The strange and ultimately beautiful story of Virginia Ridley’s life with her oddball husband has captivated Forensic Files viewers since it first aired 25 years ago. A recent survey ranked “Killigraphy” in the top three favorites of all 400 episodes of the series.
But the narrative would have had a much different conclusion if not for McCracken Poston, the lawyer tasked with proving Alvin Ridley’s innocence in the 1997 death of the reclusive Virginia.
Alvin owned a television repair business in the town of Ringgold, Georgia. Everyone agreed that he did a great job of replacing cathode ray tubes, but few had anything else good to say about him.
He threatened people who came to the door of his house, hid in his own bushes to spy on passersby, and motored around town with a fake woman in his front seat.
Most troubling of all, he had a real wife at home who almost never appeared in public — and she cut off contact with her family members despite their attempts to reach her. When Virginia Ridley turned up dead with petechial hemorrhages at the age of 49, law enforcement concluded that Alvin had held her hostage for decades and then strangled her.
Fortunately, inside Alvin’s sloppy hovel of a house, Poston discovered evidence that Alvin and Virginia were just two unusual people who suited each other.
Virginia had hypergraphia — an affinity for constantly writing down the minutiae of everyday life.
Pieces of paper with her handwriting described a contented home life with Alvin. The topics included what she and Alvin ate for dinner and which TV shows they watched; one of the papers listed the cast of The Waltons.
McCracken Poston named a downtown building after Alvin Ridley. Photo byEmily Dorio
At the trial, Poston argued that Virginia stayed inside the house because she wanted to — she had epilepsy and feared having seizures in front of anyone but Alvin — and that she died of natural causes.
In his 2024 book, Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom, Poston describes how Alvin Ridley, who died at age 82 on July 2, 2024, turned into a sympathetic character and how his own relationship with Alvin evolved into a friendship.
“Alvin was neurodivergent. That’s modern parlance for autistic,” said Poston. “I think Virginia was on the spectrum too. Alvin was her perfect partner.”
Poston, who is a former Georgia state legislator and a onetime candidate for U.S. Congress and now has a solo law office in Ringgold, indulged some of my curiosity about the case. Here are excerpts from our Zoom interview on July 22:
Alvin Ridley was task-oriented in his work as a TV repairman, according to his former lawyer. Photo by Thomas England
Did you know Alvin Ridley before the murder accusations? When I was growing up, he was our TV repairman.
Did he really hide in his bushes? I wouldn’t be surprised because he didn’t trust people and wanted to see who was there. He was hiding in his own bushes in his own yard.
Sorry, but I have to ask about the blowup doll of a woman Alvin reportedly drove around in his car. It was a mannequin from the late 1950s, a chalky broken mannequin, but because of the way people in town think, it became a blowup sex doll. When Alvin was in high school, people saw him with this mannequin in the passenger seat. He used it to make a woman he was interested in jealous. The mannequin made an appearance again after someone talked about it during jury selection and it reminded Alvin it was in his basement because he never threw anything away, and he broke it out again. I just thought, this guy cannot catch a break. People are talking about things that happened decades ago.
The Forensic Files episode prompted negative reader-comments about Virginia’s relatives, the Hickeys. Were they really the enemy for repeatedly trying to reach her? I don’t blame the Hickeys. It was a very unusual situation. I would have been as aggressive trying to contact my sisters. But Virginia quoted the Bible about being married, being one, and said she wished her parents would leave her and her husband alone. She persuaded a judge and courtroom officers that she was where she wanted to be. Virginia’s cousin showed up at one of my book signings and said that Virginia told her she wanted to stay away from her parents. The Hickeys were probably responsible for getting Virginia and Alvin evicted from public housing in the 1970s.
Virginia Ridley
Reports describe the Ridleys’ house as cockroach-infested. It’s hard to believe a woman would live that way by choice. What’s your take? Virginia kept a neat home. The pictures of the house were taken after she died. Alvin was the one who ate and left half-eaten food around the house. He had a vehicle that he ate in, and a rat came in it. After the trial, I was in the house very briefly when we were doing media, and the house had gotten worse with hoarder-packrat stuff.
The house turned out to be a gold mine when you noticed that Alvin had covered the walls with papers with Virginia’s handwriting — describing a happy home life. Had you heard about hypergraphia before then? No. Shortly before I put the epilepsy expert on the witness stand, he asked if there was anything else strange about Virginia. I said, yes, she wrote down everything she’d ever done. He said, I’ve heard of that. A lot of my patients have hypergraphia.
[Poston also learned that epileptic seizures sometimes cause petechial hemorrhages — enabling him to counter the prosecution’s contentions that the marks came from manual strangulation; Virginia died from having an epileptic seizure during sleep, he argued.]
Did Virginia’s hypergraphia extend to the outside world? Yes, she corresponded with elected officials. She wrote to President Richard Nixon about being evicted from public housing, because the law is under HUD. U.S. Senator David Henry Gambrell wrote her back, noting her letter to President Nixon.
Virginia Ridley’s death made great tabloid fodder
How did you end up getting so close to Alvin? He felt comfortable in my law office. We began meeting for lunch regularly after the trial.
I knew he had a kidney problem and tried to get him help. When he went into the hospital, I said that they’d better keep him there for a few days. They got his kidney function up and he moved to a step-down facility, and then he allowed me to put him in another rehab-nursing home, so that Medicaid would kick in once his funds were exhausted. Then, he had a heart attack.
In the hospital, I said, did you ever think that Virginia and your parents are calling to you? He said, no, I want to stay here with you. He said he was going to live to 110. I said, you just want 30 more years of free lunches from me. I didn’t ever think he would die so soon.
The last time I saw him, he was in great distress. It looked like another coronary issue. I said, Alvin, I’m looking forward to meeting Virginia, and he said when we get up there, I’ll show you where you can fish and catch 30 fish an hour. Then he said, ‘Oh Lordy.’ I was holding his hand when died.♠
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Photographer Charles Rathbun Is Secretly a Savage (‘Photo Finish,’ Forensic Files)
Linda Sobek
Before jumping into “Photo Finish,” I want to let folks who watch Forensic Files on HLN know that you can find a daily list of updates and recaps on Facebook and Threads. Those who watch the show elsewhere can use the table of contents to find related blog posts.
