What Happened to these Cold Cases V5 | Stories of the Supernatural - Stories of the Supernatural

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, this is Marlene with Miami Ghost Chronicles and I
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Hi everybody, this is Marlene with Stories of the Supernatural
and this week we're going to revisit cold cases. This

(01:22):
is going to be volume five of this series. What
happened to these cold cases? And let's travel back all
the way back to the nineteen seventies, all right. The
first story involves children, unfortunately, and it's known as the

(01:43):
Rochester Alphabet Murders. Between nineteen seventy one and nineteen seventy three,
three young girls were taken, raped, and killed. It was
theorized the murderer specifically chose them based on their names,
so that their first name and surname started with the
same letter, and the girls bodies were dumped in parks
as started with the same letter as their name. Their

(02:04):
names were Carmen Cologne, Wanda Wakowitz, and Michelle Manza. Cologne
was found in Churchville, Wokowitz and Webster, and Maenza and Macedon,
inspiring the moniker the Alphabet murders or double digit murders.
The three girls had other similarities. They were all ten

(02:26):
or eleven years old. They had recent problems at school,
such as bullying and poor academic performance, and came from
poor Roman Catholic families with absentee or dead fathers. All
three mothers were on welfare. The three disappeared in the
early afternoon on days when it rained. Each girl was

(02:49):
thrown or carried from a car to where the body
would later be found. All three were viewed as lonely
outcasts by their peers. Carmen Cologne was taken on Novembers sixteenth,
nineteen seventy one, when she was returning home from an errand.
She went to Jack's drug Store to make a purchase
for her grandmother, but loved since the prescription had not

(03:10):
been filled. She was seen getting into a car park
close to the pharmacy. Less than an hour after Carmen
left the pharmacy, over a hundred motorists driving along Interstate
four ninety saw a child naked from the waist down,
running from what appeared to be a dark colored Ford Pinto,
which was reversing in pursuit of her. Despite the child

(03:33):
waving her arms, no one stopped, and one of the
witnesses saw her being led back to the vehicle by
eight p m. That night, Carmen was reported missing. She
did not live with her mother, but with her paternal grandparents,
Felix and Gandidac Cologne. Two days later, two teenagers found
a partially nude body and a gully close to I

(03:53):
four ninety and close to the village of Churchville, about
twelve miles from where she was last seen alive. Her
coat was three hundred feet from her body, and a
few days later her pounds were found close to the
service road where she had been seen trying to escape
from the man in the pinto. The autopsy found she
had been raped, Her body was extensively scratched by finger nails,

(04:16):
and her skull and one of her vertebrae were broken.
She had been strangled to death. A reward of six
thousand dollars was offered for the arrest and conviction of
the murderer. In nineteen seventy two, five large billboards were
erected along expressways in Rochester. The advertising company who owned
them allowed the sign headline with do you know who

(04:38):
killed Carmen Coloonne to be displayed for free. In the
months prior to Carmen Cologne's abduction and murder, her grandparents
had noted her sleeping patterns had become frequently disturbed by
recurring nightmares. These nightmares Cologne experience were often so violent
a child would fall from her bed. Recurring nightmares is
a classic symptom of the distress felt by victims of

(05:01):
child sexual abuse. Seventeen months would pass before another girl
was killed. This time it was Wanda Walkowitz, age eleven.
Like Carmen, she disappeared while returning home from an errand.
She had gone to the delicatessen and was last seen
on April second, nineteen seventy three. She was reported missing

(05:21):
at eight p m. Fifty detectives immediately searched around her home,
the delicatessen, and the area around the Genesee River where
she was known to play. She was seen by neighborhood
residents and three classmates struggling with a large bag of groceries.
Her father had died five years before from a heart attack,
as she would frequently run errands for her mother. Her body,

(05:44):
fully clothed, was found the next morning at the bottom
of a hillside at the Bay Ridge Rest stop on
Route one O four in Webster by a New York
State trooper while on patrol. This was about seven miles
from Rochester. It was the deuce she had been thrown
from a moving via. She was raped and strangled from
behind by a ligature, possibly a belt. The girl had

(06:06):
defensive wounds indicating she had fought back. She was redressed
after she was dead, and seamen in pubic hare was
found on her body. White cap for was found on
her clothes, even though the Walkowitz did not own a
pet with its color fur this time, the reward for
information was ten thousand dollars. An eyewitness told police that

(06:27):
as Wanda walked home, he saw her standing next to
the passenger door of a brown vehicle while she talked
to the driver. Another person who called the tip line
said they had seen a red haired girl that matched
Wanson's description being forced into a light colored dodged dart
on Conky Avenue. The police did not believe this case
was related to Carmen Cologne's murder. A local television network

