Other Crimes We Follow

[Ausgirl]

I realise not all of us are interested in crime in general, but there's quite a few who are. I'm curious about what other particular crimes people here might have become interested in over the years.

Personally, I read a lot about serial killers in the 90's, mainly as an adjunct to my old psychology degree - what makes 'em tick, etc. John Douglas' profiling books were a big deal for me, as well.

I've not been generally interested in a lot of other individual crimes, until this one, really, except in passing (I found the Keddie board via a search for Jonbenet, for my daughter, who's a budding profiler, ha). But through research for this board, I've become really interested in a few other similar cases.

The McDonald murders in North Carolina in particular. There's quite a few similarities to the Keddie case, in that there's a lot of bullshit surrounding it that had little to do with the actual victims.

[renosmom]

I too have an interest in serial killers. I recently saw a documentary on the "Original Night Stalker" (same as East Area Rapist)and thought there might even be a connection with this location as timing and location may have been a fit - I think someone also mentioned EAR-ONS in one of the threads and determined that it was not a viable lead. I don't have a ton of free time but I am planning to get to know this case (and continue with the Keddie case) as much as I can.

http://killertruecrime.forumotion.com/t ... ht-stalker

[Ausgirl]

I was over on websleuths, updating the Keddie threads there, when I happened to click the thread above it.

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61089

This, folks, is one INCREDIBLE story. I post it here because 1/ it's just damn fascinating. Sad as hell, and fascinating. And 2/ because they talk about sociopaths a bit. And 3/ it shows justice CAN and does happen.... despite the best efforts of the American judicial system And 4/ it's amazing and uplifting to see how people come together there to gather and share information and help each other.

I'm only about halfway through this very long thread, but I'm rivetted and can't stop reading. I'm hoping the families involved get justice, by the end of it...

[bigsis]

You folks give me hope that I'm not the only bizarre person who is obsessed with true crime. I've been fascinated with crimes - especially unsolved crimes - since I was a young person. In my teens my friends read "True Story" and I read "True Cimes". Glad to know I'm not alone! The McDonald murders have always had a place in my questioning mind - did he really do it? I'm not convinced.

And JonBenet? That beautiful little girl who has yet to receive justice. And - can't think of her name right now - the girl who went to ARuba - even though we know who probably killed her, it's still up in the air what happened. More LE ineptness???

Thanks for making me feel more normal????

[not sure]

I've obsessed with the San Francisco Bay Area missing girls cases from the 80s and early 90s. One of the young girls who disappeared without a trace, Ilene Mischeloff, was from my community. I knew her because she attended some of the same school functions as my kids. It was a search for info on her case that lead me to this case.

Plus, I've been keeping track with what was happening in the case of Tina Faelz, a young murder victim, also from the Bay Area. She was stabbed to death on her way home from school in '84 and it went cold pretty quickly. I'm pleased to say her murderer was recently identified via DNA and was apprehended a few months back!! His trial is in pre-lims. Another reason to keep hanging in there with this case!!!!

[MommylovesMax]

Somehow I stumbled on to the Martha Moxley case over a dozen years ago. I was very interested, and then later read Mark Fuhrman's investigation/book. It was a great victory when Michael Skakel was convicted and his appeal was denied.

I remember watching the Jeffrey MacDonald TV movie in high school psychology. I still wonder what the truth is in that case.

eta: I also feel so broken hearted about the Kyron Horman case. I long for answers for that family. I have a 6 -1/2 year old boy, and Kyron's disappearance is just horrifying to me.

[just a friend]

I agree about Jeffrey MacDonald. That is a very interesting one. I feel the prosecution really made their case, especially when they matched the pajamas with the stab wounds.

[Ausgirl]

What's truly weird about the McDonald case is pretty much of the same caliber and type of weirdness going on with cabin 28.

When you scratch the surface of this case, you start to see the same kind of unbelievable 'wtf' material that's turned up around Bo. Who was also in the Air Force. Seriously? Take a look some time at how many serial killers and other psychos have done a stint in the Air Force. It's ... weird. Anyway, to the McDonald case.

Tin foil hat time:

- Some of the people peripherally involved in the McDonald case were part of a hugely lucrative drug smuggling ring that was using the bodies of soldiers killed in Viet Nam to ship heroin to the States. Yup. They cut the bodies open, filled em with drugs, stitched them up and shipped them home, where Air Force personnel would remove the baggies before autopsy. This is a massively risky and unspeakably shameful crime, so needless to say there were some -very- dangerous people involved. The police were overwhelmed with drug-related murders, 31 of them all at once, and heroin in the military was to say the least a massive, massive problem at Fort Bragg.