And speaking of devotees of the series, I think most would agree that “Photo Finish” is about as Forensic Files as an episode can get: The deceased had a sunny personality and was known for reliability. The suspect changed his story during the course of the investigation and ultimately settled on “she died by accident and I covered it up out of fear” (John Boyle). Oh, and the sex was consensual. (Thomas Jabin Berry).
But wait, there’s more: The criminal had been arrested years earlier for another horrible crime and either gotten a light sentence (Clay Daniels) or beaten the charge entirely (David Copenhefer).
Sweet and friendly. For this post, I checked into whether killer Charles Rathbun has won any leniency of his own with the criminal justice system. I also filled in some biographical details about him and victim Linda Sobek. So let’s get going on the recap of “Photo Finish” along with extra information from internet research:
On November 16, 1995, Linda Sobek, 27, vanished on her way to a photo shoot. She was a busy model and aspiring actress living in a house just off the boardwalk in Hermosa Beach, California.
Linda made friends easily and was outgoing, but sometimes could be “as vulnerable as a wounded fawn,” according to the book Death of a Model by Clifford L. Linedecker. At age 17, she slit one of her wrists amid romantic problems.
The LA Times reported that she called her cat, Boo, her best friend.
Calendar girl. She was also spiritual and belonged to Baycities Community Church in Redondo Beach. She called her mother, Elaine Sobek, who lived in Lakewood with her father, every day.
Linda Sobek shared a four-bedroom house with three other women in Hermosa Beach, part of Los Angeles County
From 1989 to 1993, Linda worked as a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Raiders. A friend recalled that, as a Raiderette, Sobek “was able to dress more quickly than others because she was so beautiful she didn’t have to spend much time putting on makeup,” the Press-Telegram reported.
At no more than 5-foot-4-inches, she wasn’t tall enough for the runways of Paris or Milan, but she was well-proportioned and looked great in a swimsuit. The Brand Model Agency in Irvine represented her, and she got gigs posing in bikinis for calendars and auto magazines and appearing at conventions, according to Death of a Model.
A no-show. Not all of Linda’s career consisted of wearing sexy clothes. Shortly before she died, she had plans to appear in a catalog featuring fashions of the 1940s.
On the day she went missing, Linda got a page directly from a photographer — not through her agency — for a last-minute shoot. She left a message for Elaine, an administrative assistant at Bechtel Corporation, that she would call her later to talk about a barbeque they had planned.
But she never did.
Weight for her. And the usually dependable Linda also missed a date with Married With Children that day. Forensic Files said that it was for an audition, but Death of a Model wrote that she had already won a small part on the TV show and it was a wardrobe fitting that she missed. The sitcom about a crass family of four never received critical acclaim, but it launched the successful careers of regulars Katey Sagal, Ed O’Neill, and Christina Applegate as well as then-unknown bit players like Matthew LeBlanc and Pam Anderson.
For Linda to willingly skip out on an appointment like that would have been unthinkable.
The last place anyone remembered spotting Linda was at a Redondo Beach Gold’s Gym, where she worked out in the morning.
Huge response. Elaine immediately reported her daughter missing. Linda’s roommates worried that some dodgy person she might have met at a trade show lured her to a photo shoot to get her alone, according to Death of a Model.
Truckin’ magazine ran a tribute to Linda Sobek
Fortunately for the Sobeks, the disappearance of a popular and attractive young woman with long blond hair is no ordinary missing persons case, and they had plenty of help right from the start.
The Raiderettes publicist dashed off a press release asking for help. A reward fund for assistance finding Linda received $100,000 in pledges, the Associated Press reported. The boyfriend of Linda’s roommate Kelly Flynn made up 53,000 flyers. Tabloid TV shows like A Current Affair with Maury Povich ran segments about Linda.
Police started getting 100 calls an hour with tips, according to Oxygen. Law enforcement considered the Angeles National Forest ground zero for the search effort.
Final resting place. The National Forest Foundation describes the 700,000-acre expanse as the “backyard playground to the huge metropolitan area of Los Angeles.” But law enforcement knows it as a backdrop to homicide.
“Somebody once said, if all the bodies in the Angeles National Forest suddenly got up and walked out, the county population would jump by 10,000,” sheriff’s deputy Steve Crider told the Orange County Register.
Police mobilized dogs and helicopters to search the forest, but the first valuable clue came from a man serving community service as part of a work crew. Bill Bartling, 49, who was paying off traffic tickets by picking up trash, found discarded pictures of Linda as well as her day planner — with the date she went missing ripped out. A garbage can also held a contract to borrow a black Lexus prototype Lx 450 sport utility vehicle for an Autoweek assignment. The document bore the name of Charles Rathbun.
Linda Sobek as a Raiderette
Suspect makes a slip. A 38-year-old freelance photographer, Charles Rathbun told police that he met Linda for breakfast at Denny’s in Torrance on the morning she disappeared to discuss her portfolio, but he decided she wasn’t right for the shoot. He claimed that she drove away in her car, but police found her white Nissan 240-SX at 182nd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard, right near the restaurant.
According to Real Murders of Los Angeles, while speaking with police, Charles blurted out that he was the last person to see Linda alive. How did he know that? Her body hadn’t turned up. A crime lab that checked out the Lexus he’d borrowed found small amounts of blood despite that someone had cleaned the vehicle thoroughly.
While under surveillance, Charles fired a gun toward his driveway and one shot ricocheted and hit the arm of a woman friend. She wasn’t badly hurt, but it gave LA police grounds for arresting him.
In his home, police found more than 100 firearms and a bag with cords, tape, and alcohol.
So who was this No. 1 suspect?
Harrowing story. Charles Edgar Rathbun was born the last of four children on October 2, 1957. He grew up in Worthington, a section of Columbus, Ohio. According to the Los Angeles Times, he became interested in photography early on and started taking pictures for the school paper, The Chronicle.
He later took classes at the Ohio State University while working at a Kroger grocery store.
Charles Rathbun (Photo used with permission from Filmrise)
Investigators discovered something alarming buried in his history: the alleged rape of a married co-worker in 1979. The woman, a clerk at Kroger, had given him a ride home from work because he had a flat tire.
No consequences. She was interested in photography andaccepted his invitation to take a look at his work inside his home, where he attacked her, she said. She begged Charles to leave her alone, but he threatened to kill her if she cried out for help, and he raped her on the floor, she said.
But Charles claimed they’d had consensual sex, and the judge in the case believed him.
