Forensic Files Archives - Page 4 of 23

Dawn Fehring: A Missionary Dies Too Young

Eric Hayden Randomly Preys on a Neighbor
(‘Nice Threads,’ Forensic Files)

Dawn Fehring smiling — Dawn Fehring was described as having a low-risk lifestyle

At the time of her death in 1995, Dawn Fehring had plans to visit Russia and Israel. But she never got a chance to exchange her dollars for rubles or read up on safety tips for travel in the Middle East.

The bible student met her end on her own turf — in an area of Washington state known for safety.

For this week, I looked for a little more information on Dawn’s short life and the case, so let’s get going on the recap of the Forensic Files episode “Nice Threads” along with extra information from internet research.

Take a bow. Dawn Rene Fehring was born in Olympia, Washington on April 27, 1968, the second of Carl and Dottie Fehring’s four children. Always interested in languages, Dawn was an exchange student to Paris and Vienna, where she learned to speak French and German.

In 1986, she graduated from Olympia High School in the top 10 percent of her class, according to her obituary. She earned a bachelor’s degree from California Lutheran University.

Dawn, who played the violin, was the secretary of the Capitol Youth Symphony Association, and she worked at Christ the Servant Lutheran Church in Lacy.

A public park with a partly covered bridge — The Kirkland area features such attractions as Juanita Bay, where bird-watchers look for great blue herons

Door open. After doing missionary work and teaching English in Japan, the 27-year-old returned to Washington to work toward a certificate in cross-cultural ministries at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Issaquah.

She moved into the Salish Village Condominiums in Kirkland, an area with a low crime rate and high population of well-educated people. Sources vary as to whether Dawn was renting or borrowing the condo, but most say that she was housesitting for friends in Japan.

On May 14, 1995, about two weeks after Dawn returned to the U.S., a firefighter neighbor noticed her door open and went inside to investigate. He saw freshly baked cookies on the counter and Dawn’s body on the floor. Rigor mortis had set in. She had died on May 13.

Cookies vs. brownies. A clerk at a Fred Meyer supermarket witnessed Dawn shopping for baking ingredients at the store on May 12, the last time she was seen alive. The night of the murder, Dawn was making chocolate chip cookies as a gift for Mother’s Day. As prosecutor James Konat noted during his Forensic Files interview: What could be more American than baking chocolate chip cookies for one’s mother?

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(According to The New Detectives episode “Infallible Witness,” Dawn was making brownies, but the show got at least two other facts wrong, so I’m trusting Forensic Files on this one.)

Police arrived to find Dawn with a fist-sized bruise on the back of her head. She’d been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with her own bedsheet.

Image on fabric. First responders noticed ash marks on the bedding and a cigarette burn on a table, which almost certainly came from the attacker. Dawn didn’t smoke, and she reportedly kept her home immaculately clean.

In what must have been a horrible surprise, Dawn’s 13-year-old sister, Joy, called to check on Dawn, only to have a police officer answer the phone, according to the Seattle Times.

Forensic investigation revealed that bloodstains on the bedsheets came from Dawn. The bleeding originated from injuries to her mouth and hymen (a word we rarely hear today, which is probably a good thing), according to court papers.

Dottie and Carl Fehring — After the murder, Carl and Dorothy Ann “Dottie” Fehring moved to California to be closer to one of their sons

Criminal returns to scene. A forensic examiner soaked Dawn’s bedsheet in amido black liquid, which exposed a hand and fingerprint in blood, but there wasn’t enough definition to make them identifiable.

Investigators checked on the whereabouts of local sex criminals around the time of the murder, but they all had decent alibis.

Police then turned toward someone who had actually brought himself to their attention. A prosecutor would later describe Eric Hamlien Hayden as a big slob who was hanging around the crime scene. Hayden asked investigators whether his own safety was in danger from some unknown assailant.

Alibi dies. Hayden, a 32-year-old mill worker, occupied an apartment upstairs from Dawn’s in the complex at 12515 N.E. 132nd.

He lived with his girlfriend, but a neighbor recalled seeing him standing around outside barefoot in the rain while smoking cigarettes and eyeing the women who came and went.

When questioned at the police station, a nervous Hayden said he had an alibi: He was out drinking with friends at the time of the murder. Apparently his friends wouldn’t cover for him or never existed, because he later changed his story to say he was alone.

Highly suspect. Hayden told his girlfriend that he was too drunk that night to remember where he had been, according to court papers.

“His story wasn’t washing,” Kirkland Police Sgt. Gene Markle told the Seattle Times. “Every instinct you had was telling you something wasn’t right.”

Fortunately, a forensic lab made a breakthrough more concrete than instinct.

Scientific advance. Erik Berg, a forensic supervisor at the Tacoma Police Department, used pattern removal filters to subtract the thread pattern from the images in the blood on Dawn’s bedsheet. He came up with a clear print that matched one that police had on file for Eric Hayden because of a drunk driving action against him.

Dawn Fehring in a newspaper photo — Dawn Fehring didn’t date, drink, or use drugs

“Bingo, it was him,” Berg told 60 Minutes. “I got a phone call two hours later saying he was in custody.” Police deposited Hayden in King County jail and set bond at $500,000.

The methodology that identified Hayden became known as digital fingerprint enhancement. The 60 Minutes episode would later call it a silver bullet.

Strangers in the night. When the trial kicked off, a judge allowed the prosecution to present the digital fingerprint enhancement evidence.

Prosecutors made a case that Hayden was coming home from drinking and noticed that Dawn had left the door open, probably to let out the heat from the oven. The two didn’t know each other except possibly in passing, they believed. Dottie Fehring said that Dawn hadn’t met the neighbors yet.

Hayden entered Dawn’s apartment through the open door with the intent of raping her, the prosecution contended. The New Detectives suggests a slightly different narrative, although it was to the same end. The show theorized that Hayden used a ruse to get Dawn to open the door for him and then inadvertently propped the door open when a bedroom slipper got caught at the edge while he was making his getaway.

Voice from beyond. Whatever the scenario, the prosecution contended that Hayden struck Dawn on the back of her head, knocking her down, and then sexually assaulted and killed her. When he got up, he steadied himself by placing his hand on the mattress, leaving a bloody print. While contemplating what he’d done, he smoked a cigarette and snuffed it out on the table, leaving the ashes and burn mark.

Defense attorney Andrew Dimmock argued that the police had no evidence against Hayden except for the digital fingerprint enhancement, which was a new science.

James Konat in a tie and jacket — Prosecutor James Konat appeared on both Forensic Files and the New Detectives

The jury, however, put faith in the prosecution and convicted Hayden of murder.

At the sentencing hearing, Dawn’s mother showed a Mother’s Day card with Dawn’s photo and played a recording of Dawn singing hymns such as “I’ve Been Blessed.”

The prosecution asked for a 41-year sentence, but Judge Marilyn Sellers gave him 26.

Zero vindictiveness. Dottie Fehring told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that she was grateful for the sentence because an offender like Hayden would likely strike again and she didn’t want other families to face an ordeal like hers.

She wasn’t bitter, however. “Anger is not what you do when life creates problems,” she said, as reported in the Seattle Times. “You need to create peace. There’s no help in striking out again.”

After Hayden went to prison, the Fehring’s sent 200 of their friends cards handmade by Dawn.

Constructive idea. Next up, the Fehrings created the Dawn Fehring Love of God Award to financially help aspiring missionaries. They raised funds in part via entertainment. A May 1, 1999 item in the News Tribune noted a variety show including magicians, puppets, and Dixieland music with a suggested admission price of $5 per person.

The Fehrings have also supported other charitable causes as a tribute to their lost daughter.

Dottie, Carl, and their son Jeff paid $1,500 each to participate in the Jimmy Carter Work Project in Maragondon in the Philippines, where they labored under the sun to build two houses for poor people. A story in the News Tribune reported that Carl worked so hard that he suffered from heat exhaustion and had to receive fluids from medical workers, but he went back to work the next day.

Mucho dinero. Carl said it was doing the work that Dawn would do.

Little has been made public about Eric Hayden’s life before or after prison

“She was so full of life and love,” her mother told The Olympian newspaper in 2001. “It’s amazing what she packed into 27 years.”

Dawn’s other legacy was that her murder spurred police departments across the country to use digital fingerprint enhancement — despite that the technology package cost around $40,000 at the time.

Living quietly. Investigators can now identify criminals “drunk enough or stupid enough to leave their fingerprints in the victim’s blood,” according to James Konat.

So what happened to the man whose crimes fostered a forensic tour de force?

It appears that Eric Hayden served his 26 years and slipped out of sight. The Washington Department of Corrections doesn’t list him as a prisoner and there’s no obituary for him.

Let’s hope he’s gained some respect for human life or at least a little reverence for the technology that can catch evildoers like him.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Scott Dunn: Lost And Found

A Father Fights for Resolution
(Forensic Files, ‘The Killing Room’)

Before jumping into the recap, I wanted to mention that this blog is now a book. Forensic Files Now: Inside 40 Unforgettable True Crime Cases includes blog posts along with extra information that doesn’t appear on my website plus a Q&A with Forensic Files creator Paul Dowling and a biography of narrator Peter Thomas, who started out doing Listerine commercials.

Jim Dunn

You can buy the book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or your local independent bookstore. Or just spread the word on social media, an area where I can always, always use extra help.

Business in the front. And speaking of the internet, here’s a case that began before most laypersons had heard of it and finished when the whole world was posting its relationship status on Facebook:

Jim Dunn might have appeared as though he came from at least a slightly different socioeconomic group than his son Scott, but he was utterly devoted to him.

When Jim, a distinguished-looking CEO from Yardley, Pennsylvania, learned that his mullet-wearing child had disappeared, he immediately traveled to Lubbock, Texas to search for him.

Unfinished story. Once it became clear that Scott, who worked installing audio systems in cars, met a violent end at the hands of a girlfriend, Jim found a way around the Texas law that required a body in order to make a murder case.

Thanks in part to his diligence, a jury convicted Leisha Hamilton of beating Scott to death.

She went off to prison in 1994, but by the time Forensic Files produced “The Killing Room” in 1999, Jim still had no remains to bury beneath the headstone placed on an empty grave in the City of Lubbock Cemetery.

Scott Dunn working under the hood of a car — Scott Dunn was known for his fun-loving personality, but he also worked diligently

Checkered past? For this week, I checked on whether Scott’s body ever turned up and also looked for more information about the case. So let’s get going on the recap to “The Killing Room” along with extra information from internet research.

Roger Scott Dunn came into the world on Feb. 10, 1967, one of two sons born to James and Mary Sue Dunn. He used his middle name as his first. His family lived a financially comfortable life in the Philadelphia area.

Scott served in the military and moved to Lubbock, reportedly to start anew after making some bad choices. Nevertheless, he ran into trouble in his new home. At age 23, he was arrested in connection with a Domino’s Pizza robbery. The Abilene News-Reporter article about the alleged crime listed him as a car stereo installer at MGM Electronics.

Two timing, or more. It’s not clear what, if any, consequences came about because of the incident but, in the meantime, he was enjoying a successful career. He loved working on cars. According to KCBD, he had won stereo-installation competitions. He also bought, restored, and resold used automobiles on his own.

But vehicles weren’t the only things Scott enjoyed toying with. At age 24, the fair-haired Scott was living with Leisha Hamilton, a 28 year-old waitress, at the same time he was engaged to another woman, and possibly had relationships with others.

In one of the rare narratives in which Forensic Files leaves a storyline unfinished (Viktor Gunnarsson: A Swede Meets Death), the show opens by revealing that the day before his death, Scott played a joke on his buddies by bringing a gorgeous date to a party. His friends enjoyed flirting with her. But they later realized that, underneath the sexy outfit, there was a man.

Regular Florence Nightingale. His friends were not amused, and Scott got sick at the party. But, confusingly, those incidents don’t seem to have anything to do with each other or his imminent disappearance.

During her Forensic Files interview, Leisha said that Scott was compromised the night of the party and needed help getting dressed for bed after she brought him home to the place they shared at Oakwood Club Apartments at 5818 24th Street. Leisha said that she made him some tea in the morning and left for her waitress job.

Then Scott vanished.

Leisha stopped by Scott’s employer to pick up his 1991 yellow Camaro. Scott had run off with another woman, she told his boss, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer article from November 16, 1997.

Dramatic vehicle. Next up, Leisha called Jim Dunn—who up until that time didn’t know about her existence—on May 19, 1991 to alert him to Scott’s disappearance.

Clipping of story about Domino's Pizza robbery — A clipping from the Abilene News-Reporter from September 28, 1990

Jim got in touch with the Lubbock police, and ended up calling them every day, according to one account. Sympathetic detective Tal English remembered Jim’s telling him how unusual it was for Scott to leave the Camaro — nicknamed the Yellow Submarine — and his tools at work for the night, according to his interview on The New Detectives. Jim would make numerous trips to Lubbock to do his own fact-finding, interviewing witnesses and searching for evidence, all the while maintaining a good relationship with local law officers.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to control the narrative, Leisha led police to a corner of her and Scott’s bedroom with recently replaced carpet pieces —not a good sign in any missing-person story. And yikes, under the rug, luminol revealed red stains. They came from Scott’s blood, and there was lots of it.

