Bizarre Cases of the missing and murdered

https://www.oregonlive.com/expo/new...&utm_campaign=oregonian_sf&utm_source=twitter

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Update on a case I covered previously:

After having phenotyping done with Parabon last year, the Carlsbad (CA) Police and San Diego County District Attorney's office have announced that they have identified a suspect in the murder of special-needs victim Jodine Serrin in 2007. They did not find the suspect in available databases, but they did find relatives leading them to identify deceased transient David Mabrito. It turns out Oceanside (CA) Police did have a sample of his DNA, but it had not been processed because he died shortly after it was taken. They used the sample to get a match.

This is the case where the parents walked in and found the suspect in bed with their daughter. They left the room to give them privacy, not realizing that their daughter had already been murdered. The suspect escaped while they waited.

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/lo...e-Murder-Suspect-David-Mabrito-500416982.html

This one includes the Parabon picture and parents' comment:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-serrin-solved-20181113-story.html
 


http://unidentified.wikia.com/wiki/Opelika_Jane_Doe

On Jan. 28, 2012, the partial skeletal remains of a little girl were found in the woods behind a mobile home park in Opelika, according to Police Capt. Shane Healey. The child, of African heritage, likely died between 2011 and 2012. Authorities determined Opelika Jane was between 4 and 7 years old. She was likely "abused and malnourished" before her death leading authorities to believe she was murdered. Her height, weight and eye color could not be determined from the remains but the FBI Victims Identification Project created a facial reconstruction that shows what she may have looked like. She has not been buried, Healey said. "Her remains are still being analyzed by forensic scientists for clues," he said.

In 2016, investigators received a tip including photographs taken during Vacation Bible School at Greater Peace Church in 2011. The pictures show the unidentified little girl who bears a strong resemblance to Jane Doe; however all attempts to identify the girl in the photos have failed so far and investigation is pending. She had a visible deformity with her left eye and may have been blind in that eye. All attempts to identify her through church and school records were unsuccessful.

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https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/indonesian-newlyweds-ate-alleged-rapists-genitals-police

In November 2015, an Indonesian man named Rudi Efendi murdered a man he suspected had raped his wife. Afterward, he cut off the man’s penis and took it home for his wife to cook. He and his wife ate the cooked penis.

Efendi had married his wife that September, only to discover she was not a virgin as he had previously thought. His wife claimed she used to be a virgin . . . until she was raped by the man, who worked as a driver, a week earlier. Efendi told his wife to call the driver for a meeting.

The driver honored the meeting but met Efendi instead of his wife. Efendi stabbed him to death before cutting off his penis and setting the man’s vehicle on fire. Efendi claimed he ate the penis to cure himself of the heartbreak caused by the rape. However, he denied his wife’s involvement and insisted that he acted alone. Police insisted the wife was an accomplice.
 
https://www.heralddemocrat.com/news/20180712/craft-sentenced-to-18-years-for-sons-murder

In 2017, 36-year-old Kristoffer Thomas Craft of Leonard, Texas, crashed his truck as he drank and made phone calls while driving. With him in the truck was his seven-year-old son, Colton Craft, who was seated in the front seat and was not wearing a seat belt. Craft crawled out of the wreckage. However, what happened next was unprecedented.

Instead of rescuing his son, who was still stuck inside the truck, Craft proceeded to rescue his cans of beer that had spilled on the road. He also stopped witnesses from helping Colton or calling 911 and tried to flee the scene. Craft was charged with felony murder after Colton died of his injuries.

During Craft’s trial, it was revealed that he had previously crashed his truck while drinking and driving. The officer who responded to the accident told the court he found almost 100 beer cans around the vehicle. It was obvious that Craft was trying to clear the accident scene so that police would not know he was drinking and driving.

However, Craft denied killing his son and had his lawyers convince the judge and jury that the incident was second-degree manslaughter and not murder. Craft received an 18-year sentence for manslaughter
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http://doenetwork.org/cases/649umms.html

The unknown victim was struck by a drunk driver while hitchhiking on I-59 just north of Highway 49 on the ramp to I-59 northbound in Hattiesburg on December 1, 1998. The driver left the scene and was later apprehended.

Prior to losing consciousness, the victim told responding paramedics that his name was Steve Hex (Hicks) and that he was from West Virginia.

He passed away on May 1, 2002 from complications that were the result of the hit and run accident.
 
Ok, so I already watch a lot of documentaries on serial killers and unsolved crime.

I've really taken an interest in Australian crimes & criminals.