And, back in those pre-internet days, the story didn’t follow Charles. The young man, who loved cars as well as photography, moved to the Detroit area to get his fill of all things automotive. He then relocated to California circa 1987.
Charles gained a reputation as a talented photographer for car magazines. He could make sleek cars look even sleeker and he also understood the mechanics of the vehicles, according to the LA Times.
Man of dualities. The Ohio native’s work appeared in such publications as Car and Driver and Motor Trend. Steve Spence, managing editor of Car and Driver, told the LA Times that nothing about Charles suggested he was in any way capable of murder. The two men had enjoyed a visit to Sicily together so Charles could test out the tires of a new Mustang on the Targa Florio race course.
Other associates described Charles as friendly and sociable, and comfortable around women.
Yet a few people who spoke to the LA Times characterized him as a loner, someone who lived in Hollywood for eight years and never seemed to have a girlfriend. After the murder, some models he’d worked with came forward to say he’d gotten out of line with them.
Serial revisionist. According to Forensic Files, Charles harbored some hostility toward women with blond hair and didn’t like Linda, whom he had previously worked with.
Investigators found out that he had a bad temper that had cost him some freelance work.
During police questioning, Charles changed his story, admitting that he had hired Linda as a model to pose with the Lexus around a dry lakebed called El Mirage in the Angeles National Forest. The assignment required her to kick up sand by making doughnuts with the car, he said. While demonstrating how to drive the car in circles, he accidentally hit her with the Lexus, then panicked and buried the body in the forest, Charles claimed.
Flowers and tears. He agreed to lead police to her body, but a series of spots he pinpointed yielded nothing. Charles was stalling for time, hoping the body would deteriorate enough so they couldn’t find evidence on it, according to Forensic Files.
Finally, investigators told him that they believed his story about the accident and that recovering Linda’s body would help prove his innocence. On November 25, 1995, from a helicopter, Charles identified her resting place. Police found Linda’s body buried in a shallow grave near a rock and a culvert.
Because of the cold temperatures there, her body hadn’t decomposed.
Tie to OJ. Meanwhile, mourners began leaving floral wreaths and sprigs outside Linda’s shared house. The Los Angeles News-Pilot published a photo of Kelly Flynn tending to them.
Tanya Brown, the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson — whose murder led to the O.J. Simpson trial of the century — attended Linda’s funeral. “I feel like I know her, and it’s just as tragic as it was ours,” Tanya told NBC News: Today.
In fact, the funeral, at the First Baptist Church of Lakewood in Long Beach, drew some 1,000 people, including friends from Linda’s modeling career, Raiderette alums, and former running backs Eric Dickerson and Christian Okoye. A violinist and guitarist played “Over the Rainbow” and “Yesterday.” White doves were released.
Medical examiner’s report. The media was there too. “She was an angel when she was with us and she is an angel now,” one friend told the Press-Telegram.
The minister spoke of how there should be a buddy system for models so they don’t have to meet photographers alone. (He’s right, it’s a good idea, but to me, that’s a form of blaming the victim. Not every woman has a friend available to accompany her anywhere anytime.)
The Angeles National Forest includes deserts, mountains and woods
Soon, Linda’s family had to bear disturbing news from the autopsy results. Linda died of asphyxiation, not injuries from a car accident.
Cover-up effort. Investigators believed that Linda had refused sexual advances from the 6-foot-3-inch photographer and he then hit her on the head and sodomized with a foreign object, perhaps a gun. Linda had internal hemorrhages. Bruising on her legs pointed to sexual assault as well. Ligature marks matched the size of the rope found in his house.
To eliminate evidence, Charles had washed her — she had no makeup on when police found her — and changed her clothes before disposing of her body, investigators believed.
Charles was charged with first-degree murder and sodomy with a foreign object. A judge set his bail at $1 million.
Play-acting? Los Angeles County put a heavy hitter in charge of the prosecution, Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, who was part of the team that prosecuted Charles Manson.
By this time, Charles Rathbun had already tried — or wanted it to appear that he had tried — to shoot himself, according to CNN. He would later testify that he drank half a liter of Scotch, wrote suicide notes, cocked a handgun, and then passed out. When he awoke, his friends talked him out of it. He blamed the attempt on anguish over not finding good legal representation right away.
Then, while in custody, Charles cut his wrists with a razor and wrote in his own blood, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” But the cuts were superficial and not life-threatening, and police believed it was a sympathy-seeking stunt, according to Oxygen.
Surprise pictures. Next up, Charles revised his story about Linda’s death again. After he accidentally hit her with the car, she started kicking and screaming and, while subduing her, he accidentally choked her.
At the trial in 1996, the court got to hear Charles Rathbun’s final narrative: Linda consumed half a flask of tequila and seduced him by flashing him. They had consensual sex during which she was accidentally asphyxiated.
Robert Rathbun, brother of the accused, claimed to have found five rolls of film in the desert that would prove Linda had willingly participated in sex. While the first four rolls showed her posing in dresses, the fifth consisted of double-exposed photos of female genitalia, which Charles said Linda willingly posed for.
Alcohol involved. The prosecution, however, found evidence that the explicit photos were taken in an Oldsmobile, not a Lexus, and they didn’t come from Linda.
Prosecutors contended that Linda fought back against the photographer’s advances. He forced her to drink tequila, resulting in her blood alcohol level of 0.13% when she died. (According to those who knew her, it wasn’t like Linda to drink on the job, or drink at all.) After the rape, Charles strangled her to death.
And there was also the matter of what Autoweek publisher Leon Mandel said: Rathbun’s assignment was to photograph the Lexus in a rural setting — not a desert forest — and the shoot wasn’t supposed to include any models, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Strong convictions. Models Tiffany Richardson and Amy Weber, who had worked with Charles Rathbun, testified that a year before the murder he had referred to Linda as a bitch. He told Weber that Linda “deserved what she got coming to her,” as reported by the LA Times.
In what must have been excruciating for the Sobeks, portions of Linda’s diary were read in court. They mostly portrayed her struggle to find and maintain true love. It came out that she had recently had renewed thoughts of suicide and that she had once allowed an admiring stranger to buy her a $1,000 bed.
“I don’t want to drag Linda Sobek through the mud,” defense lawyer Mark Werksman said. “But the fact is my client is facing the death penalty.”
