Robert Maudsley: Britain’s Most Dangerous Criminal

Robert Maudsley resides deep below HMP Wakefield, in Yorkshire, England. The prison has housed some of Britain’s most notorious criminals, including several serial killers like Harold Shipman and Colin Ireland, child murderer Ian Huntley, and serial sex offender Ian Watkins. For that reason, it’s known by some as ‘Monster Mansion.’

There’s a big difference between Robert Maudsley and every other prisoner at Wakefield, though. Because, despite others’ notoriety and threat levels, he is frequently considered Britain’s ‘most dangerous prisoner.’ This has led to authorities feeling like they had to take a rather severe course of action.

Instead of living alongside the 750 other prisoners in a cell, he is kept in a glass box for 23 hours a day, alone. He has a concrete slab for a bed, a sink and toilet bolted down to the floor and a chair made of compressed cardboard. Whenever he leaves the cell – for the one hour of exercise he is permitted – he is flanked by at least six guards. Despite his now-68-year-old frame, it’s clear that the prison officers are taking no chances.

But how did Robert Maudsley, ‘Britain’s Hannibal the Cannibal’, end up where he is today?

Early Life

Born in 1957, Robert Maudsley was one of 12 children. From birth, his and his siblings’ childhoods were difficult ones. Robert and three of his siblings were put into a care home called Nazareth House before he reached the age of two. Authorities gave the reason “parental neglect” though it’s unknown why only a few of the children were taken.

In the home, Robert thrived. Years later, a nun would insist that he was “one of the better-behaved boys” out of all of the children who resided there.

Just six years later, though, Robert’s parents would reclaim him and his siblings and they would go back home.

There, the abuse that they had seemingly suffered years before, continued.

Some of Robert’s siblings recall their parents’ treatment of him to be worse than any of theirs. Others say that it was the same. Recently, his nephew recalled his father (Robert’s brother) telling him how their father broke an air rifle across Robert’s back. In another instance, Robert told of an occasion where he was locked in his bedroom for 6 months. His father “only opened the door to beat me.”. Later, he would also state that he was raped as a child, though he never specified by whom.

As time went on, some of Robert’s siblings would move out of the family home as soon as they could. When Robert himself left, he decided to make the 200+ mile trip from his Liverpool home to London.

There, the 18-year-old survived by becoming a sex worker. He also used this income to supplement his drug addiction. He was also raped and attempted suicide several times while doing this job.

After seeking psychiatric help, he admitted that he heard voices telling him to kill his parents.

The First Conviction

At the age of 21, Robert Maudsley committed his first murder.

Still working as a ‘rent boy’, Maudsley attended the house of a client. While there, the client showed Maudsley images of children that he claimed to have abused.

Maudsley snapped. He garrotted the man, strangling him to death and then fled the scene. However, he later handed himself into police before the man was even found.

Apparently, Maudsley believed that he would get help after this. He would later explain how, when he killed, he thought of his parents. In his fits of rage, he would see his parents in his victims.

After going to court and pleading guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, he was sent to Broadmoor Hospital.

Broadmoor

Described as a “high-security psychiatric hospital”, Broadmoor provides psychiatric care for its residents. Around ⅔ of these people have been convicted of crimes but have also been deemed unfit to stand trial. Much like Maudsley.

He was there for three years, until 1977. That year, he committed his second murder.

On the 26th February, Robert Maudsley and another man, David Cheesman, acted out a violent plan.

Some residents in Broadmoor participated in football matches within the grounds. After one of these matches, Cheesman and Maudsley cornered another man and took him hostage in the locker room.

There, they tortured him – child molester, David Francis – for nine hours. He was beaten, thrown against walls, and even allegedly given electric shocks.

Prison guards and nurses tried to break down the door to get to the trio. They only backed off when Cheesman held a knife-like object to Francis’ throat and told them he’d kill him.

Then, the pair started making demands. They wanted to see another inmate, as well as a psychiatrist. Guards rejected these demands.

Finally, when authorities managed to enter the room, Francis was already dead. The two murderers had stabbed him and Maudsley, like how he did with his first victim, had garrotted him.

The man’s head was smashed open, “like an egg,” as described by a guard. This was how Maudlsey gained the nickname ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’; it was initially believed he ate some of his victim’s brain. This was due to the weapon being a spoon with a sharpened handle and the mistaken belief that some of the victim’s brain was missing.

In the autopsy, there was no sign of any of the brain being missing but the nickname stuck.

David Cheesman, 32, and Robert Maudsley, 23, appeared in court two days later on 28th February 1977.

Wakefield Prison

Inside Wakefield Prison

When the trial came round on the 6th February, both pled guilty to murder. Neither of these, however, were under the terms of diminished responsibility.

Cheesman’s attorney claimed that he only committed the crime because he knew it would get him transferred out of Broadmoor. Many people hated the Hospital, and saw committing more crimes there as a way out.

After being convicted, Robert Maudsley was sent to permanently be imprisoned in Wakefield Prison. Here, he would tell officers that he should not be kept on an open wing – especially not with prisoners who had committed crimes of a sexual nature.

Despite this, Maudsley was kept alongside prisoners responsible for an array of crimes.

One prisoner was 46-year-old Salney Darwood. He was in Wakefield for assaulting and killing his wife.

In 1978, Maudsley killed him in his cell before hiding him under his bunk and leaving to find another victim.

He attempted to lure several prisoners into his cell, but was turned down by all of them. So, he set his sights on 56-year-old Bill Roberts. Roberts was convicted of molesting a 7-year-old girl.

Similar to Francis in Broadmoor, Roberts was stabbed with a makeshift blade and his head was smashed against the wall of his cell until he was dead.

Then, Maudsley calmly made his way to the prison officers and handed over the bloody blade stating, “There’ll be two short on the roll call.”

Robert Maudsley had become a serial killer – while in prison.

Maudsley Being Interviewed

The Cage

At that moment, Robert Maudsley was officially classified as Britain’s Most Dangerous Prisoner. Prison officers and authorities alike agreed that he could no longer be kept amongst other prisoners.

As a result, a 5.5-metre-by-4.5-metre cell was constructed in the basement of Wakefield Prison.

It had a bulletproof glass front and would be the home of Robert Maudsley from 1983. Inside was a concrete slab for his bed, a table and chair made from compressed cardboard, and a toilet and sink which were both bolted to the floor. 

‘Monster Mansion’s’ worst monster would be held alone and never allowed to interact with other prisoners in any way.

For 23 hours of the day he would remain inside his cell, only being allowed outside for one hour for exercise in the yard. For this one hour, Maudsley would be escorted by six prison officers every time.

Any visitors would have to pass through 17 locked steel doors in order to gain access to Maudsley. Even then, they would only be allowed to speak to him from outside the cell.

Dr Robert Johnson

However, there was a period of time where he was allowed a frequent visitor in the form of psychiatrist, Dr Bob Johnson.

In the mid-1990s, Dr Johnson became the first person to be allowed to interview Robert Maudsley during a stint at Parkhurst Prison. He described seeing it as “his duty as a doctor” to discover why Maudsley had done what he’d done.

After two and a half years of speaking to Maudsley through the mesh and glass, Dr Johnson was finally able to enter the cell of the murderer. Every time he would speak to Maudsley inside the cell, the pair would sit on opposite sides of the bed. Dr Johnson would sit on the side closest to the door.

Perhaps no one ever has or ever will get a look into Robert Maudsley’s mind quite like Dr Johnson did. The psychiatrist said that he had told Maudsley that if he frightened him, he couldn’t help him.

Then, after three years, authorities suddenly stopped the communication between the two. Maudsley was sent back to Wakefield Prison, where he was put back into the ‘cage’.

Now, Dr Johnson maintains that he would help Maudsley even now if he was asked to by authorities.

Though many see Robert Maudsley as ‘Britain’s Most Dangerous Prisoner’, Dr Johnson does not. He believes that Maudsley could be helped and rehabilitated, eventually getting a job.

This seems to be largely due to what Johnson describes as his “astonishing intelligence.” He argues it could be used to give back to the families of Maudsley’s victims.

“He should be given employment – which he could well do with, with his intellectual powers – and pay compensation to those whose lives he’s ruined.”

While Johnson was visiting Maudsley, he reported seeing improvement in Maudsley and his mental health. From what Johnson understood, Maudsley would “project the picture of his father” onto his victims. This would cause him to lash out, and kill. Through psychiatric help, this could be lessened or even eradicated from Maudsley, Johnson argues. However, we will likely never see any attempts at that happening again.

Johnson didn’t get any explanation for why he was no longer to see or treat Maudsley. After attempting to contact Maudsley via letters for a while, he finally got a reply consisting of just three words: “All alone now.”

Appeals

In 2000, he wrote a letter in an appeal to the courts. In it, he asked why he couldn’t have a budgie “instead of flies, cockroaches and spiders,” or a television “to see the world and learn.” If his requests were rejected, he stated, then he asked for a cyanide pill to allow him to die as he felt that “all I have to look forward to is indeed psychological breakdown, mental illness and probable suicide” due to his treatment.

The appeal – and requests – were rejected.

Robert Maudsley continued to make appeals until Christmas 2021, when his final appeal was rejected. Now 68 years old, he had requested to spend the remainder of his sentence (and life) among the general population of the prison.

However, he is still considered too dangerous to mix amongst other prisoners and prison officers.

Having exhausted his appeals, he will now remain inside the Hannibal-like glass room until his final days.

Sources:

Liverpool Echo

Crime + Investigation

The Sun

ITV

The Killer In My Family – Robert John Maudsley

Making a Monster / Making a Monster – The Tapes

Daily Mail

Houston House of Horrors

Dubbed the Houston House of Horrors, news recently broke of an apartment that housed three abandoned children. The worst thing, however, was that – thanks to their mother, Gloria Williams, and her partner, Brian Coulter – these children were living with the dead body of their young brother.

It started on October 24th 2021 when West County Police received an alarming phone call.

Welfare Check

On October 24th 2021, West County Police received an alarming phone call.

A 15-year-old boy had called 911 to tell them that he and his siblings had been abandoned by their mother and step-father. The three children had been living alone in an apartment for months, with only rare visits from their mother and her partner.

But the worst was yet to come. There was a fourth child. This child, Kendrick, was allegedly killed by his step-father, Brian Coulter, on a visit in November 2020. The oldest told police how the three of them watched Coulter kick and punch Kendrick even “after he stopped moving and his eyes were black.” Then, he covered him with a blanket.

When police arrived at the apartment, they indeed found the 8-year-old’s body laying on the floor in the apartment. His remains were covered only by a thin blanket, and for nearly a year he lay exposed to his other 10-year-old and 7-year-old siblings.

The County Sheriff, Ed Gonzalez, attended the scene and described the surviving boys as being malnourished and having clear evidence of physical injuries. He told the press how the apartment was infested with cockroaches and flies, with human waste all over the floors.

The 15-year-old told officers how his mother, Gloria Williams, began crying and fighting with Brian Coulter when she walked in the room and discovered the scene. He thought his mother would call the police on Coulter, but she never did.

The 10-year-old claimed that Coulter would beat him too. He would hit him on the face, stomach, buttocks and legs. When officers arrived at the scene, they found him with a swollen jaw, which he said Coulter had done three weeks prior. The next day at the hospital, the boy said that his mother knew about his injury but didn’t take him to get medical help. Authorities say that the boy will need surgery to correct his fractured jaw.

All three children had been left to fend for themselves. Several neighbours would occasionally give the children food via the eldest child. A neighbour said that he would be paranoid that the food was poisoned and wouldn’t accept cooked meals, only packaged snacks and fruit. One would charge his phone for him.

However, the two neighbours that the press have talked to have claimed not to know anything about the other children. According to them, they only saw the eldest boy.

The final time he had his phone charged, the boy had “overcome his fear” and used it to text his mother. He told her he couldn’t take it any more, and then phoned the police.

Interviews and Subsequent Arrests

Williams and Coulter in the library and being arrested after leaving (247 News Around The World)

On the 25th October 2021, Gloria Williams and Brian Coulter were taken in by police for interviews.

It was discovered that they now lived in an apartment 15-25 minutes from the children. Williams still paid rent on the apartment with her children in it, and allegedly had groceries delivered to it once a month.

They were released without charge that same day, then arrested and charged on 26th October 2021. Apparently they were at a library looking up news stories online regarding the case when they were arrested.

Brian Coulter was charged with murder. Gloria Williams was charged with felony injury to a child by omission, and tampering with evidence (human corpse).

Other Information

It has since been established that the family had been in contact with Child Protective Services at some point. However, there was no ongoing investigation being carried out by CPS. When asked, they said, “Child Protective Services does have history with the family, but there was no active CPS investigation at the time the children were discovered alone in their apartment.”

This is perhaps due to the childrens’ absence from school. According to a spokesman for the Alief school district, the children haven’t attended school since May 2020.

In both 2020 and in the year prior, the school district filed truancy papers against Gloria Williams due to the absences of two of her children. According to the district, a home visit in September 2020 went unanswered.

After being arrested, Williams did a jailhouse interview with a news station wherein she stated that she didn’t know Kendrick was dead. However, in court before this, a statement was read which stated that she had previously admitted to investigators that she knew he had died. Her reasoning for not reporting it was that she was scared to lose the other children and that she would go to prison.

Just days later, Coulter was arrested about 140 miles west of Houston. The manager of Buc-ee’s – a convenience store/gas station – called police and asked for a welfare check on an intoxicated male who was possibly armed with a gun. He was in jail from November 23rd to November 29th. Then, he bonded out.

Court Appearances

Gloria Williams in court

On October 27, 2021, the charges against Coulter were read in court. At the time he did not attend as he was being evaluated at a mental health unit. The judge put his bond at $1 million and ordered him not to have any contact with minors. Specifically he said Coulter could not have any contact with the three children, nor their mother. The following day, Coulter made his court appearance to agree to the bond and its conditions.

