy about Gilbert's death, in September 2014, famed forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden agreed to conduct an independent autopsy of Gilbert's remains in hopes of determining a clear cause of death. Upon examination of Gilbert's remains, Baden found damage to her hyoid bone, suggesting that strangulation may have occurred. Baden also noted that her body was found face-up, which is not common for drowning victims. Despite this, her death is still officially listed by police as an accident. On July 23, 2016, Mari Gilbert was murdered in her home in Ellenville, New York. Later that day, her younger daughter, Sarra Elizabeth Gilbert, was arrested and charged with the stabbing death of her mother. On May 6, 2020, the New York State Supreme Court ordered Suffolk County Police to release Gilbert's 911 call recording, denying their request to withhold it after more than 10 years. The tapes were released to Gilbert's estate attorney, John Ray a short time later. Under the court order, Ray is barred from discussing the specifics of the call. He did, however, comment that the nature of the calls contradict what Suffolk Police Detective Vincent Stephan had described in earlier reports about the calls from that morning. Specifically, Gilbert's tone had been described by Detective Stephan as calm, and indicated no desperation. After reviewing the tapes, Ray claimed that this was not true. Andre Isaac: Andre Isaac was a professional drag queen known by his stage name, Sugar Bear. He was 6'5" inches tall and was 25-years-old when he disappeared from East New York in November 2002. Isaac's torso was found close to the boardwalk on Beach 63 Street in Arverne, Queens on December 17, 2002. On January 25, 2003, his head was discovered by ice skaters in East Millpond in Moriches, New York in Suffolk County, with a single bullet wound to a temple. His arms and legs were later found several miles away in plastic bags. Isaac's case was added to the Suffolk County Police Department Gilgo News website on May 29, 2020. Tanya Rush: On June 23, 2008, Tanya Rush, 39, was last seen around 3 a.m. walking towards a subway station in Brooklyn. Her dismembered body was found by a state road-cleaning crew inside a black canvas suitcase on June 27, 2008, in plain sight on the Newbridge Road ramp leading to the westbound Southern State Parkway in Bellmore, New York. Rush was a mother of three who had been a Salvation Army volunteer and had worked in telemarketing. She took up sex work to support a drug addiction. Rush was African-American and lived in the Van Dyke Houses, a Brownsville public housing complex in Brooklyn, New York. Unidentified- Unidentified woman, Lattingtown: On January 23, 2013, a woman walking her dog found human remains in a small patch of brush in a sandy area along the shore at the end of Sheep Lane in Lattingtown, near Oyster Bay. The skeletal remains showed signs of trauma and were wrapped in a particular type of material that police have not disclosed. The remains are believed to be those of a woman between the ages of 20 and 30 who was possibly Asian. She was wearing a 22-karat solid gold pig pendant which may be related to the Chinese zodiac "Year of the Pig." The relevant birth years are 1971, 1983 and 1995, possibly suggesting that the woman died at the age of 29. Investigators believe that her body had been dumped before Hurricane Sandy in late 2012. Her case may be connected to the other 10 bodies found 32 miles (51 km) away in and around Gilgo Beach, though unlike the other victims, her body was buried rather than left above ground. "Cherries" / Unidentified woman, Mamaroneck: On March 3, 2007, a suitcase containing the dismembered torso of an unidentified Hispanic or light-skinned African-American woman washed up on a beach at Harbor Island Park, in the town of Mamaroneck. The victim had a tattoo of two cherries on her left breast, similar in appearance to the tattoo found on "Peaches." She was determined to have been stabbed to death. Never identified, the victim is referred to as "Cherries" by investigators. One of her dismembered legs washed up at Cold Spring Harbor on March 21, 2007, and the other at Oyster Bay in the village of Cove Neck the following day. "Cherries" was dismembered in a fashion similar to three other victims (Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, and "Peaches") meaning she may be linked to the other official victims. Identity of the killer: The media has speculated about a profile of the killer, referred to by police as "Joe C" (unknown subject). According to the New York Times, it is most likely a white male in his mid twenties to mid forties who is very familiar with the South Shore of Long Island and has access to burlap sacks, which he uses to hold the bodies for disposal. He may have a detailed knowledge of law enforcement techniques, and perhaps ties to law enforcement, which have thus far helped him avoid detection. Newsday reporters speculated that serial killer Joel Rifkin, a former resident on Long Island, may have been responsible for some of the older remains found in March and April 2011. Four of the victims' complete bodies have never been found. In an April 2011 prison interview with Newsday, Rifkin denied having anything to do with recently discovered remains. Suspects and persons of interest- John Bittrolff: On September 12, 2017, Suffolk County prosecutor Robert Biancavilla said that John Bittrolff, a Suffolk county resident convicted of murdering two sex workers and suspected in the murder of a third, was a suspect in at least one of the LISK murders. Biancavilla stated that Bittrolff was likely responsible for the deaths of other women, and that there were similarities between the Gilgo Beach crime scenes and Bittrolff's known murders, for which he was convicted in May 2017 and sentenced in September. Bittrolff was arrested in 2014 after his DNA was found on two murdered women, Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee, whose bodies were found in 1993 and 1994, respectively. (The match had been made through DNA submitted by his