Investigators believe a serial killer was responsible for the slayings of three middle-aged homeless men who were stabbed to death last month. No possible motive has been disclosed.

The body of the first victim, James McGillivray, a 53-year-old man, was found December 21 near a Placentia shopping mall. The second victim, Lloyd Middaugh, a 42-year-old man, was found on a riverbed trail in Anaheim a week later. The third victim, Paulus Smit, who was 57, was discovered with fatal stab wounds outside a Yorba Linda library. Police have been warning homeless people throughout Orange County not to camp or sleep in secluded areas.

“We believe these murders were likely committed by the same suspect and feel he is extremely dangerous to the public,” Anaheim Police Chief John Welter said.

Police have been reviewing surveillance video from the scene of the first murder. The authorities released photos from the security footage that they hope will lead to the killer and a possible witness. Police say they believe a 2000-2003 model white four-door Toyota Corolla captured in the surveillance video could belong to the suspect or a witness, who police still want to speak with. Police obtained a photograph of a possible suspect from the same video as he approached the victim, later identified as James Patrick McGillivray, 53. The suspect is wearing a dark, hooded sweat shirt or sweater. Authorities asked for the public’s help in finding the killer.

Police are beefing up their patrols throughout north Orange County as a result of the killings. Authorities have formed a task force involving Anaheim, Brea and Placentia police departments.

“At this time we have not ruled out the possibility that there is one or more suspects, but all of those things are still under investigation,” said Anaheim Police Sgt. Bob Dunn.

If you have information related to these murder cases, contact the Anaheim Police Department at (714) 765-1944.

-articles from CBS.news and ABC Local rewritten and adapted by admin-

The 1974 disappearance and slaying of a 13 year old Georgia girl has been solved. DNA and other clues linked this case to a long dead serial killer who was blamed for murdering at least 18 people – Paul John Knowles.

Skeletal remains found in a wooded area off Ga. 96 in April 1976 recently were matched to the girl, said Gary Rothwell, special agent in charge of the GBI’s Perry office. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said agents were “reasonably confident” that Ima Jean Sanders was killed 37 years ago by Paul John Knowles.

In 1974, Knowles, 28, of Orlando, went on a killing spree across several states, killing at least 18 people, including a Milledgeville man and his teenage daughter. Carwell Carr, 45, was stabbed with a pair of scissors, while his daughter, Mandy was strangled in their home.Knowles was captured in a roadblock near McDonough on I-75 north of Macon in November 1974 after kidnapping a Florida state trooper and another man near Perry, Fla., and later killing them in Pulaski County. Knowles was shot to death by a GBI agent on Dec. 18, 1974, while attempting to escape from custody near Douglasville.

Ima Jean was living with her mother and her 4-year-old sister in Warner Robins, Ga., when she disappeared in August 1974. Her sister remembers getting upset when Ima Jean told her to stay at home while she hopped in a van with some friends. She never saw her family again. In January 2011, DNA samples from Sanders’ mother and sister, now living in Texas, were sent to a national DNA database containing DNA of convicted criminals and missing persons. The genetic data from Sanders’ mother and sister matched DNA from the girl’s skeletal remains. Using this information, investigators developed evidence to support the likelihood that Sanders was killed in 1974 by Knowles.

Investigators say a key piece of evidence in the case was a letter written in 1975 to the GBI by a former U.S. attorney, which summarized Knowles’ taped confessions to crimes.”

Sometime in August 1974, Knowles picked up a white, female hitchhiker named Alma who represented her age as 13 or 14 but who appeared to be in her late teens,” the letter states. “He carried this girl to a wooded area some distance from Macon, possibly west. He raped her and then strangled her and left her body in woods between trees.”

This week, the GBI medical examiner confirmed a DNA match, concluding that the skeletal remains belong to the girl. Warner Robins police Capt. Chris Rooks said the child’s remains are being released to the family so they can finally bury her.