Also on the 27th, Williams’ bond was set at $900,000 in total and she was also ordered against contact with the children and her partner.

In court on November 1st 2021, Williams was assigned an attorney. A judge heard how Brian Coulter and Gloria Williams lived with Kendrick’s body for around four months. Then, they moved out and left the other children to fend for themselves.

On November 5th 2021, Gloria Williams appeared in court again. Here, a judge deemed her $900,000 to be insufficient. It was increased to $1.5million. This was despite her defense lawyers wanting the original $900,000 to be lowered.

In this court session, it was also reported that Williams had been collecting government aid for two of her children – one of which was Kendrick due to his learning disabilities. She continued to collect this even after his death, an amount which came to around $2000 a month.

Brian Coulter is expected back in court on December 15th.

Updates to come.

Sources:

Guardian

Independent

1 Daily Mail

2 Daily Mail

3 Daily Mail

ABC

Kelly Anne Bates: Tortured to Death

When Kelly Anne Bates began telling her parents about a boy called ‘Dave’, they understandably assumed that their 14-year-old daughter had an innocent crush on another teenager at school.

They weren’t surprised either. Born in 1978, Kelly had been a bubbly, confident, and social girl from the start, always finding it easy to meet new people and make friends. Margaret and Tommy recall how she would often find herself in the company of a slightly older crowd, too.

So, when Kelly approached them two years later and told them she had an older boyfriend, that was of no surprise – nor concern – either. In fact, upon speaking to Dave on the phone a few times, Margaret wasn’t concerned at all.

However, when Margaret first met him, she realised that ‘Dave’ wasn’t 17, 18, or even 20 years old. According to her daughter, he was 32 years old. Double her age by this point.

Margaret, understandably, was instantly upset by this. Her daughter was just 16 years old. And upon meeting Dave, Margaret’s unease only grew. They first met when Kelly had invited Dave over when the house was empty, and Margaret had returned home later that day. 

“It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck,” Margaret recalled in a 2015 interview. That was the first time she and Tommy could stand to talk of the events that occurred in 1996. “I vividly recall seeing our bread knife in the kitchen and wanting to pick it up and stab him in the back.”

She had, after that, tried to steer Kelly away from the older man again, telling her that she could do better. Kelly didn’t listen. “I like him. He’s nice, Mum,” is what she would reply.

So, Margaret and Tommy could only watch on.

Soon, though, Dave seemed to prove them wrong. He was caring and thoughtful, even calling Kelly’s parents when she started staying out for long periods without telling them where she was. Unbeknownst to them, Kelly was actually at Dave’s house.

According to Crime + Investigation, though, this wouldn’t last long as it would soon be discovered that the pair were lying. Dave wasn’t 32 years old. He was actually 48. Over 30 years older than Kelly Anne Bates.

When Margaret confronted him and asked why he lied, he apparently said, “I thought you wouldn’t want me being with Kelly because of the age difference.” He was right.

Signs of Abuse

In May of 1995, Kelly turned 17 and she was spending more time at Dave’s house. Soon, her and Dave made the decision to move in together. Kelly would have little contact with her parents, but whenever they did see her, she usually had marks on her. Often bruises, and on one occasion a bite mark.

When she was questioned by her parents, she would deny that Dave was hitting her. After coming home with a black eye one day, she told her mother that she was attacked by a group of girls.

That same year, Kelly’s parents decided to visit Dave’s semi-detached house in Gorton, Manchester, after tracking down his address. Their intention was to talk Kelly out of the relationship, but they couldn’t get a second alone with their daughter. Inside, they drank tea with their daughter’s boyfriend, and watched on as Kelly sat there looking at the floor seeming nervous.

Later, Margaret would recall Dave showing them a hole in the floor which he claims was made by engineers when he had a gas leak.

Kelly even ended the relationship during that period, but the relief felt by her parents would be short lived. In November 1995, she moved back in with him for the final time.

Kelly Anne Bates’ parents

That December, Kelly quit her part-time administrative job at a mailing company. She didn’t see family or friends, and the entrance of 1996 saw her losing more and more contact with loved ones. Her and her parents would have phone calls most weeks, but even they came to a halt.

Over the span of the relationship, Margaret and Tommy called police and social services on several occasions. However, because Kelly was over the age of 16 and, therefore, not technically an adult, they could not help. The only thing that the police domestic violence unit provided were leaflets that they recommended Margaret pass on to her daughter. She would never get the chance.

On the 10th March, Margaret called her young daughter to inform her that she’d missed a dentist appointment. It would be the last time they ever heard each other’s voices.

Not long after that, Margaret received a Mother’s Day card from her daughter. Except, it wasn’t in her daughter’s handwriting. Soon following that, the couple received another two cards: one for their anniversary and another for Tommy’s birthday. Neither were in Kelly’s handwriting.

That was the last straw. Just as they were about to leave the house to get their daughter, one of their son’s came through the door. He reassured them that a friend of his had told him that he’d seen her and she was fine.

“We were so pleased,” Margaret told newspapers in 2015. “It never entered my head to ask when she’d been seen. It turned out to be December.”

Three weeks later, Margaret and Tommy got a knock on their door. It was the police.

“I’ve killed her. I know I have.”

On April 16th 1996, Dave Smith walked into a police station and told the officers there that he had accidentally killed his 17-year-old girlfriend Kelly Anne Bates.

He said that they were arguing while she was in the bath, and had swallowed water. PC Tracey Turner quoted him as saying, “I’ve killed her. I know I have.”

Police took Smith into custody and visited the scene, along with medics. What they found painted a much different picture to the one Smith had told them.

The body of Kelly Anne Bates was unrecognisable.

She was found naked on the floor of Smith’s home. It did appear that she had drowned, but the countless other injuries that marred her body were not consistent with drowning.

There was blood in every room. Kelly was clearly underweight, weighing just 6 ½ stone at the time of her death.

Kelly’s autopsy would list 150 separate injuries, all varying in age. William Lawler, the Home Office Pathologist who examined Kelly-Anne’s body, described her injuries as “the worst he had seen on a murder victim.” By then, he had examined over 600 bodies in his career.

James Patterson Smith

The Trial

At trial, the true extent of the relationship – and Kelly’s suffering – would come to light.

The pair had allegedly met when Kelly was just 14 years old while she was babysitting for one of Smith’s friends. Smith – whose real name was revealed to be James Patterson Smith – had walked her home that night. From then on, he groomed the young girl.

He was abusing her from the start. Those bruises that Kelly came home with were, of course, caused by her then boyfriend, Smith.

The treatment of Kelly Anne Bates in her final weeks was described as “deliberate and systematic torture.”

Warning – the following is a list of some of the things that Kelly was subjected to:

• Burns to several parts of her body, done with cigarettes and an iron
• Scalding from boiling water on her buttocks and legs
• Broken bones in her arm
• Stab wounds caused by several different household items
• Mutilations to her ears, eyes, nose, lips, genitalia
• Partial scalping
• Eyes gouged out
• Stab wounds in her empty eye sockets

Smith had kept her tied to a radiator by her hair, feeding her very little at a time. The young woman’s eyes had been gouged out up to three week before she was killed. As if her life of abuse wasn’t bad enough, she would live her final weeks blind.

In the end, he would beat her with the shower head before drowning her.

It’s believed that he thought she would lie to him. This is evidenced by a conversation he had with a minister of a local religious group. In this, Smith told him that his girlfriend was making him mad by lying to him. He followed this by saying he could “understand why men killed their women.” This was just a day before Kelly’s death.

Previous Abuse

Other women would come forward to testify against Smith.

His first wife divorced him in 1980, after a decade of abuse.

Then followed a relationship with a 20-year-old woman. She would say during the trial that he treated her as a “punching bag”. He would often beat her while she was pregnant, and eventually tried to drown her. That would push her to leave.

In 1982, the same year he and his previous partner split, he would meet a 15-year-old named Wendy. He would groom her, much like Kelly Anne Bates, and would also abuse her. That would escalate until he tried to drown her in the kitchen sink.

Despite this, and despite Kelly Anne Bates’ injuries, Smith would claim that he was the victim.

He would insist that Kelly would taunt him and mock his dead mother. She would, apparently, challenge him to hurt her and by doing so, he was just doing as she wished. He also claimed that some of her injuries were self-inflicted “to make him look bad.” He admitted stabbing her and said that he had poked her eyes making them bleed. However, he denied gouging them out

None of this would fool the jury. After just one hour, they would convict James Smith, 49, of the murder of Kelly Anne Bates.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years.

In what was apparently a first, all jurors accepted counselling after having to witness photos of the crime scenes and Kelly Anne Bates’ injuries.

In 2015, 20 years after their daughter’s murder, Margaret and Tommy were still unable to read the autopsy report.

“Every now and again, I phone the coroner to ask for the post-mortem report,” Margaret said. “Each time I back out. I can’t face it – I never will.”

In 2020, Margaret passed away just before Christmas. From 2012, she worked at the local Tesco. It stood where their family home once stood and Margaret would say that she felt close to Kelly there. According to her, “my checkout desk overlooks the spot where our living room once stood.”

She is survived by her husband, Tommy, and her two sons. After her death, Tommy said, “She was always saying ‘I want to get back with Kelly’.”

As of 2021, James Patterson Smith remains in prison.

Kelly Anne Bates

Sources:

Daily Mail

Manchester’s Finest

Crime + Investigation

Bugged Space

Morbidology

Murderpedia

Independent

e-space

St Louis Jane Doe

The Garden of Innocents in Calvary Cemetery, St Louis, Missouri

Calvary Cemetery in St Louis, Missouri, was created in 1854 and is the second oldest cemetery in the Archdiocese territory. As a result of its nearly 200-year history, it’s the resting place of many notable people, ranging from US Senators, inventors and sports stars. The names of these people are etched in the local – and even national in some cases – history books.

However, the Garden of Innocents section of the cemetery is home to “unclaimed children and infants” who have never been identified.

One such child is known as the St Louis Jane Doe.

Found in 1983, her identity has remained unknown for 38 years. A fact made all the worse knowing the brutal way in which she died.

5365 Clemens Ave has since been demolished, but here is the land where it stood

On February 28th 1983, two men were attempting to loot 5365 Clemens Ave, a vacant apartment building. After their car broke down nearby, they resolved to break into the rundown apartment building in order to find something to help fix their car.

When one lit his cigarette, however, it would reveal something much more sinister than a bit of metal. There, in the furnace room of the building, was a headless body.

St Louis During The 20th Century

Pre-1950, St Louis was seen as a place of opportunity for black people in America. As part of the Great Migration, many people moved there to start a new life away from the rural southern states wherein racism, segregation, and discriminatory laws were more common. 

There was, however, still a large divide between black people and white people. Black children were not being treated fairly or equally despite the introduction of integrated schools. The housing market, too, often excluded black tenants and homeowners, resulting in lawsuits.

Industrialisation allowed St Louis to expand throughout the 20th century, especially due to the growing population which created a lot of supply and demand. However, the second half of the 20th century saw a restructuring of industry and a loss of jobs. These, combined with suburbanisation, led to a dramatic decrease in population, and the area soon suffered.

By the 1980s there was still tension between black and white people in the community, and even more so between the black community and the police. There was a huge feeling of mistrust amongst them, with the view often being that police cared more about white victims than black ones. This was, of course, true and can easily be reflected in statistics and anecdotes from the time. It’s also still seen in policing today.

The Crime Scene

The sweater Jane Doe wore and rope used to bound her

The body was laying on their front with their hands behind their back. They were tied at the wrist with a red and white striped nylon rope. The victims nails painted red. A blood-soaked yellow sweater was the only item of clothing on the body.

Joe Burgoon and Herb Riley were the first detectives on the scene. They quickly identified the victim as a female, first believing her to be a sex worker killed by a client. However, upon turning the body over they realised that it was actually a young girl who hadn’t even gone through puberty yet. In reality she was just tall for her age with investigators later estimating her to be between 4ft 10 – 5ft 6 when she was alive. More specific reports describe her as 5ft 5. This was despite being aged between 8 and 11 years old.

Her head was nowhere to be found, even after police searched a wide radius around the neighbourhood. Despite the amount of blood on her sweater, police concluded that there wasn’t enough blood at the crime scene for her to have been decapitated there. They believe this was done at another location and perhaps her blood was drained before she was then dumped in the apartment building.

She had also been sexually assaulted prior to her death. Police placed her time of death at around five days before she was found.

X-rays at the time would show no signs of prior trauma or possible abuse. An anthropological exam would show that the girl had spina bifida occulta to her sacrum, which was likely undiagnosed. This is the most common and mildest type of spina bifida, and it occurs when one or more vertebrae don’t form properly. The gap it forms in the spine is very small, though, so it usually doesn’t cause any problems. This frequently leads to people not even realising they have the condition.

Other than that there were no scars, birthmarks or otherwise irregularities which would lead to her being easy to identify. On her nails she wore two layers of red and/or purple nail polish. The label inside her yellow sweater had been cut out, though the garment itself appeared to be relatively new.

Her fingerprints were taken, in case she could be identified at a later date via them. No dental identification could happen. Facial reconstruction images could never be made due to her head not being found.

Further testing revealed that she had been killed around five days prior to being found via strangulation. The cut that severed her head was a clean cut, likely made with a large sharp blade.

“I’ve been involved with her since the day she was found, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop looking for her killer.”

Herb Riley, one of the first homicide detectives at the scene.

Police soon decided to start interviewing men around the area who had previously been arrested for child-related offences. Known paedophiles were taken in for questioning and several suspects were looked into.

Meanwhile, attempts were also being made to identify her. Police went through the records of schools in Missouri to see if any girls around her age attended, and were missing. After not finding anything, they concluded that she was likely from another state.

Communication began with police in other states to see if a girl matching her description had been reported missing. Police also sent out media and ads in newspapers and magazines across the country which had predominantly black audiences.