brother, who was convicted in 2013 in an unrelated case.) Bittrolff was convicted in May 2017 of these murders, and in September sentenced to consecutive terms of 25 years for each murder. The Suffolk County police did not comment on the prosecutor's statement, due to the active homicide investigation of the LISK murders. Bittrolff's attorney rejected the prosecutor's assertion. Bittrolff lived in Manorville, three miles from where the torsos of LISK victims Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack were recovered. Bittrolff was a hunter who was said to enjoy killing animals. He was a carpenter by trade with access to hacksaws and electric saws. Because many of the bodies were found precisely dismembered, his access to and proficiency with these tools is of note. The grown daughter of Rita Tangredi, who was murdered by Bittrolff, was also the best friend of Melissa Barthelemy, who was one of the Gilgo Beach victims. Barthelemy's mother said that her daughter Melissa "had a lot of calls to Manorville from her phone" before her death. Joseph Brewer: Joseph Brewer, an Oak Beach resident, was one of the last people known to have seen Shannan Gilbert alive. He hired her as an escort from Craigslist on the night of her disappearance. Brewer said that shortly after Gilbert arrived at his residence, she began acting erratically and fled his home. Gilbert was reportedly seen running through Oak Beach, pounding on the doors of homes in Brewer's neighborhood. Around this time, Gilbert called 9-1-1, saying that "they were trying to kill her". Police, however, did not find any evidence of wrongdoing, and Brewer was quickly cleared as a suspect. James Burke: Former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke was reported to have blocked an FBI probe of the LISK case during his time as police chief. In November 2016, Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for assault and conspiracy. Burke violently assaulted a man in custody who had stolen a duffel bag from his police vehicle. The duffel bag contained sex toys, a pornographic DVD and Viagra. Burke pleaded guilty in February 2016 to charges of a civil rights violation and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Thomas Spota, the then-district attorney in Suffolk County, was convicted in December 2019 of conspiracy to cover up Burke's violent assault. Christopher McPartland, who had been Suffolk County’s top anticorruption prosecutor, was also convicted in the conspiracy. In December 2016, an attorney for Shannan Gilbert's family reported that an escort had stated that she suspected that Burke might be connected to the LISK cases. The escort, who identified herself as "Leanne," stated that at one party she had attended in April 2011 in Oak Beach she had seen Burke drag a woman of Asian appearance by the hair to the ground. Leanne said that when she saw Burke at a later party in August 2011, she decided to engage in sexual activity with him. She described an experience in which Burke violently yanked her head during oral sex to the point where she began to tear up. Burke was unable to reach orgasm and proceeded to throw $300–400 at her afterwards. At the time she was not a professional sex worker and she states that this was the first time she was paid for sex. Peter Hackett: Two days after Gilbert's disappearance, Peter Hackett, a neighbor of Joseph Brewer who was a former physician and who had worked for Suffolk County as a police surgeon, phoned Shannan Gilbert's mother, Mari Gilbert. Mari Gilbert later recounted that Hackett said that he was taking care of Shannan, that he "ran a home for wayward girls," and that he had given her medication because she was distressed. Three days later, Hackett called Mari Gilbert again, denying that he had had any contact with her daughter and that he had previously phoned her. Investigators later confirmed through phone records that Hackett had indeed called Mari Gilbert twice following her daughter's disappearance. The marshy area where Gilbert's remains were found was near Hackett's backyard, and her personal items and clothing were found directly behind his property in the marsh. Gilbert's family filed a wrongful death suit against Hackett in November 2012, claiming that he took Gilbert into his home that morning and administered drugs to her, facilitating her death. The lawsuit was dismissed because it could not be proven that Hackett had administered drugs or treatment to Gilbert. Later police revealed that Hackett had a history of inserting himself into, or exaggerating his role in, certain major events. Police later ruled out Hackett as a suspect in the deaths of Gilbert and the LISK victims. Hackett left Oak Beach and moved to Florida with his family not long after Gilbert's disappearance. James Bissett: Two days after Shannan Gilbert's remains were found, businessman James Bissett committed suicide in his car at Mattituck park. One of Bissett's businesses was a plant nursery which was the main supplier of burlap in the region. Many of the victims' remains were found wrapped in burlap. In popular culture: Numerous films, television programs, and podcasts have covered the case. These include: -48 Hours: "Long Island Serial Killer" (1-hr documentary airdate July 12, 2011) -The Long Island Serial Killer (2013), also known as The Gilgo Beach Murders, an independent feature directed by Joseph DiPietro -People Magazine Investigates: "The Long Island Serial Killer: The Lost Girls" (2016): season 1, episodes 1–2 -The Killing Season (American TV series): "The Most Dangerous Game" (airdate November 12, 2016): season 1, episode 2 -Crime Junkie, episode 21: "SERIAL KILLER: L.I.S.K" (Released: April 16, 2018) -Lost Girls, Netflix film (2020) -60 Minutes Australia: "Who is the Long Island serial killer?" (2020) -The Long Island Serial Killer: A Mother's Hunt for Justice, Lifetime television film (2021) -The Criminal Lawyer by Thomas Benigno -Grim Tide, (2021) a five part series on Fox Nation. -Unraveled: The Long Island Serial Killer (2021), a seven-part podcast series released by Investigation Discovery.

