The Yogurt Shop Murders

Shortly before midnight on the 6th of December, 1991, a fire was reported at a yogurt shop at a strip mall in northwest Austin. As firefighters extinguished the flames at “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” they uncovered a gruesome sight. Among the debris and ash were the bodies of four girls – 13-year-old Amy Ayers, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, and sisters, Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, 15 and 17.

Jennifer and Eliza were employees at the yogurt shop while Sarah and Amy had been shopping at the nearby Northcross Mall before stopping by the yogurt shop shortly before 11PM to help close up the store for the night. They had planned on having a slumber party that night. ¹

The four girls had been stripped naked and bound. They had been gagged with their own clothing to muffle any pleas or screams. Amy was discovered in the middle section of the shop while the other three were found out the back. Eliza and Sarah were piled on top of each other while Jennifer lay nearby; all of the teenagers had been shot in the head, gangland style. An autopsy determined that Sarah had also been raped. ²

The fire was then set in an attempt to destroy any evidence of the brutal murders.

The case was bungled from the very beginning. As it was believed to have just been a case of arson, firefighters, armed with water cannons, were first on the scene and they trampled and trudged through the crime scene, contaminating and destroying any evidence that could have been left behind. At one point during the investigation, there were 342 suspects. Nevertheless, the case remains unsolved to this very day. ³

The Walker Family Murders

Christine and Cliff Walker married in 1954 and went on to have two children before settling down in a farmhouse in Osprey, Florida. The young family carved out a simple but happy life in their clapboard house in cattle country. Their home was sparse but they had what they needed to survive. It was the 19th of December, 1959, and the family were visiting a friend. Christine headed home first. Cliff said he would follow with the children, 3-year-old Jimmie and 1-year-old Debbie, who wanted to ride in their daddy’s jeep.

At approximately 4:05PM, Christine arrived home. She didn’t park in her regular spot. Investigators would later theorise that somebody else was parked there. Was it somebody she knew and invited inside? Once behind closed doors, Christine was raped by the assailant. When he was finished, he pointed a gun at her head and pulled the trigger. The first shot was a superficial wound which hit just above her hairline and scraped the surface of her skin. The second shot went right through the top of Christine’s skull. ⁴

As the killer was dragging Christine’s lifeless body into the living room, Cliff pulled up outside, children in tow. As Cliff opened the front door, a bullet smashed through his right eye, killing him instantly. Now, just the children were left.

Did the killer take a moment to consider what to do with them? They were just babies, after all.

Probably not.

Jimmie was shot in the head. He fell to the floor beside his dead father and writhed and cried before being shot two more times. Debbie, who had crawled to be beside her mother, was shot in the head. However, she didn’t die and the killer had now ran out of bullets. He grabbed the bleeding toddler to the bathroom where he drowned her in the bathtub.

Two of the main suspects were Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the two killers made infamous in Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” However, in 2013, they were exhumed and DNA was compared to that found at the crime scene and was found to not be a match. ⁵

The killer left behind an abundance of evidence including a bloody cowboy boot and a fingerprint on the handle of the bathtub faucet. Despite these clues and the fact that there were over 500 suspects over the forthcoming years, the case has still not reached a conclusion.

The Burger Chef Murders

It was a wintry Friday night on the 17th of November, 1978, in Speedway, Indiana. 20-year-old Jayne Friedt, along with her co-workers, 17-year-old Ruth Shelton, 16-year-old Danny Davis and 16-year-old Mark Flemmonds, were finishing the night shift at Burger Chef. It was their duty to prepare the restaurant for the morning shift and then lock up.

Shortly after midnight, another off-duty employee was passing by the restaurant when they noticed that the back door was wide open. When he entered, he found the restaurant completely devoid of life. There was nobody there but the cash register was open and empty.

He called the police.

Investigators found that the head office had been left in disarray and approximately $500 was missing. Despite the fact that the girls’ purses were left behind, police theorised that the teenagers had made off with the money to have a wild night. By the afternoon, the restaurant would be wiped clean by other employees.

It would soon become apparent that this wasn’t just a case of teenagers off on a jolly when Jayne’s abandoned car was discovered. Police shifted their focus on an abduction but by now, it was much too late for any evidence to be collected at the crime scene.

It had been cleaned spotless.

On the 19th of November, a grim discovery was made in a field approximately 20 miles away. Mark had suffered blunt force trauma to the head while Jayne had been stabbed to death. She had been stabbed with such force that the blade snapped off, lodging itself in her body. Both Daniel and Ruth were shot. ⁶

Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer or killers were never identified or apprehended.

The Lane Bryant Shooting

Lane Bryant was a clothing outlet located in the Brookside Marketplace in Tinley Park, Illinois.
On the morning of the 2nd of February, 2008, 42-year-old store manager,  Jennifer McFarland, was carrying out her daily duties. She wasn’t scheduled to work that morning but there was a big sale and she didn’t want her employees to be swamped. She was working alongside an unnamed woman employee. It was approximately 10AM when a delivery man entered through the store door. Also inside the store at that fateful moment was 37-year-old Connie R. Woolfolk, 34-year-old Jennifer L. Bishop, 22-year-old Sarah Szafranski and 33-year-old Carrie Hudek Chiuso.

They were five different women from different walks of life but they would forever be bound by an unfathomable fate. The apparent delivery driver wasn’t delivering any goods. Once he entered the store, he produced a .40 pistol and forced the now-terrified women into the back room where he bound them with duct tape and ordered them to lie face down. The women were then shot execution style.

Miraculously, the unnamed employee survived the shooting when the bullet wounded her neck, missing her head. She lay motionless, pretending to be dead.

A composite sketch of the killer was drawn up with the description gave by the survivor. He was described as being an African-American man that stood at approximately 5 feet 9 inches to 6 feet tall and 260 pounds. He was wearing all black and was around 25 to 35-years-old. He had three to five corn rows running from the back of his head to the front with one strand having green beads. ⁷

The main theory was that it was a botched robbery. However, it was noted that the timing was unusual considering the shop hadn’t been open for very long and therefore wouldn’t have conducted many sales. Police announced that evidence was recovered at the crime scene but never released what that evidence was.

Police followed up on more than 7,000 tips and a reward for $100,000 for information leading to an arrest was assembled by concerned citizens. Nevertheless, the killer has still not been identified. ⁸

The Frog Boys

It was a national holiday in Korea on the 26th of March, 1991, due to the local elections. A group of friends, 13-year-old U Cheol-won, 12-year-old Jo Ho-yeon, 11-year-old Kim Yeong-gyu, 10-year-old Park Chan-in, and 9-year-old Kim Jong-sik, decided that they would venture out to Mount Waryong to trudge through the streams in search of frogs.

They never returned home.