Liaising with members of the St Louis community was difficult. The longer it took for police to identify the girl and find the person responsible, the more the distrust became apparent. Other black people in the area felt that police would have been trying harder to solve the case if she was white.

Captain Leroy Adkins, now 71, was just a year into his job when Jane Doe was found. He was the first African-American head of homicide and wanted to prove to the community that police were doing all they could for the little girl. He organised meetings in the black community, wrote letters to the St. Louis American, Ebony and Jet magazines, but there was still nothing.

Months after the girl was found, a woman told officers in the St Louis station that a man had told her that he was responsible for the murder. After she expressed disbelief, he showed her a machete and what appeared to be a human skull.

Detectives arrived at the man’s apartment. The “machete” was plastic, and the skull was a prop from a high school classroom. Another dead end.

With no further leads, the St Louis Jane Doe – also known as “Hope” – lay in the city morgue for nine months. In December 1983, she was subsequently buried in an unmarked grave at Washington Park Cemetery, St Louis.

One of the first detectives on the scene, Herb Riley, is quoted to have told a reporter at her funeral, “I’ve been involved with her since the day she was found, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop looking for her killer.” He never did, until he passed away in 1996.

1994 – 2013

Police with the now missing sweater found on the St Louis Jane Doe

In the decades following, detectives struggled to find any new information on the St Louis Jane Doe and/or her murderer.

As such, they soon turned to psychics and seances.

On one such occasion, Adkins and Burgdoon agreed to go on TV show, Sightings. This was a show wherein a psychic in Florida supposedly “entered the mind of Jane Doe”. However, this would be perhaps the biggest mistake police made in the entire investigation.

The yellow sweater once worn by Jane Doe, and the rope she was bound with, was actually mailed to the psychic in order to aid her. Police never got them back; apparently, they got lost in the mail.

Perhaps the only known piece of physical evidence had been lost.

Meanwhile, the cemetery where she lay fell into a state of disrepair.

In the early 90’s, lawsuits were launched against the owner of the cemetery by many families for the treatment of their deceased loved ones. They alleged that bodies were missing, headstones were broken or gone, and bodies were put in the wrong plots. The owner killed herself shortly after in 1991.

By the early 2000s, it was overgrown with weeds and shrubbery, and Hope’s grave could barely be found. She was initially buried without a gravestone until a high school class wrote letters to city officials and the cemetery. A monument company donated a small headstone soon after.

Burgoon videotaped the area, frightened that her resting place would be soon overgrown for lost. He wanted police to find it one day, if they needed to. He would still work on the case when he has spare time.

Around this time, Detective Tom Carroll was on the case. By 2004, he had spent 6 years scrolling through thousands of missing person profiles around the country. When he came across one matching her description, he would contact the child’s parents.

Time and time again, he came up empty handed.

2013

There was no further movement on the case until 2013.

That year, authorities decided to exhume the girl’s body and use new technology in a bid to give her identity back.

By extracting DNA from her and examining minerals in her bones, they were able to narrow down more areas where she may have come from. They believed, after all, that she was from out of the state.

The grave of Jane Doe being found, and her body being taken away

Attempts to find her grave, however, were initially unsuccessful. This was due to the poor state that the cemetery was now in, as well as the fact that her grave was now unmarked again. Local students raised money for a headstone in 2012, much like all those years prior, but it was put at the wrong grave.

Finally, in June 2013, they found her resting place. The forensics team looked through eight images that were taken on the day of her funeral and compared them to current images of the cemetery to find her spot.

After the forensic testing, it was concluded that she likely spent most of her childhood in one of these states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, and West Virginia.

According to the Doe Network, additional tests showed that she might have also been from the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee.

Unfortunately, though her DNA was ran through the database of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, she couldn’t be identified.

Part of the process was re-burying the St Louis Jane Doe after their tests were carried out. The decision was made to move her to another St Louis cemetery: Calvary Cemetery.

Another small funeral was held on February 8th 2014. There, she would take her place in the Garden of Innocents. She would be amongst 28 other children like her, young Jane and John Does. She is also the oldest there.

Suspects

Police believe that it’s very likely that the person who killed the St Louis Jane Doe, knew her. This is for a couple of reasons:

• The removal of the head (possibly to prevent people from finding out her identity and linking her to the killer)
• She didn’t seem to have been reported missing 

But perhaps the closest thing they got to naming a suspect was someone that was already in prison for their crimes.

Vernon Brown was a serial killer, responsible for the deaths of at least three young women and girls.

At the time, Brown was located in St Louis, and arrested in 1986 just three days after he murdered 9-year-old Janet Perkins. In custody, he confessed to 19-year-old Synetta Ford’s murder, too. Her throat was slit so deeply, she was nearly decapitated.

In 2005, while he sat on death row, he was visited by Detective Tom Carroll.

Though Brown didn’t confess to the murder of the St Louis Jane Doe, Caroll said, “Personally, I believe he did it.” His theory was that Jane Doe was somehow known to Brown: more specifically, the daughter of one of Brown’s wives or girlfriends.

The lethal injection was given to Brown later that year. Any potential confessions – regarding Jane Doe’s death or anyone else’s – he took to his grave.

Present Day

38 years on and the identity of the St Louis Jane Doe is still unknown.

Missing children – most notably Sharaun Taree Cole, who went missing three days before Hope was found – have been ruled out via DNA.

Advances in genealogy have seen many other Jane and John Does identified recently. The Woodlawn Jane Doe was named as Margaret Fetterolf. The Escatawpa Jane Doe was named as Clara Birdlong. Veronica Wiederhold was named as the Mount Vernon Jane Doe. All of these were identified in 2021.

Perhaps this means that there is hope for little Hope, the St Louis Jane Doe.

Sources:

Doe Network

Fox

missingkids

YouTube

Hope Memorial

FBI

River Front Times

Donald Neilson: The Black Panther

How Donald Neilson would look in the clothes and gear, as posed by a police officer

On 11th February 1975, British newspaper, The Daily Mirror used the words “the most dangerous criminal at large in Britain” to describe a man believed to be guilty of a young heiress’ kidnapping. To the press, and the British public, this man was known as The Black Panther.

Before then, the kidnapper’s identity was a mystery. That was, until police realised that the person responsible for the kidnapping was a man that they had been looking for for a while. And he was a serial killer. 

The presence of such a dangerous criminal was first noticed by police in February 1974 when he committed his first murder.

15th February 1974

Donald Skepper

54-year-old Donald Skepper was in his home in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. He was a sub-postmaster who lived above his sub-post office, with his wife Johanna. That fateful night, the pair were asleep when the assailant later known as the Black Panther broke in.

His intention was to find the keys to the downstairs post office safe. When he couldn’t locate them, though, he instead forced Donald’s 18-year-old son to search for them. When he couldn’t find them either, the assailant went to Donald’s bedroom and woke him while armed with a shotgun.

Head and face covered in a hood, dressed head to toe in black, the Black Panther pointed the gun. When Donald leapt up off the bed in an attempt to tackle the 5”6 burglar, he was shot in the chest at point blank range. He died shortly after in his wife’s arms.

The Black Panther quickly made his escape with nothing to show for his attempts, except the death of an innocent man.

Police set up roadblocks and began interviewing civilians, but there was nothing.

After Johanna gave a description of the man and police investigated the scene, they quickly noticed some links. There had been dozens of post office robberies that had occurred within a wide radius between 1971 and 1974.

This wasn’t his first robbery – or attempted robbery – but he had taken this one to a new level.

September 6th 1974

Derek Astin

Seven months later, he would strike again.

Sub-postmaster Derek Astin was woken suddenly at 4am. He and his wife, Marion, were asleep in bed above the sub-post office that they ran together in Lancashire. Their son and daughter slept down the hall, too.

They were confronted by a masked man dressed all in black who had entered the couple’s bedroom while armed. This was, of course, the Black Panther.

Derek attempted to subdue the man, tackling him into the nearby bathroom. Shots soon rang out as Derek was shot in the shoulder and then back as he tried to leave the bathroom. The intruder fled.

The Astin children were aged just 10 and 13 at the time, and were awoken by the gunshots. As per the Panther’s usual strategy, the phone lines had been cut so Marion and the children had to run to a neighbour’s house to call for help.

Though he was still alive when emergency services arrived, Derek would die at the hospital later that morning.

This crime was almost identical to the killing of Donald Skepper, and it was becoming clear to police that this was a dangerous man on a rampage.

This was also when the hooded man in these attacks first started to be known as the Black Panther. It was when Marion was doing an interview with a local television station and she was describing the perpetrator. To her, she said, he was “so quick, he was like a panther.” Pairing this with the dark clothing he was known to wear, the reporter ended the interview with, “Where is the Black Panther?”

And that was the name that the press and terrified residents now knew this man by.

Unfortunately, the new alias would bring police no closer to finding out the serial offender’s real identity.

11th November 1974

Sidney and Margaret Grayland

It would only be two months later when he would strike again. This time, it was at around 6pm instead of the usual early hours in the morning.

55-year-old Sidney Grayland was stocktaking with his wife Margaret at their sub-post office in Oldbury, near Birmingham.

That’s when the Black Panther appeared at the back door of the store. He allegedly had ammonia which he planned to use to subdue the occupants of the post office. This didn’t go to plan, though, as Sidney grabbed the torch that the intruder was using and the ammonia instead sprayed in the Black Panther’s face. This didn’t deter the man, though, and Sidney Grayland was shot in the stomach.

Hearing the commotion, Margaret entered the backroom only to see her husband on the floor. Above him, stood a now unmasked Black Panther. He had removed the hood over his face because of the ammonia.

This now meant that Margaret had seen his face. She was consequently nearly beaten to death.

This time, the Black Panther got away with £800 in cash and some postal orders. This was likely due to the fact that, after beating Margaret unconscious, he could freely look for things to take.

The scene remained undisturbed until around 11pm when two local police officers noticed that the shop lights were still on. They entered and first found Sidney, who was now dead. Then one officer stated that he heard some groaning, and then located Margaret.

One of the officers also stated that he didn’t even recognise her when he saw her, despite last being in the post office just a few weeks prior.

Margaret would go on to survive and fully recover, but she never regained the memories of what happened that night. This meant that she couldn’t remember what the perpetrator looked like, either.

Despite this, and despite the fact that he struck at a different time, police found a bullet at the scene and were able to match that to bullets used in the two previous robbery-murders.

This was the Black Panther’s worst crime yet. He had murdered one person and attempted to murder another, during the one robbery. By now, he was up to 3 murders, and police felt no closer to finding him.

While the police worked, the Post Office put together a £25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of this man. Still, there was no success.

The Black Panther’s next crime would occur two months later and would be hugely different to his previous crimes. So much so, that the police wouldn’t even link it to him straight away.

January 14th 1975

Lesley Whittle

That night, 17-year-old Lesley Whittle was asleep in her Shropshire home. Lesley lived in the house with her mother, Dorothy, while her older brother, Ronald, lived with his wife.

Previously, her father, George, had lived with his family until his death five years prior. In the event of his death, his family would be entitled to large sums of money, all earned by George through his popular private coach company. Lesley herself stood to inherit around £80,000 when her father passed away in 1970.

Dorothy had been out with friends on the night of January 14th, but when she got home in the early hours of the morning, she found her daughter asleep.

When Dorothy woke the next morning, however, her daughter’s bedroom was empty. Her clothes and belongings were there, except for her dressing gown, and it looked undisturbed. The young girl, however, was missing.

The only clue to her disappearance was a note found in the lounge. It demanded £50,000 and for the police not to be alerted. It also gave details of where the ransom was the be dropped off, instructing:

WAIT FOR TELEPHONE CALL AT SWAN SHOPPING CENTRE TELEPHONE BOX 6 PM TO 1 PM IF NO CALL RETURN FOLLOWING EVENING WHEN YOU ANSWER GIVE NAME ONLY AND LISTEN YOU MUST FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS WITHOUT ARGUMENT

Dorothy rushed to the phone with the intention of calling her son, Ronald. Upon finding the phone line had been cut, she got into her car and drove the short distance to his house.

She picked up her son and daughter-in-law from their home, and went back to the family home. After taking a look around, Ronald made the decision to call the police.

Police arrived and quickly realised that they had to be cautious about their presence; amongst the ransom, there was a clear threat of death if there was any police involvement.

Ronald was to be the one to go to the telephone box that night, and police would keep their distance and all those involved would keep the entire thing private.

From 6pm onwards, officers secretly staked out the telephone box where Ronald was awaiting a call from the kidnapper. The duty of one officer was to use a tape recorder to record the kidnapper’s message when he rang.

However, the police forgot one thing: to request or order a media blackout. It appeared they didn’t think they would need one because of the secrecy about the matter.

Unfortunately, a local freelance journalist got word of Lesley’s disappearance earlier in the day, likely from contacts from some Whittle company offices that were close to his office in Kidderminster. He approached officers who only said, “No comment.”

After this he decided to market the story to a local radio station. It broke while Ronald was waiting for the call.

At midnight, the call finally came through. But no one was there to answer it.

Apparently, the officer in charge of the telephone vigil called it off because of the news breaking. That meant that the kidnapper’s call was missed. An opportunity to get Lesley back was gone.

Hoping that the kidnapper would call back again, police and Ronald attended the telephone box at the same time the next night.

By this time, though, the same journalist had somehow discovered the location of the telephone box, and the press soon descended on the location. Ronald was hounded by the press at the scene.

The kidnapper did not call.

Ronald Whittle waiting for a phone call from the kidnapper

On the third day, however, there was an unexpected turn.

The phone at the Whittle house rang, and Lesley’s voice spoke. In a tape recording being played through the phone, Lesley instructed the family to take the ransom money to another location. She told them, “I’m okay,” and to go to the phone box outside Kidsgrove post office, in Staffordshire. There, they would find instructions as to where to leave the money.

Ronald was to go again, and this time he would be fitted with a listening device and wire so that police could communicate with him from a distance. Staffordshire police were informed, but also told not to get involved.