-articles by Fran Jeffries and Jeff Martin rewritten and adapted by admin-

One of Canada’s most notorious serial killers, Michael Wayne McGray (47), pleaded guilty to first-degree murder of his cellmate and was sentenced to his seventh life term.

Michael Wayne McGray, strangled to death his 33-year-old cell mate, Jeremy Phillips, at Mountain Institution on Nov. 22, 2010. He was sentenced again to life without parole for 25 years. He was serving time for six previous murders, although he once admitted to killing 16 people across North America since his deadly rampage began in 1985.

The only thing that I regret is that it ended, he told a reporter last year from a prison cell in New Brunswick.

McGray told police after his arrest that Phillips wanted to stage a hostage-taking in which he would be tied up so that he could go to the prison infirmary and McGray could go back to Kent prison. But McGray said he became angry with Phillips and decided to end his “bullshit” and kill him. With a razor and nail clippers, McGray told police he cut up bedsheets to tie up Phillips. He said he strangled him for five minutes, and then punched him in the head to make sure he wasn’t faking death.

The Correctional Service of Canada has never explained why McGray was transferred from the Kent maximum-security prison to the medium-security Mountain Institution. The killes also said during an interview with the National Post a decade ago that he could kill again, even while in prison.

Just because I’m locked up in segregation doesn’t mean I can’t kill somebody, I have a chance every day.

-articles by Robert Freeman and Neal Hall rewritten and adapted by admin-

Cody Legebokoff, also known online as 1CountryBoy, a 21-year-old man who was already charged in the slaying of a 15-year-old girl has now been charged in the deaths of three women, dumping bodies in the backwoods during a year-long violent spree.

Cody Legebokoff was charged in late 2010 with first-degree murder in the death of Loren Donn Leslie, 15, whose body was found on a remote logging road last November, and has been in custody since then. Police arrested Mr. Legebokoff after a Vanderhoof RCMP officer returning from a meeting with colleagues spotted a 2004 GMC pickup truck speeding away from an unused logging of Highway 27 road at night. A conservation officer, who originally thought he was investigating a report of poaching, found the body of Ms. Leslie, whom police say had been murdered only hours before.

This week, RCMP disclosed Mr. Legebokoff is facing three further first-degree murder charges in the deaths of three women. All were reported missing between 2009 and 2010. Police found the remains of two, but have enough evidence to charge Mr. Legebokoff in all three. Stuchenko, 35, was found dead in a gravel pit off Otway Road, on the outskirts of Prince George, in 2009. Montgomery, 23, originally from Quesnel, was reported missing in August 2010. Her body has not been found, but police say they are working hard to locate her remains. Maas, 35, went missing in September 2010. Her remains were found in L.C. Gunn Park, in a remote area of Prince George, the following month.

On Tuesday, school superintendent Charlene Seguin said the chilling developments were at odds with the young man teachers recall as a student in the community’s secondary school. He graduated in 2008 and moved to Prince George, where he worked at a car dealership for about a year.

“He was a typical kid. There was nothing remarkable – I use the word to say there is nothing that would point us in this direction,” – Ms. Seguin said.

At a news conference in Prince George, attended by members of the media and representatives from local First Nations communities, police said they believe Legebokoff acted alone. They said the investigation was “far from over,” as investigators are looking for witnesses and additional victims. It’s believed Legebokoff used the internet and social media websites to meet women, frequently using the online name 1CountryBoy, and he lived in Lethbridge, Alta., from June 2008 to 2009, said police.

Police are asking anyone who had any contact with Mr. Legebokoff to contact them.

“There’s a possibility he’s meeting people online and that a lot of these people may be people we want to talk to,” Insp. Fitzpatrick said. “They may have information. He may have corresponded with them. He may have tried to meet them. They may know where’s been.”

-articles from CBC News and www.theglobeandmail.com rewritten and adapted by admin-

Tony Williams has uncovered a six-inch blade amongst the possessions of his distant relative Sir John Williams, which he believes was the one used by Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper – the name given to an unidentified serial killer who terrorized the Whitechapel district of London in 1888.