Their disappearance stunned the small and relatively safe country. Tens of thousands of police and soldiers searched countrywide. They were assisted by hordes of locals; the parents of some of the boys quit their jobs to embark on what seemed like a never-ending search. Over 8.1 million flyers were distributed and their pictures decorated cigarette packs and milk cartons. Their disappearance inspired two films and several songs. ⁹

It was the 26th of September, 2002, when a lone hiker was picking acorns on Mount Waryong when he stumbled across a grim scene: human remains. He was approximately 2 kilometres from where the boys lived when he first spotted discarded shoes and clothing. This location had been thoroughly searched over the years. One theory is that they had been washed into visibility by a typhoon that had swept the mountain just a couple of weeks beforehand. Another theory is that their murderer disposed of their body in this location years after the murder.

As the parents rushed to the scene, they were grief-stricken when they were shown the clothing found at the crime scene. The little rubber shoes and t-shirts were the same ones their sons were wearing when they left home for the final time 13 years ago.

“I thank everyone who has shown interest in our boys for the past 13 years,” announced Kim Hyon-do, the father of one of the boys.

The initial theory was that the boys had gotten lost and died from exhaustion and hypothermia. Their bodies were discovered clutching one another and police theorised that they could have been attempting to keep warm. The family members of the boys immediately refuted these claims: “The boys used to visit and play around this mountain and knew the direction so well. It doesn’t make sense that they got lost here,” said the uncle of Kim Jong-shik. ¹⁰ Furthermore, all of their clothes had been removed and obscurely tied in knots. ¹¹

The remains were sent to the forensic medicine team from Kyungpook National University. A thorough investigation of the remains showed that three of the skulls had extensive damage. There were sharp cracks and holes along the skulls indicating that they had been bludgeoned or hacked with some heavy object. “We found marks on three of the five skulls that appeared to be created by blows with metal objects, possibly a tool of some kind,” announced a member of the forensic medicine team. ¹²

It was determined that they were murdered.

Eventually the statutes of limitations expired, leaving many questions still lingering. Who killed the frog boys? If they stumbled across a sadistic killer in the woods then how could one person kill all five of them at once? Surely as soon as the first boy was attacked, the others would scramble. Was there more than one perpetrator? Did he/they tie the boys up to render them immobile? What was the motivation?

26 years have passed and we’re still no closer to uncovering the answers to these grim questions than we were when the bodies were first discovered.

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The Murder of Yoshihiro Hattori

In 1992, 16-year-old Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese exchange student, was on his way to a Halloween party in his new hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As he arrived in the working-class neighbourhood in which the party was being held, he mistakenly went to the wrong house. He stood on the chilly front porch of Rodney Peairs, and knocked on the door. Nobody answered, but Peairs’ wife, Bonnie, peered out through the curtains and became alarmed. She requested her husband retrieve his gun.

As Hattori began to stroll back to his car, disgruntled that the assumed host wouldn’t open the door to him, Peairs came to the front door, armed with his .44 Magnum revolver. He shouted “Freeze!” to Hattori who didn’t understand what that command meant. Hattori exclaimed “We’re here for the party!” Nevertheless, Peairs fired his gun point blank at Hattori before running back inside. Thankfully, a friend of Hattori witnessed the entire event and ran next door to request assistance. Neither Peairs nor his wife offered assistance; they even shouted at a neighbour to go away when they came to help. ⁷

Tragically, Hattori died on the way to the hospital. Originally, police questioned Peairs before releasing him, claiming that he was fully within his rights to shoot Hattori. However, Louisiana governor, Edwin Edwards protested that the slaying of Hattori was certainly manslaughter. During his trial, Peairs tried to claim that he feared for his life. District Attorney Doug Moteau disagreed. He said it hadn’t been reasonable for a man of 6′2″ to be afraid of a friendly and unarmed 130lbs boy who rang the doorbell before walking away to his own car. He hadn’t attempted to break in. He wasn’t wearing a scary mask. He wasn’t armed.

Nonetheless, Peairs was acquitted. He was found to be liable to Hattori’s parents for $650,000 in damages. With this money, his parents founded two charities in their son’s name. One was to fund U.S. students wanting to visit Japan while the other was for gun control. Following the murder, the Japanese government was prompted to teach its citizens travelling to the United States the word “freeze.” ¹¹
Following his acquittal, Peairs claimed that he would never own a gun again. He claimed he felt as though he had overreacted to his wife’s apparent fear.

The Murder of Taylor Van Diest

It was Halloween night of 2011 and 18-year-old Taylor Van Diest was adding the final touches to her zombie costume. When she was ready, she departed her home in Armstrong, British Columbia, to meet her friend to go trick-or-treating. She never showed up to her friend’s house. Her friend became alarmed when she received an ominous text message from Van Deist saying that she was “creeped out” because she thought that she was being followed. By who, she never got a chance to say. She stopped replying to her friend and never showed up at her house.

Within an hour of leaving home, her parents received a phone call from somebody who had found Van Deist’s discarded phone. At 8:45PM, police found her badly beaten body beside a railroad track. She was lying in a pool of her own blood.

An ambulance was called but it was too late; she passed away at the hospital shortly after arriving. There was evidence of strangulation but it was blows to the head with a steel pipe that ultimately killed her/ ¹³

In such a small-town, it wasn’t long before 26-year-old Matthew Foerster was apprehended. After an interrogation, he confessed that he had bludgeoned her to death after she resisted his attempt to rape her. DNA that was collected from Van Deist’s body matched Foerster’s DNA.

He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In March of 2017, however, he was granted a retrial citing errors that may have affected the jury’s decision to find Foerster guilty of first degree murder as opposed to a lesser charge.

Who Was Orange Socks?

On Halloween of 1979, the unidentified body of a young woman was discovered along Interstate 35 near Georgetown, Texas.

She had been sexually assaulted and then strangled to death. The unidentified murder victim was estimated to be in her twenties and stood at around 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing 135 to 140 pounds. Her hair was brown with a reddish tint; she had hazel eyes and pierced ears. Her teeth were in good condition and had zero dental work. She was naked except for a pair of orange socks, thus earning her the moniker “orange socks.” 

In 1982, infamous serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed to her murder. He claimed he picked her up as she was hitchhiking and that her name was either “Joanie” or “Judy.” Further investigation showed that Henry Lee Lucas was most likely working in Florida at the time of the murder and no evidence could corroborate his claims; he was known to confess to murders that he did not commit.

A run of her DNA in a database that matches the genetic material of missing persons with that of identified bodies proved unfruitful.

Her identity, and who killed her, still remains unsolved to this very day. She was buried in a grave marked “Unidentified Woman” in Georgetown.

The Griffin-Liske Family Murders

On Halloween of 2010, 16-year-old Devon Griffin returned from church to his two-storey family home in Ottawa County, Ohio. When Devon entered the home, he went into his bedroom to play video-games, completely unaware as to what horror had earlier unfolded.

When he went into his mother’s bedroom later on, he was met by a gruesome scene. His mother, Susan Liske, and her husband, William Liske, were lying in a puddle of blood on their bed. In another room lay the lifeless body of his brother, Derek Griffin. They had all been shot and then brutally bludgeoned with a claw hammer. At first, Devon believed it to be a Halloween prank. He described it as “something out of a haunted house.”