The trial lasted six weeks, and it took the jury six hours to finish deliberations.
Charles closed his eyes to brace himself before the verdict was read, and the Sobek family broke into cheers when they heard the decision, guilty of first-degree murder and sexual assault.
The jury didn’t believe any of Charles’ story about the death resulting from consensual sex. “You couldn’t get me to believe that’s something any woman would agree to,” juror Greg Mars later said, as reported by the Daily Pilot, a news service owned by the LA Times.
Sheer scorn. The killer showed no reaction in the courtroom. Ann Rathbun, his mother, also stayed quiet, but she covered her mouth with her hand and the color drained from her face, and his father jerked, according to the Daily Pilot.
“I have never known what it was like to despise someone like I despise this person. God will punish you, Charlie,” Linda’s father, Bob Sobek, told the court, as reported by the LA Times.
As the jurors filed out of the courtroom, Linda’s parents and brother hugged each one, creating a “tearful, impromptu reception line,” according to the Daily Pilot.
Where the money went. Mark Werksman said his client had been afraid he would be wrongfully convicted. Robert Rathbun, himself a lawyer, said that his brother was a kind and gentle person who never wanted to harm others and that his family believed Linda Sobek’s death was a tragic accident.
The Sobeks thought that Robert Rathbun should have faced charges for providing false evidence to cover up the murder and rape. Sobek family lawyer Wayne Willette noted that Robert claimed to have destroyed maps that Charles had given him so that he could find the missing rolls of film. (I found nothing to indicate Robert Rathbun was ever criminally charged.)
A memorial life-size cutout of Linda Sobek, shown in a photo with her mother and brother, Elaine and Steve Sobek
The $100,000 in the reward fund would go toward helping abused women “so that Linda’s death will bring about positive change,” Willette said.
Remember the grocery clerk. Linda’s family took out an ad in the Mercury News a decade after the murder: “It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since you left us. We’ll always remember your smile, contagious laugh, and the light you shed that is still spreading. The world will never be as good as it was before you left.”
It’s still galling today to remember that, had the judge believed the other, alleged rape victim back in 1979, Linda Sobek would probably still be alive.
Perhaps the Sobek family can also take comfort in the knowledge that Charles Rathbun’s life without parole sentence stands. The state corrections website notes that he remains incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino.
For Forensic Files viewers, however, some loose ends to the story remain.
More felonies? The episode mentions that Charles Rathbun was at first suspected of involvement in the then-mysterious murder of another model, Kimberly Pandelios. She died after meeting a photographer at a Denny’s and her remains turned up not far from Linda’s.
Plus, the LA Times reported that authorities were investigating Charles for “unsolved slayings and disappearing young women from Michigan to California.” During the investigation into Linda’s death, police had found scores of photographs of models in “death poses” and attempted to contact them to ensure they were only play-acting for the camera, according to an Associated Press story.
For an upcoming post, I’ll check into an epilogue for those parts of the story.
In the meantime, you can watch the Real Murders of Los Angeles on the Oxygen network’s website if you create an account.
Greedy Lovers Kill a Once-Famous Singer ‘The Cheater,’ Forensic Files
Walter Scott in his prime
Forensic Files went all in on “The Cheater,” the episode about the rise and fall of vocalist Walter Scott. The producers scored interviews with the victim’s mother and father — plus Bob Kuban, the leader of the group that Walter helped to land on the Top 40 list. Forensic Files even got the man who murdered Walter to speak on camera.
Before seeing the episode, I had never heard of Walter Scott, but the show’s portrayal made me want to learn more about his trajectory from blue-collar worker to nationally known celebrity to wedding singer — and ultimately to homicide victim.
Making the band. So let’s get going on the recap of “The Cheater,” along with extra information from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s great reporting as well as other internet sources:
Bob Kuban, the founder of Bob Kuban and the In-Men, was a DuBourg High School music instructor who once studied under the head percussionist of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Drawing upon his most promising former students, Kuban formed the eight-piece group in 1964.
Hygienic youths. Although a musical act with more than five people — including brass instruments, no less — seemed a little anachronistic in the age of the Beatles, the group did well.
Bob Kuban said the Vietnam War hurt the act as two of its horn players were drafted
In a 1966 interview, Kuban lauded the group’s wholesome image. He noted that the members styled themselves in a clean-cut manner, took baths daily, and in general distinguished themselves from the rock musicians who were “long-haired freaks” and wore Victorian costumes (not sure who he was taking a swipe at on that one).
According to Forensic Files, the band owed much of its appeal to its blond frontman, Walter Scott. Born as Walter Scott Notheis on February 7, 1943, he grew up in St. Louis and married when barely out of his teens. He and wife Doris had two sons, Wally and Scott.
When Walter joined Bob Kuban and the In-Men, he was working as a crane operator during the day.
Tuned up. The group first gained fame in their native St. Louis. The boys “cast a spell over teenagers” around town and spread the magic around the country, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Kay and Walter Notheis Sr.
In 1966, the band created the song that would become its legacy.
“I remember a couple of the guys came up, and they were working on this tune,” Kuban would later tell the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It was a rough version, but it sounded great. It just needed an intro and needed a driving beat. We put it together, recorded it, and it went crazy.”
High note. The lyrics to “Look Out for the Cheater” warned about a “guy known as the cheater, he’ll take your girl, then he’ll lie and he’ll mistreat her.”
On April 30, 1966, Bob Kuban and the In-Men performed “Look Out for the Cheater” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.
The record reached No. 12 on the Billboard chart and stayed in the Top 40 for seven weeks. It would go on to sell a million copies.
In their heyday, the boys appeared on a soap opera called Never Too Young and continued to play at many St. Louis-area venues. The normally quiet Catholic Youth Council dances became all the rage when Bob Kuban and the In-Men performed there.
Lightning not striking twice. Walter, who had azure eyes and sometimes wore a blue tuxedo on stage, acquired many female fans. “Take a good-looking guy and he was like a movie star back then to a lot of women,” Kuban told Forensic Files. Locals who knew Walter described him as a nice person, too.
The band followed up with the songs “The Teaser” and “Drive My Car,” but they didn’t make it into the Top 40. Bob Kuban and the In-Men never had another hit like “Look Out for the Cheater.”
The boys in the band stayed true to their St. Louis roots
Walter quit the band and continued on his own, hoping to become the next blue-eyed soul phenomenon, according to a Daily News story. Many people who heard his disembodied voice assumed he was African-American, a 2016 retrospective in The Australian said.