Financial offense. Crime-scene consultant and semi-regular Forensic Files guest Tom Bevel got in on the act. He conducted blood splatter tests in the bedroom and found the pattern consistent with blows from a blunt object or pipe.

Leisha, in her grief, found the strength to tell Jim Dunn that she wanted to keep Scott’s Camaro for herself.

Jim traveled to Leisha’s former home of Albuquerque to look into her past. She had a police record for embezzlement.

Scott and Jim Dunn pictured together, both smiling — Scott and Jim Dunn

Next victim. But it was what Scott’s associates told investigators about her that was more worrisome. A female friend of Scott’s said that Scott was afraid to break up with Leisha. According to the New Detectives, Leisha’s ex-boyfriends warned Scott that she could lather herself up into violent jealous rages.

Leisha, meanwhile, tried to throw off suspicion on her new boyfriend, Tim Smith, who came from a sheltered background and was a “lovesick admirer” of the worldly Leisha, according to a story in The Times of Trenton. She probably thought he would take the fall.

When police dropped in on Tim at his place, they found a roll of duct tape similar to the tape used to attach the carpet pieces in Scott and Leisha’s bedroom. Stuck to the adhesive were green trilobal fibers like the ones in Scott’s bedroom. The tape also had Tim’s and Leisha’s hairs on.

Photo of the book Forensic Files Now — Book available in stores or online!

Pro bono aid. Despite the evidence, the authorities couldn’t make Scott’s death into a murder case until they had a body.

In 1992, Jim appealed to the VIDOCQ Society (pronounced vee-DUCK), a group of law enforcement professionals including none other than forensic sculptor Frank Bender, who helped to catch John List.

The VIDOCQ Society investigated cases for no fee.

Richard Walter, a forensic psychologist who belonged to the group, found Leisha’s behavior suspicious and, bless his heart, offered to help Jim “go after that bitch.”

Clever claim. Scotland Yard even got into the act after VIDOCQ forwarded evidence to the British detectives. They agreed that someone had murdered Scott via blunt force involving at least four blows.

Tim Smith

The Associated Press called the evidence “signs of a nasty butchering.” Scott had lost an estimated one quart of blood, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

The big break in the case came when Richard Walter persuaded authorities to move forward with the case because blood is a bodily part. In a way, they had a body.

Ruining another man’s life. In 1994, Leisha was charged with perjury and tampering with evidence. The perjury charge stemmed from her lying about not having possession of what media reports called a radio-controlled boat belonging to Scott.

But soon enough, she and Tim were charged with murder. The motive for the homicide? Revenge. Leisha was angry after finding out Scott planned to marry another woman.

When Tim Smith fell under her Leisha’s spell, instead of just using him as a rebound boyfriend until she got over Scott, Leisha enlisted him to carry out a plan for revenge.

Photo of yellow Camaro used on the Forensic Files episode — In its recreations for TV, Forensic Files used the same model cars from the cases

Good riddance. The authorities made a case that on May 16, 1991, someone attacked Scott as he slept and beat him to death.

After separate trials, Leisha and Tim were convicted of murder. Leisha got 20 years. Smith received a $10,000 fine and 10 years probation. Either the judge or jury, or both, believed that Tim helped with the disposal of the body but Leisha wielded the weapon.

It’s not clear why Leisha got such a short sentence — in Texas, no less — but she had to serve it in full after losing multiple bids for parole. Leisha dropped out of sight once she got out of prison.

But that’s getting ahead of the story.

Literary effort. By 2004, the Dunns still had no body to bury in Scott’s grave, but that didn’t mean the public forgot about the case. In fact, a writer from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal thought the story would make a good book.

“That father just caught my heart, because I am a parent myself,” Wanda Evans said in a Plainview Writers Guild video interview. “I kept seeing my son in Scott.”

She and Jim ended up collaborating on Trail of Blood: A Father, a Son, and a Tell-Tale Crime Scene Investigation, which found a publisher and got positive reviews on Amazon.

Over the years, Jim Dunn maintained a good relationship with the same authorities who helped put away Leisha Hamilton. Jim was not adversarial, detective Tal English told the Lubbock-Avalanche Journal. “Sometimes the family gets so disgruntled with investigators.”

Theory proves right. There was much relief in 2012, when Lubbock Victims Assistance Services got word to Jim Dunn that a work crew (a.k.a. the folks who tend to discover stuff on Forensic Files) had uncovered skeletal remains in a sewage system near Scott’s apartment complex. Dental records confirmed they came from Scott.

Just as the prosecution argued in court, Scott died from blunt force trauma. The killer or killers had wrapped his body in a vinyl sheet from his waterbed. Investigators discovered a gold ring belonging to Scott’s grandmother at the scene, The Times of Trenton reported in a story from October 28, 2012.

Jim nearly passed out when he first heard the news about his lost son, according to his interview with KCBD TV.

On June 16, 2012, the Dunns buried him in a grave beneath a stone engraved with a likeness of Scott’s Camaro.

“I tell everyone,” Jim told The Times, “that Scott came home for Father’s Day.”

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. —RR

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Daphne Wright: Jealousy and Horror

A New Friendship Spurs Darlene VanderGiesen’s Murder
(‘Hear No Evil,’ Forensic Files)

Daphne Wright didn’t contribute a whole lot to her community, but no one foresaw how much she would take away from it.

The Sioux Falls, South Dakota resident thought that her on-again off-again girlfriend was spending too much time with a factory worker named Darlene VanderGiesen, so she decided to eliminate the competition.

Darlene VanderGiesen holding a black and cream Siamese cat — Murder victim Darlene VanderGiesen

All three of the women were deaf and two of them were gay, so the novelty of the story captured many headlines. And the gory manner of death sparked debate over whether Daphne should become the first woman in South Dakota history to receive the death penalty.

For this post, I searched for more biographical information about Darlene and her killer and checked on whether she’s (fingers crossed) still in prison.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Hear No Evil” along with extra information from internet research.

Darlene VanderGiesen was born deaf. She graduated from the Iowa School for the Deaf and attended junior college before moving to South Dakota.

She worked in the shipping department at JDS Industries Inc., a company that makes sports trophies and promotional items in Sioux Falls, a town known for its large community of people with hearing impairments.

An employee for 13 years, Darlene loved her job and also enjoyed camping, softball, going to the Deaf Club and collecting Beanie Babies in her spare time, according to her obituary.

Daphne Wright in a yearbook photo — Daphne Wright long before she committed a grisly murder

On February 3, 2006, Darlene’s parents received word that their daughter hadn’t shown up for her job for two days in a row. Gene and Dee VanderGiesen left a family reunion in Nebraska and headed back to Sioux Falls to look for her.

They were particularly concerned because Darlene had started using online dating websites. According to Deadly Affairs, Darlene had no shortage of friends in Sioux Falls, but she wanted to find a serious relationship.

“Oh, Darlene, be so careful,” Dee recalled telling Darlene. “There are so many, excuse the expression, ‘weirdoes’ out there.”

(“When a mom excuses herself for using the term ‘weirdoes,’ you have no doubt she raised her daughter to be a good person,” one commenter said on YouTube.)

At Darlene’s apartment in the Timberland Village complex, her parents found her cell phone lying on a table. Normally, she took it everywhere for texting. The VanderGiesens didn’t see her truck in the parking lot, and her cats looked hungry, according to “Playing With Hearts,” an episode of Deadly Affairs.

Still, the VanderGiesens had no reason to believe someone wanted to harm their daughter.

“She has no enemies,” Darlene’s friend Cheryl Brimmer later told the Argus Leader. “Why anyone would want to kill her is beyond me. I never saw her mad or upset or anything negative about her.”

Many of Darlene’s friends gathered at the VanderGiesens’ home to offer moral support. Daphne Wright, an acquaintance Darlene met at a Deaf Club, showed up, too. “She gave me a hug and she said she was sorry that Darlene was missing, that they were friends, and she would be praying that we would find Darlene soon,” said Dee VanderGiesen, as reported by the Argus Leader. “And I thanked her for coming.”

Police got what looked like a promising lead in a man Forensic Files calls Jeff Flynn — a local field hand who Darlene had recently dated. He seemed nervous during questioning and investigators found dried blood in the back of his car.

But testing proved the blood came from a deer, and Jeff could prove he had been out of town when the murder happened.

Darlene’s car soon turned up abandoned in a Pizza Hut parking lot on 26th Street and Sycamore Avenue, but police found nothing out of order inside. No one had used Darlene’s bank cards.

Meanwhile, her sister found emails on Darlene’s account from someone named Wendy Smith who declared her hatred of Darlene. “Wendy” called Darlene fat and said she had elephant feet. In other emails, the writer identified herself as the lover of Sallie Collins (Forensic Files uses the pseudonym “Sally Ford”).”You always visit Sallie when [I] am not here,” the message said. “Enough please.”

Sioux Falls waterfalls — Sioux Falls features waterfalls in the middle of town

Police spoke to Daphne Wright, who said that she and Darlene were friends and they liked each other. But soon enough, Daphne cracked and admitted she had created the email account in the name Wendy Smith and sent the disturbing emails to Darlene. At first, she denied meeting her at the Pizza Hut, but later acknowledged that she did.

And news of a dramatic incident involving Daphne came to light. A few days before she died, Darlene had gone out to dinner with Sallie Collins.

Daphne showed up and confronted Darlene and Sallie with accusations and got so out of hand that the police were called to escort Daphne off the premises. (Forensic Files says the outburst happened at a restaurant, but a newspaper account gave Sallie Collins’ house as the venue.)

Darlene later said that she made peace with Daphne. Darlene and Sallie Collins were just friends. Darlene wasn’t gay. But, in reality, Daphne still harbored suspicions. According to her mother, Daphne had some boyfriends in her youth before coming to terms with her gayness. Maybe Daphne thought Darlene would do the same—and then steal Sallie.

A look at her background showed that Daphne did have some understandable anxiety over abandonment. As a child, Daphne — who lost her hearing to rubella at the age of 10 months — faced rejection from other kids and even some members of her extended family. Daphne’s parents had to leave her at a school for the deaf 125 miles away from their home in North Carolina.

Her father died when she was a teenager.

As far as Daphne’s intellect, opinions vary widely. According to her mother, Daphne did well in athletics but had trouble reading in school. One mental health professional described her as “mildly retarded.” Another assessment placed her nonverbal IQ at 114 to 117, a higher-than-average score.

Snapped described Daphne as working in a series of low-paying jobs. She reportedly received Social Security. Daphne’s roommate, Jacki Chesmore, would later say that Daphne spent most of her time sleeping and playing video games.

Fortunately for police, Daphne didn’t channel much energy or intelligence into her murder plan. She left forensic evidence scattered over a 20-mile area starting in South Dakota and ending in Minnesota.

When police searched Daphne’s apartment at 1806 S. Phillips Ave., they smelled chemicals and found a receipt for a chainsaw from Ace Hardware. Her basement floor had random spots painted blue, and a storage room had a freshly painted floor in the same blue color. Investigators found some human tissue and bone pieces there.

Their DNA matched Darlene’s and so did blood found beneath the blue paint.

A hardware store employee remembered selling a deaf customer a chainsaw. She had handed the worker a note that said “tree cutting machine” and then bought the cheapest model available, a 1.5-horsepower that cost $60.

With the preliminary forensic evidence unmistakably grim, Darlene’s family went ahead and held a memorial service for her.

Shortly after, there was gruesome confirmation of Darlene’s fate. At a landfill, investigators found the pelvis, thighs, feet, and lower legs of an adult female along with a sweatshirt printed with sign language. It had Darlene’s bloodstains on it.

Just across the South Dakota border near Hills, Minnesota, a county snowplow driver named Keith Schmuck discovered a female upper torso and severed head wrapped up in a plastic bag in a ditch near Interstate 90. A drawstring was tied around her neck.

The body parts had a petroleum smell — as did Daphne’s basement, especially after investigators scraped the blue paint off the floors, according to Jessica Lichty, a forensic chemist with the Sioux Falls Police Department.

Darlene VanderGiesen in a formal blue gown and holding a flower bouquet — Darlene VanderGiesen

All the body parts belonged to Darlene. She died of either blunt force trauma to the head or suffocation, or both.

Police arrested Daphne 10 days after the murder. Media stories described the case as a “lesbian love triangle,” despite that Darlene self-identified as straight.