An investigation quickly led to William Liske’s son, William Liske Jr., who had fled to the family’s cottage in Carroll County, Ohio, following the slayings. ¹⁴

It was soon revealed that this wasn’t the first violent outburst from Liske Jr. who had previously smashed a coffee cup on Susan’s head and stole her car. He reportedly had a history of mental health issues, however, he was declared legally sane.

In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. Without shedding a tear, Liske Jr. told the courtroom that he could not give a solid motivation behind the murders of his father, stepmother, and stepbrother. “I can’t really explain why this all had to happen, but I think most of all it had to do with my mental illness,” he said. ¹⁵

In April of 2015, William Liske Jr. committed suicide in prison.

The Trick or Treat Murder

On Halloween night of 1957, Peter and Betty Fabiano were preparing to go to bed when their doorbell rang. It was after 11PM and they thought it was a little too late for kids to be trick or treating but since they were still awake and still had candy to offer, Peter answered the door, candy bowl in his hands.

When he opened the door he was surprised to see not a child, but an adult concealing their face with a masquerade mask. They were pointing a paper bag at his chest. The masked assailant then shot Peter before speeding off. Betty jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to find her husband lying on the floor, covered in blood and gasping for air. She quickly rang an ambulance but he died before they managed to get to the hospital.

At first, authorities thought it was a random murder. Peter Fabiano was a beauty shop owner who seemed to have no enemies. They began investigating deeper and found 40-year-old Joan Ravel who had once been employed at Peter’s salon. Police became suspicious when she began lying about where she was on the night of the murder. They had to release her due to the fact that they had no evidence against her but they kept tabs on her.

The following month, an anonymous call directed police to a rented locker in a department store in which they found a .38 revolver: the same gun used in the murder. The locker was being rented by a woman called Goldyne Pizer. When Pizer was tracked down and questioned by police, she confessed that Joan Rabel was her lover. She also confessed that Rabel lied to her about Peter by claiming that he was a wife beater and abuser. Rabel had made Pizer believe that Peter was an evil man and deserved to die.

Pizer agreed that she would help and eventually confessed that she was the one who killed Peter. In an even more bizarre twist, it was soon discovered that Rabel had been having an affair with Peter’s wife, Betty, and wanted to get rid of Peter. In fact, when Betty and Peter had a brief separation, Betty moved in with Rabel. When the married couple reconciled, one condition was that Betty never see Rabel again. ¹⁶

Rabel pleaded not guilty, and Pizer pleaded insanity. Both agreed to a plea deal for second-degree murder and life in prison.

Who Killed Martha Moxley?

The last time Dorthy Moxley saw her daughter, 15-year-old Martha Moxley, alive was the night before Halloween of 1975. She was attending a nearby party with a friend. The following morning, her bloody body was discovered semi-nude in her own back garden in Greenwich, Connecticut. She had been brutally beaten with a golf club. The beating was so vicious that the golf club had broken. The killer then turned the broken golf club into a weapon and stabbed the teenager several times; once in the neck.

The first point of interest in the investigation was the party she had attended on the night she died. The party was at the nearby home of brothers, 15-year-old Michael and 17-year-old Thomas Skakel. Their father, Rushton Skakel Sr., is the brother of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, meaning the brothers were his nephews. Martha’s diary revealed that she had enjoyed romantic relationships with both of the brothers. ¹⁷

Thomas and Martha were seen flirting at the party and left together; this was the last time she was seen alive. Thomas was immediately suspected. In addition to the witness reports placing them together, he also had a shoddy alibi. With no evidence to warrant an arrest, the case eventually went cold but many local people believed that Thomas had committed the brutal murder until 1991, when his younger brother, Michael, was charged with her murder.

While it was concluded that the golf club used in the murder had come from the Skakel household, no forensic evidence could successfully connect him to the brutal slaying. During his trial, two students testified that they had heard Michael confess to killing Martha, bragging: “I’m going to get away with murder. I’m a Kennedy.”

Poisoned Halloween Candy

The case of Ronald Clark O’Bryan sounds like a plot in a Stephen King novel. In fact, poisoned Halloween candy is frequently a theme in urban legends. The notion that somebody could be evil enough to poison Halloween candy is almost unbelievable, but this case, however, is very much true.

On Halloween of 1974, 8-year-old Timothy O’Bryan from Pasadena, Texas, went out trick or treating with his father, Ronald Clark O’Bryan, his 5-year-old sister, Elizabeth, and two neighbourhood children and their father. Towards the end of the evening, Ronald handed his two children and the two neighbourhood children Pixy Stix. Before going to bed that night, Timothy asked his father if he could eat the Pixy Stix. As soon as he tasted it, Timothy complained that it tasted bitter; Ronald got him some Kool-Aid to wash it down. ¹⁸

Within minutes, Timothy started to vomit and go into convulsions. Within an hour, he was dead. The autopsy concluded that he had been poisoned with enough cyanide to kill 10 adults. Thankfully, none of the other children ate the tainted candy. Who could do such a thing?

It was soon uncovered that Ronald was behind on his car payments and had accumulated debts of almost $100,000. ¹⁹ Furthermore, it was discovered that Ronald had taken out an insurance policy for his children the week of Halloween and had then called the insurance company the day after his son’s death. He was soon apprehended and charged with the murder of his own son.

It took the jury just 46 minutes to find Ronald guilty of murder. It took them 71 minutes to decide that his punishment would be death. Shortly after midnight on the 31st of March, 1984, Ronald was executed via lethal injection. During the execution, a crowd of college students wearing Halloween masks showed up to cheer and to shout “Trick or Treat” as the clock struck midnight.

The murder of Timothy prompted fear within the community and that fear continued even once Ronald was convicted and executed. The notion that somebody, anybody, could poison children under the guise of being a friendly neighbour was horrifying; in a way, Ronald killed the innocence and enjoyment of Halloween.

While houses that are the scene of gruesome crimes are often demolished so that they don’t become a grim reminder to the atrocities that took place between the walls, many still stand and many you can visit.

Lizzie Borden – Fall River, Massachusetts

Lizzie Borden has been immortalised in the infamous poem:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

Over 100 years have passed and the case of Lizzie Borden still manages to grip the nation. Was she wrongly accused of killing her father and stepmother or did she get away with murder? The opinion is very much divided still after all these years.

Born on the 19^th of July, 1860, Lizzie lived on 92 Second Street, Fall River. At the time of the murders, she lived with her sister, Emma, her father, Andrew, and Andrew’s wife, Abby. In 1863, Lizzie and Emma’s mother, Sarah, passed away. Three years later, Andrew and Abby were married. The Borden’s were an extremely wealthy family. Andrew was a successful property developer and owned a profusion of commercial property. Furthermore, he was the president of the Union Savings Bank and a director of the Durfee Safe Deposit and Trust Co. ²⁰

Despite his wealth, Andrew was extremely frugal. He refused to install indoor plumbing, forcing the family to use a two seat latrine. The Borden household had no electricity and no gaslight. This lifestyle didn’t satisfy Lizzie or Emma, who both wanted to live a more comfortable life in the wealthy neighbourhood known as “The Hill.”

The relationship between the girls and Abby wasn’t a particularly amicable one and they preferred to refer to her as “Mrs. Borden” as opposed to Abby.