- Helena Stoeckley, the "girl in the floppy hat", was the well-educated daughter of a high ranking officer. She was also a highly valued police informer. Yes, the cops took this teenaged heroin addict and further put her life at serious risk by asking her to narc on dangerous heroin dealers, while leaving her to continue her very useful-to-them drug habit. Go LE. She was also thought to be providing information about the high-level heroin trade through the Fort Bragg air base mentioned above. "Helena, after giving birth to a baby boy in June, was found dead-nude from the waist down-on January 14, 1983."

- Police found evidence that Helena and her friends were practising animal sacrifice in "black witchcraft" rituals at the home of a local drug dealer.

- McDonald worked at a heroin clinic, and was doing so at the time it was announced that doctor-client privilege no longer applied to addicts in the military. McDonald was responsible for several drug users and dealers being sent to prison, a fact known to other users and dealers.

- The FBI refused and still confuse to consider that any of these people were of interest in the murders of Mrs. McDonald and her children. Despite Helen's confession and also, much later, that of her boyfriend, violent drug dealer Greg Mitchell.

The list of oddness goes on and on and on - my own research has turned up peripheral connections to a few names that scarily coincide with fake names known to be used by members of Charles Manson's crowd. For example.

Did McDonald kill his wife? I actually do think it's possible. But there was SO much more going on around that family, deep and scary stuff involving military and police personnel, stuff that points just as hard at Helen Stoeckley's druggy pals as anything pointing to McDonald, which really ought to be considered:

One of the newer and youngest members of that satanic drug cult, 16 year old Helena Stoeckley, remorseful after the event, tried to help win MacDonald's vindication in later years by revealing a portion of what she knew, but the army's CID, the FBI, the Fayetteville Police Department, the prosecutor's office, and the judge in this case had very different ideas about what they were going to allow Helena Stoeckley to reveal before a jury. In May of 1982, Ted Gunderson and Fayetteville police detective Prince Beasley arranged for Helena to sit down in front of a film crew from 60 Minutes and reveal much (but not all) of what she knew about the murders and the events that transpired in the MacDonald home on that fateful night. Her filmed confession also revealed much about the official investigators and their motivations for framing MacDonald, who turned out to be the perfect patsy, in order to limit the scope of the investigation to MacDonald only and maintain the cover-up of a lucrative CIA drug pipeline running from Vietnam into military bases in the U.S using the body cavities of dead American soldiers being returned to America. The 60 Minutes interview was never aired.

And also:

Investigators from the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID), from the very beginning of their 'investigation' of the crime scene at the MacDonald home, were intent on setting up MacDonald to take the fall for the killings. It wasn't until some years later that the reasons behind the CID's mishandling of the crime scene, their concealment of key evidence (that would have proven the presence of other people in the MacDonald home at the time of the murders), and their "losing" of physical evidence under their control (which would have allowed MacDonald to establish his innocence), would begin to emerge.

Initially, MacDonald was exonerated of all charges following a long (nearly four months) Article 32 military hearing in the Summer of 1970. While the CID was trying their best to hang the murders on MacDonald, the fortuitous presence and oversight of a straight shooting Army hearing review officer by the name of Colonel Warren V. Rock saw through the devious machinations of the CID investigators and declared MacDonald innocent of the charges. Rock ruled that the CID charges against MacDonald were simply "nor true". But MacDonald made the mistake of publicly lambasting the vendetta prone CID investigators during an interview on the Dick Cavett television show in December of 1970 and that set in motion a decision to go after MacDonald with all of the advantage, might, and authority available to government prosecutors.

Despite the utter lack of legal authority and a violation of the Posse Commitatus Act, the same Army CID investigators who tried to frame MacDonald at the Article 32 Army hearing now launched into a 're-investigation' of MacDonald; following him into civilian life after he was discharged from the Army. This eventually led to a 1975 indictment and a 1979 jury trial (spearheaded by ex-CID investigator turned US Justice Department prosecutor Brian Murtaugh and North Carolina state prosecutor James Blackburn) that resulted in a conviction for MacDonald and the imposition of three consecutive life term sentences (the death penalty was outlawed at the time). Attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Harvey Silverglate have called the MacDonald railroading one of 'the worst cases of prosecutorial misconduct' in the history of United States jurisprudence.

Sorry for going on about it at length. It just fascinates me.

Is Marty a murderer? Yup. But there's so much else to consider. Confessions that lead nowhere. Protected informants. Cops "losing" evidence. Cans of worms all over....

[just a friend]

Very interesting food for thought Ausgirl. You know a lot more about the McDonald case than I do.