Holding his own. His solo records didn’t sell well and he never became a singular sensation, but he made a living for himself for 17 years singing with cover bands that played at private events and street fairs. St. Louis Post Dispatch stories from 1967 note “Walter Scott and the Guise” appearing at Stoppkoette Roller Rink and Christ the King Parish Hall.
By 1975, he had formed a band called Walter Scott and the Cheaters, playing at such venues as the Harbour House Hotel in Lynne, Massachusetts. He might not have been a major star anymore, but his voice still sounded great as evidenced by a 1980 recording of Walter Scott performing live.
Walter’s career required a lot of time on the road and, as Forensic Files pointed out, he was not only singing about a cheater but also becoming one.
Scandalous goings-on. After years of being unfaithful to Doris, Walter divorced her. He then married his mistress, the olive-skinned Joann Calcaterra — described as one of Walter’s starstruck fans by an Exhumed: Killer Revealed episode titled “Murders on the Edge of Town.”
Walter’s parents, Kay and Walter Notheis Sr., told Forensic Files that Joann, who worked as a secretary at a TV station, was selfish and untrustworthy.
Things got more sordid and sad from there.
Walter, who shared a twin son and daughter with Joann, had an affair with a dancer from his act. In turn, Joann cheated with a sloppy-looking electrician named James “Jim” Williams — who was married.
Friends and neighbors of Joann Calcaterra Notheis Williams helped fund her $500,000 bail
“It was like Peyton Place,” said Kay Notheis. “Everyone was running around with each other’s wives.”
One last chance. In October 1983, Jim’s wife, Sharon Almaroad Williams, with whom he shared two sons, died at the age of 42 after her Cadillac Seville crashed into a ditch.
That same year, there was some good news. Bob Kuban decided to get his original band back together, and signed Walter on.
But the reboot was not to be.
Taking a break from a gig at a Playboy Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Walter returned to St. Louis to spend Christmas of 1983 with Joann — and promptly vanished. He left the house to replace a car battery and never came back, according to Oxygen.
Badmouthing a dead man. Wally Notheis, one of Walter’s sons from his marriage to Doris, first heard the news from his stepmother that his dad was missing. “I just didn’t know what happened,” Wally told Exhumed. “His life was pretty secretive.”
When reporting Walter’s disappearance, Joann immediately went into smear-the-victim mode (Ken Register, John Boyle). She told police that Walter was involved in the drug trade, associated with underworld figures, and tended to carry a lot of cash, according to Autopsy 3: The Cheater.
Police found the car he was using, a dark green Lincoln, abandoned at the St. Louis Airport. And, yikes, when Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. stopped by the house that their son shared with Joann, they found Jim Williams — a bear of a man at 6-foot-6-inches and 300-pounds — sitting at a table with Walter’s jewelry spread out in front of him. He was inspecting it with a magnifying glass.
That was fast. Within 24 hours of Walter’s disappearance, Joann canceled all of Walter’s singing engagements. Jim Williams began spending the night at Joann’s; she told police that Jim slept on the couch and they were just friends. Jim said they were merely consoling each other.
Nine months later, Joann divorced the still-missing Walter on grounds of adultery, abandonment, and emotional abuse. She married Jim Williams in April 1986.
Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. were not thrilled to see Jim Williams move into the house on Pershing Lake Drive where their son and Joann once lived together. They also had to contend with the enduring mystery of their son’s disappearance when the case turned cold.
Crypt located. In 1987, investigators finally got a break, from one of Jim’s sons, who was in prison at the time. Thanks to Jim Jr.’s tip, deputies zeroed in on a cistern on his father’s property. Little Jim recalled that his father had covered it with a wood-lined concrete planter around the time that Walter disappeared.
Homicide victim Sharon Williams with husband Jim Williams and their sons in happier times
Law enforcement officers quickly converged on the structure and pried open the cistern. They found what was left of Walter’s body, dressed in a blue jogging suit, floating in the water. Someone had tied him up and put a bullet through the heart. When the deputies lifted out his corpse, the head — a skull by this time — tumbled away from his spinal column. Medical examiner Mary Case, who had arrived at the scene minutes earlier, quickly retrieved the skull and made sure police carefully handled his torso, which had some delicate flesh attached.
Police arrested Jim Williams Sr. for Walter’s murder. Investigators built a case that he also killed Sharon Williams. Investigators found evidence suggesting that Sharon’s car accident was staged; her exhumed body showed injuries inconsistent with what the auto wreck would have caused. She had gasoline on her body, which they attributed to a failed attempt to incinerate the car.
It took years for the justice system to build a solid case against Joann and Jim Williams.
Major irritant. In the meantime, Walter’s father took comfort in driving past Jim and Joann’s house from time to time. “I think he just wants them to know we’re still around,” Kay told the St. Louis-Post Dispatch in 1990. “We’re still watching them.” Sometimes, Jim would come out of the house and stare at the car until they drove away.
Neighbors said that Joann usually stayed inside the house, but they would see Jim doing woodworking projects outdoors or fishing in the backyard on the banks of Pershing Lake.
”To see that guy in your own son’s house, it just gripes me no end,” said Walter Notheis. “I’d like to go in there and blow his head off.”
Wheels of justice. Members of the community were frustrated, too, as evidenced by a letter to the editor in the Christmas Eve 1991 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
Walter Notheis Jr. died a cruel and violent death. His family and friends have suffered too long. The suspects should be tried and, if found guilty, they should be executed. Then and only then may our wounds start to heal.— Jack W. Geer, Kirkwood
The trial finally kicked off in 1992.
Authorities theorized that Jim got in an argument with Sharon at home and used an implement to strike her head. He staged the auto accident and set a fire near the car to cover up the murder, they alleged.
Not an agonizing decision. As for Walter, the prosecution made a case that Jim shot him in the back before burying him on his property where, Jim thought, no one would find him. One witness told the court that, before Walter’s body turned up, Jim Williams said that Walter was gone and never coming back. There was also testimony that Jim had tried to hire hitmen to kill Walter.
The jurors quickly found Jim guilty, but they rejected prosecutor Thomas Dittmeier’s request for the death penalty. Jim Williams, then 52 years old, received two sentences of life without the possibility of parole for 50 years for the murders of Sharon Williams and Walter Scott.