El Dorado Jane Doe

Kelly was the first name of a 23-year-old American woman and identity thief who was murdered on July 10, 1991 in El Dorado, Arkansas in Room 121 of the now-demolished Whitehall Motel. She used multiple names while alive, including Mercedes (which is how her friends knew her), Cheryl Ann Wick (which was the name on the identification card found with her body), Kelly Lee Carr, Kelly Karr, Shannon Wiley, Cheryl Kaufman and Sharon Wiley; none of which were found to be her real name. As an unidentified victim, she was known to have lived in various states prior to her death, including Texas and Louisiana, and was alleged to have engaged in sex work. While alive, this woman shared varying accounts of her past, suggesting that she had been arrested at one point, had one or two children and had possibly been involved in a bank robbery on the East Coast. Her murderer was identified as her ex-boyfriend and alleged pimp James McAlphin; McAlphin was quickly convicted, but her true identity remained unknown until 2022. On May 24, 2022, her first name was revealed via an article by forensic specialist Yolanda McClary. Prior to her partial 2022 identification, Kelly was known as El Dorado Jane Doe. Early life: Kelly was born in 1968 in Virginia to a woman named Brenda who was living with Kelly's stepfather at the time. Kelly never knew her biological father and it's likely her father was unaware of her existence. She grew up with a younger sister. Her early life was described as normal and stable, until her parents separated in 1971. They divorced the following year. Four months later Brenda remarried to a man who was abusive to all of them. The marriage lasted 7 years during which Brenda had a child with this man, however she gave the baby away to nearby farmers. After that marriage collapsed, Brenda remarried again, however it tragically ended when her husband killed himself in December of 1979. For the next 2 years, Kelly lived with her family in Charlottesville, Virginia. She and her sister stayed with an aunt while their mother, Brenda, resided in Virginia Beach. Kelly and her sister stayed with this aunt for about 1.5 years until Brenda requested that she move in with her. Kelly dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and got a job on the beach at a kiosk selling jewelry. Her mother at one point stole the merchandise and the profits from her daughter's job. Kelly had to painstakingly return the merchandise in order for her mother to avoid jail. She and her mother had to move 3 or 4 times after the summer of 1983, because Brenda had trouble paying rent. Sometime between 1984 and 1985, Kelly (who was then living in Florida) called the aunt she stayed with previously asking to move in with her because she couldn't handle her mother's cocaine addiction. However, this living arrangement didn't last long because Kelly herself was addicted to cocaine having been introduced to it by her own mother. She returned to Florida where she underwent drug rehabilitation in 1986. During this time, she also helped her mother regain her health after multiple abortions. However, Kelly also had to endure her mother's troubled lifestyle which included jail stints for drugs, bad checks, credit card theft, grand larceny, and even car theft from a car rental dealership. After completing rehab, Kelly moved back in with the same aunt this time in Texas as the aunt's husband was in the military and was stationed there. Kelly's aunt noticed "sexy clothing" in her suitcase suggesting that she worked as a topless dancer back home in Florida. Kelly explained to her aunt that she was a dancer to get access to drugs and because it made her a lot of money. She then lived with a boyfriend, however she left him and relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas where she stayed from 1986 until 1989. Kelly then returned to her mother's house in Florida only this time her younger sister stayed with them. The sister left just a few months later after a humiliating stay during which their mother entered her into a bikini contest for money. Kelly left her mother in 1990 and moved to Norfolk, Virginia. In 1991, she decided to go to Dallas, Texas. Activities prior to death- Residence: Kelly's earliest verified location is Dallas where she was arrested for prostitution. She also worked at a KFC there. After leaving Dallas, she traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana, before going to El Dorado in early 1991. She also worked as a topless dancer in Little Rock, Arkansas prior to her death and was found to have lived with a family in Irving, Texas. Arrest record: -December 31, 1990 – arrested (as Cheryl Ann Wick) for prostitution at La Casita Motel in Dallas, Texas -January 26, 1991 – arrested in Dallas -February 8, 1991 – arrested (as Cheryl Ann Wick) for public lewdness at the Carousel Motel in Garland, Texas -May 1991 – arrested (as Cheryl Ann Wick) for writing bad checks in El Dorado, Arkansas James McAlphin: Kelly met James McAlphin while in Dallas. They eventually began a relationship, during which Kelly would often find herself in the emergency room due to injuries suffered at the hands of McAlphin. Before McAlphin, Kelly had been involved with other men known as Tyronne and J.D. In June 1991, Kelly left McAlphin and moved in with a friend named Andrea Cooksey. McAlphin continued to