Between 9am and 11am on the morning of 4 August, 1892, 70-year-old Andrew and 65-year-old Abby were murdered in their home in Fall River. They were both struck on the head, neck, and shoulders with a hatchet. Andrew was killed on the sofa in the living room while Abby was killed in the bedroom.

Lizzie soon fell under a cloud of suspicion after giving conflicting reports as to where she was and what she was doing during the time the murders took place. She initially claimed she was in the barn eating pears, where she remained for around half an hour. However, it was a scorching hot summer’s day and would have been much too hot to sit in the barn for a prolonged period of time. Furthermore, no footprints could be found in the dust.

She claimed that after she came back inside, she heard a groan, a scraping noise, or a distress call, before finding her father dead. She soon changed this story, though, and claims she heard nothing when she came inside from the barn.

A couple of days after the murders, the maid, Alice Russell, stated that she had witnessed Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen stove. She claimed she had spilled some paint on the dress but was she trying to hide something more incriminating? ²¹

An inquest into the murders was held from the 9^th until the 11^th of August following which Lizzie was arrested. It was decided there was “probable cause” to believe that she had committed the murders. ²²

On the 20th of June, 1893, Lizzie was acquitted of the murder charges and was released. She and her sister continued to live in the family home. They inherited their father’s estate and purchased a larger, more ostentatious home: something they had always dreamed of.

Lizzie remained in Fall River until her death in 1927. She was forever held under a cloud of suspicion and ostracised from the community. While she had been acquitted, many believe that all evidence points towards her being the killer.

The where, the when, and the how of this gruesome case are enshrined in history, but the who and why has been relegated to speculation and legend.

The Borden abode still stands in Fall River. It has since been turned into B&B and is said to be rife with paranormal activity. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can stay the night and chow down on the same meal that Andrew and Abby devoured before their lives were tragically ended. If you want to make a trip of it, located just a couple of blocks from the Lizzie Borden household is the Oak Grove Cemetery. Lizzie, Emma, Sarah, Andrew, and Abby are all buried in the same plot. Despite the fact that Lizzie left no descendants other than a large donation to the Animal Rescue League, her gravestone is always decorated with flowers and keepsakes.

The LaLaurie House – Royal Street, New Orleans

If you’re a fan of American Horror Story then this house will be all too familiar to you as it was a plot in the third season. Delphine LaLaurie, or Madame LaLaurie, was a New Orleans Creole socialite. However, she became more infamously known as an alleged serial killer and slave-keeper.

Dr. Louis LaLaurie and his wife, Delphine, moved into the mansion at 1140 Royal Street in 1832. ²³

Madame LaLaurie was known to throw lavish parties in her mansion. Her guests would be bewildered by the exquisite décor inside the LaLaurie dwelling. However, these impressed guests weren’t aware that Madame LaLaurie was hiding an exceptionally grim secret.

She kept a plethora of African American slaves in the attic and they were subjected to unimaginable torment and torture at the hands of Madame LaLaurie.

As guests arrived for one of these opulent affairs in the spring of 1833, Madame LaLaurie was in her boudoir preparing for her grand entrance. As Leah, a 12-year-old slave, was combing Madame LaLaurie’s hair, she accidentally hit a snag which pulled out a small lock of hair. In a fit of rage, Madamde LaLaurie reached for the bullwhip and chased the young terrified girl. Leah ran through the hall and out to the balcony. In a desperate attempt to flee the banshee-like Madame LaLaurie, Leah plunged from the balcony onto the courtyard below. Unable to cover this specific tragedy up, she was charged with a $300 fine. ²⁴

In the spring of 1834, a fire broke out in the mansion and authorities finally uncovered Madame LaLaurie’s gruesome secret. Behind a hidden door in the attic, they discovered more than a dozen slaves “in varying degrees of torment and starvation.” ²⁵

Allegedly, some were chained to the wall while others were strapped to makeshift operating tables. Inside one of the numerous cages, rescuers reportedly discovered a woman whose limbs had been broken in several places, forcing her to walk like a “crab.” Several slaves were suspended by the neck with their limbs stretched and torn. ²⁶ There were reports of disfigured faces and even disfigured genitalia. Human organs were apparently proudly displayed on the shelves like trophies.

Within hours of the discovery, Madame LaLaurie was gone. Some say she fled to Paris or north shore while others say she never left New Orleans. Rumours swirled around the town that voodoo queen, Marie Laveau took the wretched woman under her wing and taught her voodoo practices.

After the fire and the outrage, the home was rebuilt and along with the restoration came the tales of strange noises, bizarre flickering lights, and tales of paranormal sightings. A series of new owners came and went. None stayed for a prolonged period. Most fled in the middle of the night after experiencing something terrifyingly unexplainable. In 1920, a resident told the New Orleans Item newspaper “on the third floor, I saw a man walking carrying his head on his arm…” Another family reported that she spotted a woman running through the house with a whip and on another occasion, they awoke to find decapitated animals in the courtyard.

As the lurid tales of Madame LaLaurie grew and grew, much of what actually took place has been obscured by myths and legends. It’s difficult to tell what is truth and what is exaggeration. Nevertheless, the three-story gem in the French empire style with a wraparound balcony still stands today. In fact, it was once owned by Nicholas Cage.

Even to this very day, people report paranormal and bizarre events in and around the mansion. “On one tour stop there, none of the tourists’ cameras would work, and only at that one house,” said Sidney Smith, the owner of Haunted History Tours. Check it out, if you dare!

The Villisca Axe Murders House – Villisca, Iowa

During the early 1900s, Villisca, Iowa, was a flourishing quaint town. The family farm, the one-man cheese factory, the buggy rides and horse buyers were a regular way of life in this farming town of approximately 2,500 residents.  According to D.N. Smith, a Chicago Railroad employee, Villisca meant “Pretty Place.”

However, in 1912, this pleasant tight-knight community was rocked by a grisly tragedy that still remains unsolved today.

A prominent citizen of Villisca, 42-year-old old Joseph Moore, lived in a white wooden farm-style home at 508 e 2^nd Street. He owned a distinguished farm implement store and lived with his wife Sarah Moore, and their four children: 11-year-old Herman Montgomery, 10-year-old Mary Katherine, 7-year-old Arthur Boyd and 5-year-old Paul Vernon.

The afternoon of the 9^th of June, 1912, was a pleasant summer’s day. Katherine Moore invited her two friends,  8-year-old Ina Stillinger and 12-year-old Lena Stillinger, to the family home. The family and their two guests later attended a Children’s Day programme at the local Presbyterian Church, not leaving the festivities until approximately 9:30PM.  As the Stillinger family lived in another town, they decided that the sisters would sleep overnight at the Moore dwelling.

At some point during that fateful night, something unfathomable took place.

“8 Iowa Persons Slain with an Ax While They Slept” read the Chicago Tribune headline on the 11^th of June, 1912.  In the middle of the night, somebody crept through the Moore household, armed with Joseph’s own axe, and bludgeoned and smashed the heads of six little children and two adults. The axe was swung with such force that marks could be seen in the ceiling from the upswing.