On the witness stand at the trial, Sallie Collins described the confrontation that preceded the murder. As the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported her testimony:

“[Daphne] saw Darlene, and she got very mad and said, ‘Why are you destroying our relationship?’ And she was very angry and then she sat down, and I said, ‘Daphne, you are wrong,’ Collins said. VanderGiesen left and put her middle finger up to her face as a gesture toward Wright, who refused to leave, so Collins said she went to a neighbor’s house and called police. She left when officers arrived, Collins said.“

Sallie also said that Daphne was antsy after the murder and smoked “a cigarette every minute.”

During Sallie’s testimony, Daphne chewed gum and shed some tears, according to an AP account.

Daphne Wright might have looked tough, but she had no criminal record before the murder

Police theorized that on February 1, 2006, Daphne met Darlene at the Pizza Hut and somehow persuaded Darlene to get into her Suzuki SUV. Once at Daphne’s apartment, the prosecution alleged, Daphne hit Darlene in the head and threw her down the steps to the basement, where she ultimately died.

Daphne then used the chainsaw to dismember the body in a room formerly used to store coal. She tried to burn the body parts — hence the gas smell — and then disposed of them in the dumpster in South Dakota and along the highway in Minnesota. She used the blue paint to cover up the blood in her basement.

Jacki Chesmore, Daphne’s helpful roommate, said that Daphne left the house with some cinderblocks and garbage bags and stayed out for two hours around the time of the murder.

When the prosecution showed photos of Darlene’s body parts, Dee VanderGiesen left the courtroom in tears, according to reporting from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, which also noted that Daphne rarely let her emotions show, and mostly watched an interpreter stationed near the front of the court room.

Much to his credit, Judge Brad Zell decided the evidence was already gruesome enough and declined the prosecution’s request to show a video demonstrating a chainsaw carving up a pig’s body.

It’s unclear why Daphne didn’t just bury Darlene’s body whole instead of doing the ghastly work of sawing it up. By disposing of it in different places, Daphne made it easier to find and she branded herself forever as not only a murderer but also a depraved murderer.

And an inept one at that. At the sites where Daphne dumped the body parts, investigators found bed sheets, coal dust, rope, and carpet fibers, all of which originated from her house.

Daphne Wright was reserved during the trial

Public defender Traci Smith had an uphill battle but she managed to throw a few salvos. She tried to shift suspicion to Sallie Collins, because a T-shirt with the logo of her employer, Wells Fargo, turned up at one of the crime scenes. Traci Smith also suggested that some unknown man Darlene met online could be her killer.

The defense claimed that the prosecution made too much out of the emails. “These childish words have been spun into the death threat which gave rise to the state’s theory of their case,” Traci Smith said. She also hinted that a pack of cigarettes, not Darlene’s regular brand, found at her apartment implicated an unknown suspect.

In the end, however, Traci Smith was no match for the prosecution’s evidence. The jury of 11 women and one man convicted Daphne of kidnapping with gross personal injury and first-degree murder.

After the verdict, Darlene’s sister, Sandra Sidford, who is also deaf, said thank you and hugged state attorney Dave Nelson. “Deaf bloggers around the country felt the same elation, loss, and sadness,” the Argus-Leader wrote.

Friends from the deaf community explained their grief through interpreters. “I just can’t believe she’s gone,” said Monique Lion-Boothe. “We want her back so bad.”

The death penalty was in play and, as mentioned, the media publicized that Daphne could be the first woman executed in South Dakota.

Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, said that Daphne didn’t deserve any leniency because of her deafness. “I think it’s very dangerous to argue that deaf people as a general matter shouldn’t be eligible for the death penalty,” he told ABC News, according to information available on Murderpedia.

A newspaper headline asks, "Will it be death?" — The trial was a sensation in Sioux Falls as well as in deaf communities across the country

The victim’s sister and brother-in-law said they felt comfortable leaving the punishment up to the jury’s discretion. According to an AP account, during the penalty phase, some jurors cried when they heard Eugene VanderGiesen describe the last time he saw Darlene — when she “put her big arms around me and gave me a great big hug” and said “I love you” in sign language.

But the testimony of Carolyn Tucker, Daphne’s mother, probably affected them as well. She said that Daphne’s father was an alcoholic and physically abusive and Daphne had witnessed his violence. According to an AP account, Daphne did poorly in school as she struggled with her sexuality.

Tucker told of the scene when she and her husband left Daphne at the school for deaf students. “She came out and thought she was going with us,” Tucker said, “but we had to leave her and she was screaming and crying, running behind the car.”

The jury decided Daphne deserved life without parole rather than the death penalty.

Today, Daphne Wright lives in South Dakota’s Women’s Prison in Pierre. Her inmate profile describes her as 5-foot-7 and 203 pounds. The South Dakota Department of Corrections lists her status as life, with no chance of parole mentioned.

In one of the few bright notes to the story, the families of both the murderer and the victim came to terms with each other without rancor. “As one mother to the other, I express my sorrow to your family,” Dee VanderGiesen told Carolyn Tucker, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. “We both have lost our daughters. One to death and the other to prison time for as long as she lives. May God’s grace be shown to you at this time of pain in your life.”

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Book cover — Book available in stores or online!

Stacey Castor: No Loyalty to Anyone

The Antifreeze Killer Progressed From Evil to More Evil
(‘Freeze Framed,’ Forensic Files)

Before launching into the recap, I’d like to share some great news. A book version of this blog is available in stores and online. Forensic Files Now: Inside 40 Unforgettable True Crime Cases offers informed recaps of favorite Forensic Files episodes — plus extra information that didn’t appear in my posts or on TV. So please help spread the news.

Now, let’s switch up and talk about someone who was all bad news: Stacey Castor.

She counts among a handful of Forensic Files criminals who plotted to kill their own children. They include Debora Green, who orchestrated her kids’ demise in a fire to punish her husband, and Brad Jackson, who suffocated his daughter because she didn’t get along with his girlfriend.

But Stacey was working on a whole different level. When she tired of her husbands, she poisoned them to death for the insurance money. Then she attempted to kill her daughter while passing off the blame for the murders on her.

Stacey’s behavior was so devious that her story spawned not only the Forensic Files episode but also an episode of 20/20 and a Lifetime movie titled Poisoned Love: The Stacy Castor Story starring Nia Vardalos.

Fortunately, Stacey’s daughter Ashley Wallace survived the homicide attempt and lived to testify against the mother who betrayed her. For this week, I looked for more biographical details on Stacey and checked into Ashley’s life today. I also read up on David Castor Sr. — the second of Stacey’s two husbands — to find out whether he deserved the unflattering portrayal of him in the made-for-TV movie.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Freeze Framed” from season 14 of Forensic Files.

Stacey Ruth Daniels was born on July 24, 1967 and grew up in the area around Syracuse, New York.

As a child, Stacey was bold and inquisitive, her mother, Judie Eaton, told David Muir during the “Black Widow” episode of 20/20. “She was only allowed three why’s in a day sometimes,” Judie said.

Stacey acknowledged she could be difficult. “I was very stubborn and headstrong, even as a kid, so my mom had her work cut out,” Stacey told ABC.

First husband Mike Wallace was the father of Stacey’s daughters

According to information available on Murderpedia, Stacey was just 17 when she met Mike Wallace, and the two married young.

Stacey worked for an ambulance dispatch company. Mike was a mechanic.

They had Ashley in 1988 and Bree in 1991.

Sadly, Mike died of a heart attack at the age of 38. Stacey said that he had a bad heart and had struggled with drug and alcohol dependence. Mike’s side of the family believed his health declined because of some kind of mystery illness. They had seen him looking unsteady and suffering from coughing, swelling, and purpled skin.

The family wanted an autopsy. Stacey vetoed the idea.

She had him buried in a grave next to a plot she bought for herself.

Stacey took her daughters to Disney World after Mike Wallace died. Bree said that the three survivors were close and enjoyed good clean fun at home, watching TV and generally acting like three best pals, just as Poisoned Love portrayed them.

At some point, Stacey got a job as an office manager at Liverpool Heating and Air Conditioning, owned by a divorcé named David Castor Sr.

David Castor Sr. made himself a nice living. During his Forensic Files interview, his adult son, David Jr., noted that his dad had high standards for workmanship.

The younger David was the product of David Sr.’s longtime marriage to his high school sweetheart. David Jr. described home life as happy with a lot of togetherness.

Things deteriorated, however, after David Sr. injured his head in an ATV accident and his personality changed, according to his son.

Police took this footage of the house where Stacey Castor lived with her second husband and two daughters.

“He didn’t have a lot of consideration of people that he loved [and how] what he said would make them feel,” David Jr. told ABC. “I believe what made my mom leave is not only the way it made her feel, but made everybody that she loved feel.”

The father and son became alienated. David Sr. found comfort in his relationship with Stacey.

In 2003, the two got married. Stacey, Ashley, and Bree moved into his house.

The TV movie portrayed David Sr. as an aspiring disciplinarian (which always goes over so well with stepchildren) who punished one of the girls by removing her bedroom door.

It’s not clear whether that particular incident happened in real life, but he got pretty low marks overall as a stepparent, according to 20/20. The girls said that, on one hand, he told them that he didn’t want to be a father to them, but on the other, he liked to boss them around a lot.

But Bree and Ashley didn’t have to contend with him for long. On August 22, 2005, Stacey called 911 from the Castors’ home in Onondaga County, New York. (Media sources vary on the towns where she lived and came from. Salina, Clay, and Liverpool were all mentioned.)

Stacey told first responders that David Sr. had recently lost his father and was very sad.

“David got upset, took a bottle of Southern Comfort, went into the bedroom and locked himself in and got drunk — wouldn’t come out,” Stacey explained, according to Sergeant Michael Norton with the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, as recounted in The Sun in a July 22, 2022 story.

Stacey was a BFF to her kids until she tried to kill one

She said her husband stayed in the bedroom all weekend.

When a police officer kicked the door in, he discovered David Castor naked and face down on the bed. He had vomited.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Two drinking glasses, one with a green liquid, sat on the night table.

An empty bottle of antifreeze lay on the floor. A lab found antifreeze in the green liquid in the glass. Oh, and there was a turkey baster with traces of antifreeze in the kitchen.

It turned out that David Sr., then 48, had no alcohol in his system. He died from ingesting ethylene glycol, the poisonous compound in antifreeze. Investigators thought it unlikely that David Sr. would choose to kill himself by slowly by ingesting antifreeze — the Castors had a gun in the house.

Lead detective Dominick Spinelli found it suspicious when Stacey casually let on that she knew that the poison ethylene glycol was the main component of antifreeze. That part didn’t seem like a red flag to me. If she claimed she didn’t know, he might have suspected her of lying because a bottle of the stuff with its ingredients clearly listed was in her bedroom.

What really tripped her up regarding the antifreeze was that she mispronounced it as “antifree.” But that’s getting a little ahead of the story.

After David Castor’s death, detectives tapped Stacey’s phone line.

Judie Eaton, seen standing at far right, believed Stacey’s story that Ashley killed Mike Wallace and David Castor Sr.

On September 5, 2007, the authorities upped the stakes by having the body of first husband Mike Wallace exhumed. “I remember thinking, while Michael Wallace’s casket came out of the ground, I wonder if he’s saying, ‘It’s about time you guys are looking at this, because I didn’t just die on my own,'” Spinelli told ABC.

The medical examiner found calcium oxalate crystals in his organs, a sign of ethylene glycol poisoning. The crystals can stay in a dead body for years.

On Ashley’s first day of college, investigators came to tell her that Mike Wallace — her biological father — died of antifreeze poisoning, not a heart attack. Investigators recorded the phone call she made to her mother.

“Mommy, they came to my freaking school,” Ashley said. “I’m freaking out.”

Stacey began to panic as well — she sensed that police were circling in on her.

So Stacey suggested that she and Ashley indulge in a little mother-daughter drinking to take the edge off. Stacey picked up some watermelon-mimosa flavored Smirnoff Ice. Ashley would later say that it was the first time her mother had encouraged her to drink alcohol. And the beverage tasted “nasty,” but at the time she had no reason to suspect her mother of trying to harm her. They were best friends.

The Smirnoff Ice made Ashley feel ill, so her mother gave her a pill to help her sleep, according to ABC. Ashley went back to school the next day.

Next up, Stacey proposed another home cocktail hour, except with hard liquor. Investigators would later allege that she knocked out Ashley with drugs secretly mixed in a drink of vodka, orange juice, and Sprite. She used a teaspoon to get more of the tainted drink down Ashley’s throat, according to the Journal News.

Fortunately, Bree discovered her older sister unresponsive but alive in bed the following morning. She alerted Stacey, who then had no choice but to call 911. Ashley received medical treatment in the nick of time, only to wake up to a detective asking about a suicide note of which she had no knowledge.

Stacey had told authorities that Ashley took morphine and codeine on her own and left a 750-word suicide note confessing to the murders of Mike Wallace and David Castor Sr. Next to Ashley’s bed, there were empty bottles of sleeping pills and vodka.

The motive? According to Stacey, Ashley resented Mike because Bree was his favorite. And Ashley wanted to get rid of David Sr. because he was mistreating Stacey.