I have been researching a little more on Ivan Millat recently, who the police know killed 7 people.

There's been some more recent docs on the man and there's more reason to believe he killed a lot more than the 7 people known. Maybe in the 20's. Especially given how many foreign tourists visit Australia and hitch hike.

http://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/milat-ivan.htm

This first one mentions the more missing persons cases around the area towards the end.


This second doc mentions also how it is now thought he may not of acted alone and how a sibling might of been an accomplice.
 
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http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2009/02/08/man-posing-as-renter-tortures-kills-homeowner/510/

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/homicides-and-sexual-assaults/victim-oakey-al-kite-jr

Oakey "Al" Albert Kite, Jr. was, by all accounts, a warm and friendly individual who had bounced around the United States (and even lived in Algeria for a time) working as an accountant / payroll professional. In 1998, 47-year-old Al moved to Aurora, CO for work (again as an accountant / payroll professional). The Denver area was a good fit for Al as he loved the outdoors (biking, hiking, skiing). He purchased a large town-home with the hopes of renting out the downstairs/basement area to tenants to provide extra income. Al settled into Colorado nicely: he had found some nice tenants to live with him; he had met and started dating a woman named Linda; and of course, he enjoyed Colorado's many outdoor-friendly attractions.



However, by 2004, Al would fall victim to a brutal and senseless murder that would leave many in the Aurora area (and really many who hear about this) traumatized and desperate for answers. At the start of 2004, Al's longtime tenants had moved out and his downstairs / basement space had become vacant once more. In an attempt to find a new tenant, Al listed a post in the local newspaper. A man who called himself Robert Cooper (not his real name) responded to the ad, and this would be the person to torture, brutalize, and viciously murder poor Al Kite. Cooper claimed that he had been reloacted to the area for his job at Wells Fargo. However, it would later be determined that no one matching Coopers name and description had ever worked for Wells Fargo; nor did any one working for Wells Fargo transfer into the area at that time. Al, of course not knowing any of that, thought the man seemed fine enough to rent to, so he offered him the downstairs area. Cooper signed the appropriate paperwork and even paid a deposit. Although the stranger's money was good, it was later determined that all of the essential information on the paper work had been falsified. Cooper's one request was that he asked Al to help him with a piece of furniture: a heavy recliner chair. This chair, it is believed, would ultimately be the chair that Al would be tortured and die upon. Al, being a nice guy, of course obliged to help the man. However, first Al needed to take his girlfriend to the airport, as she had planned a weekend get-away trip with some friends.



That would leave only Al and Robert Cooper alone at the home for the weekend.



On Friday, May 22, 2004, after dropping his girlfriend off at the airport for a trip she had already planned, Al returned home, and as promised, helped Robert Cooper with the large recliner. Unbeknownst to Al at the time, each cumbersome step down the stairs was slowly sealing his grisly fate.



It is believed that Cooper struck and subdued Al after he helped him get the recliner into the basement. Cooper then bound Al by the wrists and ankles and set him in a chair -- possibly even the recliner chair that he had just moments ago struggled to help Cooper carry down the stairs. After binding Al, Cooper went upstairs to fetch knives from Al's kitchen. Cooper then slowly tortured poor Al over several hours with Al's own kitchen knives. That night, Cooper stayed upstairs, sleeping in Al's bed; eating Al's food; showering and using the restroom in Al's bathroom. Then, he slipped off into the night (either on Saturday or Sunday) vanishing like a ghost or the grim reaper he had become.



By Monday, when Al didn't show up to work -- and when no one could reach him -- Al's sister (who lived out of state) asked police to do a welfare check on him. When police arrived, they found the gruesome scene. His death has been described as "cruel, prolonged, and terrible," but other than that, few details have emerged as to the extent of Al's torture. However, if multiple knives were used to kill the poor man, any one's darkest imagination can clearly fill in the details as to how a person would go about torturing another person if one were so inclined.



Apparently, Al gave up his pin number to his debit card (probably very early on) to his killer. After killing Al, Cooper drove Al's truck to an ATM and withdrew some money (but not all) out of Al's checking account. Cooper was captured on surveillance video on the ATM camera; however, he obscured most of his face by wearing a ski mask -- only his eyes, parts of his uppper-cheeks, and the bridge of his long nose are visible, which can be seen here. Cooper later abandoned Al's truck and left the ATM receipts on the seat of the truck. Cooper would also dispose of Al's credit cards and cell phone at different spots around the Denver area.