The location was almost 75 miles away, and Ronald took longer than anticipated making the long journey in the dark, as well as prepping with police. He was already late by the time he arrived at the phone box, but it took him an extra 30 minutes to locate the instructions behind the board inside.

Ronald was instructed to go to Bathpool Park in Kidsgrove, around a mile away. He was to flash his car lights and then wait for the kidnapper’s signal: a torch light.

The signal never came, though, and Ronald and police abandoned the drop over an hour later.

Scotland Yard decided that any major searches of the area would raise the kidnapper’s suspicions. By the kidnappers’ demands, Ronald wasn’t supposed to alert authorities of the meet up, so police didn’t want to tip the kidnapper off.

Instead, smaller and more discreet searches were conducted, yet nothing was found.

Then, eight days after Leslie went missing, police responded to a report of an abandoned car. The car matched the description of a car seen idling near Leslie’s home the night she went missing.

Gerald Smith

300 yards from where the car sat, a man named Gerald Smith was shot six times on January 15th. This was just one day after Leslie went missing.

Astonishingly, Gerald had survived the attack, and in hospital he told police of a suspicious man he had found trespassing on the railway yard where he worked as a security guard. When he confronted the man, he was shot.

However, the abandoned car had gone unnoticed by police investigating the crime.

When it was found a week later, police searched it and recovered vital information. A tape was inside the car and on it was Lesley Whittle saying she was okay. There were also other clues pointing towards a ransom drop around the area where the car was found. Police believed that the perpetrator was around the area putting down clues when he was confronted. He had shot Gerald, panicked, and fled. This all took place on the night that Ronald awaited his call and never got one.

The most important clue, however, wasn’t found inside the car. It was part of the Gerald Smith crime scene.

The bullets used to shoot Gerald matched the ones used to kill Sidney James Grayland.

So, this allowed police to match these two crimes together, and potentially the other post office killings. Not only that, but it was the first time the police realised that the post office killer – the Black Panther – was likely the person who had kidnapped Leslie.

It wasn’t until early March, though, that police decided it was safe enough to do a larger and more thorough search of Bathpool Park.

On 7th March 1975, they were conducting this search and stumbled upon a drainage shaft. Inside the shaft, they found the naked body of 17-year-old Lesley Whittle hanging from a wire noose.

It became clear that she had been kept down there while alive, as evidenced by the sleeping bag that was on a thin ledge near her body. Police couldn’t determine whether she had been pushed off the ledge to her death, had fallen or had jumped, though they believed it was the former.

Despite the contact with the kidnapper during the crime and the numerous clues found during and after, the identity of the Black Panther went unknown.

The man himself would not be caught until December of the same year, and even then it was by chance.

“There was certainly a feeling of relief and elation when he was arrested after such a long investigation.”

DS Jim Oldcorn

December 11th 1975, two police officers were out patrolling in Rainworth, Nottingham. They were parked in their car on the side of a road, observing traffic when they spotted a man on the opposite side of the road. One officer said in an interview afterwards, “He has been up to something or is going to be up to something.”

They called him over and asked him a few general questions; his name, where he was from. He gave the name John Moxton, and police didn’t think much of it, but when they didn’t dismiss him, he pulled out a shotgun and pointed it through the passenger window.

After ordering the officer in the passenger seat into the back of the car, “John” climbed into the passenger seat and told them to drive normally or he would kill them.

Eventually, after 20 minutes of driving, the officer driving knew he had to do something. The car came to a split in the road, and the officer used this as an opportunity to feign confusion over which way to go and began swerving the car.

The officer in the back seat used this as an opportunity to wrestle with “John”, grabbing his neck and the barrel of the gun to point it away from his partner. The gun went off, grazing the officer’s hand as he tried to pull the car over.

Eventually they spilled out on the street and grappled with John, only managing to handcuff him when several members of the public rushed over to help subdue him.

While the man was handcuffed to a railing, people around him got an insight into just how dangerous he was. Strapped to his body were knives and bullets, as well as the gun now lying in the road.

Donald Neilson the night he was arrested

Things found on Donald Neilson

Initially, after being taken to the station, the man refused to answer any questions.

His bag was searched and it contained items used to break into properties, and a mask matching the description of the one worn by the notorious Black Panther.

In fact, warnings had been sent to sub-postmasters that winter to remind them to be cautious due to the fact that the Black Panther had still not been caught.

Now, though, police were thinking that they had caught him red handed and on his way to another crime. After a few days of questioning, he began to talk.

The man told police that he was responsible for Lesley Whittle’s disappearance. Not just that, but also for the crimes committed in those sub-post offices a year prior. He didn’t, however, accept responsibility for Lesley’s death. Instead, he insisted that she slipped.

He was actually 39-year-old Donald Neilson. His wife, Irene, was completely unaware of what her husband had been doing, only finding out when police visited their house to search it. Inside which, they found a secret room wherein Donald planned all of his crimes – including Leslie’s kidnapping. Guns, ammunition, knives, maps, and even a small figurine of a black panther was found.

Donald Neilson on their wedding day

Donald Neilson was a former soldier, having been posted to Kenya at 18 years old, who left the army permanently around the time his daughter was born in 1960.

Shortly after, he changed the family name to Neilson, having originally been called Donald Napper. According to him, he was bullied in school over the surname and didn’t want the same fate for his daughter.

After leaving the army, he, of course, needed a new source of income. He would try several new things including the building trade, and setting up his own companies but he wouldn’t eventually end up sinking into debt.

It wasn’t until 1965 that Neilson would turn to burglary to fund his life. He would go on to rob hundreds of homes, but still this wasn’t enough for him. After setting his sights on the sub-post offices, Neilson hatched a plan. The sub-post office burglaries would tide him over temporarily, but in 1972 he saw an article in the newspaper about Lesley Whittle. In it, he found out that she was left a sum of £82,500 (£1.1m in today’s money) after her father’s passing.

Using his military skills, he meticulously planned the kidnap of Lesley Whittle. Weeks before, he visited Bathpool Park, where Lesley would ultimately die, and found a drainage shaft. There, he decided that the shaft would be a perfect place to keep her.

The night he took Lesley he stole a car, replaced the registration plates, and broke into her home. He allowed her to put a dressing gown on, before marching the girl out into the cold night at gunpoint. He then bundled her into his car, and took her to the last place she would ever know.

At trial, he would admit his guilt but still maintain that Lesley had fallen accidentally and that he had simply panicked and fled.

The judge and jury didn’t believe this, though, and he was found guilty. Many, including police and the prosecutors, believed that he knew that Leslie would be able to identify him as she saw him without his mask. That’s why he pushed her off the ledge, ending the 17-year-old’s life.

In July 1976, Neilson was given five life sentences.

Afterwards, Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Booth, head of the force’s CID, was demoted due to the mistakes and missed opportunities during the investigations.

Prior to this, he had an excellent career, solving over 70 murders. For this one, though, it was too late, and it was clear that this haunted Booth long after. Speaking in a documentary years later, he said, “We had let her down. I had let her down. I’m in charge, it was my fault.”

Donald Neilson died in prison on 17th December 2011 aged 75.

Sources:

Murders That Shocked The Nation: Donald Neilson – The Black Panther

BBC

Birmingham Mail (Gallery)

Postal Heritage

Lancashire Telegraph

BBC 2

York Press

Express and Star

Stoke Sentinel

Rocío Wanninkhof: Spain’s Miscarriage of Justice

Rocio Wanninkhof

The peaceful coastal town of La Cala de Mijas is located in southern Spain and is home to around 4000 people. In 1999, one of those people was 19-year-old Rocío Wanninkhof.

She was born to a Dutch father, Willem Wanninkhof, and Spanish mother, Alicia Hornos, in 1979, but they separated a few years later. Alicia, who claims that Willem was a domestic abuser, allegedly began a relationship around the same time with a woman named Maria Dolores Vázquez.

Custody of Willem and Alicia’s three children was given to Alicia, and the family appeared to live happily for around a decade. Alicia would remain at home as a housewife of sorts, and Maria would go to her job and be the breadwinner even after they broke up. Around 1994, though, the couple’s friendly relationship would break down. According to Alicia’s sister-in-law, this was due to disagreements about the ownership of the house and other properties.

October 9th 1999

The night of October 9th 1999 was like any other.

Rocío Wanninkhof was with her boyfriend, Antonio “Toni” Jurado, at his house and they made plans to go to a fair with some friends that night. At around 9:30pm, Rocío decided that she would need a change of clothes. She left Antonio’s house on foot and started the approximate 5 minute journey back to her home.

Unfortunately, she would never get there.

The next morning, her mother noticed that the young girl wasn’t home. This was unusual; Rocío was sensible and responsible and wouldn’t stay out overnight like this. So, Alicia sent Rocío’s sister, Rosa, to Antonio’s house. Alicia knew that she was there the evening before, and thought that Rocío probably just stayed there.

Antonio told Rosa that Rocío had been at his house that night, but she had left to go back home to get ready and he had fallen asleep waiting for her to get back. Apparently, though, Antonio said that he had heard that Rocío had been at the fair. Rosa went back home empty-handed.

Not long after, Alicia went out for a walk with her partner, attempting to take her mind off the nagging worry over her daughter. On this walk, though, the pair found the shoes Rocío was wearing that night, alongside a puddle of blood.

This finding was immediately reported to the police who, upon learning Rocío was missing, cordoned off the area for forensic testing.

Around the blood, they found large trails of blood that led to an even bigger pool of blood. This led to the conclusion that the victim was running after being attacked. Near the scene were tyre tracks.

Later, the police’s testing would confirm what Alicia worried was true: the blood belonged to Rocío Wanninkhof.

Searches would take place for the teenager, with many from the local community joining in.

Just weeks before she went missing, Rocío got a job as a babysitter for Internet millionaire, Cliff Stanford. Upon learning of her disappearance, he put forward a £40,000 reward for information about her whereabouts, despite hardly knowing her. To many, this is testament to the kind of person Rocío was and the impact she had on people.

Then, three weeks later on November 2nd 1999, a body was found about 20 minutes from where Rocío went missing. It was discovered by the workers of a tennis club located near a millionaire resort.

The victim was badly burned with hydrochloric acid, but it was later apparent that they had been beaten and stabbed. The body would soon be identified as Rocío Wanninkhof, mainly due to the clothing that was found on and near the body. Police believed that she had been killed somewhere else, then dumped in that location.

Upon hearing the news, Rocío’s mother even had to be sedated.

It was inconceivable to the people of La Cala de Mijas; this kind of crime and brutality was unheard of in the small seaside town. The loss of Rocío Wanninkhof affected thousands, with some sources saying around 1000-1500 people gathered at her funeral to pay their respects to the young woman and her family.

But who would kill Rocío Wanninkhof? And in such a brutal manner?

When asked by the press, police would assure that they had leads. Namely the fingerprints found on plastic bags by Rocío’s body the day she was found.

The family theorised that she was attacked by somebody she knew.

Despite being “close to an arrest” just days after her body was found, police wouldn’t do so until 11 months later.

That arrest would be of Maria Dolores Vázquez: the ex-partner of Rocío’s mother.

Maria being arrested

Alicia had been told of the police’s suspicions around a month earlier, stating that Maria had been a suspect for a while. Rocío’s mother was shocked; no one in the family had suspected this, except one of Rocío’s uncles who pointed the finger at her as soon as she went missing. Police stated that she had lied continuously, and had poor cooperation.

However, despite this, there was no real evidence that she had committed the crime. There was no physical evidence, the murder weapon had not been found, and fingerprints and DNA did not match. In fact, the DNA matched an unknown male.

So why was Maria arrested? This would come out in the trial.

Part of the prosecution’s case focused on Maria’s character – and so did the media. This would be a move that many would later believe to be highly prejudiced.

She was portrayed as a cold and severe woman. The owner of a kiosk where she bought newspapers, for example, described her as a “cold woman who never spoke”. Similarly, Alicia would go on to call her, “possessive, envious, and aggressive.”

It was also alleged that this side of her especially came out in her relationship with Rocío; Alicia would testify that instead of being like a second mother to the children, Maria was like a “second father.” By this, she meant that Maria was harsh with the children, and took on the disciplinarian role.

On the stand she would give examples of Maria’s seemingly unnecessarily harsh punishments against her children, especially Rocío and her son.

Alicia claimed that Maria once grounded Rocío for three months for bad grades and even hit her. On one such occasion, Rocío allegedly said to Alicia, “Mom, one day she is going to kill me and you are not going to do anything.”

Next was Rocío’s 21-year-old sister. She admitted that she and Maria had a good relationship, but that she had seen her doling out these punishments to Rocío.

During the trial, a psychic took the stand. She said that she had recognised Maria on television as one of her customers. She alleged that Maria had come to her one night months before the murder, claiming that “she wanted to return to her partner, but one of their children prevented her,” and that “Alicia Hornos would cry tears of blood.”

Maria denied knowing her, but admitted her telephone was used by guests to call clairvoyant lines.

Another witness was a Ukranian employee of Maria’s. When spoken to by police, the employee had said that Maria had stabbed a photograph of Rocío with a knife in front of her around the time that the young woman went missing. Although, she didn’t provide a reason as to why Maria would do this.

So, what was the motive? Exactly what Maria had allegedly told the psychic: she believed that her ex’s daughter was to blame for the break up of her and Alicia’s relationship. And, that night, she took her revenge.

They alleged that she left the house armed with a knife and killed Rocío Wanninkhof before putting her body in an “unidentified” vehicle, taking it home for a few days, and then dumping her body to where it was found.

Maria on trial

However, the defence would come back with her alibi: Maria had her niece, her niece’s husband and their two-year-old daughter at her house. The couple went out to dinner leaving Maria to babysit. The only time she left the house was to buy tobacco and dump some garbage. Her niece would confirm this, asserting that she didn’t notice anything “out of the ordinary” when she returned.