But Ashley, who was 12 when Mike Wallace died, told David Muir that they had a good relationship. He went on Girl Scout outings with her and helped her win badges. And while her stepfather might have been difficult, she didn’t kill him.

Forensic examination of the home computer revealed that the suicide-confession letter was written while Ashley was in school.

The note misspelled “antifreeze” as “antifree,” suggesting that Stacey penned it. When interviewed, Stacey allegedly slipped up and said that she gave David Castor the antifreeze—mispronouncing it as “antifree”— although she quickly corrected herself, saying that she gave him cranberry juice.

As one YouTube commenter put it, “Anti-free made Stacey Castor anti-free.” (It’s strange that Stacy never caught on about the “ze” at the end of the word. Maybe she thought “antifreeze” was a plural form.)

Stacey, who received more than $50,000 from her first husband’s death, had about $200,000 to gain via property and insurance from David Castor Sr.’s demise. Hence she joined another Forensic Files club, that of killers who get away with one murder and push their luck by committing another (Mark Winger, Tim Scoggin) out of greed.

David Sr. “had motorcycles, jet skis, snowmobiles, a house, a business,” ex-wife Janice Poissant Farmer told ABC. “And I figure that Stacey just had made plans to take it all.” Stacey started redecorating the house after David Sr. died.

She produced a fake will that left everything to her and her daughters and nothing to David Jr., who apparently had reconciled with David Sr. by this time.

Investigators believe Stacey got David Sr. to drink the antifreeze disguised as something innocuous. When it didn’t kill him right away, she used the turkey baster to force more of the toxic liquid into his mouth while he was incapacitated.

At Stacey’s trial in 2009, Ashley told the court about the strange-tasting alcoholic beverages her mother gave her. Bree also testified for the prosecution.

Prosecutor William Fitzpatrick said that Stacey, having worked for a paramedical company, knew that David Castor and Ashley Wallace needed medical help immediately, but she chose not to summon it in a timely fashion.

Fitzpatrick, who introduced the word “vomitus” into the Forensic Files lexicon, also pointed out that the confession note spelled antifreeze wrong in the same way (“antifree”) four times — and that Stacey said “antifree” when questioned. Stacey said she deliberately cut off the “ze” because she interrupted herself with another thought.

In return for immunity, Stacey’s friends Lynn and Paul Pulaski testified that Stacey persuaded them to act as false witnesses to the signing of the phony David Castor Sr. will.

When Stacey took the stand, she insisted that Ashley killed Mike Wallace and David Castor Sr.

In February 2009, after days of deliberation, the jury found Stacey guilty of murder in the second degree, attempted murder in the second degree, and filing a bogus will. According to The Journal News:

“There was a loud gasp from the front row where Wallace sat with her younger sister and other members of the Wallace and Castor families. The relatives shared a round of hugs…’There isn’t enough punishment but we’ll take what they give her,’ David Castor Jr. said. A sobbing Ashley Wallace left the courthouse without comment.”

“If there is a ceiling on the terms of evil, [Stacey] is at the ceiling,” prosecutor William Fitzpatrick said after the verdict.

During her victim impact statement at the sentencing, Ashley Wallace said she couldn’t understand why her mother did what she did. “There are so many things that she has ruined,” Ashley said. “She’ll never be able to see Bree graduate. My father will never walk me down the aisle. She’ll never get to see her grandchildren. All these things, she took away from me.”

Onondaga County Judge Joseph Fahey said that he had never seen a parent willing to sacrifice a child in order to escape blame.

After telling Stacey that “you are in a class all by yourself,” the judge gave her a sentence of a minimum of 50 years.

The authorities saw no need to try Stacey, then in her late 40s, for Mike Wallace’s murder. “In light of her age,” Fitzpatrick said, “it is very likely she will die in prison.”

Meanwhile, Stacey’s lawyer, Charles Keller, complained that the evidence about Mike Wallace’s death shouldn’t have been allowed and that it was “piling on” Stacey.

Investigators theorized that Stacey wasn’t able to make David Sr. drink enough from the glass of antifreeze

In reality, Stacey was probably the one who had been piling on — piling on more victims. In 2010, Fitzpatrick told CNYcentral.com that his office was looking into the 2002 death of Stacey’s father, Jerry Daniels. He reportedly died after Stacey brought him an open bottle of soda to drink while visiting him in the hospital.

So what happened to Stacey Castor’s surviving victims?

Ashley is still living in central New York and is engaged. According to OprahDaily.com, she credited her counselor, doctor, and loved ones for helping her survive the trauma without turning to substance abuse. But Ashley has also said that she wishes the media attention would stop and that she hopes no more shows are made about the case.

David Castor Jr. and his mother, Janice Poissant Farmer, sued Stacey and the Pulaskis. In 2011, the state Supreme Court awarded them $127,118.65 in compensatory damages and $250,000 in punitive damages. An appellate court overturned over the judgment in 2014.

Stacey’s lawyer, who went on to run for County Court Judge, would later say that he had no regrets about representing her. “I measure success by professionalism, ethics, and hard work,” Charles Keller said in March 2016, noting that sometimes legal professionals have to take unpopular positions.

But no lawyer would ever have to worry about Stacy Castor’s litigation needs again.

In June 2016, she was found unresponsive in her cell at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester County, NY. Numerous media accounts reported that she died of natural causes, probably a heart attack because an autopsy showed she had an enlarged heart.

Local reporter Russ Tarby noted surprise that she had a heart at all.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Douglas Birdsall (aka Doug Miller): A Librarian’s Final Chapter

An Academic and a Teenager Meet a Horrible End
(‘Shattered Dreams,’ Forensic Files)

Men who patronize prostitutes don’t usually come off as particularly sympathetic characters on Forensic Files.

Some, like Michael Dally, are cheating husbands. Others are psychopaths like Roy Beck, who robbed one sex worker and killed another.

Douglas Birdsall, for whom Forensic Files uses the pseudonym Douglas Miller, falls into a different category, that of a lonely guy who secretly traded money for companionship.

Bookish type. For this week, I looked for more information about Doug and the lady of the night who died alongside him as well as their killer, who committed double homicide on an angry whim and annihilated his own somewhat bright future.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Shattered Dreams” along with extra facts from internet research:

On January 31, 2001, Douglas Birdsall, an associate dean of libraries at Texas Tech University, didn’t arrive at work at his usual 8 a.m.

Saab story. His coworkers at the Lubbock school immediately became worried. “He is a very reliable person,” colleague Dawn Pierce told the Associated Press. “He’s a dean, after all.”

Doug’s boss, Dale Cluff, checked Doug’s house and no one answered the doorbell, according to the Daily Toreador.

Then, a bicyclist alerted authorities after spotting a black Saab in a drainage gully in Canyon Lakes Park, five miles from campus.

Furrowed brows. Doug, 53, lay dead in the backseat. Viola Leanne Ross McVade, 18, also deceased, was in the front seat of the 1993 vehicle, which belonged to Doug.

Doug had hired Viola as an escort that night.

Police Captain Thomas Esparza noted that they were both fully clothed, the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, Doug’s coworkers — many of whom had red eyes from crying, according to Pierce — couldn’t imagine how the divorced dad ended up in a vehicle with a teenaged prostitute. They also said that he rarely talked about his private life.

My own research revealed nothing troubling about him.

Educated duo. Douglas Birdsall was born in Wyandotte, Michigan on July 1, 1947, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1969. He earned a teaching certificate from Western Michigan University in 1971, and went on to get a master’s degree in library science from the University of Michigan.

In 1972, he married Francia Fitch, who studied music education at Michigan State University. The couple started out as teachers in the Midland Public Schools District, according to an item in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

The Birdsalls had two children, Emily and Nathaniel.

Doug put his graduate work to good use, taking jobs with the library systems of North Dakota State University and Idaho State University.

Giant makeover. Next up, he joined Texas Tech University in Lubbock. There, he created the Art in the Library Committee and a scholarship for library assistants. He also oversaw the library’s $17 million renovation.

Today, the Texas Tech Library has 1.7 million books as well as podcast studios and a 3D printer.

Despite the extent of the construction project, Doug made sure the library remained open every day while it received such updates as new elevators, new carpets, and a new mezzanine level to provide offices for subject librarians, among many other improvements, according to Texas Tech’s archival notes.

By this time, Doug and Francia had divorced. She remarried. He stayed single.

Fiddling around. One night, Doug wanted a date with a young black woman. According to Forensic Files, he was looking for companionship more than, or instead of, sex. Doug asked an acquaintance named Teresa Kay Williams, who had three convictions for prostitution, to find someone for him. She suggested Viola.

Not a great deal about Viola’s short life came up in the media. She was born on July 13, 1982 in Lubbock and had two sisters, Liza and Ashley. Viola’s father, Chester Ross, would later describe Viola as warm-hearted, friendly, and always with a smile. According to Forensic Files, she hoped for a career in modeling.

Viola was engaged to Terremy Beaver, who noted during his Forensic Files interview that Viola liked money and would do whatever necessary to earn it. (There’s no indication of how long Viola had been working as an escort or whether she had any other occupation. A Daily Toreador story described her as unemployed; another source said she was still in high school.)

Fiancé eliminated. The green T-shirt Terremy was wearing during his TV appearance worried me a bit. Forensic Files‘ producers like to prolong the whodunit by bringing in regular street clothing for imprisoned interviewees to wear.

It turned out, however, that Terremy wasn’t incarcerated when he appeared on Forensic Files in 2006 — but he was in jail the night of the double murder in 2001.

Police ruled out Terremy as a suspect.

Robbery not a motive. The killer had shot Viola three times in the head, suggesting she had been the intended target. The blood pattern in the car indicated that the gunman shot Doug in the front seat and then moved him into the back.

The victims both died from head wounds.

No one had stolen their wallets or jewelry.

Misery from Missouri. Some people in a dicey part of Lubbock told police that on the night of the murder, they heard gunshots coming from the direction of a nearby alley. Investigators determined that pieces of glass found on the little street came from Doug’s car. A 10-inch-diameter pool of blood at the scene matched Doug’s DNA. The murder weapon, a .380 pistol, was abandoned there.

More evidence turned up at Doug’s house. A cigarette had Viola’s DNA on it. Investigators found out that someone used Doug’s phone to call Viola’s sister Liza Shontell McVade the night of the murders.

Police learned that Viola had called for Liza but instead ended up talking to Liza’s boyfriend, 29-year-old Vaughn Ross

Vaughn, born on September 4, 1971, grew up in Missouri and earned a bachelor’s degree from Central Missouri State University. Despite the shared name of “Ross,” Vaughn and Viola were not related.

Tough talk. At the time of the murder, Vaughn was working a clerical job to pay for graduate architecture classes at Texas Tech. (Vaughn and Doug probably never met. Not counting its law school, Texas Tech had 24,910 undergraduate and graduate students in 2001.)

Viola and Vaughn were feuding; he admitted it. She disapproved of him because he reportedly had physically abused Liza. According to court filings cited by Reuters News, during at least one past call to Vaughn, Viola put an ex-boyfriend of Liza’s on the phone. He allegedly called Vaughn a coward.

Vaughn threatened to shoot Viola.

The tip fits. It later came out that Liza allegedly saw Vaughn don gloves the night of the murders and he suggested that she leave his apartment because, he said, “If I do something, I don’t want nobody around.” Liza left, according to Forensic Files.

Vaughn’s place, in the Chateau De Ville apartments, was a stone’s throw from the alley with the broken glass and blood. A lab test showed that the rubber tip of a glove found under Doug’s body held DNA from both him and Vaughn Ross.

Investigators believed that he killed Doug and Viola in the vehicle, moved Doug’s body to the backseat, got into the driver’s seat next to Viola’s body, and steered the vehicle into the ravine in Canyon Lake Park.

Worrisome history. A background check revealed that in 1997, Vaughn had pleaded guilty to stabbing then-girlfriend Regina Carlisle with a butcher knife and stealing her car. He claimed that she threatened him with the weapon and that he grabbed it from her hands and used it to defend himself. She had wounds to her arm, thigh, and neck.

Fortunately, she survived.

Texas Tech’s architecture library in 1955

Vaughn received probation and attended an anger-management class.

On February 5, 2001, police arrested Vaughn Ross for the murders of Doug and Viola.

He behaved. Vaughn’s friends at school apparently knew nothing of his violent past.

“He was a nice guy, one we all kidded around with. He never showed any anger in class or blew up at the teacher,” one acquaintance said.

But he did act out while in Lubbock County Jail pending his trial for double murder. Vaughn threw his ID band to the floor and spewed profanity at a jail employee, according to a press release from the Texas Attorney General.

Boiling over. Prosecutors charged Vaughn with two counts of first-degree murder and announced they would seek the death penalty.

The authorities believed that on the night of the murders, Vaughn seethed with anger and hatred for Viola.

He donned rubber gloves. When he spotted Viola in Doug’s car, he shot her to death, then turned the gun on Doug to eliminate him as a witness.