Given that Robert Cooper did not take all of Al's money from his bank account, and given that Cooper left plenty of fingerprints and possibly DNA behind at the crime scene, and given that this was not necessarily a sexual crime, and furthermore given that Cooper knew that he would be caught on camera, police have surmised that "Robert Cooper" is/was likely a very methodical serial killer -- and that this wasn't his first kill.



Police also gleaned some very interesting things regarding the killer and his interactions with various people in the community. Firstly, Al was not the first person Robert tried to rent a room from.



Robert Cooper used a "burner phone" to look up rental properties in the Denver area. He purchased the phone at a store near the University of Colorado Medical School. He had visited and tried to rent from at least three different properties. On all of the application forms for renting, his information was completely false, but most were addresses on the Univesrity of Colorado Medical School campus. Also worth noting: a couple of the room-to-rent type properties that Cooper visited were only posted at the University of Coloarado library.



One woman reportedly refused him a room to rent, because she thought that something was "off" (if only Oakey had that feeling). Different renters claimed to have noticed different things about the man: one noted that he walked with a limp; another one didn't notice any limp. One noticed that he spoke with an accent, specficially a Romanian accent.



As to others who interacted with Robert Cooper, two people in particular give interesting stories. One is Linda, Al's girlfriend. Before she left on her trip, she recalled hearing Robert in Al's home. Linda was in the bathroom , and she heard Al tell Cooper that he wanted to introduce him to his girlfriend; however, when Linda came out into the living room, the man quickly retreated from the doorstep citing some excuse as to why he could not stay even a second to meet Linda. Luckily, Linda caught a glimpse of him as Cooper left: she described him as being in his 40s with dark, wavy hair, nicely-dressed, and of average height and build.



Another strange encounter: One of Al's neighbors reported meeting Cooper -- or at least attempting to meet him. The neighbor called out to the man, but Cooper "snubbed" him and avoided any interaction with the neighbor.


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https://nurse.org/articles/nurse-kills-hitman-hired-by-husband/

“Does she need an ambulance?” asked the 911 dispatcher. “No, she’s a nurse. She says to call an ambulance for the guy. He may be dead," responded the voice on the other end.

In 2006, ER nurse Susan Kuhnhausen (later Susan Walter) divorced Mike Kuhnhausen, her husband of 17 years. Walters endured years of mental and emotional abuse by her husband. She finally gained the courage to end the marriage and kicked Kuhnhausen out of their home.

Shortly after the marriage ended, Mr. Kuhnhausen was laid off from his janitorial job. With few options left, he decided he wanted their second home for himself. He knew Walters wouldn't easily give up the home and conspired a plan to have her murdered.

Mike responded by hiring a hit man to kill her. He paid Edward Haffey $50,000 for the hit.

Kuhnhausen had met Edward Haffey at work. Haffey, a convicted murderer with a lengthy criminal history, agreed to kill Walters in exchange for $50,000.

On the evening of the attack, Walters arrived home from work and immediately noticed her bedroom was abnormally dark. Within moments Haffey appeared and lunged at her with a hammer.

The first blow hit Walters in the temple. She fought back.

For almost 15 minutes the two grappled. Walters was able to restrain the man multiple times and each time attempted to get information about who had hired him. Each time, he continued to viciously attack her with the hammer.
Eventually, she was able to restrain and strangle the man to death.

Mike Kuhnhausen was charged with solicitation of aggravated murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In 2008, Susan Walters won a $1 million civil court case against her estranged husband.

Kuhnhausen died in prison of prostate cancer 6 months prior to his release date.
 
This case is two months old today.
The night of the disappearance a 911 call was made from the home of the Closs family around 1:00 am.[3] While the operator did not speak with anyone, they heard a disturbance and a lot of yelling. When the dispatcher attempted to call the number back, they received the voicemail of Denise Closs.[5] Upon arrival four minutes after the call, police noticed that the front door had been kicked in, and her parents, James Closs (56 years old) and Denise Closs (46 years old), were dead from gunshot wounds.[6]

The family dog was still in the home when officers arrived, and it was believed that Jayme was home at the time of the shooting, based on details in the 911 call and evidence from the home. No gun was recovered after searching the home.[7]
Click to expand...
 
JabToucher said:
Ok, so I already watch a lot of documentaries on serial killers and unsolved crime.

I've really taken an interest in Australian crimes & criminals.

I have been researching a little more on Ivan Millat recently, who the police know killed 7 people.

There's been some more recent docs on the man and there's more reason to believe he killed a lot more than the 7 people known. Maybe in the 20's. Especially given how many foreign tourists visit Australia and hitch hike.

http://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/milat-ivan.htm

This first one mentions the more missing persons cases around the area towards the end.