“New evidence has emerged which may identify an abortionist as Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer of women in Victorian London,” says John Smeaton of SPUC. “A knife and samples of uterine tissue belonging to Sir John Williams, a famous surgeon who performed abortions, have been discovered by one of his relatives. Sir John was recorded to have had performed an abortion on one of the Ripper’s victims.”

Williams was the surgeon to Queen Victoria and lived in London at the time of the slayings. He was known to his family at the time of the killings as “Uncle Jack.” He left the capital after the murders and went on to establish the National Library for Wales in Aberystwyth.

Tony Williams(49), Sir John’s great-great-great-great nephew, believes the blade he discovered also fits the description of the one used in the attacks. He said: “A pathologist at the time said the ripper had used the same six-inch knife in all the murders. He said it would have been at least six inches long, very sharp, pointed at the top and about an inch in width – a surgeon’s knife. I am convinced that this is the knife used by Sir John Williams to murder those women.”

He has published a book, that features the image of the blade, to expose his uncle’s guilt – “A lot of members of our family don’t really speak about it – I think they are a bit upset. But in my mind the case has been solved – it was Sir John Williams.”

- articles by Matt Quinton and Steven Ertelt rewritten and adapted by admin-

Lonnie Franklin Jr., 59 years old former car mechanic, who is already charged with murder in the slayings of 10 women whose bodies were found on the streets of South Los Angeles over two decades, using DNA evidence, ballistics and a 911 voice recording is now linked to the killings of six more victims.

Read Previous Posts on Grim SLeeper Case

The new cases raise the tally of potential victims to 16. Detectives are still look for additional victims, taking the unusual step of releasing photographs of dozens of women found at Franklin’s home, hoping the public could help determine if they too were victims, said the sources, who spoke of the condition of annoymity becuse the case was ongoing. “Twenty-eight years is the span of Franklin’s criminal endeavor,” said LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck, at a press conference Wednesday night at the Bethel AME Church in South Los Angeles. “We may never know how many young women Lonnie Franklin killed.”

The new victims, who range in age from 22 to 43, were allegedly tied to Franklin through physical evidence, said a police source with knowledge of the investigation, who requested anonymity because the additional cases have not been made public. In two of those cases, ballistic evidence showed that the bullets used to kill the women were fired from a gun Franklin is accused of using in other killings, while DNA and ballistic tests connected him to a third woman, the source said. Los Angeles detectives discovered the additional slayings after combing through hundreds of unsolved homicide cases and missing-person reports dating back to May of 1976. Franklin’s link to the other three cases is more circumstantial. Police concluded Franklin killed one woman based on a 911 call made at the time of the slaying to report the location of the body.

At the press conference, police identified two of the new victims as Sharon Dismuke and Georgia Mae Thomas. Dismuke was discovered shot in the chest in the restroom of an abandoned gas station in January of 1984. Thomas, who was 43, was found on a sidewalk in the 1800 block of 57th Street, just a block away from where Franklin’s mother-in-law owned a house, in December of 2000. She had been shot twice in the upper torso with a small-caliber pistol. The third victim, Regina Theresa Beaty, was found dead in an alley in August of 1992. Like the other victims, she was shot in the upper torso with a small-caliber pistol. The victim identified last April was Inez Warren. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies discovered her body in an alleyway off Western Avenue on August 15, 1988. She had been shot once in the chest. An anonymous person called in to report her murder. Police said they have since matched the caller’s voice to Franklin.

Please, take a look at the 180 new photos released by LAPD and if you think you can help, please contact the police immediately.

Link 1 and Link 2

-articles from The Daily Beast and LA Times rewritten and adapted by admin-

Former security guard a 40 years old Steven Hobbs, married Texas father of two, charged with killing and assaulting prostitutes for the past decade, may be linked to several other unsolved murders in Harris County, investigators say.