Can’t lie to Mom. The prosecution alleged that the glove tip broke off when Vaughn shuffled Doug to the back of the Saab. When police found similar gloves at Vaughn’s apartment, he explained that he was planning to wash his floor with bleach. Police discovered Vaughn had a sweatshirt with a bloodstain containing Doug’s DNA.

On a recorded phone call from Lubbock County Jail, Vaughn told his mother, Johnnie Ross, that he wasn’t sure whether or not he committed the homicides and that he needed a lawyer. “Oh, lord,” she said.

Nonetheless, the defense alleged that the police planted evidence and that it would take two assailants to move Doug Birdsall’s body. Vaughn was 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records.

Trashing the ex. Vaughn’s lawyers, Patrick S. Metze and Floyd Holder, also cast doubt on the DNA evidence.

The Texas Tech architecture library today

“It’s a useful tool, but it is collected and analyzed by humans and can be contaminated,” Holder said, as reported by U-Wire. “You can be fooled by DNA.”

As for Vaughn’s previous assault, on Regina Carlisle, the defense downplayed its severity, noting that the victim was treated and released, not kept overnight at the hospital.

Traumatic injuries. The defense suggested Doug Birdsall put himself in danger by frequenting a high-crime area, the Houston Chronicle reported. Holder contended that “crackheads or prostitutes” might have set Doug up, lying in wait for him.

Vaughn’s lawyers, however, were no match for the prosecution’s showmanship. In the courtroom, the team projected overhead images of the victims’ bodies at the morgue. They had a combined total of 11 bullet wounds.

Strong conviction. Roger Birdsall, Doug’s brother, told the court how the murder had devastated their mother as well as Doug’s two adult children.

It took the jury one hour to find Vaughn, then age 31, guilty.

During the punishment phase of the trial, Vaughn’s former college roommate, Tanya Robertson, advocated for him. She told the court that Vaughn didn’t use drugs, seldom drank, and had a steady relationship with a girlfriend whom he treated well. Robertson described the accused as meek, humble, and polite, according to court papers available on Murderpedia.

A Boy Scout, Literally. Vaughn’s mother played the “no male role model” card, noting that Vaughn hadn’t seen his father, Hershall Sumpton, since he was around 8 years old.

She also threw in the “he was a great kid” angle, noting that her son attended church several times a week, played football, and was a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout, and had no interest in guns. He was never violent until the stabbing incident in 1997, she believed.

Furthermore, she said, the jury held a tainted opinion of her son from the beginning. She also expressed sympathy for the families of Doug Birdsall and Viola McVade.

The court was not impressed. Vaughn received a death sentence.

SCOTUS bid. In 2013, Vaughn Ross appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He complained that his trial lawyers neglected to call witnesses who could have persuaded a judge to give him a life sentence instead of the death penalty.

Assistant Texas Attorney General Tomee Heining pointed out that it was Vaughn himself who had instructed some family members and friends to not cooperate.

The high court rejected his appeal at 5:45 p.m on July 18, 2013.

No reprieve. Doug’s son, Nathaniel Birdsall — who had become a lawyer himself — told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that his father opposed the death penalty. “I am saddened that the loss of two lives will be needlessly compounded by the taking of a third,” said Nathaniel.

At 6:38 p.m. on July 18, 2013, Vaughn, 41, had his date with a gurney and syringe.

The Clark County Prosecutor’s office noted that it no longer provided a special last meal for the condemned, but it did offer Vaughn a chance to speak before the execution.

Gone forever. He denied that he killed Viola and Doug but said he wasn’t afraid to die. According to the AP, none of his friends or family members attended the execution, but in his last words, Vaughn said he loved them and that they should “stay strong.”

The Dallas Morning News reported on the execution:

“As the lethal dose of pentobarbital began taking effect, Ross took several breaths, then began snoring. He let out a gurgle, snored once more and then stopped all movement. “

Roger Birdsall watched.

The university is going strong today, with some 60,000 students across all its schools

There ended the case, but it didn’t stop the puzzlement over Doug’s desire for paid companions who probably only visited libraries to use the Ladies Room.

“Bad idea from the get-go,” wrote one YouTube viewer. “Unfortunately, he was eventually going to get arrested, robbed and/or killed. This was way out of his league.”

Another said, “They’re trying so hard to make him just an innocent, lonely man. We know why he was with her. C’mon.”

Doug’s colleagues, however, didn’t judge him for going astray.

In 2002, they dedicated a 7-foot-tall steel and sheet metal sculpture, titled Windsong II, to his memory.

“Undoubtedly,” Texas Tech President David Schmidly told the AP, “the Texas Tech library would not have become one of the most comprehensive research libraries in the nation had it not been for Doug’s dedication.”

That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Tim Scoggin: Suck-Up and Killer

A Fortune Hunter Plays Faithful Servant to His Victims
(‘Penchant for Poison,’ Forensic Files)

Although it usually isn’t the main point of the episode, Forensic Files has taught us that you don’t always have to kill your well-to-do associates to win big.

Tim Scoggin walking to court with law officers — *Small but lethal: Tim Scoggin, middle, in custody*

Brigitte Beck, for one, inherited all the assets of a nice German couple who took her in after she first came to the U.S. (“Past Lives“). Likewise, two employees at Al Zullo’s home-improvement company became its owners when Zullo willed it to them (“Frozen Assets“) to reward their loyalty. In both cases, the benefactors died of natural causes.

Not the plan. A more common and central Forensic Files theme, however, is that of “Prints Among Thieves.” It told of how Sharon Zachary, a beloved caretaker to millionaire Robert Rogers, beat him to death in a bid to speed up her inheritance.

Such was the case with Timothy G. Scoggin, except that the petite-sized plotter used poison instead of brute force on his victims.

Like Sharon Zachary, he ended up in a prison cell instead of a Rolls Royce.

Chilling tale. For this week, I looked for background information on this outwardly virtuous man as well as the business owners he betrayed.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Penchant for Poison” along with extra information drawn from internet research:

Leita and Olgie Nobles, both born in 1918, owned Nobles Hardware & Air Conditioning in San Angelo, Texas. Thanks to the area’s hot weather and scant rain, the store did a great business.

Sieged with symptoms. Perhaps because the pair spent so much time together at home and at work, they didn’t have a whole lot of patience for each other, according to Forensic Files. They often quarreled.

But there would be no couples counseling or divorce for the Nobleses. A violent illness took hold of Olgie and he died on March 27, 1988 at age 70.

Cause revealed. At the time, no one suspected foul play.

Leita Nobles sits on the couch with a crocheted blanket covering her — *Arsenic was no match for Leita Nobles*

Leita, meanwhile, was suffering from horrible nausea plus other discomforts and numbness in her fingers.

She received two blood transfusions at Brownwood Regional Hospital. During a subsequent stay at Shannon Medical Center, tests revealed she had consumed three times the typically fatal dose of arsenic.

Riddled with toxin. Arsenic has no color, taste, or smell, making it easy to sneak into edible substances. A bottle of Riopan Plus found in Leita’s medicine cabinet contained arsenic.

Some wondered whether Olgie poisoned Leita before his own demise, but a hair test indicated that she ingested some of the arsenic afterward.

Investigators had Olgie’s body exhumed, and tests revealed large amounts of arsenic in all of his major organs.

Lots o’ loans. Farrice L. James, Leita’s son from a previous marriage, bore no arsenic in his blood despite that he lived in the same household. But Farrice, who used a wheel chair because of a disability, was soon cleared.

That left the aforementioned Tim Scoggin, a trusted 33-year-old mortuary professional who was a dear friend to Leita and Olgie and had bought their appliance business in 1985. He had borrowed more than $30,000 from the couple and was paying them back in increments of $1,700 a month.

He had taken out other loans and, all in all, Tim was $175,000 in debt, according to the late Texas Monthly writer Gary Cartwright.

Storefront of Nobles Appliance and Air Conditioning store — *Tim Scoggin committed murder for a hardware business*

Dead on. So who was this guy? According to a 1989 Texas Monthly story, Tim Scoggin had a father who was a longtime employee of El Paso Natural Gas. (No mention of Tim’s mother turned up online.) During an interview with Gary Cartwright, Tim said he grew up middle-class in El Paso.

According to Cartwright’s 1989 Texas Monthly article:

“With little prompting Scoggin painted a picture of himself as a popular, hard-working, above-average student at Jal High School — editor of his yearbook, member of the drama club, officer on the student council — with an abundant talent for art and an outgoing personality. He sold paintings and mowed grass at the country club to buy a car. He also revealed himself to be acutely class-conscious.“

After graduation, Tim attended mortuary school in Dallas.

Finer things. He secured an apprenticeship at Waldrope-Hatfield Funeral Home in 1975. In a quest for riches, he also tried his hand at real estate and other businesses.

In his spare time, he enjoyed painting flowers on porcelain urns, and belonged to a club devoted to the art. Tim befriended a number of older women there.

In his 2002 Texas Monthly piece, Cartwright recalled Tim as a “smarmy nerd.”

Friends in high places. But at the Nobles household, he had been like a family member. He helped Leita address her thank-you notes after her hands grew weak.

She considered him above suspicion.

Her nephew, a county prosecutor named Leonard Sutton, wasn’t so sure. He kick-started an investigation into Leita’s 5-foot-4-inch auburn-haired “friend.”

It turned out that before Olgie and Leita Nobles became sick, Tim had grown close to wealthy sisters Catherine and Cordelia Norton, who lived in a mansion on a hill above Llano, Texas.

Parties galore. Catherine and Cordelia were the remaining two of five daughters born to owners of a profitable granite-mining operation. Tom W. Norton and Mary Agnes “Lady” Norton had bought the house in 1915 and moved their family in the following year.

When the daughters were growing up, the Nortons hosted many festivities at the abode, which had a wraparound porch and an observation deck.

“That’s where I learned to dance,” Lucille Patton, who had known the sisters since childhood, told the Austin American-Statesman. “It was a big meeting place for us kids. It was a whole lot of fun back then.”

Untimely deaths. None of the Norton daughters married or had children. Only one of them, Polly Norton, moved away from Llano; she lived in Washington, D.C.

Their father, known as T.W., died in 1948, followed by Lady in 1962. Three of their daughters died of cancer, according to a friend quoted in the Austin American-Statesman.

Catherine, 75, and Cordelia, 83, remained in the gigantic house.

The Nortons' light yellow mansion with a huge porch — The Civil War-era house’s original owner, F.R. Malone, went broke, and the structure later served as a tuberculosis sanatorium. The Nortons remodeled the structure and turned it into a happy home, moving there in 1916

The sisters were entrepreneurial and ambitious. Cordelia, described as the rough-mannered one, owned the Lone Star Beer distributorship and operated a ranch. “The only dress she owned was to go to a funeral,” friend T.D. “Dutch” Swenson told the Austin-American Statesmen.

Local philanthropy. Catherine, nicknamed “Girlie,” ran two retail businesses, Norton’s Flowers and Norton’s Dress Shop. (Multiple sources describe Catherine as the feminine sister, but for some reason Forensic Files used a photo that makes her look like Orville Redenbacher.)

In their adulthood, the two sisters, whose combined wealth totaled around $5 million, were not socialites and liked to keep a low profile — no more galas. But they weren’t recluses either. They went out to dinner in town and had a circle of close friends.

Catherine and Cordelia quietly donated money to causes benefitting the town of Llano, their friend Ann Lottie Wyckoff told the Dallas Morning News for a September 10, 1988 story.

L.T. Des Champs, the Nortons’ estate lawyer, said the sisters had “hearts of gold” and respected people from all walks of life — but they weren’t suckers for every opportunist with a sob story, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

A framed photo of young Tim Scoggin — *A youthful Tim Scoggin*

Presumptuous panderer. Tim managed to ingratiate himself to the Nortons after meeting Catherine through her work as a florist. He became their driver and helper at home. He prepared their food. They reportedly considered Tim — whose high-pitched voice prompted people to mistakenly call him “ma’am” over the phone — like one of the family. Sometimes he stayed overnight at their house. (It’s not clear whether the Nortons paid Tim for his services or he gave them for free under the guise of kindheartedness.)

Apparently, Tim believed the women had written him into their wills. He told people he was going to be rich, according to Charlotte Harris, the county prosecutor who appeared on Forensic Files.

In February 1988, the sisters died within a day of each other. Tim immediately called Mary Moursund, executor of the estate, and inquired about the will.

“When the will is filed for probate, you’ll get to see what you got,” Moursund replied “tersely,” according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Grocer spills it. The Nortons were cremated at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But Rod McCutcheon, a toxicologist for the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab, knew that a fire can’t completely burn away a metallic substance like arsenic.

Leita Nobles and her son, Farrice James — *Leita Nobles outlived her son, Farrice James, who died at 58 in 1995*

Tests on Catherine’s ashes were inconclusive, but McCutcheon found huge amounts of arsenic in Cordelia’s.