Someone mentioned Jon Benet' Ramsey. I have always felt that her parents did not kill her. Maybe the beauty pageants were a little strange, I don't know. I guess it depends on the person. There was a show on TV called Toddlers and Tairra's (I believe that was the name), and that is the same thing that Patsy was doing with Jon Benet. Patsy Ramsey had stage 4 ovarian cancer and she knew she was going to die. She wanted to spend time with her little girl. I just don't see her or John as the killers. I think it was an intruder. Some of the evidence is a little hard to explain, but I still don't think it was the parents.

And Natalie Holloway was the girl in Aruba.

[dmac]

I was looking up an old case in Twin Lake, MI, that I read about years ago to see if any progress had been made. None had, but I found a really good site http://www.delayedjustice.com/ He's made several excellent documentaries, including one on Janet Chandler, an old case from 79. I hadn't heard much about it in years, as it was thought to be a pretty standard motel robbery/murder. What raised red flags for me was that the guy who reported the crime was a security guard living at the motel. That's enough reason to bump him to #1 Suspect in my book, but he wasn't.

Fortunately, Schock and his students did a documentary on the Chandler case, and the Michigan Cold Case team then were jostled into working it for 2 years, leading to six convictions in what turns out to be one of the most disgusting, horrific cases I've ever seen. This was about as far away from a hotel robbery/abduction/murder as one can get and, yes, the security guard was fully involved. Along with about 30 others.

Schock's intro to the case: http://www.delayedjustice.com/?page_id=9

Dateline did a surprisingly succinct piece on the case, once Schock and the Cold Case team did the heavy lifting and brought the prosecutions and convictions. Their story is archived here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24792743/ns ... y-silence/

It potentially ties into the Keddie case, given that Wackenhut is so deeply involved in the drug trafficking DOJ and sheriffs departments were/are involved in (look back to the case of the Mariposa murders / "Queen's Accident" in Yosemite I posted about). Same assholes: drug-dealing Sheriffs, DOJ, Wackenhut, and Sacramento.

This is one horrible case and, as with Keddie, many of the people involved are still alive and 100% as guilty.

Oddly enough, minutes later I saw a rerun on TV of 20/20 or one of those other lame, condescending shows, and I would have skipped it had it not been about my poster boy for govt informants sanctioned to murder innocents: Scott Lee Kimball. Despite being a terrible show, they did manage to get across the fact the FBI lied to Kimball's victims' families, then mocked and belittled them, "hoping [they] would give up and go home and forget the disappearance of [their] daughter[s]". When we say Bo (and/or Marty or Dee, for that matter) was WPP, for a long time it has only been shorthand to the fact they were "connected" somehow, and protected by the very same scummy pigs who were supposed to bring justice to the victims, not suppress the truth and protect the perps.

[MommylovesMax]

Thanks for this, dmac. Visited the sites and watched the videos.

Janet Chandler's case is infuriating, depressing, and just f*ing incredible- but also gives hope that *this* case can be resolved as well.

eta: it really is beyond horrific to me. As much as I have seen and experienced in my lifetime, the fact that people can live for 30 years and sleep at night, have any semblance of a normal life after participating in such pure unadulterated evil....

It also makes me understand your tirades, dmac. I know your visit to Keddie really brought this case to life for you in an even bigger way. I have a lot more compassion for your tirades now. Your passion for this case may just inspire an ending like this one.

[Ausgirl]

Just for something different, and to get my head clear of Keddie for a while so when I'm playing connect-the-dots I can sidestep the bullshit more easily ---- I've been going spare over on Websleuths on a pile of really, really cold cases.

Made a little progress on the following, too, at least as far as research goes.

1. 1928 - Elfrieda Knaak: The Girl in the Furnace Mystery
- Warning. Not pretty. I mean, all murder is ugly, but this case freaked me the heck out. I'm gonna get to the bottom of it, though, or I'll ... eat my hat. Which will play havoc with the silver fillings.

2. 1951 - Lonnie Jones, Idaho
- Poor wee tyke. Bit of a mystery, too, but in a simpler if not sadder way. I'm less sure about the trail, here.

I consider my input on these cases as an act of claw-sharpening for when I'm back from my brief hiatus here. Plus, dead or not, the assholes who killed these people are just as much assholes as the assholes who murdered Sue and her kids and Dana, and I think they ought to be remembered as murdering assholes, in perpetuity. I aim to help that become a manifest fact.

I am feeling rather inspired.

