Archive for the ‘cold cases’ Category

New Clues In Peter Tobin Investigation

Monday, March 1st, 2010

A new photo of young Peter Tobin resurfaced and presents the latest clue police are hoping will unravel the past of one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers.

photo of young serial killer Peter TobinOn the photo on the left, you can see a sex murderer Peter Tobin as a man of 27, who is now serving a life sentence for the murder of 23-year-old Polish student Angelika Kluk and is linked to unresolved disappearances of several other young women in Sussex. Police are hoping the image will jog people’s memories if they knew Tobin as a young man and give officers a clearer view of his past.

There are fears that he may have killed many more and could have been carrying out gruesome sexual attacks in the county undetected throughout the seventies and eighties. Among those suspected of being Tobin’s victims is student Jessie Earl who disappeared from her Eastbourne bedsit in 1980 and whose remains were found at Beachy Head nine years later. Police are also listing Louise Kay, who was last seen in 1988 dropping a friend home from an Eastbourne club, as a potential Tobin victim.

Police have been gathering information about Tobin’s life in Brighton and Hove since three people came forward saying they knew about his time in the city. Tobin is thought to have been a member of a Biker Gang called the Rising Sun and officers are hoping to trace members of that group as well as a woman possibly called Lesley who lived at a seafront hotel in the city in 1986 and whose parents are believed to have attempted to legally prevent her from seeing Tobin.

They are also trying to trace items of women’s jewelry that Tobin owned which could help identify more victims and reveal the full extent of the vile acts of one of Britain’s most evil men.

Read more articles about Peter Tobin: Peter Tobin may have been a serial killer, Bible John case, serial killer Peter Tobin linked to a pedophile ring.


To contact the Operation Anagram team about Tobin call 0845 6070999.

-article from www.theargus.co.uk rewritten and adapted by admin-

Rodney Alcala Convicted Of 5 Serial Slayings

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Serial Killer Rodney Alcala was convicted of five serial slayings, for the third time, after being sentenced to death twice for killing the Orange County girl, but both convictions were overturned. He is also suspected in up to 30 more deaths.

Serial killer Rodney Alcala on trial

A jury convicted Rodney Alcala, 66 years old amateur photographer, Thursday of murdering a 12-year-old girl and four women in the late 1970s, setting the stage for a possible death penalty in a legal saga that has dragged on 30 years. Jurors took less than two days to reach guilty verdicts against Rodney Alcala after six weeks of testimony. The penalty phase of the case begins Tuesday.

Police believe Alcala, who has been in custody since 1979 and has twice had previous convictions overturned, could be responsible for dozens more deaths in New York and Los Angeles in the 70s, and some even say he is a new Ted Bundy. Authorities said they were able to tie Alcala to the murder of four Los Angeles County women between 1977 and 1979. Investigators said they linked Alcala to the torture and murder of Jill Barcomb, 18; Georgia Wixted, 27; Charlotte Lamb, 32; and Jill Parenteau, 21, with DNA, blood and fingerprint evidence. Each murder carried a special circumstance charge that would make Alcala subject to the death penalty.

The Samsoe case, which was first tried in 1980, presented more of a challenge for prosecutors because it was built largely on circumstantial evidence. Murphy said he does not expect this third conviction to be overturned:
“This one is as clean as we can possibly make it for an appeal,” he said. “We’ve got a good jury and we feel very satisfied with the progress of the case so far.”

-articles by Gillian Flaccus and Nick Allen rewritten and adapted by admin-

Here is a Rodney Alcala’s case timeline by Kimi Yoshino:

(more…)

Suspected Serial Killer Rodney Alcala’s Trial

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Rodney Alcala, 66 years old former Los Angeles Times typesetter and amateur photographer, alleged serial killer with a genius IQ, is on trial for the murder of four women and a young girl between 1977 and 1979.