The owner of local supermarket Abbott’s told police he recalled selling Tim Scoggin some Cowley’s Original Rat and Mouse Poison, which contained arsenic. (Note to poisoners: Buy your toxic substances out of state.)

Convenient crucible. But even before the truth came out about the Nortons’ deaths, Tim had received some bad news. The sisters never got around to changing their wills to include him.

Tim consoled himself by forging a $30,000 check with Catherine’s name. And in an inept move reminiscent of Ron Gillette‘s and Jason Funk‘s crimes, he dated the check the day after Catherine died, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Next up, Tim concentrated on Leita and Olgie Nobles. Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but during this time, an unidentified person stole a large amount of cash from the store after the couple rushed to the scene of a fire at a trailer they owned — interesting because Tim had some arson in his past. A suspicious fire once befell a house he’d just bought (no one was charged and the insurance company paid off on Tim’s policy), according to Texas Monthly.

Bad edibles. Oh, and Tim was the manager of the Cactus Lane trailer park, where Olgie and Leita kept their ill-fated trailer.

Tim must have gone to work fast at the Nobles household, because Olgie died just five weeks after the Norton sisters. Police believed Tim poisoned the couples’ food in a bid for ownership of the appliance business without the pesky $1,700-a-month payments.

Authorities arrested Tim and charged him with murder and intention to commit murder. A judge set bail at $500,000.

A photo of Catherine, Marge, Elinor, Cordelia, and Polly Norton in their youth — *The Austin American-Statesman published this vintage photo on October 20, 1990*

Lethal concoction. At some point amid this mess, Tim filed for bankruptcy due to his financial woes over the appliance store.

In court, defense attorney Steve Lupton argued that investigators ignored potential evidence that might have implicated other suspects.

District Attorney Stephen Smith contended that the illness of Leita Nobles and the deaths of Olgie Nobles and at least one of the Norton sisters had three things in common: “old age, arsenic, and Tim Scoggin, their greedy friend.”

Treasures within. In April 1989, a jury took less than four hours to find Tim guilty. He was sentenced to 20 years for his attempt to kill Leita and life for murdering Olgie plus 10 years for forging $45,000 in checks and depositing them in his own account.

A year later, he pleaded guilty to the Norton homicides and picked up concurrent 55-year sentences plus another 10 years for forgery.

An empty glass bottle embossed with a raised rat figure — *Cowley’s Original Rat and Mouse Poison is no longer manufactured, but its distinctive bottles turn up on collectibles websites*

(During Tim’s friendship with the sisters, $40,000 in gold coins and securities had disappeared from a safe in their house in 1983, but authorities lacked evidence against Tim.)

With Tim behind razor wire, in October 1990, the Norton sisters’ estate began organizing an auction of their house, its contents, and 40 acres of land, with the proceeds going toward Llano’s city park and cemetery. Items for sale included Oriental rugs, “15th century icons,” and “Italian renaissance furniture believed to be from the Vatican,” according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Hard to kill. As for the victim who survived Tim’s crimes, Leita Nobles appeared on Forensic Files in the 2006 episode amid her struggle with paralysis and pain as aftereffects of the arsenic poisoning. She used a wheelchair and wore braces on her hands to prevent her fingers from curling, according to Texas Monthly.

The tough Texan died at the age of 93 in 2012.

The man who tried to kill her resides in the Wynne Unit, a medium-security prison with no air-conditioning in Huntsville, Texas. In an interview, Tim told Gary Cartwright that jail was his first encounter with “lower class” people and that he didn’t realize how unluxurious life in the joint would be.

See ya’ in five. Any charm that Tim still possesses isn’t winning him any friends in management. The board has repeatedly denied him parole, most recently in 2020, noting his “conscious selection of victim’s vulnerability” and that he poses a “threat to public safety.”

He has another shot in 2025.

That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Forensic Files Wants to Know: What Are Your Favorite Things?

UPDATE: TV SPECIAL WAS CANCELED! IT WAS FUN HEARING FROM YOU — THANKS MUCH TO THOSE WHO ANSWERED!

Another Forensic Files special — yes, we are blessed! — is in the works. As you probably remember, in 2021, a great TV show took a serious look at the docuseries over the years.

This time, the producers are out for fun.

Gary Lico, one of Forensic Files producers, is interested in hearing what you think is the craziest, most shocking, or off-the-charts weird alibi or clue or evidence — or person.

Please leave a reader comment at the end of this post and I’ll relay the message to the folks at Forensic Files. Or shoot Gary an email directly at gary@garylico.tv

P.S. The men in the photo brought you the original Forensic Files, from 1996 to 2011. Left to right: Michael Jordan, Vince Sherry, Gary Lico, Matt Hensel, series creator Paul Dowling.

Cassie Hansen: Abducted in Church

Taxi Driver Stuart Knowlton Spontaneously Kidnaps a Child
(‘Church Disappearance,’ Forensic Files)

Vanessa, Cassie, Ellen, and Bill Hansen — Vannessa, Cassie, Ellen, and Bill Hansen before the tragedy.

If you watch enough Forensic Files, you learn that even the most unlikely places are settings for tragic crimes against children.

It happened when Lisa Manderach and her baby daughter entered a kids clothing store with a depraved killer working the register.

Gone too soon. And it happened when 6-year-old Melissa Brannen ducked out of her mother’s sight for 30 seconds at a Christmas party filled with neighbors. A married maintenance man no one knew was a pedophile grabbed her and fled.

Likewise with first-grader Cassandra “Cassie” Lynn Hansen: She vanished from a well-attended church function.

For this week, I looked for a bit more information about Cassie and her short life and also searched for epilogues on killer Stuart Knowlton as well as Dorothy Noga, who nearly lost her own life in a bid to help solve Cassie’s murder case.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Church Disappearance” along with research from the internet:

Stuart Knowlton allegedly liked to hang around playgrounds

Bookish girl. On November 10, 1981, Ellen Hansen and her two daughters, Cassie, 6, and Vannessa, 4, went to family night at the Jehovah Evangelical Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Up until that evening, Cassie, born on Jan. 20, 1975, had led a happy life. She attended St. Columba Grade School and enjoyed ice skating and creating art projects.

“Cassie was just learning to read and loved it,” her godmother, Kathleen Schuba, told the Winona Daily News. “She’s been interested in books and magazines for years.”

People described Cassie as warm and affectionate and able to make friends easily.

Frantic search. But she would never get a chance to go out on her first date or read Jane Eyre and Of Mice and Men for English class.

On that November 1981 evening, sometime between 6:50 p.m. and 7 p.m., Cassie got her mother’s permission to leave the church’s auditorium, where a scavenger hunt was about to begin, and go to the restroom.

The blond-haired blue-eyed little girl never returned. A search of the church yielded Cassie’s coat but no sign of her.

The police swooped in immediately and scoured the surrounding area for Cassie. Volunteers joined in the effort. The authorities quickly sent her picture to publications and news shows.

Lifeless body. But the search concluded the next morning. Cassie’s body turned up three miles from the church in an Auto Clinic dumpster in St. Paul’s Crocus Hill area. Someone had strangled her, possibly with a belt. The attacker left semen on her pleated blue skirt, but an exam showed no signs of penetration, according to court papers.

Church member Lynette Pederson remembered seeing a white-haired man outside the church as well as inside near the restrooms around the time Cassie vanished, according to reporting from the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. Pederson also saw Cassie heading downstairs toward the bathrooms — making her the last person, except the killer, to see her alive.

Another witness recalled a man carrying a motionless little girl near the dumpster the night of the murder, and others remembered seeing him lurking around the crime scene. Their descriptions of him matched the one Pederson gave.

Awesome tip. The police department assigned six detectives to the case. They went door to door searching for witnesses, and ultimately interviewed 633 potential ones. They also considered 108 suspects, according to the Star-Tribune of the Twin Cities.

An FBI profiler suggested that the killer was a white male loner with a nocturnal lifestyle and a history of child sex offenses. And he’d probably feel compelled to talk about the crime.

Sure enough, Dorothy Noga, who Forensic Files described as a massage parlor employee, went to the police with a terrific lead.

An inside view of the pews and altar at the Jehovah's Lutheran Church — Stuart Knowlton said he stopped by the Jehovah’s Lutheran Church to use the bathroom

Daring proposition. A 50ish taxi driver named Stuart Willis Knowlton came to the Comfort Massage Studio the day after Cassie disappeared — and requested that Dorothy tell anyone who asked that he’d been with her the night before.

Under police questioning, Knowlton denied he murdered Cassie and said he was busy driving his cab on the night she died. He felt sorry for her family, he offered.

Dorothy Noga volunteered to secretly tape her conversations with Knowlton, but police declined because it was too dangerous.

Untaped confession. Next up, another great tipster came along. Janice Rettman, head of St. Paul’s public housing, told police that she had received complaints about Stuart Knowlton making advances toward children. Investigators accepted her offer to secretly record a conversation between her and Knowlton.

On the tape, Knowlton didn’t confess, but he did mention that Cassie had been beaten about the face, a detail police hadn’t made public.

In the meantime, Dorothy Noga went rogue and tried to get Knowlton to discuss the murder — and he allegedly did confess to her, but not on tape, she said.

Dorothy Noga heading to court and during her Forensic Files appearance — Dorothy Noga at court, left, and during her Forensic Files appearance

Horror scene. Shortly after that admission, a mystery man waited for Dorothy outside the massage parlor at closing time and stabbed her 32 times. He slit her carotid artery and jugular vein.

The blood “just poured like a faucet, like a garden hose,” Noga told the Pioneer Press. Fortunately, patrol officer Pat Scott, who had just gotten coffee at a Flame Burger — 125 feet from where Dorothy lay praying for help — quickly arrived on the scene.

Scott used a towel and applied pressure to her neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding and would later recall that her blood soaked his pants “from his thighs to his boots,” according to the Pioneer Press story from Dec. 12, 2017.

Against all odds, Dorothy survived.

He’s with the band. The next part of the story sounds like a daytime soap opera, but apparently it really happened: Dorothy underwent hypnosis to help her remember who attacked her. She identified Stuart Knowlton as the man who told her, “Take a look because it’s going to be your last,” as he pushed his face into hers and began using his knife.

Minnesota doesn’t allow evidence influenced by hypnosis, but it gave more affirmation to the case against Knowlton.

Police got a hair sample from him that looked similar to some strands taken from Cassie’s clothing. They also found one hair with a hairshaft abnormality, “banded” hair. Knowlton’s hair bore the same pattern.

Life and limb. He was also seen eating at an Arthur Treacher’s restaurant near the Auto Clinic around the time of the murder.

The investigation lasted 10 months.

Ellen Hansen during her interview on Forensic Files

Then there was a shocking development that had nothing to do with the case: A vehicle struck Stuart Knowlton as he crossed a street in downtown St. Paul. Doctors had to amputate his leg below the knee.

Story unfolds. Knowlton’s misfortune didn’t stop police from arresting and jailing him in September 1982. Apparently, he spent a little too much cash at the massage parlor because he couldn’t come up with $75,000 in bail.

He waived his right to a jury trial, leaving his fate in the hands of Judge James Lynch.

In court, Dorothy Noga testified that Knowlton said that on the night of the murder, he entered the church to use the bathroom and asked Cassie if she’d like to play a game and then led her to his taxi. Cassie started to scream, so he choked her with his belt and disposed of the body and left her shoes in two different places. (But he kept the little buckles — he supposedly had a foot or shoe fetish.)

Fishy behavior on the job. Rettman testified that Knowlton told her he couldn’t remember where he was on the night of the murder.

Members of the Hansen family sitting in the audience during a ceremony honoring those who helped solve the murder case — Hansen family members attending a 2017 ceremony belatedly honoring four people who worked on the murder case

Two taxi dispatchers who worked with Knowlton said that he normally checked in with them frequently throughout the evening, but on the night Cassie disappeared, he didn’t communicate with them after 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. He also never turned in his trip sheets for the night; Knowlton said a passenger stole them. When Knowlton began work the next day, he rattled on about the murder so much that the dispatcher had to cut him off.

Knowlton’s defense lawyers had a few salvos to launch. They found some witnesses who said they’d seen a girl matching Cassie’s description in other parts of St. Paul the night she went missing.

Oddball turn. They also introduced a signed confession to Cassie’s murder from a 25-year-old Texan named Bondell Kvanli.

But on the witness stand, Kvanli denied committing the murder and said she was struggling with alcohol problems and schizophrenia.

Stuart Knowlton as a young man with eyeglasses and tousled hair. — Little is known about Stuart Knowlton’s early life, but this photo of him turned up on ancientfaces.com

After the three-week trial, Knowlton was convicted of first-degree murder and second-degree misconduct and given a life sentence.

Solo actor. At a parole hearing in 1997, Cassie’s father, Bill Hansen, asked board members to not let Knowlton’s age or missing leg arouse their compassion. “His physical condition would lure sympathetic children into his lethal grasp,” Bill said, as reported by the Star-Tribune of the Twin Cities.