After seeing no movement the following morning, Mary Peckham, the Moore’s next door neighbour, went to the their front door and knocked. Maybe they had slept in, she thought. It wasn’t like them to laze about and ignore their daily chores. What if they were ill? Receiving no answer and unable to open the door herself, she called for help. It was a bloodbath. The first bodies to be discovered were Lena and Ina who were lying deceased on a bed located downstairs, surrounded in blood. The remaining members of the Moore family were discovered upstairs in the other bedrooms. Their faces were covered either with a section of bedspread or an item of clothing. The killer left the murder weapon leaning against a wall downstairs and locked the door behind him.

The house was investigated from top to bottom, sniffer dogs were employed, and even clairvoyants were called in to assist. The killer added some obscure touches to the crime scene. He had left a four-pound slab of bacon beside the murder weapon. Furthermore, he covered the mirrors and glass doors with items of clothing. On the kitchen table, he left a plate of uneaten food and a bowl of bloody water. ²⁷

Over the forthcoming years, there were numerous suspects, ranging from a senator to a travelling preacher. One suspect was even put on trial twice but there was no conviction. Over a century has passed since the grisly murders and yet they still remain unsolved.

Much like Lizzie Borden’s B&B, The Villisca Axe Murder House is available to tour and if you’re feeling particularly bold, you can even stay the night for around $400 a night. Paranormal investigators and curiosity seekers arrive to Villisca in droves. As if the case with most scenes of terror, there’s many reports of paranormal incidents in the “murder house.” A disk jockey reportedly awoke in the middle of the night when staying overnight and heard to sound of children’s voices and laughter when no children were in the house.  Tours have been cut short by moving objects and unexplainable sounds. ²⁸

It is said that the Villisca Axe Murder House is one of the most haunted houses in America.

Further Reading:

Shortly after his arrival, a hotel maid arrived to clean the room. As she opened the door, she found the man sitting on the bed in the dark. Despite the fact that it was still light outside, he had tightly drawn the blinds, making the room pitch black. She recalled that the man seemed somewhat afraid or nervous. Of what, she was not sure.

As she was cleaning the hotel room, “Roland T. Owen” put on his coat and left the room, asking her to leave the door unlocked because he was expecting a friend to arrive later on.

At approximately 4PM, the maid arrived at room 1046 once again to leave fresh towels for the evening. The man was lying on the bed in the dark. Beside him lay a note which read: “Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait.”

The following morning, the maid arrived to clean the bedroom. Once again, she found the man sitting motionless in the darkened hotel room. As she cleaned around him, the phone rang. Eavesdropping in on the call, she heard the guest tell the man on the other end of the line, who he identified as “Don,” that he wasn’t going to be having any breakfast that morning before hanging up the phone. Before the maid left, “Roland T. Owen” began to question her about her role within the hotel and what duties she was to carry out daily.

When she returned later on in the afternoon with more fresh towels, an unidentified male grunted that they didn’t need any when she knocked on the door.

At around 11PM that night, a local man called Robert Lane was driving downtown when he saw a man running down the street. He was wearing pants and a light shirt. It was an odd clothing choice for the brisk winter air, Robert thought. As he pulled over to ask if he needed any sort of assistance, the running man asked him if he could give him a lift to the Hotel President. Robert informed him that he wasn’t a taxi driver but would give him a lift nevertheless. It was much too cold for him to be wandering about in such inappropriate clothing for the weather. As the man climbed into the car, Robert couldn’t help but noticed that the oddly dressed man had a large bleeding wound on his arm and looked to be in a bad shape, as if he had been in some sort of physical altercation.

As the duo drove, Robert later told police that he had heard his passenger mutter “I’ll kill that… tomorrow.” ²⁹

Later on in the night, after this odd meeting, a guest reported hearing several voices coming from within room 1046, including a woman’s voice. She later told police that it sounded as if a violent scuffle was happening and that she considered complaining to hotel management but decided against it.³⁰

Another guest later told police that at approximately 2AM, they too heard some sort of altercation coming from room 1046following which they heard a bizarre gurgling-like sound coming from the room.

Back at the Hotel President the next morning, it was noticed by the desk staff that the telephone in room 1046 was left off the hook. Presuming it was an accident, a bellboy was sent up to inform the guest. When nobody answered, he used a master key to enter the room.

At first glance, he saw blood spatter over the walls and the floor with some more spatter on the ceiling.

In the bathroom, a naked “Roland T. Owen” was on his knees with his head resting on the edge of the bathtub. Rope was tied tightly around his neck and wrists. He had been repeatedly stabbed and bludgeoned across the head. There were slashes across both wrists and a gash on his chest, over the heart. Still clinging to life, he said that he had simply “fell against the bathtub.”

He died later on that night after being rushed to a nearby hospital.

An investigation of the room turned up nothing. Not one piece of clothing could be found and the complimentary hygiene products and towels had been removed by somebody. The weapon used to inflict the wounds on the man was nowhere to be found. Inside the bathroom, however, it was discovered that a water tumbler had been smashed but the jagged portion was never uncovered. Could it have been the murder weapon?

Due to the blood spatter near the bed, police surmised that the man had most likely been attacked while sitting or lying in the bed before being dragged to the bathroom. Detective Johnson suggested that the gurgling-like sound the other hotel guest had heard during the middle of the night was very likely “Roland T. Owen” gasping for air after the brutal attack.

It was uncovered early on in the investigation that “Roland T. Owen” was a fake name, thus his body was displayed at the Mellody-McGilley funeral home in the hopes that somebody could recognise him. The unidentified victim was described as being approximately 6 feet tall and weighing around 180 pounds.  He had dark brown hair which was combed over to the left side of his head. Underneath this mop of hair was a scar on the top of the forehead. ³¹

The man who had picked up the bewildered hitchhiker the night before recognised him immediately. Multiple people from separate establishments, including other hotels and even a wrestling arena, came forward to identify him. However, each person that identified him said that he gave a different name. As the weeks passed, the man remained unidentified, even though many could identify him by appearance. One bar worker came forward to tell police that he had seen the deceased man the night before he was murdered.

He was in the company of two women, he contended. He was intended to be buried in the city’s cemetery for the unidentified but when locals caught wind of this, police received an anonymous letter from somebody who asked them to hold the burial off until they would be able to forward a hefty amount for a decent burial and funeral. Days later, the money came in and he was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery. A local florist also received an anonymous donation for a bouquet of flowers that were signed off with “Love Forever – Louise.” Other than a couple of investigators working on the case, nobody attended the funeral.

The case remained cold and his identity unknown until 1936, when Eleanor Ogletree read about the murder in The American Weekly. She believed the description of the man sounded like her brother, 17-year-old Artemus Ogletree, who they hadn’t seen since 1934, when he set off hitchhiking to California.

The family had assumed he was okay because in spring of 1935 – months after “Roland T. Owen” died – they had received several typewritten letters from Artemus, claiming he was sailing to Europe. The family were initially suspicious of these letters because Artemus couldn’t type. A few months after receiving these letters, they received a phone call from a man who told them that Artemus had saved his life in Egypt and that he was happily married to a woman he had met during his travels. The caller told the family that Artemus wouldn’t be sending any more letters because he had lost his thumb during a bar fight. The caller sound rushed and irrational, the family said.