This second doc mentions also how it is now thought he may not of acted alone and how a sibling might of been an accomplice.
Click to expand...


Look into Adelaide, it’s got the most interesting cases in the world.
 
CHRISTMAS EDITION!!!

https://www.theday.com/article/20060114/DAYARC/301149869

On Christmas morning 2004, Roland Berstecher went to his mother's apartment and found her bruised, bloodied body, naked from the waist down, stuffed halfway under a stove.

According to the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Alexandria Berstecher was electrocuted by wires under the stove. She had numerous bruises on her body, and when the stove was removed, bloody hand prints streaked the wall behind it.

Roland Berstecher said Groton Town police brought him to the police station soon after he found his dead mother and grilled him for more than eight hours, at times demanding a confession. The week after the death, a police department dispatcher said the death was ruled a suicide. In December 2005 a Groton Town detective told the group the death would likely be ruled an accident."

This took place one town over from where I live and has not been mentioned in the news or local paper since 2007. The police stated that the case remains open but suspended after they exhausted all leads and interviewed all possible witnesses. Because Alexandria's death is still listed as "undetermined" and was never officially ruled a homicide it isn't listed on any of CT's unsolved crime websites. If anyone can find any further information please share!

Here's what we know:

Roland Berstecher moved his 89 year old mother, Alexandria, into Poquonnock Village Apartments in 1993. A widowed Navy wife, she suffered from arthritis and glaucoma. The 97-unit apartment building is less than five miles from her son's Phillips Avenue home.

Roland took his mother grocery shopping every week and drove her to the bank monthly to get a money order for her rent. Alexandria kept a written log of the visits and the daily calls she received from her son and his partner of 21 years, Joann Degenhart. The only time she talked about suicide was that “she'd kill herself if Roland stopped coming to see her,” a friend told police. “She talked about him all the time. She was also constantly stating that she had given Roland money,” the woman said of Alexandria, who lived off Social Security and her late husband's Navy pension.

Roland was a cosigner on his mother's checks and helped manage her finances. His mother suffered from arthritis, anxiety, high blood pressure and heartburn and had been diagnosed with colon cancer two years before.

At the time of Alexandria's death there were two registered sex offenders living on her floor. Alexandria lived in apartment 307. A quick search on the CT sex offender registry shows that there is currently a registered sex offender living in Apartment 301. He was 67 at the time of the murder and was convicted of 1st degree sexual assault 14 years earlier, in 1990. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post his name here, but a quick search of the address should show you (1039 Poquonnock Road, Groton CT). So far I haven't had any luck finding the details of his rape conviction but I'd be interested to see if they are similar in any way to this case.

According to Roland, his mother didn't join them for Christmas Eve dinner because her arthritis made it difficult for her to use their bathroom, which is located upstairs. The police say that Roland told them that he lied to his mother and told her that he had to work on Christmas Eve and that Joann didn't want her coming over because she could be “unsociable” and often banged into things because of her glaucoma.

Roland states that the last time he spoke to his mother was by phone at 3PM on Christmas Eve. He says that he had dinner with Joann, her son Edward and his girlfriend Jennifer and that afterwards they watched two movies before going to bed.

Alexandria's downstairs neighbor reported hearing loud banging sounds coming from Alexandria's apartment that night. She said that she had heard loud noises above her before but never to that extent and that they usually took place on the weekends after midnight. She says that she considered calling the police but after banging on the ceiling with a broom the noises stopped.

At about 12:10 p.m. on Christmas Day Roland went to bring his mother lasanga and Christmas presents. He rang the downstairs buzzer but there was no answer so he entered the lobby using a spare key.

Alexandria did not respond to knocks on her locked door and Roland did not have a key for that door. As he grew more concerned he banged harder, attracting the attention of a neighbor who knew him. She volunteered to get the superintendent to unlock the apartment.

The usually tidy apartment was a mess. Her small dog was in there alone and Alexandria's bed was unmade. Two chairs and her walker lay on their sides.

Roland entered to find his mother's legs and lower torso sticking out from where the stove drawer had been. A button-down cardigan covered her top half, but she wore no pants or underwear. She was bloodied, bruised and had a broken rib.

Berstecher called Joann, a nurse, and told the superintendent to call 911. He then took a washcloth from the bathroom to cover his mother's genitals. Police arrived within minutes and taped off the scene.