Joann had been arrested, too, although investigators didn’t have quite enough evidence of her involvement to guarantee a murder conviction. She would later say that her only crime was falling in love with the “kind and gentle” Jim Williams, but she pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution. She received a five-year prison sentence, served 18 months, and then disappeared from public view. (There’s a 2015 obituary on the internet for a Joann Calcaterra, but it’s not the same woman.)
Despite his cheating, Walter Scott for years felt reluctant to divorce his first wife because of his Catholic upbringing
Time for the finale. During his Forensic Files interview, Jim Williams denied committing murder and tried to cast blame on his own son, Jim Jr., for Walter’s homicide (Stacey Castor).
Williams served time in maximum security at Missouri’s Potosi prison. He died of cancer in an infirmary hospice at the age of 72 in 2011.
Bob Kuban called Walter’s mother to give her the news of Jim Williams’ death. “I was wishing he would live longer so he would have to suffer a little longer,” Kay Notheis, then 88, told Stlouistoday.com. “But you don’t always get what you want.” (Walter Notheis Sr. had died in 2003 at the age of 81. )
Band plays on. Sadly, a 2014 newspaper story told of how a caregiver hired by Ron Notheis — Kay’s well-meaning surviving son — stole her jewelry and cash.
At least the unscrupulous employee didn’t try to kill her.
Kay lived until she was nearly 100, dying in 2022.
Bob Kuban’s musical act lived a long time as well. After Walter’s death, Bob took over lead vocals and changed the group’s name to the Bob Kuban Band. He acknowledged that the latest incarnation struggled a bit.
As recently as 2019, however, the group was still playing, and had an invitation to perform at the annual Pointfest rock festival in St. Louis. Kuban told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the band would play a medley of 1960s hits as well as “Look Out for the Cheater.”
Wait, there’s more. He also said he’d rather be a one-hit wonder than a no-hit wonder.
Walter got a lot of mileage from that song as well, but he didn’t learn much from it and, unfortunately, he was cheated out of everything in the end.
You can watch the Autopsy episode about the murder on YouTube. The Exhumed episode is also on YouTube, but it’s behind a paywall and mostly concentrates on the murder of Sharon Williams.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Elwood Jones Surprises a Hotel Guest (‘Punch Line,’ Forensic Files)
Back in 1996, the case against hotel worker Elwood Jones seemed as solid as cast iron. The handyman had prior convictions for theft and possessed a master passkey for rooms at the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash, Ohio.
Rhoda Nathan
Two years after guest Rhoda Nathan was discovered beaten to death and a piece of her jewelry turned up in Elwood’s car, Judge Ralph Winkler sent him to death row.
But in a surprising development in 2023, Elwood exited prison on two feet after a different Hamilton County judge ordered a new trial.
Social gal. A look into the reasoning behind that decision seems in order — but first, here’s a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Punch Line” along with extra information from internet research:
Rhoda Silverman was born in the Bronx on January 15, 1927 and then lived in New York City for 18 years, according to her obituary in the Asbury Park Press. She married Robert Nathan and had two sons, Valentine and Peter.
By 1994, she was a 67-year-old widow, but still a livewire. Rhoda lived in Toms River, New Jersey and enjoyed local theater, tennis, golf, travel, and orchestrating family celebrations, according to the Justice for Rhoda Nathan website. An Asbury Park Press story described her as a popular member of the Dover Township retirement community.
Friends up in the air. She also stayed close to her old acquaintances, including childhood friend Elaine Shub. In September of 1994, Rhoda flew to Ohio to attend the bar mitzvah of Elaine’s grandson.
On the airplane, a married couple named the Cantors who were headed to the same bar mitzvah introduced themselves to Rhoda and ended up dropping her off at the Embassy Suites, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati hotel rooms were in short supply during the Labor Day weekend, so Rhoda Nathan and her friends stayed at an Embassy Suites outside of town
Rhoda and Elaine shared Room 237, along with Elaine’s boyfriend, Joe Kaplan.
Egg in the a.m. The hotel was configured with an atrium surrounded by guest rooms. No one could slip into a room without chancing detection.
Or so it seemed.
According to the Cincinnati Post, unlike other rooms, Rhoda’s had an exterior door partly blocked by plants and a low wall.
On the day of the event, September 3, 1994, Elaine and Joe left the room early in the morning to grab a bite in the atrium — where the hotel had an omelet station — and give Rhoda a chance to shower and dress in privacy.
Sudden terror. Unfortunately, it was just enough time to allow a thief to sneak into what he probably thought was an empty room.
When Joe, Elaine, and Elaine’s daughter Cynthia Kirsch returned from breakfast, they allowed Cynthia’s 6-year-old son to turn the key in the lock. The door opened to the sight of Rhoda on the floor.
Elaine screamed in horror.
Guests try to help. Although Season 4 of the Accused podcast said that police at first thought Rhoda had simply suffered a heart attack, her friends described her as having a face so swollen and battered that they could barely identify her — far more physical trauma than a cardiac arrest would cause. Rhoda had a shattered jaw and broken ribs. Investigators would later identify door chains and a walkie-talkie as objects possibly used in the attack.
Elwood Jones, seen here under arrest, was known for being arrogant and wearing cologne
“They just beat the living daylights out of her,” police chief Michael Allen said, as reported by the Associated Press.
A cardiologist and a nurse staying at the hotel tried to revive Rhoda, with no luck.
Emotionally scarred. Dorothy Cantor told the Cincinnati Enquirer that she was stunned to learn that the nice woman she and her husband had just met was now gone.
Cynthia would later tell the Accused podcast that Elaine Shub was never the same after that day.
Rhoda’s son was devastated. “As she passed away, so did my family,” recalled Valentine Nathan in a video on the Justice for Rhoda Nathan website. “We drew apart. There was nothing there to draw us back in together. It was horrible.”
Dental damage. Because of her facial injuries, the Nathans had to give Rhoda a funeral with a closed casket. “My baby, my baby,” said Rhoda’s 92-year-old mother, Sarah Silverman, as she looked at the coffin.
Meanwhile, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office had sent detective Peter Alderucci to the crime scene. He found one of Rhoda’s teeth on the floor; another would turn up in her stomach. A necklace given to Rhoda by her husband, who had it custom-made with diamonds once belonging to his mother, was missing and so was $500 in cash from Elaine’s purse.