The Ogletree family sent a photograph of Artemus to the Kansas City Police who confirmed their greatest fears.  It was Artemus, they unfortunately confirmed. While Mrs. Ogletree had been receiving these mysterious letters and phone calls, Artemus was dead.

While at least he was finally identified, this identification led to even more questions. Why had he used so many fake names? Who was the woman in his room? Who was Don? What happened to him the evening he was picked up by the driver? Who paid for his funeral? Who was Louise? Who sent the letters to his family?

And ultimately, who killed him and why?

Skidmore is a small and modest town in Missouri, situated approximately 80 miles northwest of Kansas City. Consisting of around 440 residents and a number of small family-run businesses, the farming town revolved around work ethic. This was something that the “town bully,” Ken Rex McElroy, staunchly rebelled against. ³¹

McElroy was never a popular man. Weighing in at approximately 270 pounds with bushy black sideburns, McElroy held the entire town of Skidmore under his thumb. Always armed with a gun, McElroy took whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and nobody dared asked questions.

Born in 1934, he was the 15^th out of 16 children born to poor sharecroppers, Tony and Mabel McElroy. Illiterate due to quitting school after just the fifth grade, trouble seemed to follow McElroy wherever he went. When McElroy was a young boy, he fell from a hay wagon on his family farm and as a result, a steel plate was implanted into his head. Many question if this was the catalyst that caused him to become the abominable character that he eventually morphed into.  ³³

His criminal career started off with petty crimes such as stealing livestock but this soon escalated, predominately in violence. Over the years, McElroy, who was a raging alcoholic and notorious womaniser, was married multiple times. He fathered a total of fifteen children with a hoard of different women, many of them being just teenagers.

Not one to care about the law (or quite clearly morals), he met his youngest and last wife, Trena, in 1971 when she was just 12-years-old. She fell pregnant just two years later. Unsurprisingly, McElroy mistreated Trena, who eventually attempted to escape his evil clutches by fleeing to her parents’ house with their new born son. McElroy refused to let her get away that easily; he followed Trena to her parents’ house and once there, he shot their dog and set their house on fire before bringing Trena back home where he physically abused her for her apparent misconduct.

Trena revealed the arson and abuse to a local doctor who in turn called a social welfare agency and put her into a foster home. Facing molestation charges due to Trena’s young age when he began a sexual relationship with her, McElroy discovered that if he were to marry Trena then she would be exempt from testifying. He knew all too well that Trena’s testimony against him was very damning. McElroy was granted permission to marry Trena by her panic-stricken parents after he threatened that if they didn’t grant permission, he would burn their new home to the ground. ³⁴

They reluctantly complied and the unlikely couple were married.

Throughout McElroy’s tempestuous life, he had been indicted on a range of crimes including child molestation, rape, attempted murder and burglary. However, the citizens of Skidmore were so petrified of his brutality and the revenge that he could potentially exact on them that everybody refused to testify against him. The whole town knew how violent and unpredictable he was. His lawyer, Richard McFadin, would later say that he defended McElroy in at least three or four felonies per year.

It almost seemed as though he was exempt from the law… at least until that fateful day when his reign of terror came to an abrupt halt when vigilante justice took over. McElroy’s ultimate downfall commenced in 1980, when one of his children – a daughter he had with Trena – was caught stealing a candy bar from a local grocery store. This grocery store was owned by 70-year-old Bo Bowenkamp and his elderly wife, Lois Bowenkamp. The Kansas City Star reported that Lois called the theft a “misunderstanding” and tried to make peace with the McElroy family.

However, with McElroy being the hot-headed aggressor that he was, he refused to let it slide and unleashed a barrage of terror on the elderly couple.

First of all, McElroy offered the elderly Lois cash to engage in a fist fight with his much younger and stronger wife before turning to the intimidation tactics that he knew so well. McElroy took to sitting outside the Bowenkamp residence in his truck and every so often, shooting his gun into the air as a warning sign.

“Oh, he was intimidating,” Lois Bowenkamp said. “You can’t know how awful it was. My neighbor and I took turns sleeping at night.” ³⁵

The stalking and harassment of the Bowenkamp family took a tragic turn for the worse on a pleasant summer’s night in July of 1980. Bo Bowenkamp was standing outside on the loading dock of his grocery store awaiting an air-conditioning repair man. McElroy drove up to the store, produced his shotgun, and shot the elderly man in the neck.

Miraculously, Bo survived his wounds but this senseless attempted murder was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This time, the small town of Skidmore would not forgive or forget this mindless attack on a defenceless and well-adored man.

McElroy was soon convicted of the attack. However, he was released on bail awaiting appeal, much to the shock of the entire community. Within hours, McElroy was ready to exact his revenge on Bo Bowenkamp and the witnesses that testified against him. The town rallied together and wrote a number of letters to the Missouri authorities, the governor, attorney general, and state legislators, expressing that they were living in fear of McElroy and wanted to finally see some justice but alas, their pleas were ignored.

An exasperated McElroy was soon seen in D&G Tavern, his local haunt, brandishing an M-1 rifle with a bayonet attached to the muzzle. This, of course, violated the terms of his bail. Richard McFadin, McElroy’s lawyer, somehow managed to postpone his appeal hearing not once but twice, much to the townsfolks dismay.

On the prickly-hot afternoon of 10 July, 1981, the town gathered at Legion Hall to contemplate what to do about McElroy after the second postponement.

The whole town was at the end of their tether with the barrage of intimidation and harassment that had been inflicted on them. They were also extremely wary as to what McElroy could be planning against them as revenge.

Simultaneously, McElroy and Trena were sitting the D&G Tavern having a couple of beers and getting rowdy completely oblivious to the uprising of the town. It’s not exactly known what was being discussed in Legion Hall – some think they were discussing how to keep witnesses safe while others think they were planning the demise of McElroy. Whatever took place inside that hall, when the meeting ended, the townsfolk made their way to the D & G Tavern where they encountered McElroy and Trena climbing into his Chevy Silverado.

McElroy was armed with his beloved rifle and a six-pack of beer.

Moments later, shots rang out and the town intimidator sat dead in his car, his bloody body riddled with bullets with his wife screaming in the front passenger seat. Ironically, he had been killed with the same sort of violence that he had revelled in over the years.

At least 40 people witnessed McElroy being shot and every single one refused to confess who had fired the fateful shots.

Nobody saw a thing.

Not one person called an ambulance as McElroy lay bleeding to death, surrounded by the wide-eyes of the town he had once held in fear.

As Postmaster Jim Hartman said: “I can’t think of anyone who’d seen it (the shooting) feel any different than you would about the people who invented penicillin. Nobody tried to hang them for finding a way to kill a germ.” ³⁶

When police eventually arrived, they discovered shell casings from both a .22-caliber Magnum and an 8mm Mauser. An investigation uncovered that McElroy had been shot by two separate people. One who had been positioned behind the truck while the other was positioned a half block in front of the truck. Regardless of the abundance of witnesses to the murder which took place in broad daylight, nobody was ever charged and the jury concluded that McElroy was killed by a “person or persons unknown.” ³⁷

Trena claimed she knew who one of the shooters was but with nobody to corroborate her claims, he couldn’t be indicted.