(06:50):
broadcast a reconstruction of the crime, but this failed to
produce any useful leads. Relatives who visited Wanda's grave site
said that for fifteen years, an unknown visitor had been
cleaning her gravestone and placing flowers. Michel Maenza eleven was
the next one abducted seven months later. On November twenty sixth,

(07:10):
nineteen seventy three, she failed to return home from school,
and she was last seen at three twenty p m.
As she walked from school to a shopping plaza to
pick up a purse her mother had left inside a
store earlier that day. Within ten minutes, a witness saw
Michelle sitting in the passenger seat of a beige vehicle
speeding down Ackerman Street before turning on to Webster Avenue.

(07:35):
The child was crying. Two hours after Michelle was seen
going to the plaza to pick up her mother's purse,
a motorist saw a man standing by a large, tanned
vehicle with a flat tire. This was at Route three fifty.
He was holding a girl by the wrist. It was
believed this was the abducted Michelle. When his motorist stopped

(07:55):
to offer help the man, he grabbed the girl and
pushed her behind behind his back. He also obscured his
license plate. He stared in such a menacing manner that
the Good Samaritan left. Two days later, Michele Menza's body
was found lying face down in a ditch about fifteen

(08:16):
miles from Rochester. She was fully clothed and her autopsy
found she had received extensive blunt forced trauma to her body.
Then she was raped and strangled by a ligature, possibly
a thin rope like Wanda white cat Fir was found
on her clothing. A partial pomprint from her neck, and

(08:36):
traces of semen on her body and underwear were taken
by investigators. The semen's samples found she was raped by
one person. Traces of a hamburger were found in her stomach,
eaten about an hour before she was killed. This corresponded
to a report of a girl matching Michele's description seen
with a white man with dark hair, about aged twenty

(08:58):
five to thirty five at who was about six feet tall,
about weighing one hundred and sixty five pounds, at a
fast food restaurant in Penfield. All these girls were buried
in Holy sepulch Or Cemetery in Rochester, New York. After
Mens's death, the police released a composite drawing of the

(09:21):
man scene with a child by Now, authorities suspected all
three murders were connected, and the handiwork of one perpetrator.
They had several suspects and leads, but they would not
release any information to the press. Six years passed before
Rochester police gave the name of Kenneth Bianki as a suspect.
Bianchi was one of two men known as the Hillside Strangler.

(09:44):
Ten women in California and two from Washington were murdered
by Bianchi and his cousin, Angelo Buono. Bianchi was not
indicted until nineteen seventy nine for the murders. Kenneth Bianchi
was born and raised in Rochester. His mother was a
seventeen year old old alcoholic prostitute who gave him up
for adoption when he was two weeks old. The Bianchis

(10:05):
adopted him, and even as a young child, he had
serious behavior problems. When he was twelve years old, he
pulled down a six year old girl's underwear. Bianki worked
as an ice cream vendor near two of the murder scenes.
He was twenty years old when Carmen Cologne was killed.
He moved to Los Angeles in nineteen seventy six, when
the notoriety of the Hillside Strangler made the news. Was

(10:27):
one authorities in Rochester New York compared notes and realized
his car matched the description of a vehicle reported near
the scene of one of the Alphabet murders. Bianchi denies
committing the murder of the three girls. He was sentenced
to six terms of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
Former FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood said the palm print taken

(10:51):
from Michelle Menz's body did not match Bianchi. He is
eligible for parole in July twenty twenty five. His accomplice
in the California murder, Angelo Buono Junior, died in two
thousand and two while serving his life imprisonment sentence. In
later years, it's been debated whether the Rochester victims were
picked due to the double initials of their names. If

(11:13):
this was true, it would require for the murderer to
have stalked them for quite some time. Others believed that
even though Wanda and Michelee were killed by the same perpetrator,
Carmen was killed by someone different, possibly related to her.
She was strangled by bare hands instead of with ligatures
like the other two girls. Was there a killer who

(11:34):
was inspired by the synchronicity of Carmen's murder and decided
to duplicate it, or was it just pure chance. Sexual
homicide offenders perform more intimate forms of killing their victims,
such as strangulation, the preferred methodic sphyxiation, and beating. Miguel Cologne,
Carmen's paternal uncle, was considered a strong suspect. When Guillemina

(11:56):
Cologne separated from Carmen's father, Houscinia Cologne, she had formed
a relationship with her brother in law. Carmen usually walked
to the pharmacy with her grandfather, Felix Cologne. However, on
the date of her abduction, she pled with her grandparents
to be allowed to go by herself. Carmen's grandparents returned
to Puerto Rico after her death and died there weeks

(12:18):
prior to her murder. Miguel Cologne was known to have
bought a car matching the vehicle seen by the witnesses
reversing up I four ninety. When investigators search Cologne's car,
it was found the interior and exterior had been extensively
cleaned and the trunk was washed with a strong cleaning solution.