The Hamilton County Coroner declared Rhoda’s death a murder. Because she had few defensive wounds, prosecutors believe someone overpowered her completely. She was naked, making it unlikely that she opened the door to let the anonymous killer in.
Handy clue. Investigators turned their attentions toward Elwood Jones, a 42-year-old handyman for the hotel. He started work at 6 a.m. on the morning of the homicide. Later that day, he acquired a bandaged wound on his left hand, and he went for treatment four days later.
When hand surgeon Dr. John McDonough cut into Elwood’s severely infected finger, blood and tissue spurted 10 inches across the operating room table. The doctor took photos of the wound to show students because it was so unusual. (Warning: Between those photos and the autopsy pictures, you probably shouldn’t plan on dining while watching this episode.)
Elwood’s hand injury required antibiotics, two operations, and a five-day stay in the hospital.
“The virulence of that infection was a clue to the mystery,” intoned Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas.
Violent provenance. Elwood told the doctor that the cut came from a trash bin lid, but hotel employees recalled that he blamed it on metal stairs. Another version had Elwood saying he got the cut when he fell onto a garbage bag containing glass and later aggravated the wound while breaking down a dance floor at the hotel, according to a Northeast Suburban Life article from June 5, 2019.
Rhoda’s necklace had five heirloom diamonds
Lab tests revealed the infection came from eikenella corrodens bacteria, found in oral plaque. The doctor identified the wound as a “fight bite” — from a fist coming into violent contact with human teeth.
So who was this man who quickly became the chief suspect in a beloved grandmother’s murder?
Respectable beginnings. Elwood “Butch” Jones came into the world in 1952, born to schoolteachers in Ohio. In addition to their own seven children, Elwood’s parents took in kids who didn’t have good homes.
At some point in Elwood’s life, he started accruing theft convictions — at least one of them for a burglary.
Having already married and divorced once, Elwood was living with his girlfriend, Yvonne, in the East Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati at the time of the homicide. He was also having an affair with a co-worker named Earlene Metcalf.
Sharp-dressed man. A search of his and Yvonne’s apartment turned up the Embassy Suites master passkey in Elwood’s possession, even though he no longer worked at the hotel by that time. A toolkit in the trunk of his car contained the necklace given to Rhoda by her husband.
Rhoda’s son became the family’s most vocal spokesperson
Police arrested Elwood, and he was indicted in 1995. With his sleek physique and tinted aviator-style frames, he looked more like an opening act for Sammy Davis Jr. than a maintenance man gone homicidal.
Alternate suspects? Prosecutors believe Jones saw Elaine Shub and Joe Kaplan leave for breakfast on that morning of September 3 and thought the room was empty. He took along his toolkit so he could say he was doing maintenance work if the occupants returned unexpectedly. When Rhoda surprised him by emerging from the bathroom, he beat her with his fists, door chains, and possibly his walkie-talkie and stole the necklace plus Elaine’s cash.
Elwood’s defense team argued that police, who had access to his car keys, planted the necklace in his toolkit to frame him.
Tow-truck driver Jimmy Johnson said that, in the course of doing repair work on Elwood’s car on September 4, 1994, he dumped out all the tools in Elwood’s trunk and saw no necklace like the one that detective Mike Bray said he later discovered.
There was also the matter of a local jailbird named Linda Reed who said that a woman she met while locked up admitted that her husband murdered someone and then framed a Black man.
Typical accusation. The defense contended that investigators launched the case against Elwood because of public pressure to solve it after they muddied up the murder scene.
Rhoda Nathan sustained injuries to her neck and chest in addition to those on her face
(I’m always skeptical about contentions that police erred by failing to keep crime scenes pristine. In the case of Rhoda, first responders didn’t know a murder had taken place. And even if they did suspect it, they had to walk into the room and move things in the course of trying to revive her and then removing her body.)
In 1996, a jury found Elwood guilty of aggravated murder and he received a death sentence. He stayed on death row for 27 years, all the while claiming innocence and writing letters to ask for help.
Steadfast story. On September 10, 2000, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported seeing court papers suggesting that Ohio judges had criticized prosecutors for using improper courtroom statements to win death-penalty convictions in numerous cases, including that of Elwood Jones. Among the prosecutors’ offending statements was that Elwood valued a stolen necklace more than Rhoda Nathan’s life. But that revelation didn’t lead anywhere for his case.
It wasn’t until 2022 that Elwood had some real luck. Pro bono defense lawyers, including Erin Barnhart, who called the prosecution’s evidence junk science, persuaded Hamilton County Judge Wende Cross to rule that he deserved a new trial because 4,000 investigative documents, including 400 hotel guest surveys, had been withheld from the defense during the trial.
Criminals aplenty. According to reporting from WLWT, the defense lawyers’ salvos included the allegation that some hotel guests said they saw a white man dashing out of the building and into the woods around the time of the murder and that the local police reported that they received a confession to the crime from someone other than Elwood Jones. There was also a confusing contention that Rhoda Nathan’s necklace was merely a piece of mass-produced jewelry.
“I’m not a murderer,” Elwood said in an interview. “I was a thief and I’m the first to tell you I’ve got a past.” According to the Accused podcast, the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash employed other people with police records — the hotel was having a tough time filling positions and it qualified for a tax credit for employing those who had trouble securing jobs. Over the years, the property had received many complaints of items disappearing from their rooms, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Elwood Jones exits prison
His defenders also pointed out that Elwood’s narrative has remained the same since the murder happened in 1994. “A few stories have changed since then, but not Jones’,” the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote.
Rhoda Nathan’s family begged Judge Cross to keep Elwood in prison until the new trial. The state of Ohio tried to persuade her, too. “He’s 70 years old,” said assistant prosecutor Seth Tiger. “He’s got a lot of crime left in him.”
Elwood won. Wearing an electronic monitoring device on his leg and having posted no bond money, he emerged from razor wire on January 14, 2023
Comfort and reunions. “Because of all the bad rulings that have come out over the years,” Elwood told USA Today, “it’s kind of hard to comprehend when something good happens.”
In a March 2023 interview with USA Today, Elwood said he’s grateful to be able to make his own coffee and enjoy the company of his sister’s American bulldog while staying at her home on house arrest. Other family members come to visit him.
He spends some of his time sewing stuffed animals to give to people who have helped him, according to USA Today.