The town has kept its silence ever since: they feel as though they owe nothing to a man who vandalized and terrorized them for decades. It is a true tale of comeuppance that could have easily been avoided if the law and court had cracked down on McElroy when necessary. “I know why they didn’t talk – they were all glad he was dead. That town got away with murder,” his attorney would later say.  ³⁸

Heaven excelled in playing the trombone and it was something she absolutely adored doing. She could have been a professional one day and her mother never had to encourage her. Heaven’s family and friends affectionately gave her the nickname Shae. She had fiery red-hair and hazel-eyes and she most certainly wasn’t afraid of getting down and dirty with the boys. She could often be found romping around at the nearby creek with the neighbourhood kids.

Just because she was considered a tomboy by those who knew her and wasn’t afraid of a little mud, that doesn’t mean that she didn’t also enjoy the more feminine things that the world had to offer such a young girl. The Halloween before, she had dressed up as a cheerleader and had recently started to recall her daily activities and feelings in her bright pink diary. She delightedly wrote about the boy down the road who she had a crush on and how much she loved her big sister. Her bedroom was decorated with butterfly stickers. ³⁶

On the morning of 19 August, 2003, Shae left her home at Willowbrook Trailer Park, in Northport, Alabama, to walk the short distance to the bus stop on Hunter Creek Road. It was approximately 6:55AM when she departed, school backpack in tow.

Shae was a pupil at Collins-Riverside Middle School and she lived at home with her mother, Beth Lowery, her stepfather, Kevin Thompson, and her 13-year-old sister, Alex. Moments after she left, thunder came crashing down. Her stepfather decided that he would drive Shae and her sister, Alex, to school. He didn’t want them getting caught in the storm that was fast approaching. As he went outside to call Shae back, she was nowhere to be seen.

A neighbour later reported that she had seen Shae that morning at approximately 7:00AM on Creek Road, which is the road that the bus stop is situated on. She said that it appeared as though Shae was making her way toward the bus stop but she never made it to the bus. Beth immediately assumed that something perilous must have happened to Shae because it was far too out of character for her to run away from home or even play truant from school.

Shae was a home bird. In fact, shortly before her disappearance, she had planned on staying at her grandmother’s in Gulf Shores for three weeks but after just three days, she came back home because she was homesick.

Beth immediately called the police to report Shae missing, but much to her dismay, police refused to issue an Amber alert, claiming there was no evidence of a kidnapping. This was a case of a missing person as opposed to a kidnapping, they insisted: “We can’t call it abduction because if anyone saw it, they haven’t told us,” announced Northport police Sgt. Kerry Card.  ³⁷

Instead of issuing an Amber alert, police conducted door-to-door checks on the trailer park, asking if anybody had seen anything out of the ordinary. Shae was described as being 4’6” and weighing 80 pounds. Her tender age should have been cause for concern but alas, one couldn’t help but feel as though police seemed disinterested. On the day of her disappearance, she left the house wearing a hot pink Bratz t-shirt with some matching capri pants and baby blue suede tennis shoes.

Despite the lack of enthusiasm on the police’s part, the initial response from the community was immense, with the case attracting national attention. Winn-Dixie in Northport donated yellow ribbons for the volunteers in the search for Shae to wear. Olive Garden and K-mart provided food for the enthusiastic search parties, while Kinko’s, Office Max, and Kwik Kopy printed out fliers to be distributed with Home Depot donating the ink.

The U.S. Postal Service participated in a new program referred to as the Deliver Me Home Network. Mail carriers delivered over 16,000 fliers containing information regarding the disappearance of Shae to local residences and businesses. ³⁹

Shae’s photograph was broadcast on a large screen during a University of Alabama football game at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Texas-based Laura Recover Center, which is an organization that helps search for missing children, sent 60 of their members to Northport to offer assistance. The reward for information climbed up to a hefty $70,000.

If effort alone was enough to bring Shae back then there is no doubt that she would have come home one hundred times over.

For several weeks following her disappearance, volunteers were proactive in the search for Shae and gave up as much of their free time as possible. However, things eventually turned sour when volunteers got into a dispute with Shae’s family. Beth Lowery claimed that the leader of one volunteer group stole $500 that was donated by a church while volunteers accused the family of not actively helping them search for Shae. The apparent theft was something that Pam Channell, the head of the volunteers, staunchly denied, saying that had cashed all of the donated cheques and handed the money directly to Beth.

Police were called to a squabble that had erupted at the volunteer center. Soon, as is the case with many disappearances, the family fell under a cloud of suspicion. There was no denying that the family certainly didn’t live a picturesque lifestyle and they certainly wouldn’t ever be awarded with family of the year. In 2000, Shae was listed as a witness when Kevin was charged with harassment following a domestic dispute. As Shae had attempted to run for help, Kevin threw her to the ground. Nevertheless, Beth was adamant that Kevin and Shae had a very close bond: “They did everything together,” she asserted. ⁴⁰

In an attempt to alleviate the mistrust the community was feeling towards them, Kevin and Beth both took a lie detector test, with both passing. Beth declared that she thought the reason they fell under such scrutiny and were looked down upon was because they were an interracial couple, living in a trailer park.

The month after she disappeared, on the 18^th of September, police announced that they had picked up 21-year-old Evin Ryland for questioning. Evin was a friend of Shae’s older brother, Blake. In the past, Evin had harbored runaways and on one occasion, even helped Blake hide out when he ran away from home. When police eventually tracked Evin down, he was harboring two 16-year-old runaways. Police announced that he wasn’t a suspect and just wanted to speak to him because he was somebody of interest. He did know the family and certainly engaged in seedy activity involving underage teenagers, after all. He was soon ruled out as a suspect.

By the following week, the Ross family was subjected to even more misery when an inexplicable early-morning fire erupted in their trailer. Confined to Shae’s bedroom, it destroyed much of her possessions. Investigators could not determine how the fire started but they ruled it as suspicious.

As winter approached, Beth brought Shae Christmas presents and lay them under the Christmas tree in the hopes that she would return in time to open them. Christmas came and went and police were still no closer to figuring out what happened to Shae than they were when she first disappeared. As her birthday rolled around on the 11^th of June, her family released balloons featuring Shae’s photograph, but the day was tarnished by heartache and longing for her return.  It was challenging to remain optimistic when police still had no suspects. Every few weeks, police would receive a promising phone call from a concerned citizen who was adamant that they had spotted Shae. These calls came from countrywide and while they gave everybody a brief boost of morale, they all turned out to be false flags.

For the next three years, the Ross family held on to the hope that Shae would one day be found safe and sound. She could finally open all of the birthday and Christmas presents that her mother had accumulated over the years she was gone, they hoped.