contact Kelly with threatening messages after she left him. On July 10, he managed to get Kelly to come to his room at the Whitehall Motel with an offer of money. A neighbor, Roy Charles Menon, witnessed part of the interaction between Kelly and McAlphin that night when he stopped by to ask for the return of some cassette tapes he had lent out. Kelly had indicated to Menon that he should talk to McAlphin and attempted to leave, going out into the parking lot before McAlphin stopped her and hit her. Yelling "get back in the room, bitch," he dragged her back into the room as Menon left. From next door, Menon heard the two arguing back and forth before a gunshot ended the dispute. Witnesses then saw McAlphin flee, getting into his vehicle and speeding off. Investigation: McAlphin was soon arrested and charged with first degree murder and second degree battery. He denied killing Kelly, claiming she had shot herself in a suicide attempt, and that he had only hit her. The police dismissed his claim. McAlphin further refused to identify the decedent unless the police agreed to do something for him. With McAlphin uncooperative, the police looked in Kelly's possessions to glean her identity. They found a social security card and an identification card with her photo that identified her as Cheryl Ann Wick. The police traced Wick to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and contacted her family to inform them of their loss. The Wick family responded by putting the police in touch with the real Cheryl Ann Wick who was still alive and claimed her identity had been stolen. Wick theorized her social security and identification information had been stolen while she was working as a dancer for a Minneapolis company called Party Time and denied ever having known Kelly. It has since been revealed that Kelly began to pose under this stolen identity during her stay in Florida around 1984 or 1985. Her motive for this was because the clubs she worked in only employed dancers who were 18 and over. The police were left dumbfounded with no clue as to the true identity of the then unidentified Kelly. Accounts of her past from Kelly: Kelly had told differing stories about her past, making it hard to separate fact from fiction. She told her friend Andrea Cooksey that she used to be a stripper, was from out of town, and had two kids raised by her mother with whom she did not get along. To others, she had said she was in the witness protection program and that her father was in the mafia. Some had heard that she was wanted for bank robberies on the East Coast. Police investigating her identity could not discover any bank robberies to which she could be definitively tied, nor any connection to a witness protection program or the mafia. Kelly also mentioned accompanying an African American male at truck stops, where she had been tasked with luring truck drivers in order to rob them. She claimed that one of these interactions had ended with the death of the truck driver; this led police to suspect that Kelly had been involved in the November 12, 1988 unsolved murder of truck driver Dwayne McCorkendale. A white female had been seen with a white male and a black male near the crime scene in a brown Ford Pinto. However, no definitive ties have been established. To a volunteer at the Salvation Army in El Dorado, Kelly had shared a story about living on 1100 Cadiz Street in Dallas, the location of a local homeless shelter. She said that a daughter had been taken from her while there and that she had been unable to get the child back because she was using another name. This information could not be verified because records from the shelter for this period had been destroyed by the time this story was investigated. Account of her past from McAlphin: McAlphin claimed to know Kelly's identity and offered to reveal it in exchange for $4,000. To bolster his claim, he shared select information he claimed relates to her past. McAlphin has claimed that Kelly had been on the streets since she was 16 when an African American man she fell in love with forced her into prostitution in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. According to McAlphin, by the time she was an adult, she began prostituting of her own will. He further shared that Kelly had avoided being trafficked to Mexico by developing a relationship with a pimp named Jeffrey "JJ" Davis of Dallas before running away with another pimp named Tyronne. Police have dismissed McAlphin as unreliable. 2019 developments: A second cousin of Kelly living in Alabama was identified by a genealogist using genetic genealogy after uploading her autosomal DNA to the GEDmatch database. The cousin did not recognize Kelly but stated she resembled members of the family. Identification: On May 24, 2022, forensic specialist Yolanda McClary released an article on her website revealing that Kelly and El Dorado Jane Doe were the same person. She was 23 at the time of her death. Kelly's mother, Brenda, never seemed to have attempted to contact or look for Kelly. Brenda moved in with Kelly's aunt in Jacksonville, Florida in 1992. However, she stole from this aunt and moved back to Virginia where she died in 2008, having never making contact with her family again. McClary's article noted that everything Kelly did as a teenager and young adult was, in Kelly's opinion, trying to help her mother.