Previously, 1,500 members of the community had written letters to urge the board to keep Knowlton behind razor wire.

Knowlton, without any defense lawyers accompanying him, told the panel members that he was innocent, and pleaded for release.

Final exit. They denied him parole, and noted that his next hearing would take place in 10 years.

“This in no way is to be construed that Mr. Knowlton will be released at that time, only that he will be afforded another review before the Commissioner of Corrections and the advisory panel,” a statement from the Minnesota Department of Corrections said, as reported by the Star-Tribune of the Twin Cities.

It mattered little because Stuart Knowlton died of natural causes in prison in 2006.

Dorothy Noga is embraced by retired police officer Jim Groh in 2017 — After the Cassie Hansen case, Dorothy Noga — seen here in a 2017 *Pioneer Press* photo with retired officer Jim Groh — helped police nab a state tax examiner who propositioned her for sex in return for tax-related favors

Beastly man. Not that his death made anyone in the community forget what happened to Cassie.

“I had a little girl at the time, and she was my firstborn,” Don Gorrie, Ramsay County medical examiner’s chief investigator, recalled in an Albert Lea Tribune story about his retirement in 2013. “It was just hard to not carry that case with me.”

In 2017, Pat Scott recalled, “It shook us to our core [that] a monster who walked among us, impersonating a human being, took her from her family and took her from all of us.”

Award received. That year, on the 36th anniversary of Cassie Hansen’s death, the St. Paul Police Department gave the Chief’s Award for Merit to Dorothy Noga, Pat Scott and retired officers Rick Klein and Jim Groh for helping to convict Stuart Knowlton. (Others involved in the case had been honored decades earlier.)

Pat Scott called Dorothy Noga the real hero of the effort. “Without her, who knows how many little girls that monster would have gone on to kill,” he said, according to a CBS News story from 2017.

Ellen and Bill Hansen, who had since moved out of state, attended the award ceremony along with Vannessa and their other two daughters, who were born after Cassie died.

A life changed. As for Dorothy Noga, no one was ever charged with the knife attack, but she received $50,000 to settle a claim that police failed to protect her.

Noga, who had moved to Florida and was no longer a massage parlor professional, said that the profound physical trauma she suffered “was an act of God to get me out of that line of work.”

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Jason Funk: Give Us a Sign

Katie Froeschle Is Attacked on the Job
(‘Muffled Cries,’ Forensic Files)

Although it certainly wasn’t his intention, Jason Funk did just about everything possible to incriminate himself before, during, and after Katie Froeschle’s murder.

Katie Froeschle in a white sleeveless top — Katie Froeschle

The unemployed motorcycle mechanic killed the 25-year-old insurance adjuster at his residence, just after she had confirmed with a co-worker that she was at his address. In fact, she was still on a cell phone call when Jason came walking out of his house toward her car.

Zero cover-up. Next up, he left forensic evidence, including the victim’s blood, in the house and “hid” her body in a highly discoverable location.

He didn’t even get rid of the murder weapon.

But it’s another misstep in particular that cemented the 27-year-old Floridian’s ranking as the second-dumbest criminal in all 15 seasons of the original Forensic Files.

Colorado native. I’ll get to his colossal mistake in a minute, but first here’s a recap of “Muffled Cries” along with extra information drawn from internet research into the case and the victim’s young life:

Katrina Anne “Katie” Froeschle came into the world in Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1979, the only girl and eldest of three children born to Leonore Froeschle, a nurse, and Jeff Froeschle, an assistant attorney general who later went into private practice. Katie was especially close to her father. They went skiing in Steamboat Springs and scuba diving in Key West together. She also enjoyed gymnastics and softball.

The family moved to Tierra Verde, Florida, and Katie, who had long hair and attractive features, graduated from Lakewood High School in St. Petersburg and then from Florida State University in 2002. She earned degrees in finance and risk management.

Insurers deluged. Her very first job out of school, as an adjuster for Florida Farm Bureau Insurance, put her interpersonal skills as well as her business studies to use.

Katie “got all the difficult people because she could get the information she needed and soothe them,” Leonore Froeschle told the Tampa Tribune.

On November 12, 2004, Katie deserved some R&R after one of many long days. Four hurricanes had hit Florida that year, creating extensive damage and an overwhelming amount of work for insurance professionals.

The yellow two bedroom house where Jason Funk lived — Jason Funk lived in the North Tampa house with girlfriend Pamela Hintz, who ultimately turned against him

Pet gone hungry. Katie planned to meet up with some friends at a restaurant after work, but she never showed up.

Her family called her repeatedly over the weekend but heard nothing. When her best friend from work, Amy Roderick, checked on Katie’s apartment, she found it empty — and yikes, no one had fed the cat.

Police began looking for Katie’s 2003 Chevrolet Impala. They learned that she had ended her workday by visiting a house in Sulphur Springs, a working-class section of Tampa, to check on a leaky roof reported by the owner.

Potential accident. Although the area has been called a bit dicey, Katie probably didn’t feel vulnerable.

“When performing inspections for roof damage, most adjusters will cite a fall from the roof as their greatest concern, not physical attack by the home’s occupants,” according to the Property Casualty 360 Daily News.

Also, that particular inspection probably didn’t even require the adjuster to go inside the home.

Auto turns up. As mentioned, Katie needed help from a coworker to locate the house at 1503 East Mulberry Drive, then told the coworker that she had arrived and described the occupant who walked toward her car.

After Katie disappeared, Jeff and Leonore Froeschle visited the two-bedroom yellow house that Jason Matthew Funk and girlfriend Pamela Hintz had moved into just three days earlier. The couple claimed to know nothing about a damaged roof or a visit from an adjuster.

The Froeschles soon discovered their daughter’s maroon Impala in the parking lot of the Harbor Club, a restaurant about a mile from the house on East Mulberry Drive. Inside the car, they found her keys and purse with no cash.

Sad development. A witness came forward to say he saw a tall man leave the car in the lot and walk away.

The book cover of the Safety in the Field for Adjusters And Other On-Site Professionals — Jeff Froeschle remarked that if the safety manual existed earlier, it could have saved his daughter’s life

When a missing woman’s car turns up abandoned, it’s usually an indicator of a tragedy, and unfortunately, such was the case with Katie. A police officer spotted her dead body in the Hillsborough River. She was partly clothed and lay in the water directly behind Jason Funk’s house.

Katie’s family held a memorial service at the Island Chapel in Tierra Verde.

Not a typical crime. The news of the random killing rattled locals. “Everyone felt this one,” police officer Jim Simonson told the Tampa Bay Times as reported in a November 20, 2004 story, which also noted that the cashiers at an area CVS pharmacy “couldn’t stop talking about it.”

Tampa Police Department spokesperson Joe Durkin said that Sulphur Springs had “its share of crime” but that the “brutal and heinous” homicide “shocks the conscience of the community,” according to Colorado news publication Summit Daily.

Because of Katie’s half-clothed state, investigators believed someone had sexually assaulted her, although a rape kit tested inconclusive. They determined she had been in the water for about 30 hours.

Owner cleared. The medical examiner found pattern injuries in the form of round marks on her head. Someone had likely beaten her to death with an object.

(In a letter to the editor, Katie’s aunt would later criticize the Tampa Bay Times for printing ” horrific, graphic details” that “served no purpose” and “only sensationalized and humiliated the name of a beautiful and upstanding young woman.”)

Leonore spoke to Jason Funk’s landlord, who acknowledged he had made the claim about the roof. His behavior seemed a bit suspicious to Leonore — but anybody could get a little weird when questioned about a murder, and he gave an alibi that satisfied the police.

Erratic behavior. When investigators informed Jason Funk about the discovery of Katie’s body, he “was more concerned about the police distracting him from his birthday cake baking in the oven than about Froeschle,” the Tampa Bay Times reported on February 10, 2005. Jason said that he was jet-skiing at the time Katie disappeared.

“He was at turns cold, jovial, and distraught, and he said a few things only the killer could have known,” a January 27, 2005 Tampa Bay Times story reported.

Investigators discovered that someone had tried using Katie’s credit cards a number of times and succeeded at least twice.

A black and white newspaper clipping showing Jason Funk in shackles and a prison uniform in court — A Tampa Bay Times clipping shows Jason Funk in court

Put his name to the crime. A Publix store surveillance video showed a tall white male paying for groceries with Katie’s ATM card.

And here’s the part of the story that has kept Forensic Files fans scratching and shaking their heads since “Muffled Cries” first aired in 2007: The same man paid for items at a Qwick Stop with Katie Froeschle’s card and signed his own name — “Jason Funk” — on the receipt.

The reaction of the audience members at a Montel Williams Show was typical. During a segment featuring shocking crimes, they could not contain their laughter when told about the signed receipt. “This guy is just stupid,” Williams said during the 2008 episode.

Backyard inferno. Jason left plenty of other clues as well. A lab discovered that some skin cells on Katie’s steering wheel came from Jason. Apparently, it didn’t occur to him to wipe the car interior clean after he drove the Impala from his house to the restaurant.

Inside the residence, detectives found Katie’s E-ZPass unit and business card. Outside the house, investigators identified a burn pit (incinerated items, always a bad indicator, the Slover s) with Katie’s belt — she was wearing pants and a top that day. Police also believed the killer put bloodstained synthetic carpet in the flames. Neighbor Robert Rodriguez recalled the smell of “plastic burning.”

Investigators theorized that a motorcycle muffler with a circular mounting bracket they had recovered from the house was the source of Katie’s pattern injuries. Jason had beaten her to death with the car part, they believed. His Nike sneakers had Katie’s blood on them and so did walls and miniblinds inside the house. A bank envelope belonging to Katie carried Jason’s fingerprints.

Not dodgy looking. But police didn’t have to wait for the test results before arresting Jason. They had taken him into custody immediately on a drug charge after finding 19 marijuana plants growing inside the house.

So who was this dim-witted brute?

Well, his background is a little mysterious, but some information turned up on Jason Funk. He was born on November 13, 1977 and grew up to stand 6-foot-3-inches tall. A photo of Jason “reveals a clean-cut, handsome young man, whose appearance would be impressive to most landlords,” according to Property Casualty 360 Daily News, which notes that in high-vacancy markets, many landlords “do not pull credit reports (much less run criminal background checks).”

A closeup of Katie Froeschle — Katie Froeschle thought about becoming a lawyer someday

Why she went inside. It turned out that, years before the murder, Jason had gotten himself into legal trouble owing to domestic violence and drug use.

Investigators theorized that on the day Katie died, Jason was the man who came out of the house as she drove up. (His girlfriend was at work.)

“There are any number of possible scenarios that might explain why the adjuster entered a property that seemed to require only an exterior roof inspection,” Property Casualty 360 Daily News conjectured in an October 5, 2009 story. “Perhaps she asked to use the bathroom after an unexpected long drive; maybe Funk invited her in for a drink of water; or perhaps Katie found significant roof damage and wanted to check interior ceilings for water stains.”

Still water. Forensic Files suggested that perhaps Jason made a pass at Katie, then got mad when she rebuffed him, and struck her repeatedly with the motorcycle muffler, killing her and spraying the wall with blood.

Then, not noticing that the water had no current (because of a dam), Jason threw her body into the Hillsborough River behind his house — and there it stayed, awaiting discovery.

Jason burned Katie’s clothes and the bloodstained carpet and stole her cash and credit cards. He had recently lost his job and needed money for groceries and the $850-a-month rent on the house.

Caught on audio. Then, Jason meticulously cleaned the muffler alleged to be the murder weapon; the metal sparkled, but the circular cutout enabled police to link it to Katie’s injuries.

Pamela Hintz cooperated with the police and secretly recorded some of her conversations with Jason:

“‘Honey, they can have me driving her car, spending her money, using her cell phone, doing everything else, but they don’t have me doing anything to her,’ he told Hintz. At other times, he became threatening, telling Hintz if she hung up, he would put her ‘in the river,'” the Tampa Bay Times reported.

The waterway where police found Katie Froeschle’s body is part of Hillsborough River State Park

Full confession. Despite the mounting evidence, Jason did have at least one defender. “It’s not in character for Jason to do anyone wrong like that,” said Scott Bitman, owner of Cycle Masters and Jason’s former boss.

But Jason himself seemed to come to his senses when confronted with the forensics and possibility of the death penalty.

Wearing shackles and an orange prison uniform in court, he admitted to inviting Katie into his house, attempting to rape her, and beating her to death with the motorcycle muffler.

Source of sadness. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of cultivation of marijuana.

Represented by a public defender, Jason declined to make a statement to the victim’s family.

Katie’s parents, her brother Samuel, and Amy Roderick chose to address the court about their loss. Amy mentioned that Katie only saw the good in people, and Samuel spoke of how he and his sister would stay up all night talking — but now he cries himself to sleep. Leonore called Katie her best friend.