This hope was obliterated when her skeletal remains were found stuffed into the crawl space of an abandoned house in Holt on 19 December, 2006. A man discovered her remains when he was walking his dog.  He told police that his dog had ran off and scurried into the tight crawlspace of the abandoned house, which is where he discovered Shea.

Lying beside her remains, nestled among trash and smashed bottles, was Shae’s school backpack. The area, which was along a dirt road just eight miles from Willowbrook Trailer Park, was known to be a magnet for antisocial activity as well as prostitution. Police never released her cause of death, but did confirm that she had been murdered. It seems reasonable that, after three years in the harsh Alabama weather, her corpse would have been far too decomposed for a cause of death to be determined. Exposure to the elements made it impossible for any DNA or fingerprints to be lifted from her body.

Just a few months before the somber discovery, the family had held a vigil for Shae at the trailer park where they still resided. They released a number of balloons bearing a photograph of Shae: “We’re hoping that the balloons will just reach somebody that knows something about what happened to my daughter,” Beth said.  ⁴¹ Shae’s funeral took place at Wills Funeral Service Chapel on the 23^rd of December with more than 130 people attending to pay their final respects.

After three long and harrowing years, the grim, albeit long-suspected, outcome at least provided some answers and gave family and friends closure. However, at the same time, the discovery raised even more questions. Why was Shae killed? Was Shae killed by someone she knew? Did Shae accept a ride from a friendly face to avoid the approaching ominous weather? These are questions that the whole town of Northport have mulled over the years and continue to contemplate today. Her disappearance featured on several television shows, including America’s Most Wanted, and the generated dozens of leads, but as of yet, none of those leads ever panned out.

What really happened on that stormy day in 2003, remains a macabre mystery to everybody other than Shae and the person who took her life.

If you have any information about the murder of Heaven LaShae Ross, please call the Northport Police Department at (205) 339-6600.

What happened to Isidor Fink and more importantly, how?

Isidor Fink left his native Galecia, Poland, and immigrated to America in search of greener pastures shortly after World War One. After saving enough money, Fink opened his own laundry on East 123^rd Street in New York. He occupied a large ground floor apartment in which he used for business purposes as well as his own living quarters.

On 9 March, 1929, Fink returned to his apartment after delivering fresh laundry to several of his customers. East 132^nd Street wasn’t much of a safe neighbourhood. Robberies were rife and Fink was particularly cautious. He never left a window or door unlocked and would only grant entry to his apartment to those he knew. In fact, all windows and doors had multiple bolt locks. Fink was somewhat of a paranoid man, one could say.

“Some night, I’ll be robbed of everything, but they’ll have a tough job of getting in,” he joked with his customers. ⁴²

Shortly after Fink returned home at around 10PM, Mrs. Locklan Smith, who lived in the apartment next to his, ran to the Harlem police station to report hearing some loud quick shots – from a gun, she was sure – followed by a hard thud.

The first officer on the scene was patrolman, Albert Kattenborn, who discovered that the door was locked from the inside. He decided to attempt to enter via the small window which was on top of the front door but found that it been nailed shut from the inside. Kattenborn smashed the small window. However, it was much too small for any average-sized adult to fit through, and thus he sent a small boy who was in the crowd that had now congregated outside the apartment to crawl through the window and unlock the door.

Inside, the body of Fink was discovered on the floor. Two bullet wounds pierced his chest and another was through his left wrist.

When the apartment and surrounding area was searched, no weapon could be discovered. An investigation revealed that the only fingerprints found inside the apartment belonged to Fink. This baffled investigators… If somebody had killed Fink then how did they escape the apartment and lock the door and windows from the inside?

New York City’s finest investigators were sent to the scene but nobody could make any sense of it. The door had been bolted shut, the windows were unbroken and locked from the inside and there was no weapon. Nothing had been stolen from the apartment, including money which was found in Fink’s pocket, thus robbery was ruled out as a motivation.

The case held the public’s attention with many forming their own opinions as to what had really happened. Suicide was often a main theory but this too was nonsensical. There was no weapon, after all, and why would Fink have shot himself in the wrist before the chest? The coroner who examined Fink’s corpse said: “The man has been murdered. The position of the body and location of the wounds indicate, beyond doubt, that Fink could not have shot himself.”⁴³

Another more ambiguous theory was that Fink had created some sort of secret contraption, hidden in the walls, with which he shot himself dead with remote control. This theory was just implausible, however, because investigators searched the apartment from top to bottom and found nothing of the sort.

This case has mystified authorities and curious crime buffs alike for decades, yet still remains unsolved.

Further reading:

The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes by Robin Odell.

When an officer arrived, the teenagers directed him to the deceased body. The woman’s face was bludgeoned beyond recognition. She suffered a broken jaw, a broken eye socket, and her dentures had been smashed inside her mouth. She had sharp force injuries to the left ear, possibly caused by a knife. ⁴⁵

A model of her likeness could only be created after mortuary personnel reconstructed her face.

She became known as the Vernon County Jane Doe and was described as a Caucasian woman between 50 and 65 years old. She had greying brown hair which was worn in a perm and blue eyes. She was approximately 5 feet and a half-inch tall weighed around 150 pounds. ⁴⁶

On her abdomen was a 4” surgical scar and in her mouth were dentures with numbers 420 and 289 inscribed. Her blood type was O negative. She was wearing a black dress with a paisley print, a blue turtleneck sweater, a multi-coloured coat, and nylon stockings. On her feet, she donned tan slip-on shoes in a size 8.5B. Both the coat and dress were home-sewn.

While no attempt had been made by the killer to conceal her body, the labels of the clothing had been removed to prevent identification. Even more gruesome, her hands had also been chopped off and were never recovered. Again, this would have been to prevent identification via fingerprints. Did the killer think her fingerprints were on file somewhere?

After the case was publicised in local newspapers, a couple came forward to tell police that they had seen a suspicious man that same evening. He was climbing into the driver’s seat of a two-door yellow Datsun alongside US Highway 14 approximately three miles from the crime scene. When they directed police to where the car was parked, they found a broken denture, blood, and a men’s quartz Seiko watch. ⁴⁷

They also noticed fresh tracks in the gravel, indicating the driver of the car had made a U-turn. Police theorised that the suspect in the yellow car had pulled in at the side of the road in an attempt to dump the body when the couple interrupted him.

It was believed that she had been murdered elsewhere and then disposed of along Old Line Road. It is unlikely that she was a Vernon County resident but authorities believe she likely lived within 100 miles of where she was dumped.

Despite the fact that over 4000 leads were logged over the forthcoming years, her identity still remains unknown along with the identity of her killer. She was buried in the Viroqua Cemetery under a headstone which reads: “Jane Doe, found murdered on May 4, 1984.” The flowers which decorate her final resting place have been left by those touched by her lonely death. Hopefully one day, she can receive a headstone engraved with her true identity.

Do you think you know the “Vernon County Jane Doe”? Think back to 1984. Did you lose touch with a woman who was a friend, a neighbour, or just a familiar face? If so, tips can be called into the Vernon County Sheriff’s Department at 608-637-2123 or emailed to vcso@vernoncounty.org