It must be noted, though, that there were witnesses whose testimonies contradicted this statement. One neighbour said that she had spoken to Maria the day after the crime took place, and she had told her that her niece had arrived at 11’o’clock that day – not the previous day as Maria was claiming.

The testimony of the Ukrainian employee was a misunderstanding, according to Maria.

She admitted to stabbing the photograph, but stated that she did so with a fork or spoon. This was done because the employee didn’t speak Spanish so Maria did it to explain how Rocío had been murdered. Maria also corrected the information that the employee had given on trial the day prior: the incident took place after Rocío’s body was found, not before.

In regards to Alicia’s allegations of how Maria was behind closed doors, the defence team would point out how Maria took Alicia and the children at the beginning of their relationship. How she would pay for everything as Alicia was “illiterate” and couldn’t get a well-paid job.

They’d also question why Alicia would remain friends with Maria after their separation if the woman was abusive. Maria also gave Rocío a summer job at her hotel that year. She looked after Rocío even after her and Alicia split, and led in searches for Rocío after her disappearance.

Then, the defence presented texts. They showed that, after Rocío’s body was found, Alicia asked Maria to pay for the headstone.

Why – the defence proposed – would Alicia ask this of her if she was the kind of monster Alicia described? Especially if she had such a poor relationship with Rocío? More to the point, why would Maria agree?

Maria herself bluntly rebuffed these claims of a bad relationship with Rocío. She would tell the jury, “she had a good relationship with me, better than the mother and the family believe. She came to see me a lot and opened up a lot with me since she was lacking in affection.”

After all of the testimonies and witness statements, one thing became quite clear towards the end of the trial: there seemed to be no physical evidence.

Everything that the prosecution brought forwards was circumstantial and presented as ‘he-said-she-said’ kind of arguments.

Though there seemed to be a motive, there was no murder weapon, no DNA, and certainly no confession.

The fingerprints did not match Maria’s and the DNA found at the scene belonged to a man. Tyre tracks found near the body didn’t match any car that Maria owned, and clothing fibres found on the body didn’t match any of Maria’s.

Finally, the jury was left to decide Maria’s fate.

Guilty.

Maria Dolores Vázquez was found guilty of the murder of Rocío Wanninkhof and sentenced to 15 years and one day.

Then, in January 2002, there came some news.

Maria Dolores Vázquez was 17 months into her 15 year sentence for the murder of Rocío Wanninkhof. Her lawyer had appealed this sentence, and The Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) decided to annul her sentence, ordering a new trial to take place.

According to them, the judgement of the jury “appears based on circumstantial evidence or inferences.” This means that the jury hadn’t actually stated what made them believe Maria was guilty and the court believed that there was only circumstantial evidence. Instead, the jury were likely influenced by the image of Maria that was painted by the press.

In February, Maria was allowed to go back home, on parole, to wait for her next trial which was to take place in October 2003.

August 15th 2003

Coin is a small town which is approximately a 30-minute drive from La Cala de Mijas.

That sunny day in August 2003, the town was hosting a fair. It was popular with a lot of the residents of the town, including 17-year-old Sonia Carabantes and her friends.

That day they had been to the fair and then Sonia’s friends had dropped her off right outside her home.

The next morning Sonia’s mother went into the teenager’s bedroom to wake her up.

But Sonia was nowhere to be seen.

Then, upon leaving the house, Sonia’s mother noticed something just three houses down. In a bush at the side of the road was Sonia’s purse. She then notices her daughter’s mobile phone alongside it, and blood on her husband’s car next to the bush.

So Sonia Carabantes is reported missing.

The search wouldn’t last long, however. Just five days later, Sonia’s body is found in a stream located in a nearby village. The young girl had been hidden under some rocks.

The missing persons investigation was now a murder investigation.

Forensic work showed that Sonia had fought back until she couldn’t fight any longer. They had found DNA underneath her fingernails, demonstrating that Sonia had scratched her assailant.

Police ran this DNA through their system, and there was a match.

Not to a person, but to a case.

The DNA found underneath Sonia’s nails matched the male DNA found on the cigarette butt near the pool of blood belonging to Rocío Wanninkhof.

Police were still stumped, though, as the man wasn’t in their database, so they continued to investigate. It wouldn’t be long before they got help in the form of a woman coming forward with damning information.

The woman is Cecilia King, ex-wife of Tony King.

The couple met in 1996 and, after falling pregnant just 5 months into their relationship, they got married the following year. In September of that same year, they moved to Spain. The move was a decision made due to Cecilia wanting to be closer to her sister who also lived there.

Cecilia would note behaviour of his that worried her, such as his possessiveness, and jealousy, but it wouldn’t be until they moved to Spain that she really noticed a change in his behaviour. This would lead to their split in 2000, and the reason why she came forward to police.

The first time she really noticed notable strange behaviour was October 9th 1999.

After borrowing Cecilia’s friend’s car, Tony stayed out late. That, in itself, may not have been enough to raise any suspicions, but when he came back he headed straight for the bathroom, locked the door and stayed in there for a while.

After that, he left the bathroom and Cecilia noticed some small injuries on him, as well as blood on the clothing he had changed out of.

Cecilia says, “I go and look at the bathroom and it’s all spotless and clean. Then I’m really concerned about that as he’s not usually clean, he usually leaves everything on the floor.”

Cecilia would later see reports on the news of Rocío Wanninkhof going missing and it would alarm her. It made her question whether her husband could really be capable of the disappearance and murder of another human. Besides her suspicions and circumstantial evidence, though, Cecilia had no evidence, and her family told her she was being ridiculous. So, she let it go.

That was until 2003. By this time, the pair had separated, Cecilia had a new partner, and she also had custody of her and Tony’s daughter, Sabrina.

In August 2003, Tony stopped by Cecilia’s home to pick up his daughter for a visit. This was when Cecilia noticed a bandage on Tony’s hand.

She knew that Tony’s injury coincided with the disappearance of another local girl, Sonia Carabantes, and this time, it was too much of a coincidence for Cecilia. She couldn’t push it aside like she did with his previous behaviour, especially not when police announced the link between the two cases.

It was enough for the police to investigate, and what they found would flip the case upside down.

Tony KIng

Tony King was previously known as Tony Bromwich, and prior to moving to Spain in 1997, he had spent five years in prison.

In 1986, Tony King went on a five-week spree wherein he seriously assaulted five women in London, England. He was eventually caught and Tony – who the British press dubbed ‘The Holloway Strangler’ – was sentenced to ten years in prison.

After serving just half of that sentence, King was released. Just six months later, though, he was rearrested for robbing a woman at gunpoint and would remain in prison until 1996. Upon release, he changed his name from Tony Bromwich to Tony King. His now-ex-wife Cecilia had no idea of the brutal crimes that he committed before they met.

On September 17th 2003, police officers arrested King for the murders and took him in for questioning where he confessed to causing the death of Sonia.

However, he rejected the notion that it was murder. King claimed that,after a night of drinking, he went home and took a sleeping pill. After not being able to fall asleep, he got into his car to go to the store. While travelling, he hit Sonia with his car by accident and panicked. Putting her in the boot of his car, he began driving again.

He attempted to explain away the fact that Sonia had been strangled. He claimed to have taken her body out of the boot of his car with the intention of assaulting her corpse. Instead, she woke up and he strangled her. Then, he disposed of her body.

In a similar act, he tried to explain the death of Rocío Wanninkhof, too.

That night he had been drinking and smoking weed at a friend’s house before driving home. He spotted Rocio on his way home, and became instantly attracted to her saying to police that he “just wanted to touch her”. After stopping the car, he approached her with a knife, intending to scare her and subsequently assault her, but Rocio fought him instead.

King said he lashed out and stabbed her several times before slitting her throat.

Then, he left before returning to sexually assault her and move her body.

Police, however, didn’t believe either of the accounts for a second. They believed that he murdered them, but not how he described.

It emerged that British police had alerted Spanish police of King’s past crimes and the danger he posed to women. They did this when they discovered that he was living in Spain and requested that Spanish police extradite him for a 1997 crime he was suspected of committing wherein a woman was threatened at knife point. However, Spanish police rejected the extradition request due to the fact that they saw King as “low risk.”

While King was in their custody, Spanish police tested his DNA against the DNA found at the crime scenes. It was a match.

Despite this, and the confessions he made, King would go on trial and tell different stories to the panel of jurors.

 “Savage, cruel and inhumane.”

In the Sonia Carabentes trial, the court would hear how King laid in wait for Sonia at around 5am outside her house. He would then beat her, kidnap her, and then when they were in a secluded spot he would assault and then ultimately kill her in the backseat of his car.

On the 15th of November, he was sentenced to 36 years in prison for the murder of Sonia.

A year later, he would go on trial for the murder of Rocío Wanninkhof. In this, he would change his story many times, often contradicting himself.

Initially, he tried to implicate his friend, Robert Graham. This was the man that he was drinking and smoking weed with the night of Rocio’s death.

Graham had actually been told by King that he had killed Rocío and was even found guilty of covering for King by providing him with a false alibi for Rocio’s murder.

King then went on to instead say it wasn’t just Graham – it was also Maria Vázquez.

According to King, he was there the night Rocío was killed, but he was under the influence of drugs and hypnotism. Apparently, Graham and King were in the front of Vázquez’s car and Vázquez killed Rocío in the back. Graham then proceeded to put her in the trunk/boot and had to slit her throat because she still wasn’t dead.

Rocio’s aunt would take the stand, claiming to still believe that Vázquez played a part in her niece’s death. She said that she believed Vázquez and King worked together. Rocío’s mother, Alicia, would also take this opinion.

King’s ex-wife, Cecilia, would also take the stand, repeating what she had told police about King’s behaviour and appearance that coincided with the disappearances of the girls.

Ultimately, though, the jury would also find him guilty of the murder of Rocio Wanninkhof, too. On 11th May 2006 he would be sentenced to an extra 19 years, alongside the time for Sonia’s death and seven years for the attempted rape of a woman in Benalmádena in 2001. The judge would brand his crimes as, “Savage, cruel and inhumane.”

Despite being convicted, he would continue to maintain his innocence and some members of Rocio’s family would believe his version of events. Rocio’s mother and King even traded letters, and to this day she believes that Vázquez was involved in her daughter’s murder. Alicia also denies that she is bisexual or lesbian, instead claiming that she was only in a relationship with Vázquez because she was manipulated by her. 

Miscarriage of Justice

Ultimately, Maria Dolores Vázquez was recognised by the justice system as an innocent woman who was wrongly convicted.

This was seen by many as a huge miscarriage of justice, which was only furthered by the media at the time. Vázquez’s sexuality was frequently seen as a way to paint her as a “dominant” and “predatory” lesbian. One which would target a young girl after apparently manipulating her mother into a relationship.

After spending 17 months in prison for a crime she did not commit, Maria still maintains that she hasn’t even received an apology for her treatment.

In a psychology analysis, a specialist assessed Maria out of 100; 100 being “a fully rounded normal subject.” Maria scored a 35.

In 2019, 20 years after the murder of Rocío Wanninkhof, Maria dropped her compensation case against the Ministry of Justice. She was trying to argue for 4 million euros, but was only offered 120,000, and a fee was never agreed between them.  For years after she suffered psychologically: memorising car registration plates that she believed were following her, and recording everything she did in a notebook in case the same thing happened again.

Rocío Wanninkhof and Sonia Carabentes were survived by their families.

Tony King remains in prison, but he continues to maintain his innocence. Members of Rocio’s family believe that Maria was involved in the murder of Rocio to this day.

Sources:

Radio Times

El Pais

The Olive Press

El Pais 2

Sur (in English)

El Periodico

Cordoba

El Mundo

ABC

The Guardian

La Vozde Galicia

La Vozde Galicia 2

El Pais 3

TW News

Sur 2

Arianna Fitts; A Dead Mother & A Missing Child

Nicole Fitts was known by the people around her as a caring, giving woman, who her sister says, “always found a way to do more,” even from a young age.

As a child, she wanted to be a teacher and, aged 15, she received an award for her volunteer work at a Los Angeles recreation centre.

Despite them being separated when they were teenagers after their mother died, Nicole was close with her sisters. So much so, Nicole and her younger sister, Tess, moved in together near San Francisco – alongside Tess’ girlfriend, Claire – in 2012 when Nicole was around 28 years old.

Life was good, and Nicole even had a daughter named Sendy by this point. Then, Nicole fell pregnant again. In time, she gave birth to another daughter, who she decided to call Arianna.

Before long, though, living in the area became too hard for the three of them; rent was expensive, Nicole had two children to care for, and they were barely able to make ends meet each month.

Tess and Claire decided they had to move out of the area to Santa Cruz, but Nicole wanted to stay in the San Francisco area. Shortly after, she ended up in a homeless shelter.

She was clearly struggling, even sending a now-12-year-old Sendy back to live with her father while she stayed in the shelter with Arianna.

That was until she met Lemasani Briggs, a so-called “street pastor” who offered the two of them a place to stay. It was ideal for Nicole: she would go to work at Best Buy and Briggs would care for Arianna. Nicole would pay her share of rent, along with fees for the babysitting that Briggs was doing.

A few months into this arrangement, though, she decided to switch babysitters.

Briggs controlled when she could be in the apartment, dramatically increased the rent to a rate Nicole couldn’t afford, and sent abusive text messages.

The people now babysitting Arianna were Siolo and Helena Hearne – Briggs’ nieces. Helena was also married to a man named Devin, and had children of her own.

According to Tess, Nicole told her and Claire that this was because the amount that Briggs was charging her for babysitting was increasing. When she raised doubts about leaving Arianna with somebody related to Briggs, Nicole told her that the Hearne sisters didn’t have a good relationship with Briggs, so she wasn’t worried about leaving her daughter with them.

Plus, Nicole really couldn’t afford to pay for childcare from a professional. Not even with the overtime that she was doing to save up for her and her children’s future.