(12:39):
The dealership where the car was bought from confirmed they
had not washed the trunk with any detergent. A dough
belonging to Carmen was also found in the vehicle, although
family members that the girl frequently traveled in the car
and may have left it behind. A friend of Miguel
Cologne told investigators that two days after Carmen's death, Miguel

(12:59):
told them planned to leave the country as he had
done something wrong in Rochester. He left to Puerto Rico
four days after the discovery of the girl's body. Investigators
traveled to San Juan in nineteen seventy two to question him. However,
local newspapers tipped them off of their arrival and he
fled from authorities. He surrendered on March twenty sixth and

(13:21):
was extradited back to Rochester for more questioning. He could
not provide an alibi for his whereabouts when Carmen was killed,
and no witnesses could come forward to corroborate his story.
Since there was only circumstantial evidence as to his guilt,
he was not indicted for the murder. On February nineteenth,
nineteen ninety one, Miguel Cologne, now forty four years old,

(13:44):
shot and wounded his wife and brother in law before
killing himself. It seemed that Carmen's mother, Guillamina, had married Miguel.
He shot her in the neck an arm, and her brother,
Juan Melendez, thirty five, in the chest. Police responded to
reports of shots fired confronted Miguel Cologne when he stood
in the doorway of his home. He pled with the

(14:05):
officer to shoot him. He then turned the gun on himself.
The family all lived together in the same house, located
at sixty three Radio Street, and apparently the fight started
when Miguel lashed out at his wife and when her
younger brother intervened, he shot them both. An investigator with
the local police said he was having a lot of

(14:25):
financial difficulties and was very jealous. If he was Carmen's killer,
he took his secret to the grave. Dennis Termini, a
twenty five year old fire fighter and resident of Rochester,
was another suspect in the murders. He was known as
the garage rapist who raped fourteen young women between nineteen
seventy one to nineteen seventy three. He did own a

(14:47):
bage vehicle and he lived at one five nine Box Street,
close to where Michel Manza was last seen alive. Five
weeks after Michele's murder, Termini tried to abduct a teenage
girl at gunpoint. She wouldn't stop screaming, and he fled
the scene. He tried to abduct another girl, However, this
time police pursued him and he committed suicide by shooting himself.

(15:10):
A forensic examination of his car found traces of white
cat fur. In two thousand and seven, his body was
exhumed for a DNA sample. Termini's DNA was compared to
seamen taken from Wanda's body, and it confirmed he was
not responsible for her death. Some of the detectives involved
in the case believed he was not the garage rapist

(15:31):
since this perpetrator was known to mostly use a knife
and Totermini had a gun. Victims described with her attacker
had a strong body odor and mostly used the knife,
but had also threatened with a gun and a broken bottle.
The garage rapists would change his attire every time he
committed a crime and wore glasses. Pains were taken not

(15:53):
to publish Termini's photograph in the newspapers, which seems counterproductive
as perhaps an unnamed rape victim would have recognized him.
There was one suspect who flew in under the radar.
His name is Theodore F. Given Junior. Don Tubman, retired
kop who now works as a private detective, believes Given

(16:16):
is most likely the man who murdered Walkowitz and Menza.
He lived in the same neighborhood as the girls, and
they might have even known him. Tubman co authored Nightmare
in Rochester, the double initial Murders with Michael Benson. Benson
maintained a correspondence with Given, who sent him all sorts
of material. Given had a history of crime. In nineteen

(16:39):
sixty three, he was arraigned on burglary, larceny, and malicious
mischief charges. He and another teenager had escaped from New
York State school and started to break into vacation cottages.
In nineteen sixty six, he was indicted on third degree
burglary and petty larceny after he broke into a laundromat.
He was sentenced to five years set to spire. On

(17:00):
November eleventh, nineteen seventy one, he was released and put
on parole. In nineteen sixty eight, pose returned to jail
for violating his parole. He went back to prison from
April nineteen seventy one to January nineteen seventy two, when
he was finally released. This exempted him from being the
person who killed Carmen Cologne. However, he was out in

(17:23):
the streets when Wanda and Michelle were taken. In August
nineteen seventy four, he was accused of kidnapping two nine
year old girls and raping one of them. He was
driving a gold colored nineteen sixty five Plymouth Valiant. This
was similar to the car the girl's described that picked
them up in Lyon's Park. Given then confessed to the