Rodney Alcala's headshotThe trial against 66-year-old Rodney Alcala is winding down after more than a month of testimony that included several bizarre twists in which the accused murderer questioned himself on the stand – Alcala is acting as his own attorney. Alcala is currently facing five counts of murder, with special circumstance allegations of murder in the commission of rape, torture and burglary. He is accused of the 1970’s brutal rape-murders of 27-year-old Malibu nurse Georgia Wixted, 21-year-old Pasadena key punch operator Jill Parenteau, 32-year-old Santa Monica legal secretary Charlotte Lamb, 18-year-old New York runaway Jill Barcomb, and 12-year-old Huntington Beach ballet student Robin Samsoe. Twice, Alcala has been found guilty of murdering Samsoe, but both convictions were overturned on appeal.

He is not hunting deer or pheasants,” said Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy. “He is hunting people. You’re talking about a guy who is hunting through Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it. Murphy told the packed courtroom that Alcala took his time terrorizing his victims by choking them with his bare hands, waiting for them to wake up at least once, then strangling them again — sometimes using shoelaces or panty hose. “It is a staggeringly horrific way to die,” exclaimed Murphy. “There is ample evidence the women put up some resistance….He gets off on it. It was fun.”

Alcala has pleaded not guilty to five counts of first-degree murder for the slayings of four Los Angeles County women and 12-year-old Robin Samsoe from Huntington Beach in the late 1970s. At the center of the prosecution’s case is a gold ball earring that prosecutors and Samsoe’s mother say belonged to the 12-year-old girl with Alcala’s DNA on it. Prosecutors say the earring was found in a jewelry pouch in a Seattle storage locker rented by Alcala. He has focused much of his defense on the earring and has argued that it was his. In a bizarre twist, Alcala showed jurors clips of himself as the winning contestant in a 1970s episode of the TV show “The Dating Game” to prove that he was wearing the gold ball earrings before Samsoe’s death:

“You’ll see my hair go up over my left ear and you’ll see a little flash of gold,” he told jurors. “You need to look closely, but there are two little specks there.” In one of the strangest moments, Alcala said the earring wasn’t Lamb’s. Instead, “It was an earring with Charlotte Lamb’s DNA” on it. The jury should begin deliberating on Tuesday.

Alcala has been in custody since his arrest and has remained in prison while prosecutors appealed both overturned convictions. He was one of the first inmates to arrive on death row after California reinstated capital punishment. Did he really kill all five women and was he trying to say the police planted evidence to convict him remains unclear. Even if they can’t link him to the murder of 12 years old Samsoe, there are still four other deaths.

-articles by Carlin DeGuerin Miller and Christine Pelisek rewritten and adapted by admin-

Suspected Irish Serial Killer To Be Freed

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Larry Murphy, a suspected Irish serial killer is due to be freed in August this year, authorities have confirmed. Murphy is one of Ireland’s most notorious criminals and he is a suspect for the disappearance of some of the six women missing in Leinster in the 1990s.

One of the Larry’s victims is believed to be an American Irish woman, 26-year-old Annie McCarrick, from New York who returned to Ireland in 1993 after attending college there and falling in love with the place. The last thing anyone knows for sure about her is that on the morning she disappeared, she’d run errands at the local bank and grocery store. What happened after that is a mystery. One witness says she saw Annie later that day on a No. 44 city bus. The bus route ends in the pretty Irish small town of Enniskerry in nearby Wicklow where Annie often visited.

Murphy was eventually convicted of the rape of a Carlow businesswoman who he took to the Wicklow Mountains, but she was saved when men out hunting came across him assaulting her.

Murphy is a suspect for the disappearance of some of the six women missing in Leinster in the 1990s. Police investigated him in the disappearance of Jo Jo Dullard, Deirdre Jacob and Annie McCarrick in the 1990s. Missing woman Jo Jo Dullard was last seen in Moone, Co Kildare, just 13 miles from Humewood Castle. The other victims were also in the area.