Then, a few months later in November 2015, Nicole finally divulged just how bad the living arrangement was to Tess and Claire. She told them how Briggs controlled when she could be in the apartment by not allowing her a key, how she dramatically increased the rent to a rate Nicole couldn’t afford, and even sent her abusive text messages.

Tess and Claire refused to let her remain with Briggs, so they drove to pick her and Arianna up – with the police as backup in case anything went wrong – and took the mother and child back to their apartment. Even afterwards, the texts continued, with one apparently saying, “bring my baby back here.”

Moving in with Tess and Claire again would mean a two hour commute to work for Nicole, but she persisted, determined to save money for her and her daughters’ future.

To make the arrangement work, she would still let the Hearne’s babysit – often overnight – and would sleep on friends’ sofas. Not only was she working overtime and night shifts, she was also travelling to L.A to go to court for custody of Sendy, after she was taken from her father by Child Protection Services.

Many of the people around her, friends and co-workers, had no idea what she was going through in her personal life. She kept it to herself, and went about life working hard and fighting for her children.

One co-worker did know about her living circumstances, though, and was prepared to help. Goyette Williams offered Nicole and Arianna a place to stay, and even knew someone who could babysit for Nicole while she worked.

Nicole set about moving and setting up Arianna’s room, but there seemed to be a problem.

Siolo and Helena Hearne didn’t want to give Arianna back.

By this point, it was March 2016, and Nicole’s family members hadn’t seen Arianna since mid-February. After Nicole had told Siolo and Helen that she intended to take Arianna, they had been making it increasingly difficult for Nicole to get her daughter back.

They would give excuses, and one one occasion in mid-March when Nicole told them she was coming to pick Arianna up, they told her that they were out of town having taken Arianna to Disneyland.

On April 1st, she was determined to get Arianna back, claims her roommate. She went out with another coworker, going to a mall and then to Pizza Hut so she could get dinner to take back to Goyette. After that, she withdrew $600 out of an ATM, without telling her coworker why.

Later in the evening at around 9pm, she got a phone call and told Goyette that she had to go to BJ’s restaurant to meet someone. She assured her roommate that she would be back shortly to finish the movie they were watching together.

That was the last time anyone saw Nicole Fitts alive.

“How does it go from ‘I’m going to BJ’s’ to ‘I’m now in Fresno’? – Tess

Nicole never returned to their apartment, and Goyette eventually fell asleep. In the morning, she looked at her phone and saw a text from Nicole that had come through while she was asleep. It told of how Nicole was going to go to Fresno with a friend called Sam.

It didn’t say why, or when she would be back. Considering she had been so determined to get Arianna back that day, the sudden departure blindsided Goyette. Furthermore, she knew that Nicole didn’t have a car to get to Fresno and, to her knowledge, nor did she have a friend named Sam.

She then noticed that Nicole had also put a status on Facebook in the early hours, too, that rang alarm bells for everyone who knew Nicole:

For one, she was a stickler for correct spelling and grammar. Plus, Arianna wasn’t three years old, she was still just two.

Then, she didn’t show up for her shift that day. The next day came, and she missed work for the second day.

Claire and Tessa were frantic by this point; they knew something was deeply wrong.

By April 5th, the family had decided to report the mother-of-two as missing, along with Arianna, but there was little that the police were willing to do. Nicole was, after all, a grown woman who could leave if she wanted to.

Tess wouldn’t let it go, though. She began searching through Facebook, contacting Nicole’s friends who might have any idea where she was. According to Tess, it didn’t take her long to turn her suspicions towards the babysitters.

To her and the rest of Nicole’s family, it was strange that Helen and Siolo didn’t comment on or share the missing persons post about Nicole and Arianna. Siolo also didn’t respond to a message from Tess, and when they went to Helena’s house, nobody came to the door.

All they could do was notify the police of their suspicions and pass on the address.

Tragically and suddenly, their search would come to an end on the 8th of April.

Around 10:30am, Nicole’s body was found buried in a shallow grave and covered in a wooden plank in McLaren Park by a gardener.

Due to how she was found, it was officially considered a homicide, and Arianna’s disappearance was also considered to be foul play. When addressing the public about the case, police reported that nobody had seen Arianna since mid-February so she could have possibly been missing since then as no one knew when the last time Nicole saw Arianna was.

“We are confident that Arianna was in the care of a couple of individuals […] and I think she’s still alive” – Commander Greg McEachern

Of course, police were quick to start investigating.

It was soon discovered that Helena and Siolo Hearne were the people who were last known to be with Arianna, and police quickly obtained search warrants for both of their houses, though the media have never been alerted to anything found at either of the properties.

Then, it was unearthed that Helena had actually been convicted of murder before.

In 2001, aged just 18, she was charged with murder for shooting the father of one of her children to death. Upon being found guilty, she spent six years in prison.

Both Helena and Siolo were questioned extensively on several occasions, but eventually they stopped cooperating with police and their stories were described by investigators as “inconsistent.” Her lawyer said, “Now that they changed from her being a witness to a possible suspect, I’m not going to let her give any more statements.”

After Nicole’s body was found, Commander Greg McEachern stated: “We are confident that Arianna was in the care of a couple of individuals. […] I think she’s still in the Bay Area and I think she’s still alive.”

According to a couple of sources, Helena, her husband and their children moved soon after the events.

Sadly, there seems to have been little progress on the case in the 5 years since it happened.

In 2017, police towed and searched a car (which Tess and Claire believe to have been Helena’s) but no more information was given. McEachern claimed that the police were, “making some unbelievable strides in the case,” yet nothing new has been said publicly since. Apparently, though, the FBI have stated that they have some leads that they are following up, but would not go into further detail.

Arianna Fitts would be seven years old today, and below are two age progression images that have been made since her disappearance. Below that is a link with information on how to contact law enforcement if you can help in finding Nicole’s killer(s) and her daughter’s kidnapper(s).

There is a $110,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest, and conviction of those responsible.

Arianna is also on the FBI’s Most Wanted Kidnapping Victims list.

SFPD Poster & Information

Sources:

SF Examiner

SF Examiner 2

Charley Project

BAS

SF Weekly

FB Page

yahoo

Unique Harris: A Murder Charge But No Body

On the 9th October 2010, 24-year-old Unique Harris had just tucked her two sons into bed at around 9pm-10pm, along with her cousin’s 8-year-old daughter. They’d spent the night having a movie marathon.

By the time the children woke up at 8:30am, though, she was nowhere to be found inside their Washington D.C apartment. They alerted further family, who went straight over to the apartment and Unique was soon reported missing.

Her family were certain that something was wrong. Unique loved her sons and would never just leave them like this. They also noticed that her glasses were still in her home; in fact, they were placed neatly on her pillow in her bedroom. To them, this proved that she hadn’t left voluntarily, because she could barely see without them and couldn’t go anywhere without them.

Not only that, but her purse and money were also still in the apartment – the only thing missing was her phone.

However, there was no sign of forced entry or a struggle, and the children all said that they had slept straight through, not being woken up or hearing anything.

Along with the personal items still in Unique’s apartment, there was the fact that she was clearly planning for the future. She had only moved into that apartment five weeks before, and was about to start classes at a massage therapy school. Put shortly, she was mapping out a future for herself and her sons.

None of it seemed to point towards a voluntary disappearance and police were even more concerned due to the area Unique lived in.

The area had a high crime rate, and the apartment building she lived in had very poor security; the intercom was broken and her front door was “in bad shape”. Not only that, but Unique Harris had even witnessed a murder on that street just weeks before she disappeared, which posited the question; was she targeted because she’d been co-operating with law enforcement?

After some investigating, it was discovered that Unique had spoken to an unidentified person on the phone at around 3am. This allowed police to narrow down the time frame of when she went missing to between 3am and 8.30am.

Police interviewed her son’s father, as well as her boyfriend at that time, and neither of them were in town that night and both passed polygraph tests.

So, the police’s investigation was at a standstill.

In 2018, Unique Harris was legally declared dead, despite no body having been found. Her mother continued to search for her.

Then, in 2020, the investigation gained new hope.

A police informant who’d served time with a man called Isaac Moye reported to the police that he had overheard him talking about a missing girl, and how the police would never know who did it because, “he did it the right way so they’ll never figure it out.”

Moye – whose nickname was Iceberg – was already on the police’s radar by that point.

It had been noted that a patch of fabric had been cut out of one of the couch cushions in Unique’s home. Police decided to see if they could find any DNA around that area, in case Unique’s potential kidnapper had cut it away in an attempt to destroy evidence.

As it happened there had been a little DNA left behind and, in 2017, it came back as belonging to a man called Isaac Moye – the same man the police informant had said talked about a missing girl in 2020. He had recently been imprisoned and his DNA put into the database.

Not only that, but also in 2017, one of Unique’s sons came forward and said he remembered opening his bedroom door the night his mother went missing and saw a man he knew as “Iceberg”. He said after closing his door, he heard his mother shouting, “get out, get out!” followed by her screaming. However, he was just five years old when the events happened and, in 2020, he changed his mind stating he didn’t remember ‘Iceberg’ ever being in the apartment.

Over the years, Moye had been interviewed on a number of occasions by law enforcement. He was a huge suspect in the case, especially due to his contradictory and changing stories on his relationship with Unique, why/when he was at her apartment, and the 13 phone calls they shared on the day she went missing.

He simply claimed that he believed she must have walked out on her old life.

Despite this, police never had more than the account of the five year old and his DNA on the couch and they were powerless to arrest him.

Along with the informant’s information in 2020, police had one final damning piece of evidence.

The night of October 9th, Moye was wearing a GPS tracking bracelet. Police obtained the data from this bracelet and it placed him in Unique’s apartment on that night, and also tracked him leaving on the morning of the 10th before the children woke.

In December 2020, Isaac Moye was arrested and charged on suspicion of the murder of Unique Harris. Not long before that, he had been released from prison after serving five years for assaulting a woman with a knife.

In regards to the charges in Unique’s case, he pleaded not guilty in court.

Her body is yet to be found. Police believe she was killed in her apartment and carried out.

Sources:

Trace Evidence

MPDC

Medium

Our Black Girls

Charley Project

WP

I really want to cover more cases involving black and other victims of colour, so this is going to be one of many. These people and their cases are massively underrepresented in the true crime community, and in the media, which really hinders the chances of bringing them home and/or getting them and their families justice.

FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

The FBI Ten Most Wanted list has contained some of the most dangerous criminals since its creation in 1950.

When it was first made, the idea was for the list to assist the FBI in finding and capturing dangerous fugitives by giving the cases extra exposure. Information regarding the list can be found online and in places such as post offices, helping boost the list alongside the huge money incentives that tend to come along with an arrest and conviction of these fugitives.

The most notable person on the list was likely Osama Bin Laden, up until his death in 2011.

No one on the list is considered the “most dangerous”, there’s no #1 criminal, and fugitives generally don’t get removed from the list unless they are caught, have died, or charges against them are dropped. After this, they are replaced by another individual that the FBI believe fit the criteria.

So, in no particular order, let’s take a look at the FBI’s current Ten Most Wanted.

Contents [Click To Skip To]:

1. Alexis Flores
2. Bhadreshkumar Chetanbhai Patel
3. El Gato
4. Eugene Palmer
5. Jason Derek Brown
6. Rafael Cero-Quintero
7. Robert William Fisher
8. Alejandro Rosales Castillo
9. Arnoldo Jimenez
10. Yaser Abdul Said

---

1. Alexis Flores

Flores was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted in 2007.

His crimes – noted on the FBI’s website as kidnapping, murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution – date back to one specific and brutal one, back in August 2000.

Five-year-old Iriana DeJesus went missing while riding her bike. Her mother had turned her back for just a few minutes, and by the time she returned, Iriana was gone.

Five days later, the little girl was found sexually assaulted, strangled and wrapped in a trash bag in the basement of a nearby empty apartment building.

The building belonged to a man called Jorge Contreras, but he claimed to be out of town that day. He did, though, give the building keys to a young man called “Carlos”.

Carlos was hired by Contreras just days before Iriana went missing. A local homeless man, Carlos has no job, shelter, or money. Trying to do a good thing, Contreras decided to offer him a job as a handyman in the apartment building, letting him live there and even lend his clothes.

One item of clothing that Carlos had borrowed was a t-shirt with a distinctive logo on it. This was later found next to Iriana’s body, with her blood on it.

So, this Carlos seemed like a likely suspect, but they didn’t even get the chance to speak to him. After Iriana went missing, local residents never saw him again.

Police did what they could, creating composite sketches and running DNA samples, but the case grew cold in the years after.

What they didn’t know was that two years after this crime, a man was arrested over 2000 miles away in Arizona for shoplifting. Then, that same man was arrested in 2004 for possession of a forgery device after giving fraudulent identity documents to police because he was an illegal immigrant. After serving 60 days, he was deported in 2005.

This man was “Carlos”.

This man was also Alexis Flores.

Police discovered this after his DNA – collected from him in 2004 following his arrest – was entered into the DNA database in 2006. In 2007, it popped up as a match for the DNA found at the crime scene of Iriana’s murder.

He’s believed to be in his home country of Honduras, or to have returned back to America. There is a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading directly to Flores’ capture offered by the FBI.

He is considered “armed and extremely dangerous.

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – Alexis Flores

AMW

2. Bhadreshkumar Chetanbhai Patel

Patel is an Indian born man wanted for killing his wife, Palak Patel, in Maryland, US, on a holiday to visit relatives in America.

These relatives owned a Dunkin Donuts shop in Maryland, and they allowed newlyweds Patel and Palak to work there while they visited.

They had worked there for two weeks before Palak’s body was found at a brutal scene in the kitchen one night in April 2015. Customers in the shop had become concerned when there seemed to be no staff coming to take their order.

They alerted a nearby police officer, and he went to the back of the shop. That was where he found Palak’s body. At just 21 years old, she had been beaten to death and stabbed with a knife from the kitchen.