(17:43):
crimes after his arrest, and a mental examination was ordered
for him. He was found guilty and sent to prison,
but by nineteen eighty six he was out and re
arrested for six auto thefts. In nineteen eighty seven, Given
admitted to raping an eleven year old. He pled guilty
to first degree rape. He snuck into a house in

(18:04):
September of nineteen eighty six with a bandana over his
face and raped a child while she was in her bed.
He was sentencedro up to twenty five years, but was
held after his term was completed. He was detained under
civil confinement in westmore than prison after courts decided he
was a danger to the public. Civil confinement is the

(18:25):
formal legal process by which a person convicted of violent
sexual offenses may be kept in prison upon completion of
their sentence if a court believes them to be a
threat to society. In twenty twenty three, Given seventy six
was released and returned to live in Rochester. More than
fifty years have passed since these children were killed. The

(18:48):
sole remaining physical evidence pertaining to the girl's murders are
the seamen's samples recovered from the body of juand the Wacowitz.
All physical evidence recovered from the bodies of Cologne and
and their respective crime scenes have been lost or destroyed.
Hopefully advances in DNA will solve this case using forensic
evidence taken from Wanda Wakowit's body. And then one has

(19:13):
to ask where they are all killed by the same
person or some posit Carmen coloone was killed by a
different man. Very interesting, a very interesting story. Indeed, Now
for our next case, it's nineteen seventy five and location

(19:35):
is Michigan and these are known as the ann Arbor
Hospital murders. Now in in six weeks time. Between July
and August nineteen seventy five, twenty seven patients at the
Veterans Administration Hospital and Ann Arbor, Michigan, were stricken with

(19:58):
respiratory arrests that left them unable to breathe without mechanical aid.
Some patients suffered more than one attack. Eleven died by
the time the physicians realized that there was something inexplicable
happening as to why they died. The deaths were investigated

(20:19):
and it was proved that eighteen of the patients, nine
of which died, had received unprescribed doses of pavilon. This
is a sathetic form of karrari which is used sometimes
by anesthesists as a muscle relaxant. Federal agents, because of
the nature of the crime, came to investigate the case,

(20:41):
and they found that most of the respiratory arrests happened
in the hospital's intensive care unit during the afternoon shift.
All of the victims were given this drug intravenously, and
the FBI agents found that pavilon was pumped into the
feeding tubes because injection in the larger ivy bottles would

(21:05):
effectively dilute the dosage. The FBI then The federal investigators
then went further and they started looking at the work schedules,
and they finally started to focus on two Filipino nurses,
thirty one year old Lenra Perez and twenty nine year
old Filipina Narciso. Filipino Narciso she became one of the

(21:31):
first suspects, mostly because since the poisonings occurred in the
ICU where she worked. All but two of the suspected
poisoning they happened during the shift that she normally worked. However,
when they did dig into specifically those days, they found

(21:54):
that she was on duty. Apparently maybe she had taken
an extra shift, so, in other words, she was on
duty for all of the events. Later was determined that
because the other two poisonings occurred on a Saturday, not
a regular day for narcisso again she was on duty
for these as well. In other words, those two times

(22:16):
it just so happened she had worked outside of a
regular schedule. When the agents looked at the the correlation
of the poisonings with the work schedule of the entire
hospital staff, only Narciso was on duty in the hospital
during every poisoning, which says quite a lot Now Narciso

(22:42):
was also identified by one of the patients which was victimized.
His name was John mccruary. He was injuried by the
FBI two days after the poisoning. Now he recalled that
he had seen a nurse known to him as Pa
like Pia, inject something into his ivy tube. This was
minutes before he went into respiratory arrest, and it became

(23:06):
known that Narcisso's nickname was Pia. It was necessary then
for the agents to be sure that this is that
he had seen what he said he had seen, so
they called Leonora Perez, but at this time she was
not a suspect yet, and another nurse named Bonnie Weston

(23:30):
came into the room on a pretext, and McQuary didn't
identify either as the nurse he had seen. Then the
agents had Narciso come into McQuary's room, and as soon
as she came in, his pulse elevated, his heart monitors
started to alarm, and as soon as she left her room,

(23:53):
he said he told the agents that's the one. Now.
As compelling as McCarry's identification was, ultimately it was ruled inadmissible.
When this went to court, and as a matter of fact,
the reason being that two days after identifying the narcisil
mcquarie had heart bypassed surgery and during the surgery had