[Intrigued]

For those interested in the Jeffrey McDonald case: If you do a basic search of his name you will come across a compilation of crime scene evidence from that horrific night. It gives an excellent visual representation of the savage nature of Collette's, Kimberly's, and Kristen's wounds. It also shows how McDonald escaped with mere supeficial wounds. We have to ask ourselves WHY would he escape almost unscathed while the everyone else was butchered. I have never come across crime scene photos from that night that did not include full, uncensored photos of the victims.

I am not bringing this up to offend anyone and I apologize if I do. It's just that the pics show the absolute unbalanced nature of Jeffrey's wounds in comparison to his wife and children. This is very telling!

The photos are so graphic and hard to stomach that I won't post the links here. The fact that they show murdered children is particularly hard on one's emotions.

Has anyone else seen these? What did these pics suggest to you?


FYI - I am not a gore thrill-seeker but am someone who always wanted to be a homicide detective or a crime scene analyst. But, I don't want to be a cop. I'm too girly, I guess.

[dmac]

I had looked into MacDonald after seeing a BBC documentary. I've long-forgotten the details, other than "floppy hat" wig, heroin, etc. I just did a small search because you said CS photos are abundant (in fact, they are not). There was no gore, thanks. I used four engines and un-restricted all results. No gore. The websites I did find are lacking in information, credibility, and base navigational value. Those sites SUK!

The MacDonald case is shaky at best: His crime scene was staged and molested, and the "investigators" (MP- military police) screwed the pooch. He screwed himself just as poorly as the scum cops around him DEFINITELY framed him. There is corruption and stupidity on both sides of this crime, no matter who you talk to.

McClish did a bit on MacDonald, but I am MILES away from trusting it. I want McClishing of the FIRST 100 interviews, not the ones from 71, 74, 78, 88, 98, 02, 08. This case is bullshit. In the end, I've seen one photo of the child on the bed with her skull crushed. And I've seen a chest shot of Mrs. MacDonald. Were he invaded by floppy hat to get drugs, they would have been given drugs that night. His story is bullshit, and he killed his wife and children to live the life he wanted - which he did until being convicted again.

I once thought him innocent, based on the aforementioned BBC documentary. A cursory glance today says he's 100% guilty, despite blatant corruption on either side of the argument.

I do not find sites about MacDonald that show intelligence, much less the photos you claim, but that's okay. I'm not too smart, but the damage done to the kids says he killed his wife in a fit of violence first, then swiftly destroyed his children after rationalizing how best to kill his kids. He sat there for a while, after murdering his beautiful wife, likely on the very couch he claimed he was asleep on, then destroyed the kids he claimed to be a father to.

I have NOT delved into MacDonald, and McClishing his words weeks, decades after the crimes has POOR VALUE. To McClish must be sudden, and MacDonald is a long-term liar. We have McClishing of Bo and Marty hours after the murders. To McClish MacDonald a year or decade later is worthless, because you can only notice he's lying about long-established lies and embellishments. You get it? To McClish has to happen close to the fact. Years later, the same guy is speaking differently. You need to look at MacDonald's statements immediately after the crime, but he was in military custody, and MP don't play by any rules you heard of in the movies. I doubt they recorded beatings. It wasn't Iraq.

I'm not too interested in MacDonald because he has the press already- Floppy Hat was NOT wearing a wig in Keddie that night, but LOOK AT THE HAIR EVIDENCE! There is about 2 tons of hair found in Cabin 28 on the victims, not mentioned in evidence reports. Just the autopsy reports!

I'm working the Keddie murders. That's it.

[Intrigued]

Okay, dmac. You asked for it. Sort of.... Is this graphic enough for you? Both sites are virus-free.

WARNING: DEAD CHILDREN!!!

http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f10/jeffrey-macdonald-autopsy-crime-scene-photos-22880/

http://www.thejeffreymacdonaldcase.com/html/cp-photos.html

[Chichibcc]

Seeing those photos was beyond heartbreaking.....how could someone slaughter his own family like this??? There are so many people out there who would love to have what he had, but he threw it all away, and for what?? Despite what his supporters say, I totally believe it was MacDonald who did this-the "intruder" story just sounds too hokey for me.

I think Freddy Kassab, MacDonald's former father-in-law, describes the true MacDonald to a "T," a description I read on this website:

"MacDonald's goals from the beginning to this day have been to impress, to prove his manhood, to con, to screw--whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted. Many men want a little bit of that kind of freedom, but the normal man, the normal man [with] a wife & a family, derives enough genuine & deep & lasting satisfaction from family life, that the balance between irresponsible 'freedom' & commitment to his wife & his children--whom he truly loves more than he resents--allows him to forego that kind of self centered freedom, without too much 'burden' or sense of entrapment. For MacDonald the balance tilted far to the other side--to the point where the resentment was volcanic, the love only paper thin. So there came to be specifically 4 people--not 7, not 2--who intruded most especially upon his 'space,' 4 people who got in the way of his being the macho celeb & playboy he needed to be in order to feel alive. 4 intruders-three white, one black--just like MacDonald told us. Who were they? I can name 3 of them: Colette, Kimberly (sic), Kristy. The 4th intruder--black not in skin but figuratively black: as yet unseen, dark, invisible--the half-grown baby that Colette was carrying, MacDonald's as yet unborn son, as it turned out to be--the 4th intruder.