It was over an hour before police identified Patel as someone of interest that they wanted to speak to.

Unbeknownst to them, he had left the shop immediately after the murder, where he walked to his nearby apartment to pick up some things then got a cab to a hotel in New Jersey. He checked in that night, then checked out at around 10am the next morning.

CCTV footage of inside the shop that night later showed what had happened.

Palak and Patel were both in the kitchen at around 9:30pm. The surveillance footage shows them disappear out of view of the camera behind some racks. Moments later, Patel reemerges without his wife then leaves the shop.

Police discovered that Palak had last spoken to her family back in India on the phone before her death, and she was telling them about how she wanted to return home to India but Patel didn’t.

It is believed Patel overheard this conversation and an argument ensued and, afterwards, Patel made the decision to kill his wife so he could continue living in America.

He was last seen the morning of April 13 2015 at Newark Penn Station, and is believed to have either fled the country or hiding with relatives.

Police do know that he couldn’t legally leave the country because his visa had ran out by the time of the murder.

$100,000 is available for information that leads to his whereabouts, and he should be considered “armed and extremely dangerous.”

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – Bhadreshkumar Chetanbhai Patel

Reddit

3. Jose Rodolfo Villarreal-Hernandez (aka “El Gato”)

A Mexican drug cartel boss, Villarreal-Hernandez is listed on the FBI website as being wanted for one crime in particular; “his alleged involvement in the interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire of a 43-year-old male” in 2013.

He’s believed to be responsible for many other murders in Mexico.

According to the US Department of State website, he’s a high-ranking member of the Beltran-Leyva Organization (BLO) Drug Cartel where he oversees cocaine and marijuana imports into the US, as well as committing violent crimes to uphold his and the organisation’s ruthless reputation.

The man who was killed – Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa – was believed by Villarreal-Hernandez to have been responsible for the murder of Villarreal-Hernandez’s father a few years earlier.

His father was killed by rival cartel, the Gulf Cartel, and Villarreal-Hernandez blamed Guerrero, who was a lawyer supposedly associated with the Gulf Cartel, and also represented the leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.

Three men involved have since been arrested and taken to trial, but the two who actually did the killing and Villarreal-Hernandez, have never been caught.

The FBI believe him to be in Mexico and have offered a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to his arrest. He is “armed and extremely dangerous.”

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – El Gato

State

4. Eugene Palmer

81-year-old Eugene Palmer was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list in 2019.

Seven years earlier, he allegedly killed his daughter-in-law, then went on the run.

Tammy Palmer was shot to death in her backyard. Police believe the motive was a long-time feud that the two had regarding a property on Palmer’s land that Tammy lived in.

Tammy had filed a restraining order against her husband and Palmer’s son, John, while their marriage seemed to be falling apart. According to family members, she threatened to divorce John and sue him for the land that the property was on. Afterwards, she got into an argument with Palmer because the land was actually his, not John’s.

Investigators believe he hid in the woods and shot her from a distance. 

He was last seen in New York’s Harriman State Park, where he had abandoned his car. After that, he’s thought to have fled on foot.

Despite some people believing he has died while hiding out in the woods of the park, police believe he is still alive.
He should be considered armed and dangerous, and police have offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction.

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – Eugene Palmer

Bustle

5. Jason Derek Brown

Jason Derek Brown, a man described as someone who “enjoys being the center of attention”, seemed to have the best life.

He had a lavish lifestyle; expensive cars, beautiful women, luxurious holidays abroad.

He also had a secret, though. It was all fake. Brown was in debt, and lots of it. In fact, despite his two businesses, he had never been rich, not really – it was all done through years of bank and check fraud. Sometimes, he would even go to car dealerships and use fake social security numbers and addresses to buy cars. Police also believe he was responsible for some petty thefts and home invasions.

He was getting away with this, too. But by November 2004, it appears that he’d had enough of these scams.

That month, he purchased a gun and took a firearms instruction course.

Days later, Robert Keith Palomares, a 24-year-old armored car guard, would be shot to death while carrying out the weekend deposits outside an AMC theater in Phoenix, Arizona.

The gunman shot at him six times, five bullets hit him in the head and the other one missed. He had no time to defend himself.

The assailant got away on a bicycle with the $56,000 that Robert was carrying. The bicycle was later found and fingerprints were lifted from it and tested.

They belonged to Jason Derek Brown.

Because of this, he was quickly identified as a suspect and he went on the run. He fled from Arizona, to Henderson, Nevada. Then, he swapped his car for a black Cadillac that he had in storage. The Cadillac was found at the beginning of 2005 at Portland Airport.

Months later, his older brother David John Brown II was indicted for obstruction of justice, after being accused of tampering with evidence when he cleaned Jason’s car – the one that he had swapped for the Cadillac. He pled guilty in 2007.

That same year, Jason Derek Brown was put on the FBi’s Ten Most Wanted list, and his arrest has a reward of up to $200,000. He is considered armed and extremely dangerous, and may be carrying a Glock 9mm and a .45 caliber handgun.

He has links to California, Arizona, and Utah.

The most recent and most credible sighting of him was in Salt Lake City, in 2008, when a former acquaintance who had gone to missionary training with him, recognised him at a traffic light. Brown sped away through the red light. According to the man, he was now more tanned and had longer hair.

Between 1998 and 1980, Brown served as a mission for the Mormon church in Paris. Because of this, police also believe he may be hiding amongst the Mormon community, potentially living with someone who does not know his identity.

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – Jason Brown

Wiki

6. Rafael Caro-Quintero

Rafael Caro-Quintero has one of the longest list of crimes in FBI Ten Most Wanted history.

These are: Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering, Conspiracy to Commit Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering, Conspiracy to Kidnap a Federal Agent, Kidnapping of a Federal Agent, Felony Murder of a Federal Agent, Aiding and Abetting, Accessory After the Fact.

Caro-Quintero is known to have founded two cartels and was involved in drug trafficking from Mexico to the US. In 1985, he kidnapped, tortured and murdered three men, one of them being an American intelligence officer. Three leaders of the Guadalajara Cartel – one of them being Caro-Quintero – were convicted for the crimes, and Caro-Quintero was sentenced to 40 years in prison. That is the maximum time someone was allowed to be sentenced to in Mexico at that time.

The Guadalajara cartel dissipated after this.

In 2013, though, Caro-Quintero was released after it was ruled that he had been tried improperly. He served 28 years of his 40 year sentence.

However, just days later, a Mexican federal court issued an arrest warrant against him after pressure from the US federal government. Because of this, he is still wanted for the crimes he was initially convicted of.

There has been some conflict between the US and Mexico over the logistics of whether he would be allowed to be extradited to the US, though.

When, or if, Caro-Quintero is arrested by the Mexican government, the US government will have 60 days to present a formal extradition request. However, Mexican representatives argued that Caro-Quintero can’t be extradited to the US, because Mexican law doesn’t allow criminals to be tried for the same crime in different countries.  U.S. lawyers, on the other hand, may argue that his first trial was illegitimate which would mean that the law that prevents that would not be applicable. In order for Caro-Quintero’s extradition to be accepted, the US has to present other criminal charges and agree that he wouldn’t face the death penalty if he’s convicted, as there are no laws for capital punishment in Mexico.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control believes that, since his release, he has continued his drug trafficking. In subsequent interviews with various news publications, he has denied this.

The US Department of State’s Narcotics Rewards Program has offered a reward of up to $20 million for information that leads to his arrest and/or conviction.

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted: Rafael Caro-Quintero

Huffington Post

Borderland Beat

7. Robert William Fisher

On April 10th 2001, police in Scottsdale, Arizona, were called out to an explosion.

The house of the Fisher family was on fire which ended up as an explosion that was felt by everyone within a half a mile radius.

Police managed to enter the property soon after, wherein they found the bodies of Mary Fisher and her two children, 12-year-old Brittany, and 10-year-old Robert Jr/”Bobby”. Robert, the father, was nowhere to be seen.

The bodies were obviously burned, but they were found in their beds seeming to have not made any attempts to escape. Closer inspection showed police that this was no accident – all three were dead before the fire. The children had their throats slit, and Mary had been shot in the back of the head.

On April 14th 2001, Robert William Fisher was named as an official suspect. Less than a week later, his car and his dog were found in Tonto National Forest, which was a hundred miles north of Scottsdale.

He was officially considered a fugitive in July of the same year after an Arizona Superior Court state arrest warrant was issued. He was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson.

Over a year later, he was officially listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted.

During their investigation, police discovered the believed motive: Mary was going to leave Robert.

Fisher was apparently controlling towards Mary from the beginning, with some describing him as a control freak and cruel. His behaviour only got worse after they had children. They had frequent arguments and, according to one of his co-workers, Robert had cheated on Mary Anne, too.

In the weeks prior to the deaths, Mary told several friends that she was planning to divorce Robert. It’s believed that Robert likely knew of her plans or found out that night, and took the news particularly badly due to his own parents divorcing when he was young. Friends, family, and co-workers said his parents’ divorce affected him throughout his life, and he was determined not to have his marriage end.
Robert is currently wanted for three counts of First Degree Murder and Arson of an Occupied Structure. He is considered armed and extremely dangerous, and is assumed to have various weapons including a rifle. There is a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to his arrest.

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – Robert Fisher

Medium

Murderpedia

8. Alejandro Rosales Castillo

The body of 23-year-old Truc Quan “Sandy” Ly Le was found in Charlotte, USA, on August 17th 2016. She had been shot in the head once.

A week before that, she was reported missing, and her car was found on the 13th August. That same day, another call was made to the police reporting two other disappearances.

The families of 18-year-old Alejandro Rosales Castillo and his 19 year old girlfriend Ahmia Feaster contacted police after they both received calls from the teenagers saying that they were safe but didn’t know where they were. This led their families to believe that they had been kidnapped and were forced to make these calls. Police soon began investigating all three disappearances as a linked incident, though, as all three were co-workers, and Castillo had reportedly dated Le before, too.

After she went missing, Le’s uncle told police that he had last seen her after she went out to meet someone who owed her $1000. However, bank statements showed that $1000 had actually been taken out of her account, and not put into it.

It soon transpired that she had actually been texting Alejandro Rosales Castillo, and it was him that she had arranged to meet.

Then, it was discovered that the day before Le’s body was found, Castillo was captured on CCTV leaving the country along with someone.

Then, two months later on October 20th 2016, Ahmia Feaster contacted authorities in Aguascalientes, Mexico to hand herself in. She had been the person fleeing the country with Castillo. After handing herself in, she was extradited to the U.S and charged as an accessory after the fact of felony murder and larceny of a motor vehicle. She posted bond and was released in January 2017.

Feaster told authorities that she and Castillo had been staying in Aguascalientes with Castillo’s cousins. During the two months they were staying down there, Castillo had gone missing once again, and Feaster decided to hand herself in.

On November 2nd, 2016, Castillo was charged with first degree murder and then, after being classified as a  charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution on February 10th 2017.

Police say that they believe the motive was simply robbery. Castillo had no intention of paying Le back, and instead lured her to meet him, forced her to withdraw all of the money she had in her account, then drove her in her car to the woods where he shot her and dumped her in a ravine. He then escaped the scene by being picked up by Feaster, where they then left the country.
He should be considered armed and dangerous with violent tendencies, and an escape risk. There is a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of Alejandro Rosales Castillo.

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – Alejandro Castillo

News Observer

Express Digest

9. Arnoldo Jimenez

Arnoldo Jimenez married Estrella Carrera on May 11th 2012.

The next day, she was dead.

Estrella was found in the bathtub of her apartment, stabbed to death and still dressed in the silver cocktail dress that she was wearing during her wedding reception.

Her family had received a phone call from Jiminez’s sister. He had called her and told her that him and Estrella had a “bad fight” and he had left her bleeding.

Family members became worried after not hearing from her when she was supposed to pick up her two children from them on Saturday. They called the police who visited her apartment and found her.

There were no signs of forced entry at her home, and police quickly realised that Jiminez was nowhere to be found.

They concluded that he had stabbed her several times in the back of his car, probably after they had an argument, then dragged her to her apartment and placed her in the bathtub before fleeing.

Investigators tracked his mobile, discovering that, on May 12th, it had been used in Chicago then Illinois. Later, it was used in Memphis, Tennessee, then in Arkansas. The next day, he’d made calls from Houston and then in Mexico.

In September of that year, Jiminez’s brother was arrested on unrelated charges. Jiminez’s car was found on his brother’s property, and police found blood on the back seats, allowing them to come to the conclusion of where Estrella was killed.

Police believe Jiminez’s brother drove him to Mexico, then returned to his house with the car.

A state warrant was issued for his arrest on May 15th 2012 after he was charged for first degree murder. Then, a federal arrest warrant was issued after Jimenez was charged federally with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

He is to be considered armed and dangerous, and there’s a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to his arrest.

They believe he’s hiding in Mexico, perhaps specifically Durango or Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – Arnoldo Jiminez

ABC

10. Yaser Abdul Said – CAPTURED

Yaser Abdul Said is the only person on the list to have been captured.

He was arrested on August 26th 2020, and has yet to have been taken off the list. He was indicted on capital murder charges, and is awaiting trial.

His crimes were the two murders of his daughters, 17-year-old Sarah and 18-year-old Amina.

He was reportedly very controlling of his family, and both girls told family and authorities that he had physically and sexually abused them. He thought his daughters were dishonouring their Egyptian culture by not adhering to its tradition. Especially when he discovered that Amina had an American boyfriend.

On January 1st 2008, Said lured his daughters into his taxi under the pretence of taking them out for food. There, he shot them both and fled. Sarah managed to call 911, telling them, “My dad shot me, I’m dying.” She passed away before the taxi was found.

Just the next day a capital murder warrant was issued for his arrest.

At the time, investigators believed he may have fled to Egypt – though this was later proven wrong – and a federal warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution was issued by a district court on 21st August 2008. He was placed on the Ten Most Wanted List in 2014.