(24:14):
a cardiac arrest and almost died. Following the surgery, FBI
goes back interviews him again, but now his stories changed,
which based unknown facts, could not have been accurate. Now
what happens is and this is I think why his
initial description and interview where he named her, he was

(24:37):
diagnosed as having suffered brain damage and he died prior
to trial, and that's why his identification of narcisa was
ruled inadmissible hearsay because he could not be available for
cross examination. Now, the other nurse, Leonora Perez, she didn't
become a suspect until later into the investigation. This again

(25:00):
the sources another patient victim by the name of Richard Neely.
He tells agents that he saw Perez injects something into
his IVY tube and what the agents did was in
order to help his memory, they hypnotized him. This was

(25:21):
uncharted territory and possibly the first time that hypnosis was
going to be used on an FBI case. A hypnotist
and psychiatrist by the name of doctor Herbert Spiegel was
called in to place the gentleman in a trance. Now
what under hypnosis? Neely seemed to more vividly recall the

(25:42):
moments prior to his breeding failure. But Neelie, like McCrary,
died before the trial began. Now, in addition to Neey
a family member of Charles Gasmeyer, he was another one
of the victims identified Perez as a suspect. Then, on
July twenty ninth, Richard Grasmeyer, the son of Charles Gasmeyer,

(26:05):
had entered into his father's room and he saw nurse
near the head of the bed by his father's bed
doing something with the ivy apparatus shattered back to him,
so she did not see when he came into the room,
and he stood there for about two minutes. His father
was sleeping, and then all of a sudden, he sits

(26:26):
up in the bed and collapsed. Charles Gasmeyer was actually
going into a Pavlon induced respiratory failure. Richard Gasmeyer identified
the nurse as Leonora Perez, and to come from his identification,
the FBI set up a lineup of eighteen women, all

(26:46):
wearing nurse's uniform. Fifteen of which were Asian, and of
course this is because both of the nurses that were
in question were Filipino origin. Gasmeyer immediately identified Perez as
the nurse he had seen in his father's room. Richard
Gasmar did testify to what he had seen. At the trial.

(27:08):
At the beginning of the deliberation, some of the jurors
believed that the two nurses were innocent, but as all
the testimony was reviewed and compared, each juror had become
convinced that the nurses were guilty. And they also concluded
because there were so many contradictions and inaccurate in both

(27:31):
of the nurse's testimony, both Narcisso and Perez that they
were lying, and they did so repeatedly. After the trial,
several of the jury members were interviewed and they were
very candid about the deliberations and their conclusions. Now, in
July of nineteen seventy seven, this was about thirteen days.

(27:54):
After thirteen days of deliberation, the jury found both Narciso
and Leonora guilty of three counts of poisoning and conspiracy
to poison patience. Now, these reports were also incomplete. In
other words, this was such a complex case that very

(28:15):
few people in the public understood the prosecution's case and
how badly the nurse's testimony had gone against their own defense.
The verdicts were overturned on appeal five months later. Charges
were dismissed against the pair in February of nineteen seventy eight,

(28:36):
and no new suspects were ever named. Despite the government's
insistence that at least five persons right and perhaps eleven
were deliberately murdered by some unknown member of the VA staff.
Remember this was a veterans administration hospital. Many believed there
was also a political motive not to find the nurses guilty.

(28:57):
No motive was suggested in the case, and like the
identity of the elusive murderer, remains a mystery today. Filipino Narciso,
who remained living in Michigan, passed away on October twenty eight,
twenty twenty four. I'm not sure what has become of
Leonora Perez, but when you read a lot in the aftermath,

(29:19):
you could tell that there was like a political because
from what I understand, one of the judges did not
acquit them, but was going to allow them to go
to trial again, and then it just went away. But
you could see that there was a lot of activism
and political goings on where it looked like both of
these ladies had been killing these these veterans had been

(29:42):
like an angel of death kind of deal. Now let's
go on to our next case. Part of these murders,
which start like late nineteen sixty nine into nineteen seventy
were dubbed the geological murders, And you'll see what I mean.