Larry Murphy’s ten-year sentence is now up, just as police are investigating what may be a hidden grave just two miles from his old home. Police confirmed they conducted an examination of the open plot last month and removed earth fragments for analysis. One of the men that made the new grim discovery told the Evening Herald how the hole looked remarkably like a grave: “My friend and I were shooting in the wooded area just outside the grounds of Humewood Castle when we discovered this strange hole,” he said. “It was dug out like a grave. It was six feet long, two and a half feet wide and three feet deep. It looked like it was dug a number of years ago, there was moss growing in it. It is in a pretty open area and can be seen from the road.”

Murphy refused to cooperate with the police, and seeing how there is no evidence to prosecute him or even confirm there is a serial killer, the case remains open, and Larry is getting freed.

-article by Patrick Cooper rewritten and adapted by admin-

New Look At Unsolved Colonial Parkway Murders

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Between 1986 and 1989, at least eight people (four couples) were murdered along a Virginia route known as the Colonial Parkway. All four cases involve the slaying or disappearance of young people who were traveling by car in isolated areas. Two people are missing or presumed dead. The person responsible for these murders has never been caught.

The FBI believes those crimes are related (they were all young couples in “parking” situations in secluded areas), and there is a serial killer on the lose who is responsible for these killings and that person may have been (or remains) in law enforcement, possibly a police officer or security guard. Even though the case was never closed, it got attention again after a series of crucial photo evidence reached the public.

The first two victims were Rebecca Ann Dowski, 21 and Cathleen Marian Thomas, 27. Their bodies were discovered On October 12, 1986, inside their car. The vehicle had been pushed down an embankment. An autopsy found rope burns on their necks and wrists, signs of strangulation, and their throats had been slashed. Their purses and money were found inside the car. Both women were found fully clothed and there was no evidence of sexual assault.

In September of 1987 the bodies of David Knobling, 20, and Robin Edwards, 14, were discovered in the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge. They had been murdered. The area they were found was on the south shore of the James River in Isle of Wight County, near Smithfield, Virginia. They were discovered about a mile down the river bank. Knobling’s truck was parked at the Refuge several days prior to discovery of the bodies.

On April 9, 1988, Cassandra Lee Hailey and Richard Keith Call were reported missing after going on a first date together. Call’s 1982 red Toyota Celica was found, abandoned on the Colonial Parkway in Yorktown, Virginia the following day. Neither body has ever been found, but both are presumed to be dead.

In October 19, 1989, the bodies of Anna-Maria Phelps, 18, and Daniel Lauer, 21, were found in New Kent County by a hunter in the woods near a rest area on Interstate 64 between Williamsburg and Richmond. They were found covered with a blanket. They had been missing since the previous month.

Four slayings are being handled by the FBI: two people killed — and two who disappeared and are presumed dead — on federal property along the Colonial Parkway. Four others are being investigated by Virginia authorities: the Phelps and Lauer slayings and those of David Knobling, 20, and Robin Edwards, 14, both of Newport News, whose bodies washed ashore on the James River at the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge.

Agents met this month with members of the families in the FBI’s four cases and state and local investigators have recently met with the families of the Ragged Island victims. Also, last month, the FBI announced that, among other things, it was sending 130 pieces of evidence from its two Parkway cases for advanced DNA testing not available earlier. But Corrine Geller, spokeswoman for the state police, said last week that, “at this time we have not resubmitted any evidence. I can’t get into why because it’s an ongoing investigation.” But, she added, “it has nothing to do with the cost.”

Whatever their reasons are, the justice must be served because these victims can’t be forgotten, and all four cases deserve closure. It’s been 20 years since the last murder connected to parkway serial killer, and it seems like all the new technology still can’t do much about it. If you’re interested to read more about this case, I suggest you to go here.

And if you have any information concerning the Colonial Parkway murders or any of the victims, you’re advised to contact:

Virginia State Police at 757-424-6850
and/or
Federal Bureau Of Investigation, FBI Special Agent Crosby Brackett at 757-435-4708 NCIC Number: M-871430466

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