Hobbs, 6-foot-4 former security guard, has now been in jail for about two weeks, accused of murdering two women in Harris County and assaulting four others, dating back to 2002. He was apprehended after a motorcycle officer in Pasadena stopped to set up a routine traffic radar site. That’s where he discovered what Bernstein (Harris County sheriff’s spokesman) described as “the key to everything” – a badly decomposed body of Wanda Trombley, 57, who had been missing since July. The body was about 30ft from the entrance to where Hobbs was working.

They began questioning prostitutes in that area. One of them, caliming to be a victim of rape, described him as “large white man with reddish-blond hair and thick eyeglasses” Two other prostitutes also told detectives they were assaulted by a man fitting Hobbs’ description wearing a security uniform. When detectives showed photos to the first victim they found, she identified Hobbs’ picture, saying she was “absolutely certain” that he was the man who had assaulted her.

Hobbs was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault, and also charged with the aggravated assault of 28-year-old prostitute Danielle Perfitt in June. He was then charged over the 2010 aggravated assault of 33-year-old prostitute Sandra Gunter.

This week, the Harris County District Attorney’s office charged Hobbs with strangling prostitute and mother of five Patricia Pyatt, 38, in 2002, and sexually assaulting a woman, whose identity is being protected. He was also charged with murdering prostitute Sarah Sanford, 48, who was found nude and bound with handcuffs in a wooded area about five miles from Hobbs’ home. She had been sexually assaulted and shot in the head. DNA from the handcuffs used to bind her, and from her mouth, matched that of Hobbs.

Investigators said today they are using DNA evidence to probe at least 15 past killings and believe Hobbs may be the culprit in some of them. Tracking down all of the alleged victims will be tricky. “There’s no way to put a count on the number of unsolved murders of women who may have been involved in drugs or prostitution, or both,” said Bernstein.

Hobbs will appear in court again on Dec. 6, but the case probably won’t go to trial for another year while detectives continue to examine old cases for any connections to Hobbs, who may now face the death penalty. For now, detectives are asking other women who may have been assaulted to speak up. “The more we publicize this, the greater the chance that someone who would have not have come forward because of their illegal activities will come forward now,” said Bernstein.

-articles from ABC News and Daily Mail rewritten and adapted by admin-

More than three decades after the skeletal remains of 33 men were found beneath John Wayne Gacy’s house in a Chicago suburb, detectives have exhumed bones of eight unknown victims in hopes of establishing identification.

Gacy is known as one of the worst serial killers of all time. He murdered at least 33 teenage boys between 1972 and 1978 and buried 29 of them in a crawl space under his house located in the Chicago-area. Four others were found in Illinois rivers. He was able to lure the boys to his home with the pretense of sexual relations by sometimes impersonating a police officer. Gacy was convicted in 1980 and executed in 1994 at the age of 52.

The Cook County Police Department secretly began the process of exhuming the bones with the belief that DNA testing could solve the last mysteries of these horrific murders. Detectives are asking the public to come forward if they had a relative who disappeared between 1970 and 1978. Salvia tests could prove if the remains are a match.

“These are eight people that deserve more,” Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart said Wednesday. “These are eight individuals who right now are nothing more than just forgotten people that were murdered by one of the most evil persons to ever walk the earth.”

After so many years, the relatives could be anywhere, so the sheriff’s department is setting up a website and a phone bank to field calls from across the country. Dart doubts that all eight victims will be identified. But he is confident that the office will finally be able to give some of them back their names. “I’d be shocked if we don’t get a handful,” he said. “The technology is so precise.”

Those interested in giving a DNA sample can contact the Cook County Sheriff’s Office at 1-800-942-1950 or www.cookcountysheriff.com.