(30:03):
But that's a nice way of putting in. And as
we go further, you're going to see that what seems
like a group of murders looks like there's a wider
ring that some people believe that we're all done by
the same person or persons. But let's start this is

(30:24):
for nearly a year, in other words, this is the
first ripple of murders. It's nearly a year. From December
nineteen sixty nine to November nineteen seventy nine unsolved murders
were attributed to one perpetrator by Northern California police. And
like all these murders, when they start occurring, they do
not think they're connected, but then as they keep happening,

(30:46):
the police realize that they are connected. Normally, it was one.
The bodies were usually found in ravines, and they were
being killed close to a seasonal solstice or equinox. These
are periods during the calendar which are also known as
ritual days for Satanists, which might not have anything to

(31:08):
do with astrology or was it coincidental. Now two of
them were murdered on Friday the thirteenth, and some believe
there were six more killings that were the handiwork of
the same person, which ended in December nineteen seventy three.
The first was Leona Roberts. She's aged sixteen. She disappeared
on December tenth, nineteen sixty nine. Initially it was thought

(31:32):
that she had been kidnapped. The newspapers mentioned her mother
was a psychiatric tech at nap A State Hospital. Did
they believe there was a connection to the girl's disappearance. Now,
Leona had gone to visit a friend of hers named
Greg Vio, who's twenty one. He's a barber. He's a
friend of hers and her fiancee whose named Bernard Feister,

(31:55):
and he's away serving in Vietnam. He had been recalled
in October to go to Vieta. Now she had gone
to Greg's apartment after leaving where she worked at, which
was known as the White Front Store, and she had
worked there till five pm. He wasn't there, so she
had agreed to cook him dinner and she I guess
she had access to the apartment. She's in there, there's

(32:18):
a woman who lived upstairs, and she hears a terrorized
scream at about six thirty pm. Then she sees a
blue station wagon drive away like ten minutes later, another
neighbor saw a man milling about the station wagon and
he was described as being in his twenties, five feet eight, stocky,

(32:39):
with short blonde hair, and he was wearing a brown
jacket and brown pants. This neighbor called the police after
hearing the scream, and they arrived at six forty five
pm and then left. Now inside greg VIA's apartment, a
Christmas tree was knocked over and it was found in disarray.
In other words, that she had been taking from inside

(33:00):
the apartment. Leona's mother denied she had ever run away
and was very cautious about her surroundings. She had started
to work as a cashier to earn Christmas money because
one of the first things they look at you remember,
she's sixteen years old, that she was a runaway, but
when you read her mom she sounded like she was
she was very aware of what was going on with her.

(33:23):
She was working as a cashier, and she had no
history of drugs or anything like that. Now, on December twentieth,
this is ten days after she's disappeared, a partial skeleton
is found on a beach at the base of Lighthouse Point.
It had no legs, hands, or feet attached. There was

(33:44):
also no clothing. Now it was ruled out that the
remains belonged to either Leona or another girl named Elaine
Davis was seventeen years old. She had vanished from her
home in Walnut Creek on December first, This is a
week before Leona. And one of the things, because of course,
remember this is nineteen sixty nine. You know, without these parts,

(34:08):
like the hands and all this other stuff, they were
kind of limited as to how they could id the person.
So an extray of the torso indicated belonged to a
woman in her twenties. Apparently there was something there that
indicated that these two girls, who were teenagers, it was
too old for them. So on December twenty ninth, again

(34:32):
this is now three weeks more, it wor take Leona's
nude bodies found the Umbellina's Beach in Marin County. Within
a few days, her identities confirmed, and it's believed that
she was dumped into San Francisco Bay and that she
floated through the Golden Gate. Now, an autopsy failed to

(34:52):
find the cause of death, and ultimately it was described
as a viral infection. I don't understand that I didn't
go deep in infto that. However, her wrists were marked,
which indicate she had been bound before death. Now fast
forward three months or so. It's March sixth, nineteen seventy

(35:13):
and Cosette Ellison, she's fifteen years old. She disappears she
had walked across the road to pick up mail after
she came home from school. A pickup driven by a
man was seen in the vicinity of the mailbox. Her
body was not discovered until January first, nineteen seventy one,
in the Mount Diablo Foothills. She had no broken bones,

(35:36):
but some teeth were missing. She was found by someone
looking for bottles in a culvert. The girls lftan was
missing and there was no clothing on the remains. Hikers
had found girls' clothing along Morgan Territory Road in July
nineteen seventy, and it wasn't until the discovery of the
remains that Cossette's parents were shown the items they positively

(35:59):
identified them as belonging to their daughter. This discovery was
two weeks before the vernal equinox. The cause of death
was never determined. Her parents had offered a ten thousand
dollars reward during the time she was missing, but no
one ever came forth with information. Now it's March of
nineteen seventy. All search is going on for the missing

(36:23):
Cosette Ellison. Remember she's now found for like ten months
or so. This a week after she disappears. The strangled
body of Patricia King, a coed at Diablo Valley College,
was found near the press box at the college football field.
She was nude from the waist down and a pair

(36:44):
of black dancing tights was tied around her neck. She
was found a day after her disappearance. The police could
not establish a motive since she only had eight dollars
in a wallet which was missing. Despite having been found
so quickly after the murder, the police were very vague
to why she had been raped. Or not. Within days