In 2017 he was discovered to have been living in an apartment under his son’s name, but he escaped after authorities were tipped off. Then in 2020, police began surveilling a home that belonged to Said’s niece.

Said’s brother – the father of the aforementioned niece – and Said’s son were seen by police entering and leaving the house on a number of occasions, and eventually they obtained a search warrant and discovered Said inside the house. The three men were arrested.

UPDATE:

Said’s brother – Yassein Said – was sentenced on June 4th 2021 to 12 years in prison. Months before he was found guilty of conspiracy to conceal a person from arrest, concealing a person from arrest and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

Said’s son – Islam Said – was sentenced to 12 years in April 2021 after pleading guilty to the same charges as his uncle.

Sources:

FBI Most Wanted – Yaser Abdul Said

BBC

AP News

Skid Row Stabber; 42 Years On

The locations of the victims bodies

Central City East, Downtown Los Angeles, has one of the largest populations of homeless people in the United States, and has since the 1930s. As of 2019, the number stood at nearly 5000. To most people, it’s known as Skid Row.

Its infamy is due to the sheer size of homelessness in the area, as well as the length of time that it has gone on without real help from local government, only severe and harsh crack downs that punished the homeless. There was also the ‘patient dumping’ scandal, wherein hospitals and law enforcement agencies were dumping homeless people on Skid Row.

Then, of course, it is also home to the Cecil Hotel, as seen on Netflix’s recent documentary; ‘Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel’. The hotel was a temporary home to several now well-known people, including Elisa Lam who disappeared and was found dead in the hotel, serial killer Richard Ramirez, and potentially Elizabeth Short aka the Black Dahlia, a young woman who was found cut in half at the side of a road.

It still remains a dangerous neighbourhood, but in the 1970s and 80s it was especially rife with gang crime, murders, and Los Angeles as a whole fell victim to several serial killers.

LAPD detective Kirk Mellecker was one of the detectives who was assigned to the Hillside Stranglers murders which took place in LA, as well as the Skid Row Stabber case. Speaking of that time, Mellecker recalls, “Anything south of First and Second streets you wouldn’t go down there without a gun.”

In 1978, though, a new problem hit Skid Row’s homeless community. A serial killer.

As November arrived, the killings didn’t stop.

On the morning of October 23rd 1978, at around 5:30am, 50-year-old Jesse Martinez was found stabbed to death in a car park on Skid Row, between/near Fifth and Wall Street He worked as a cook.

Then at 1:00am on October 29th, another man was found stabbed to death. Jose Cortez was a 32 year old homeless man, and he was found in an alleyway in the 300 block on East 3rd Street.

The next day, also around 1:00am, a transient name Bruce Drake was found stabbed on Koehler Street, on the 600 block. He was 46 years old.

As November arrived, the killings didn’t stop.

J.P. Henderson was discovered in the early hours of November 4th. He was 65 years old and was found slightly outside of what is known as the border of Skid Row, on the pavement at 508 West 7th Street. 

Next was 39-year-old David Jones, found 5 days later at around 1:45am on November 9th. He was killed by the central library, also slightly outside of Skid Row, and just down the street from where J.P. Henderson was killed.

David was also the first victim that led police to some potentially huge information. Three of his friends were also outside the library, and they claimed that they spoke to a black man that night who told them that his name was Luther and that he was from Puerto Rico. One witness claimed he had a Spanish or Caribbean accent but others disagreed. After the conversation finished, the man walked over to where David was laying. Shortly after, David shouted out that he’d been stabbed. When asked who’d done it, he said, “the man that just left.”

So, police had the first description of a potential suspect; 28-32 years old, 6ft-6ft 2, black, and about 210 pounds. Police also released a composite sketch. 

The Skid Row Stabber’s composite sketch

The next day, two bodies were found.

On November 11th, just two days after David’s death, another body was found. 57-year-old Francisco Perez Rodriguez was found in the car park at 416 S Main Street at around 5:30am by a security guard. Like all the other victims, he had been stabbed in the upper torso. Coroners said that he had died a couple of hours before he was found, meaning that he was killed just hours after a police decoy team had left a stakeout nearby.

By this point, detectives were still not saying that they believed this was a single killer – only that it was possible. In fact, they claimed to be looking for two separate killers. There wasn’t a special task force either, despite the fact that there had been six kills in less than three weeks. However, there were undercover police officers posing as homeless men trying to catch the killer out, as well as nightly stakeouts.

The next day, November 12th, two bodies were found.

The first of the two was 36-year-old Frank Reed, who was discovered at approximately 11:30pm behind a bar at 237 E. Fifth Street. 15 minutes later, 49-year-old Augustine Luna was found just around the corner at 448 S. Main Street. This was the first double kill that the murderer had carried out.

Frank’s body was reportedly found across the street from the Central Division police HQ, and in an alleyway near to the local LA Mission that helped homeless people with shelter. That night it was raining, and due to that and the fear of the killer, they had to turn people away and lock the doors once they were at capacity – their capacity was 686, when usually the most they had was around 200.

On November 17th, the body of 34-year-old Native American Jimmy White Buffalo was found. He was with his friends in a bar immediately before the attack, and was found in the bar’s car park. Police said he was on crutches at the time of his death, so he didn’t stand much chance.

The next day, the police announced that they had plans to talk to a man called Tracy Scott who had been arrested by Las Vegas police. LA police had been informed that he fit the description of the man they were looking for in relation to the case, and believed that, “there were a number of things that indicate[d] he is a suspect.” He was soon arrested, questioned and released.

The killer took his tenth victim on November 23rd, Thanksgiving Day. Frank Garcia, aged 45 wasn’t homeless, and in fact worked as a janitor for the county government who lived in East Los Angeles. He was found sitting upright on a bench next to a fountain between City Hall South and City Hall East, which are also across the street from the main City Hall. It was also around 200 feet from the LAPD headquarters.

During their investigation of the area, the police found a palm print on the bench next to where Frank’s body was found. It couldn’t be proven, but police believed it may have belonged to the murderer.

Throughout this period, there were also three people stabbed who survived. Police didn’t seem to think that these were connected to the others though, as the survivors’ descriptions didn’t match the one given by the witnesses near David’s murder.

As a result, police arrested John Wesley Porter, aged 42. He matched the descriptions given by two of the survivors and, because of this, he was arrested only on suspicion of those stabbings – not the murders. Porter actually spoke to police officers in the street after approaching them after the stabbings. After they asked for a description of the man who stabbed the previous men, they thought of him.

December 7th saw the police make their third arrest. Gary Lee Stinson was arrested after police had investigated him for two weeks. On the 11th, he was released. Police said that although they had “probable cause” to arrest him, they didn’t have enough evidence to hold him.

Then suddenly, the Skid Row Stabber’s month of terror was over.

Until two months later on January 21st 1979, when Jose Luis Alvarez, 26, was found stabbed to death in an alleyway near 415 Harlem Place, just outside of Skid Row. He was the killer’s last confirmed victim.

Shortly after, graffiti was found inside the Los Angeles Bus Terminal building that said, “My name is Luther. 11-16-78. I kill wino’s. I put them out of their misery.”

For three months after that, police made no advancements in the investigation. The only leads they had were the handprint, the graffiti, and the witness descriptions. But, after their last three arrests, they had no more suspects.

Bobby Joe Maxwell

Then, the following April, 29-year-old Bobby Joe Maxwell, described by police as “a regular of Skid Row”, was arrested.

Police say they were initially suspicious of Maxwell because the killings stopped. On December 14th 1978, just three weeks after the 10th killing, he was arrested after being found standing over a sleeping homeless man with a 10 inch knife concealed in his pocket.

He was charged and released on January 18th – 3 days before the last confirmed victim of the Skid Row Stabber was killed – and in the time that he was in prison, no stabbings were committed.

After three failed attempts, police were now certain they had their guy.

At the preliminary trial in May, Maxwell pleaded innocent to 11 counts of murder and five counts of robbery, and the Deputy DA said he expected to call 80 to 90 witnesses and also seek the death penalty.

In the subsequent months, evidence would be presented at various hearings and trials. Though, for various reasons, the actual trial was delayed until 1984.

After they obtained the search warrant, police found various things in Maxwell’s home that led them to conclude he was a Satanist. 

Detective Mellecker said that the knife that was confiscated from Maxwell when he was arrested back in December was, “compatible in all respects with the knife that killed Frank Garcia.” It was also described by a coroner examiner during the trial as, “compatible with these wounds administered to all these victims except two.”

The prosecution would claim that his handprint matched that of the one on the bench that Frank Garcia was found on.

They also took a handwriting sample from Maxwell, and a police handwriting expert stated that it matched with the graffiti on the bus terminal building.

One of the witnesses who was with David Jones when he died, testified that Maxwell was the person who he saw just before David died. However, under cross-examination he said that the man he spoke with was 6ft and weighed around 200lbs. Maxwell was 5ft 8-5ft 9 and weighed between 150lbs and 180lbs.

Another witness said that he saw a man who resembled Maxwell in the alleyway where Augustine Luna was found, but also admitted that he didn’t see the man’s face.

The prosecution also came forward with a jailhouse informant called Sidney Storch. Storch claimed that Maxwell admitted to all of the murders, stating that they were “an effort to obtain souls for Satan.” He also said that Maxwell told him that he was part of a Satanic cult. Guards and inmates at the Tennessee prison where Maxwell served two years for robbery from 1976 to 1978, said that Maxwell would perform rituals in his cell and try to recruit other inmates.

In 1984, five years after his initial arrest, he was found guilty of two of the murders – David Jones and Frank Garcia – and acquitted of three others. The jury were deadlocked on the other five. He was sentenced to life without parole, with the jury deciding against the death penalty.

Bobby Joe Maxwell never stopped protesting his innocence.

Bobby Joe Maxwell never stopped protesting his innocence and would regularly lodge appeals for the next 40 years, as cracks emerged in the prosecution’s already weak case against him.

Perhaps their strongest evidence against Maxwell was their jailhouse informant, Sidney Storch. But 1989 saw a scandal be exposed in Los Angeles over the use of jailhouse “snitches”. After an investigation, it would be discovered that Storch would simply read about the cases in the newspaper, then lie about them confessing to him. He would also teach other inmates how to do the same.

He even admitted this himself, demonstrating how he could call the police and make something up about an inmate confessing to him and they would believe him.

Storch had testified in at least eight cases in LA, repeatedly winning leniency and having time taken off his sentences; for Maxwell, he got released from custody a year and eight months early.

Storch was arrested for perjury in 1992, but died before any action could be taken.

In March 1991, Maxwell filed an appeal but the California Court of Appeal denied his petition for rehearing. He then filed a review which was also denied.

In October 1991, he filed a habeas corpus petition (wherein a prisoner is brought before a court to determine if their imprisonment is lawful) with the Los Angeles Superior *494 Court which was denied in 1993.

In 1995, he filed another habeas corpus petition but this time with the California Supreme Court. 

In May 1996, they finally issued an order to show cause on whether Storch, the jailhouse informant, had lied in his testimony at trial. It ran from 1997 to 1999 and, in February 2000, the Superior Court ruled that “while Storch might have become an established liar and sophisticated jailhouse informant, Storch had not lied at the trial.”

In April 2001, Maxwell filed a second habeas corpus petition in the California Supreme Court. It was denied in December of that year.

He would continue to protest his innocence.

Along with the damning revelation that Storch lied in several of his court cases, there were several issues with the little, and already weak, evidence provided.

A Bic lighter that was found in the pocket of Maxwell was claimed to belong to one of the victims and while the victim’s wife confirmed that it looked like her husband’s, she couldn’t pick it out of a line up of similar ones. And, in reality, it was just a standard Bic lighter that countless other Americans owned.

Then there were the three men who spoke to “Luther” before David’s murder. When Maxwell was put in a lineup, one of the men was quoted to have said, “You’ve got everyone up there that doesn’t look like him.”

It was also argued that, though the handprint found near Frank’s body could have been Maxwell’s, that didn’t mean anything. Maxwell frequented Skid Row and the specific area that Frank’s body was found in. Since prosecution couldn’t determine the age of the handprint, that handprint could have been there long before Frank died.

Then, in 2010, the verdict was overturned. While they couldn’t determine that Storch definitely had lied at the first trial, they agreed that his testimony could not be believed. Alongside that, they asserted that the rest of the evidence was circumstantial at best.

And, although he wasn’t free to go, Maxwell was finally given the chance at a retrial.

Convinced that he was guilty, prosecutors refiled five murder charges against him in 2013 – the two he was found guilty of, and Jose Cortez, Bruce Emmett Drake, and Frank Floyd Reed. Maxwell stayed in prison, waiting for his retrial.

Bobby Joe Maxwell

That was, until December 2017 when a severe heart attack would put him into a coma.

At the new trial, the LA County Prosecutor’s Office dropped all charges against him. As a result, in August 2018, he was found not guilty. His conviction and prison sentence were seen as a miscarriage of justice.

Bobby Joe Maxwell would unfortunately never learn of his release, though. He died in April 2019, having never woken up from the coma.

All in all, it’s difficult to see how someone could be convicted of such serious crimes, on so little evidence. With DA thirsty to make another conviction to reassure the public in an era of serial killers and just off the back of the Hillside Stranglers in LA, it seems that Bobby Joe Maxwell was just another victim.

So, if Bobby Joe Maxwell wasn’t the Skid Row Stabber, who was?

Neither the prosecution nor defense ever proposed an alternative suspect.

We may not know who the Skid Row Stabber really was, but one thing we do know is that a man who was later found innocent spent 40 years of his life fighting for his freedom and to clear his name of these horrendous crimes. And he never got the chance to find out that he eventually got the outcome he desperately fought for.

Maxwell’s younger sister, Rosie Harmon, summed it up by saying, “They stole his life.”

Sources:

UPI

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5367

Newspapers.com

The Daily Beast

Crimeola

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