Blue hair

on Sunday I colored my hair blue. it was awesome and eye catching since no one else had their hair dyed. I matched my hair color with my accessories all of which were blue

Getting taller

I've been getting taller as I've been correcting my scoliosis. While I'm still smaller than my siblings I'm getting a couple inches taller. Unfortunately, I've also gotten as painful before getting half an inch taller so 2-3 inches probably won't go away for years. I'm half Chinese American descent so I'm still kinda small. Even before I got my spine corrected I was the shortest of my siblings and was often teased over it.

Scoliosis pain

I've been in a LOT of pain recently. While I've been taking pain killers it still hurts. I've been getting my height fixed as well. That COULD be why I'm in so much pain but its unconfirmed. There's TONS of reasons why I could be injured and in pain as I had 2 accidents on my scoliosis a few years back. Retworking my back isn't exactly fun. it just means I'm getting my scoliosis hurt like crazy. Least I'm close to what I should have been without scoliosis, although I'll never be as tall as my brothers.

hilarious

so a few weeks ago i was sitting in church and a kid came up to me with his hand out like he wanted a high 5. i gave him the high 5. i then looked to where the parents were and i was like "nice" with a thumbs up. a lady i was sitting near was giggling and i started laughing too. Often the little kids in the LDS church (at least where i'm from), the little kids would occasionally wander away from their parents. last week during a mother's day thing i was helping a little kid "help clean up." it was very cute as the kid was staring at me. he also likes helping despite being so young, which is kinda cute and very funny. he looked up and i picked up the chair and he was like, "who is that?"

shiny

when i went to church today i'd been asked "am i new?" i'm usually like no. many people were excited to see "new person." same thing happens at the singles ward. unless it was my main parish everyone's like "you new?"

bag

i usually bring a new bag into church today. it's my "church bag." usually i wear nicer outfits and i'm like ok use this as my church bag. while my friends like it they're usually not noticing the bag. i'd bought that bag thinking i'd be using it more often. my friends like the bag. it's heavy at first but now it's ok