(37:05):
of the disappearance of Cosette Ellison and Patricia King being
found dead, Judith Hakari, aged twenty three, disappears after leaving
her job at Sutter Memorial Hospital. This is March seventh
and thirteen, days before the Equinox. Her vehicle is found

(37:25):
parked at home, and it's believed she was abducted before
she made it inside. Her fiancee who she was to meet,
who was waging in the apartment. After a while, he's
wondering what happened to her. He wants outside into the
parking lot, finds her car unlocked with the keys there,

(37:46):
goes around the complex looking for her, and he finally
calls police about two am to report her missing. And
again that's from that point on she had totally dropped
off the face of the earth. Fast forward about forty
five days. It's April seventeenth, nineteen seventy and Judas's savagely

(38:08):
beaten body is found by bottle hunters in a shallow
grave three miles east of I eighty near Wimar and
Placer County. This they found her amid an outbuilding where
they saw human knee sticking out from the ground. She
was still wearing her engagementry. Besides being beaten, she was
raped and strangled with her own nylon stocking. Toustrips similar

(38:31):
to those found in her car were found in the grave,
and police believed they were used as gags. Her body
was stuffed in a canvas bag. No DNA of the
suspect was found. The police traced back the manufacture of
the canvas bag and found it had been a special
order from the San Juan Unified School District. Below her body,

(38:51):
they found a gray sweatshirt that didn't belong to her.
When detectives completed interviews at Suttern Memorial Hospital this is
where she worked, that they learned that a young man
with a reddish beard and hair had come to the
hospital earlier asking for Judith, but employee records showed three
women with that name work there, and most people knew

(39:12):
the missing woman as Judy. After Judy's body was found,
the Weimar property owner recounted seeing three young men about
a week after she went missing. When they're talking this
is the property where the body was found, that although
they were dressed nicely, they were digging a hole on
his land, which struck the man odd He approached them

(39:34):
to ask what they were doing, and one of the
men closed the trunk of their car as if to
obscure something. He said. They claimed to be digging for bottles.
Police released a sketch of one of the men, who
was described as slender, six feet tall with brown hair.
No suspects were ever identified. This is the part where
I think something about them scared this guy off, because

(39:55):
if he's the owner of that property, why didn't he
order them to leave, or at the very least white
didn't he returned after the left to sea. You know
this Apparently searching for bottles was something of a hobby
back in nine the nineteen seventies in California. But anyway,

(40:15):
next girl, her name is Marie Antoinette Anstey. She's a
stamm Sorry, she's aged twenty four, and she had filed
forty wars from her husband Donald in January of nineteen seventy,
two months to the day her nude bodies found at
the Lake and Napa County Line by picnickers. She had
a wound on the back of her head and the

(40:36):
body was sitting in brush about fifteen miles southwest of
lowerk Lake. She had disappeared on March thirteenth. Police were
looking for wolkswagon type buses and several hippie type males
were camping in the area near to where the body
was found, and autopsy determined that mescaline was found in
Marie's stomach and bloodstream. Strangely, only hours apart, another death

(41:00):
was caused due to mescaline. The same findings showed for
Eva Blau seventeen. Her body was found March fourteenth in
a vacant not near Petaluma of females from the Sonoma
State College campus. She was only wearing a sweater and
kneelength boots. She had burns on her wrists, indicating she

(41:20):
had been bound. The investigators suspected the two deaths were connected, however,
there was no way to prove it. In nineteen seventy five,
two California lawmen felt the murder cases were the work
of a witchcraft killer. Sheriff Don Stopke or steep Key
or Steipecke I Guess said the killer appeared to be

(41:43):
the same man described in a booklet circulated to law
enforcement around California, which had been developed by the state
Department of Justice. Lieutenant Robbie Waters, head of the homicide
detail for the Sacramento Police Department, agreed with him this figure.
This suspect figured in the death of Carol Beth Hilburn,

(42:04):
who was found dead in November seventeenth, nineteen seventy in
a field in the northern part of Sacramento. She was
nude and beaten to death. There was another case in
Monterey County which fit the pattern. It involved the death
of Donno Marie Brown to fourteen, whose body was found
in the Salinas River September nineteenth, nineteen seventy four. Remember

(42:26):
they're having this meeting in nineteen seventy five, so all
of these groups of murders have occurred maybe within the
last four years, four to five years. Then Donna A.
Las she's a nurse, disappears on September sixth, nineteen seventy
from a Lake Tahoe casino where she worked as a
nurse there. This was two weeks before the autumnal equinox.