Jeff Froeschle had an especially difficult time mourning his daughter

Quite the revisionist. Their words brought Judge Denise Pomponio to tears, the Tampa Bay Times reported. She gave Jason a sentence of life without parole for the murder plus a total of 60 years for attempted sexual battery and other offenses against Katie plus having the contraband houseplants.

But during his Forensic Files interview, Jason Funk said that he was innocent and took responsibility for the murder only to avoid the death penalty.

So where is this Isaac Newton of a man today?

FSU award. Jason resides in the Wakulla Correctional Institution in Crawfordville. Also known as #168693 and listed with the Sexual Offender Predator System, he’s under close custody, meaning that armed personnel must supervise him at all times. The Florida DOC website notes that he weighs 236 pounds and has no chance of release.

To honor the woman Jason murdered, the Froeschles established the Katrina Anne “Katie” Froeschle Memorial Scholarship Fund for FSU students interested in risk management, insurance, real estate, and business law.

Katie’s former employer, Florida Farm Bureau Insurance, donated $50,000.

In 2011, with Katie’s tragic murder in mind, the American Association of Public Insurance Adjusters published Safety in the Field for Adjusters And Other On-Site Professionals. “If this manual can save one life, it’s worth it,” a press release quoted Jeff Froeschle as saying.

Jason Funk in a prison mugshot, which shows he still has a headful of hair — Jason Funk in a 2022 mugshot

Weighty memorial. Over the years, Jeff has kept close tabs on Jason’s whereabouts as Florida moved him around to various prisons, according to a Tampa Bay Times story, which noted that Jeff served as a board member of the Life Center of the Suncoast, a Tampa facility offering grief counseling to families of murder victims.

Sadly, the Froeschles ended their 28-year marriage not long after the murder. Jeff said he worried that the union deteriorated because he talked about Katie too much.

His devotion continued, however.

Have some punch. Jeff collected 934 photos of his lost daughter and set them to music for a presentation for the scholarship fund — but he told the Tampa Bay Times that after viewing it twice, he found it too heartbreaking to watch again.

The article also notes that Jeff tried to work through his feelings by boxing with a heavy bag and sometimes he would “pretend the bag was Funk’s face.”

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Adolph Coors III’s Kidnapping

Joseph Corbett’s Plan Fails Spectacularly
(‘Bitter Brew,’ Forensic Files)

Dating back to 1960, Adolph Coors’ kidnapping is among the oldest cases featured on Forensic Files. But it mirrors the show’s modern episodes about abductions in two fundamental ways: The perpetrator never got what he wanted, and he ended up in dire legal trouble.

In the Sally Weiner case in 1988, for example, the authorities found Sally’s body before her husband had a chance to meet David Copenhefer’s demands for cash. Evidence linking the ransom note to the bookstore owner’s computer helped convict him, and he ended up dying behind razor wire.

Loser situations. Then there’s convicted killer Mark Winger. He dreamed up a plan for having a friend ransomed and using the money to murder a witness. It never made it past the prison walls. A fellow inmate recorded him. In 2007, a judge tacked an extra 35 years on Winger’s sentence for that debacle.

For this week, I looked into what price kidnapper Joseph Corbett — whose plan went haywire almost immediately — paid for his crime against Adolph Coors III, and also searched for additional background information about both men.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Bitter Brew” along with extra information drawn from online research:

Good rich guy. After coming to the U.S. from Germany, Adolph Herman Coors started the Coors Brewing Company with a business partner in 1873. His son took it over and, in turn, grandson Adolph Herman Joseph Coors III moved up to the top spot despite that he stuttered and was allergic to beer, according to the New York Times.

Adolph Coors III was born in 1915, back when Americans still named baby boys “Adolph.” People called him “Ad” for short. He grew up to be 6-foot-3-inches tall and had “Coors trademark” blue-green eyes. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Cornell University, and married Mary Urquhart Grant in 1940.

“The calamity couldn’t have happened to a more undeserving member of his moneyed class,” the New York Times wrote in a book review. “Ad Coors was devoted to his wife and four children and lived a relatively simple, scandal-free life.”

Outside the bottle. He also reportedly liked to help out at his family’s 500-acre ranch. He would drive a tractor and even shovel manure, according to the Kansas City Star.

At the office, he presided over a huge enterprise. In addition to the brewery, the family owned a ceramics business and aluminum can factory. The three companies combined were grossing $40 million a year, a colossal sum in 1960.

Exterior shot of Coors Brewery — The Coors Brewery offers guided tours and has a gift shop

Vacant vehicle. On the morning of Feb. 9, 1960, Adolph started his 12-mile drive from the ranch in Morrison to the brewery in Golden, Colorado.

He never arrived.

That day, a milkman found a blue-and-white vehicle blocking the Turkey Creek Bridge, a short and narrow structure built over a shallow creek. The dairyman pressed on his on horn, but Adolph’s International Harvester Travelall — a type of station wagon that auto magazines would later point to as the precursor to the SUV — didn’t move. It had its radio and engine on but no one inside.

Serious trouble brewing. Police took note of a bloodstain on the bridge, and saw Adolph’s brown fedora and a lens from his eyeglasses lying beneath the bridge. The Kansas City Star reported that the found objects were his tan baseball cap and plastic rimmed glasses.

Either way, yikes.

The next morning, Mary Coors, whose children were ages 10 to 18 at the time, got a typed letter saying her husband had been kidnapped. It demanded $200,000 in tens and $300,000 in twenties. Adolph would die if she notified police (she did anyway), the note said.

The kidnapper instructed her to take out a Denver Post ad for a tractor as a signal that she had the money ready. The letter used the pronoun “we” and said that Adolph would be released 48 hours after they received the cash. And they didn’t want to hurt him; they just wanted the money, the note said.

Feds come in. Adolph III’s father, Adolph Coors Jr., who had been finishing up a Hawaiian vacation when he heard about the kidnapping, said he would pay any price to get his son back. The Coorses got the $500,000 in cash together and placed the classified ad.

Newspaper clipping showing Mary Coors and her children — A *Kansas City Star* photo from March 13, 1960 shows Adolph Coors III’s wife, Mary Coors, and their children

They waited for further instructions, but they never came.

Because kidnapping is a federal crime, the FBI’s Denver division swooped in to join the case.

Astute witness. The agents studied the letter, noting that it had no errors and was beautifully typed using a font made by a Swiss company. Investigators determined the note came from a Royalite portable typewriter that retailed for $49.99. They noticed the letter “s” printed lower than the other letters, a clue that might help them pinpoint the typewriter used by the kidnapper.

A store clerk remembered that a man bought that model typewriter with cash about four months before the kidnapping.

In the meantime, a witness had recalled seeing a 1951 Mercury sedan near the scene of the abduction and even gave the police a few digits of the license plate number.

Print evidence. The canary-yellow car was registered to a “Walter Osborne.” In Denver, investigators found his apartment, but he had vacated it right after the kidnapping. The maid had seen guns in his room.

Fingerprints found in the empty apartment matched those of Joseph Corbett, a 31-year-old escaped killer using Walter Osborne as a pseudonym. Where did this brazen man come from?

Joseph Corbett Jr. was born in Seattle on October 25, 1928, the son of a newspaperman. He was more than six feet tall and slender with light brown hair and hazel eyes, according to a later FBI Wanted poster, which also noted he was a “proficient typist and neat dresser.”

Joseph Corbett wearing a jacket and tie and eyeglasses — Joseph Corbett used the alias ‘Walter Osborne’ after slipping away from prison

Promise wasted. He had an IQ of 148 and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Oregon, according to an October 22, 2017 story in The Commercial Appeal.

“I knew him as intellectually very, very sharp,” parole officer Ron Olson would later tell the Denver Post. “Emotionally, very immature. High strung. Excitable.”

At age 20, he lost his mother when she accidentally fell off of a balcony at home. He then dropped out of school.

Penchant for pigment. By 1951, Joseph’s life was spinning out of control. He shot another man in the back of the head near Hamilton Air Force Base north of San Francisco. He claimed self defense but pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received five years to life.

He behaved so well in prison that he won a spot in a light-security dormitory — and promptly escaped.

As “Walter Osborne,” he moved to Denver in 1955. He got a job as a paint mixer at a Benjamin Moore factory.

Investigators found out that he told colleagues at Benjamin Moore that he would be coming into some money. And one day, he didn’t show up for work and never returned.

Manhunt continues. A neighbor in his apartment building said he heard him typing late at night. Eight days later, a fire chief found the suspect’s burned-out car at a dump site in New Jersey. On the vehicle, investigators scraped off a caked-on substance similar to soil around Turkey Creek. Inside, they discovered the Royalite typewriter used to write the ransom note.

Now, the police had a good suspect but still no sign of Adolph Coors III.

“Will the big spring thaw yield additional clues to Ad Coor’s whereabouts?” reporter John T. Alexander wrote in the Kansas City Star.

Not coming back alive. On September 11, 1960, eight months after his disappearance, hikers found some discarded clothing around Pike’s Peak in the Rocky Mountains. A keyring engraved with “ACIII” helped authorities identify the clothing as belonging to the abducted man.

Dump site with garbage and branches — The dumpsite where some of Adolph Coors’ clothing was found

Four days later, some human remains, including a skull and shoulder blades, plus a jacket with what looked like two bullet wounds, were discovered in Sedalia.

“A colleague ran through the office, saying ‘They found Coors!’ ” recalled Richard Hanes, then an assistant district attorney in the Colorado Springs DA’s office, as recounted in local newspaper The Gazette. Hanes and his co-workers raced to the scene to preserve the evidence. Most of the body parts had decomposed and animals had picked at them. But dental records confirmed the ID as Adolph Coors III. (Hanes told The Gazette that he had to carry the skull in a box past patients in the waiting room of the dental office.)

Plot goes awry. Investigators believed that Joseph Corbett, who in reality had no accomplice, studied Adolph’s daily schedule and route to the brewery. The morning of the kidnapping, Corbett parked his car on the bridge, pretending it had broken down, and Coors got out to investigate, they theorized. Joseph’s plan was probably to restrain him — packaging from handcuffs and leg shackles were seen in a dumpster outside Corbett’s apartment building — and take him alive.

Adolph fought back when Joseph advanced on him, the two men struggled, Adolph broke free and tried to return to his own car, and then Joseph shot him twice in the back, investigators believed.

Then, he probably unloaded the body in the Colorado mountains, drove his own car to New Jersey, and lit the vehicle on fire in an attempt to dispose of evidence.

Mounties ride in. Still, where was Joseph Corbett?

J. Edgar Hoover called him the most wanted criminal in the U.S. The Denver Post later referred to him as “a man once sought more urgently than any outlaw since John Dillinger.”

After seeing a Reader’s Digest article about the kidnapping, a woman in Vancouver reported that a man matching Corbett’s description lived in her apartment building. By the time the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and FBI arrived, he had fled. Next up, the owner of the Maxine Hotel tipped off authorities that a gentleman resembling Joseph Corbett had “recently stayed at her flophouse” under the name Thomas C. Wainwright and he drove a “fire-engine red Pontiac,” according to the FBI website. Finally, on October 29, 1960, a local Vancouver patrolman spotted the car at a motor inn and called for backup.

FBI Wanted poster showing Joseph Corbett facing the camera and from the side

When Joseph saw the law officers, he said, “I’m your man” or “I give up. I’m the man you want” or “Okay, I give up.” (Sources vary.)

Get your act together. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted of kidnapping and murder on March 19, 1961. Because under Colorado law, courts couldn’t give a death sentence without an eyewitness or a confession, Joseph Corbett received life in prison.

In 1979, he won parole but immediately violated the terms by traveling out of state, and ended up back behind bars. Shortly afterward, he received parole anew, but broke the rules again. On December 12, 1980, officials gave him another chance, releasing him from the Colorado State Prison in Cañon City.

He got jobs in a factory and as a truck driver for the Salvation Army.

Inconspicuous lifestyle. In 1996, Joseph acknowledged to the Denver Post that the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case from 1932 fascinated him, but said he had nothing to do with the botched Adolph Coors abduction.

Toward the end of his life, Joseph lived in a one-bedroom apartment at the Royal Chateau Apartments in southwest Denver. Most of his neighbors knew him only as the quiet man who emerged from his apartment to retrieve his newspaper with barely a word for anyone, according to the Denver Post. A few knew about his past as a killer but never asked him about it (a wise move).

Richard Hanes sits near a window — Assistant DA Richard Hanes followed the case from Adolph Coors III’s disappearance to Joseph Corbett’s parole

Joseph caused no trouble.

Tight-lipped until the end. At some point, he got cancer and occasionally needed help up the stairs.

On August 24, 2009, after neighbors noticed Joseph’s newspaper lying uncollected outside his door, the building manager entered Joseph’s apartment and found him dead.

He had shot himself in the head with a pistol.

Joseph left no note, dying without ever admitting to his horrible crime.

That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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