-articles by Cavan Sieczkowski and Cheryl Corley rewritten and adapted by admin-

Serial killer Edward Harold Bell (72), who is currently serving a 70-year sentence for 1978 murder of a U.S. Marine, has given multiple chilling confessions from his locked prison cell of abducting and slaying eleven teenage and adolescent girls in the 1970s, describing crimes even now unsolved.

Bell is serving 70 years for the 1978 murder of Larry Dickens, a Marine who confronted Bell after he exited his red and white GMC pickup naked from the waist down and began masturbating in front of a group of girls in Pasadena. Dickens’ mother watched from her house as Bell shot her son four times, emptying his pistol, then retrieved a rifle to administer a coup de grace. The “program” killings, as Bell calls them, began well before then. The victims were young girls from Houston, Galveston, Webster and Dickinson.

In disturbing letters sent to Harris and Galveston county prosecutors in 1998 — but kept secret for 13 years — Bell claimed to have killed seven girls, including two Galveston 15-year-olds shot as they stood tied up and half naked in the chilly waters of Turner Bayou. But in the latest interview given in September, he changed the number to 11, calling his victims “11 that went to heaven.”

He named three victims from 1971: Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, 15-year-old Galveston surfer girls and experienced water skiers who disappeared after hitchhiking, and Colette Anise Wilson, 13, who never arrived home near Alvin after attending a summer band camp. In 1998, Bell described murdering Ackerman and Johnson in letters written from a maximum security cell in Huntsville 17 years after the crime. They were last seen accepting a ride near an island ice cream shop from a man driving a white van. Their abductor tied them up, stripped them from the waist down and left their bodies in the bayou, records show. Bell maintained his serial killings were an outcome of a brainwashing program that compelled him to act like a “flasher” and then rape and kill the teenagers, six of whom were murdered in pairs.

Galveston prosecutors refused to present Bell’s written confessions to a grand jury. Harris County prosecutors never investigated the claims and subsequently lost the letters. And Bell refused to cooperate with police. Several investigators said not enough effort was made in 1998 to re-investigate the cases.“If you could get me immunity from prosecution of any kind, I could lay a lot stuff on you and I will,” Bell told the newspaper.

“The investigation certainly remains open,” said Sistrunk, who now works for the Brazoria County prosecutors’ office, “and what we can count on is that because of the work of (Paige), those before him, and other area law enforcement agencies that may become even more involved, we will reach a point in time where sufficient evidence will be made available to law enforcement that will let the case proceed to a grand jury for justice to be served.”

-article from Houston Chronicle rewritten and adapted by admin-

Police are getting an increased number of tips since they released sketches of two, out of five unidentified victims dumped on a Long Island beach by at least one serial killer, including a man dressed as a woman and a woman who may have worked as a prostitute.

Police have discovered the body parts of at least 10 people along Ocean Parkway since last December, at least four of whom are believed to be victims of a serial killer.

Click here to read previous post on Long Island serial killer case

This week police released composite sketches of two yet unidentified people, also believed to be victims of the serial murderer. The composite sketches depict a woman with long hair and an Asian man. Although only their bones were found, a forensic artist used the victims’ bone structure to recreate their faces.

The woman, dubbed Jane Doe No. 6, was approximately 5-foot-2 and was from 18- to 35-years-old when she died. The male was between the ages of 17 and 23 and stood about 5-foot-6. He was missing one of his top front teeth and two molars, and authorities reveal he was dressed as a woman when he died. Police believe both individuals met their demise about a decade ago.

A police spokeswoman said 22 tips have been received as of Thursday since investigators released sketches of two of five victims who remain unidentified. They also released photos of jewelry found on a female toddler found near Cedar Beach and the partial remains of a woman now believed to be her relative discovered seven miles away near Jones Beach State Park.

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Anyone with information is urged to call Homicide Squad detectives at 631-852-6396, call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-220-8477, text tips anonymously by texting “SCPD” to “CRIMES” (274637) or email information to www.tipsubmit.com. Suffolk County Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $25,000.

-articles from longislandpress.com and Crime Examiner, rewritten and adapted by admin-