(42:50):
On September twenty third, her car was found parked at
her apartment complex. The following day, an unknown male placed
telephone calls to Donna's landlord an employer to inform them
that Donna Lass would not be returning because of a
family emergency. This information was false, So who called? Nobody knows. Everybody,

(43:12):
of course thinks that this was the killer. In nineteen
eighty six, a skull has found that immigrant gap. This
is high End the Sierra Nevada along Highway twenty. In
December of twenty twenty three, a match was made between
DNA taken from the skull and Donna's sister. It was
come from this was Donna Lass. However, in nineteen seventy five,
she was yet to be found. Remember when they're having

(43:34):
this meeting, all these uh sheriffs and they're comparing notes,
and they're realizing, you know, is this all these women
that are being abducted are there? Is it the same person? Persons?
She's she's disappeared, but she hasn't been found. And of course,
even when her skull is found in nineteen eighty six,

(43:55):
it's many, many years will pass before they even identify
its hers. Stripecki said that six of the Sonoma County
victims were nude when their bodies were thrown down embankments
in remote rural areas. All were white, They all came
from broken homes, had long hair, parted in the middle,
and had pierced years. He said. Other killings in northern

(44:17):
California and other western states thirty or more in Awe
bore resemblances to his cases. At a press conference, the
sheriff gave the profile a suspect and this is it. Male, white,
very strong, and capable of interviewing his victims before selecting
the one that met his criteria. The profile described with

(44:40):
a killer quote has a long standing problem someone who
had been admitted to state hospitals or local mental facilities.
One who has had a history of animal torture or
animal killings by strangulation or poisoning. As time has gone on,
he has transferred to this hostility towards human end quote.

(45:03):
He probably came from with this functional family with a
dominant mother and a passive father, with feelings of hatred
and total revenge towards the mother. Now, this is a
description given by a psychiatrist, a profile that they I
guess presented their information to quote. The manner in which

(45:25):
he has dumped these girls would tend to confirm his
marked low opinion of women, regarding them as garbage to
be dumped along the side of the road and not
even receive a decent burial. He has probably Caucasian and
has some kind of religion similar to that of the
Manson type, and which he would regard himself as some
kind of messiah or person who can resolve and cleanse

(45:47):
the world of these fallen women. End quote. Robert gray Smith,
author of the book Zodiac, lists six other murders that
fit the pattern. They are quote. Betty Clover twenty one
was shot and beaten by her killer during June nineteen
seventy one, her body discovered two days before the summer solstice.

(46:11):
Linda Olig nineteen was found beaten to death at Half
Moon Bay on March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy two, six
days after the vernal equinox, eighteen days before the autumnal equinox.
In September nineteen seventy two, Alexander Clary was beaten to
death in Oakland, her nwe body discarded like a broken doll.

(46:33):
Susan McLaughlin nineteen was stabbed to death and left with
out a stitch of clothing in March nineteen seventy three,
eighteen days before the vernal equinox, and Finally, eighteen days
before the winter solstice in December nineteen seventy three, Michael
Shane and Kathy Fechtel were shot and dumped beside a
road in Livermore. Now, if you part of what this

(46:58):
gentleman posits Robert gray Smith is if remember the Zodiac Killer,
part of their theory is that this was not one person.
That that's part of why he would wear that bag
with the Zodiac markings, is that they would be different
people who were doing these killings and they would just

(47:18):
put on this hood that the Zodiac Killer was known
for having. And of course everybody thought it was one person,
but part of the theory is that there was more
than one person. And again these were not soft targets.
There's been there were other rashes of murders where hitchhikers

(47:40):
with a target or prostitutes. As you can tell, these
young ladies were taken from their homes. Whoever wanted wanted them. Specifically,
they didn't want the drug addicts. They didn't want someone
running around the streets and hitchhiking. They wanted, for lack
of a better word, I want to use the word
pure but nicer girls, so much so that they even

(48:03):
went inside an apartment, which was risking a lot to
snatch them and take them away. So there you are.
There is what happened to these cold cases is you
can see most of them are technically cold cases, and
in some cases there's a very strong hint of who

(48:26):
maybe perpetrated some of the crimes, not all of them,
but again, whether the evidence is circumstantial or suspicion, that's
not enough. And as time goes by, more than likely
the killers are dead or very old, and most importantly, witnesses,
anybody who could come forward and actually give information that
maybe years ago they just were afraid to for whatever reason,

(48:50):
also have passed away. So hopefully, at some point some
of these cases are going to be resolved by DNA analysis.
So till next time, I hope. Do you like this
true crime episode

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