Swabs taken from Alexandria's body found no seminal fluid or other evidence of rape or physical assault. The apartment complex was equipped with security cameras, but there were no VHS tapes inside. A canvass of the apartment building produced no further clues and fingerprints taken from the scene were little help to investigators. The chairs in the apartment appeared tipped over, with no visible marks on the chairs or walls that would indicate they had been thrown violently.

The white Hotpoint stove was found to be in perfect working order except that someone had removed its lower drawer, unplugged the stove, and removed the electrical cover for the outlet, exposing the electrical contacts.

There were other strange signs — hair stuck to her elbows, bruises on her right arms, legs and left hand, as well as numerous cuts and abrasions. Her doctor told police that at her age, she would bruise easily. Hair found on her elbow did not prove to be significant to the investigation. Blood found in the apartment and bruises and scratch marks, he said, could be from the spasms she would have had during the electrocution.

A $359 money order for rent was missing from her apartment. Roland says that police never asked the family if any items were missing but that a large potted cactus was gone.
According to Roland he was identified as the main suspect and feels that as a result the police didn't fully pursue other potential leads. Alexandria's neighbors expressed anger and frustration over the lack of information given to them surrounding her death and whether or not they are at risk. Some of them told police that the superintendent had a drinking and gambling problem and that he had come through their locked doors unannounced, sometimes in the middle of the night.

So what do you think happened to Alexandria?

If it was a murder staged to look like a suicide or accident, why leave her half naked?

Why did the loud noises stop as soon as the neighbor banged on the ceiling with a broom? If the noises were from a struggle, wouldn't knowing that her neighbors could hear her make Alexandria struggle even harder?

If she was wearing a cardigan that implies that this didn't take place late at night, so when do you think she was murdered?

Lastly, how do you get someone under the stove and successfully electrocute them without electrocuting yourself?

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https://www.jacksonville.com/news/c...l-haunts-former-detective-who-never-found-her

April 18 2015
"It was four days before Christmas. As the story would soon be told in news accounts, he made a stop on a dirt road off Georgia 82 and an old TV console caught his eye.

He walked over to inspect the find.

Inside, there was the black steel suitcase sloppily sealed with cement. Curious, the man pried it open. The girl had been wrapped in a blanket, stuffed in a gym bag and placed in the tiny steel tomb.

The trucker cried like a child.

Speaking with the Associated Press a few days later, then-Ware County Sheriff Herbert Bond said the state crime lab determined the child had been dead for a month or two. Thought to be about 3, she was 2-foot-9 and weighed maybe 30 pounds.

She didn’t seem to have been shot or stabbed, Bond said at the time."

"The investigator saw how well the child was made up, how pretty she looked. He thought about how long it must’ve taken. Somehow, in spite of the decomposition and the lack of dignity in how she was left with the trash, Herrin said he couldn’t help but think someone loved her."

https://www.websleuths.com/forums/t...-co-christmas-doe-blkfem-15ufga-dec88.395415/
A logging truck driver who stepped into the woods, near an isolated garbage dump in Ware County, Georgia, to relieve himself discovered the girl's body when he became curious about an old television console laying nearby. The console broke open when he kicked it over - revealing a black metal suitcase hidden inside. The body was placed in a gym bag, then in a cement-filled metal suitcase. The suitcase was wrapped with silver duct tape, encased in a plastic sheet and hidden inside the television console nailed shut with plywood.

An autopsy was inconclusive because of the decomposition of her body. Investigators also don't know if she might have been alive when sealed inside the suitcase.
 
Been listening to a podcast called The True Crime Garage a lot lately and it’s pretty decent, here are a few Ive listened to recently:

The Boys on the Tracks - Happened where I grew up and still live...pure craziness that this case slithered its way all the way up to a future POTUS involvement.

The Springfield Three - I’m sure it’s been covered somewhere in here already but I agree with the two guys on the podcast that’s it’s either one of two people who did it and both are in prison for life for other crimes.

Henry McCabe - I tend to agree he was either drugged or willingly took some drugs he couldn’t handle.

Channon Christian & Christopher Newsom - This was by far the worst of their podcasts I’ve listened to as all they did is play one of the five perpetrators confession tapes. And of course he minimalized his involvement.

Sharon Smith & Debra May Helmich - Had previously seen this case covered on Forensic Files. It’s a open and shut case but still plenty creepy.
 
i still find it crazy that the Aussy PM just went vanishing while swimming

like imagine if that happened in 2k18?
 
The case of Amy Bradley who went on the cruise with her family and never was seen again has always intrigued me.
 
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