"In MacDonald's fatal blindness--blindness to the deep & genuine feeling that animate ordinary people & unite them to their loved ones--in his fatal blindness, he murdered the intruders, all 4, & making himself free at last! Free at last--to live out his image of the big shot, the glamor boy, the stud. This is the unbridled egomania, the wanton disregard for the feelings, even for the lives, of those who intruded most heavily upon his dreams--that Joe McGinniss quite correctly labeled 'pathological narcissism' in his book, [Fatal Vision]. And I am being flown out here 2500 miles to be asked is Joe McGinniss' interpretation/assumption a fair one! Well, my answer is that how MacDonald dealt [with] his family shows me that in one detail at least MacDonald was an honest man--for though he lied as usual [with] his mouth, [with] his brain he told the truth. Yes, there were 4 intruders in his life. And out of his pathological narcissism, he killed them. I do not know of a narcissism more pathological than this."

[dmac]

I'm not interested, but thanks. I do look into other cases on occasion, out of a sustained but far more casual interest- like Janet Chandler, which I listed above. I did not know there had been a solution until recently, because I hadn't looked at the case for years. The solution is simply one of the most disgusting murders I've ever seen. Read up on it if you have a good therapist and a week of comp time from work to hide in your room and cry in anguish.

I do read a lot about crime and criminals by researching this case- any single idea or offshoot theory, I need more info on the basics behind it before I'm willing to commit to it. A perfect example is postmortem bruising. I cannot imagine how stupid I'd still be about this case without having researched that single aspect, and I learned far more than I was looking for, thankfully. It entirely changed how I see this case, my understanding of how it went down, and the focus of the attacks. In the end, that single aspect- postmortem injuries- is the outsider's best bet at solving this.

Looking at other cases is absolutely crucial in solving this one, I believe. The MacDonald case reminds me of Manson due to the nature, the absolute guilt, and the crappy work put in by pigs to obtain false convictions of the guilty. I don't find it helpful to solving the Keddie case, which is why I'm not interested, But thanks, anyway. I don''t mean to sound passive or ignorant or arrogant about it, so I decided to edit this post to detail what I research and why. It's all about this case for me, so anything else is mined for intelligence and dropped off the table afterwards. This is the only case I've ever looked into deeply, and it would take a similar cold case to spark my interest, if I ever get through this one.

[Chichibcc]

Being from Southern Michigan, I have definitely heard of the Janet Chandler case-it is incomprehensible how jealousy and resentment can cause people to be such savages to this kind, sweet young lady. She had been liked by everyone. One of my local news stations here had been following the case for quite a long time, and then the documentary eventually followed.

I'm so glad the sickos who killed her are rotting in jail, where they rightfully belong.

[dmac]

One in ten of the guilty are in jail, and the one who strangled her to death with her own belt while a roomfull of perps raped her got a deal from the prosecutors.

Without the hard work of the students and teacher, then the cold case team which followed due to an outcry, this case never would have been solved, but they only prosecuted the tip of the iceberg. It's a wholly disgusting case. Anyone who witnessed, participated, did nothing? They are the scum of the earth and deserve no pity.

[Intrigued]

Chichibcc -
Kassab was a class act. A real gentleman, IMO. He loved Collette like she was his own. I often thought about what it was like to suffer such an immense, gut-wrenching pain.

In JM's statement, he claimed that his wife yelled to him, "Jeffrey!! Why are they doing this to me!?!?". I think that what she really said was, "Jeffrey!! Why are you doing this to me!?!?". Liars tend to insert some truth into the lie so that it's easier to remember. I think it's evident in Kassab's quote above.

How could anyone, much less a parent, hurt such precious beauty? It is entirely painful for me to think about what they went through. The pain, the fear, Collette's protective mommy mode in full gear as she used her bloody body to shield one of her daughter's, according to crime scene analysis.

dmac -
I don't think you sound arrogant at all. I fully respect your decision to not want to view those horrible images. They would surely be sealed in your mind like they are mine. I will check out the Chandler case. It rings a bell. If it's the woman who worked at a motel and went to a party after work, then I know of it. I'll take a refresher course, though.