Fans materialize. The Nathans and prosecutors dismiss Elwood’s plea of innocence as a typical attempt at a SODDI (some other dude did it) defense.
Elaine Shub had to borrow a dress because her hotel room was sealed off with police tape
“The issues Judge Cross rested her decision on have been decided on by the sixth circuit court of appeals, the federal court, at the district level and at the court of appeals, and all were rejected,” said Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, adding that it’s a rare day that he doesn’t think about Rhoda Nathan.
Chief Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier complained about the existence of what he termed Elwood Jones groupies.
Kickoff coming in 2024. “Now, thanks to misleading TV crime shows and inaccurate podcasts, Elwood Jones has gained enough support to be granted a new trial,” Valentine Nathan said in a video interview on the Justice for Rhoda website. “My mother is not here and this guy is still breathing and still appealing. Him constantly trying to do these appeals and bring everything back is torment of me and torment of my family.”
Elwood’s adversaries and supporters await his new trial, originally scheduled to begin on February 5, 2024 — but now delayed with the possible start time of summer or fall 2024 (thanks to reader Marcus for sending in the update). Because of a medical condition, he no longer has to wear an electronic monitoring device.
In the meantime, rewinding all the way back to 1994 for a moment, what happened with the bar mitzvah plans that prompted Rhoda’s fateful visit to Cincinnati? The ceremony actually did take place right after the tragedy, according to Dorothy Cantor, who cited the Jewish tradition of using happy occasions to help people celebrate life amid horrible events.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
A Singer Dies in Seattle, But Not in Vain (‘The Day the Music Died,’ Forensic Files)
Mia Zapata might have joined the 27 Club, but her death at age 27 was different from those of Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and the rest: It had nothing to do with drug or alcohol abuse.
The lead vocalist and songwriter for the Gits — a band variously described as grunge, punk, or rock — Mia died in 1993 when an ex-convict randomly spotted her walking alone late at night in Seattle.
Mia Zapata
Awful discovery. But the tragedy of Mia’s demise gave rise to purpose. It brought out the best in her family, friends, and members of the community who were frustrated by a lack of evidence that made the case difficult to solve. They worked together to search for clues to the killer’s identity and also to safeguard other local women from crimes of opportunity.
For this week’s post, I looked for more details on Mia’s biography and the case. So let’s get going on the recap of “The Day the Music Died”:
Just before 3:30 a.m. on July 7, 1993, a sex worker stumbled upon a brutalized woman lying in the streets of Capitol Hill, a lively but rough section of Seattle popular with aspiring musicians. The victim’s body was still warm, but paramedics couldn’t revive her.
Up and coming. An attacker had raped, bitten, and choked her with a cord from her sweatshirt, and beaten her to death.
The medical examiner, who followed local bands, recognized the deceased woman as Mia Zapata, the front woman of the Gits.
Amid the city’s music scene, which had recently given rise to Nirvana and Soundgarden, Mia and her band had a large following and were on the verge of winning a contract with one of the Top 10 record labels in the world.
Classmates click. The Gits — consisting of Mia, drummer Steve Moriarty, bass player Matt Dresdner, and guitar player Andy “Joe Spleen” Kessler — had already enjoyed successful tours up and down the West Coast and in Europe and had played on the same bill as Green Day and Nirvana.
The Gits
The four had originally met and formed the band as students at Antioch College. After graduation, they relocated to Seattle and moved into an abandoned house in Capitol Hill.
Mia Katherine Zapata was born on August 25, 1965 and grew up in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky. She went to private school, and her family belonged to a tennis club.
Trio of tikes. Her mother, Donna Zapata, was a station manager for WHAS radio and TV, and her father, Richard, worked as a media executive as well.
Both of Mia’s parents earned six-figure incomes.
They had three children. Kristen was preppy, Eric was cool, and Mia was arty, according to Kristen.
Demure girl. Despite showing signs of dyslexia, Mia liked to write poetry. She learned to play guitar and piano and enjoyed painting and listening to Janis Joplin records.
“Mia was the best of our family,” Richard Zapata told the Seattle Times. “She had a complete and total social conscience. She cared about people. She would see people on the street, homeless, and tell us that it wasn’t their fault.”
Still, she was shy and didn’t call attention to herself, her father said in an interview found on YouTube.
Mia Zapata was known for liking a drink.
Off to university. Although she grew to 5 feet 8 inches in height, people described Mia as petite or slight.
As a high school senior, Mia toured Antioch College, where a school director assured her that learning disabilities could be overcome, according to an interview with Donna Zapata in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Mia enrolled at the school, which is located in Yellow Springs, Ohio and known for encouraging students to explore their own improvised paths.
No inhibitions. She impressed other students with her vocal skills.
“I was transfixed and overcome,” Matt Dresdner told Rolling Stone about hearing Mia sing for the first time, at an open mic event in 1986. “I cried. It was raw, honest, to the bone, and from the heart. No music or musician had ever affected me like she did that night.”
LA Weekly would later say that Mia could “belt not unlike Bette Midler gone bananas.”
Dresdner told Unsolved Mysteries that once he, Mia, and the other two formed the Gits in college, people didn’t even notice him on stage because everyone was watching Mia.
“She couldn’t spell worth a darn,” Andy Kessler told the Plain Dealer. “But she could rock brilliantly.”
On the cusp. Still, the band didn’t make enough cash to pay expenses, so Mia, whose style of dress was grunge-utilitarian — tank tops, T-shirts, shorts, mini-skirts, combat boots — did restaurant work as a waitress or dishwasher.
Just before her death, everything seemed to be falling into place for the Gits. The band’s first album, Frenching the Bully, got good reviews, and a representative from Atlantic Records had taken the band out to lunch in Los Angeles. MCA (today part of Universal Music Group) was reportedly interested in signing the group as well.
Richard Zapata remarried after he and Donna Zapata divorced when Mia was a teenager
On July 6, 1993, Mia’s father drove two hours from his home in Yakima to take Mia out to lunch in Seattle. They had Thai food and visited a museum. That night, Mia had drinks at a popular bar, the Comet, and visited a friend. Mia was wearing headphones and listening to music when she headed home.
Meh prophesy. The murder took place during 80 minutes of unaccounted-for time after she left her friend’s place.
News of her death horrified and shocked the community, although some would say that she already had a fatal vision — expressed in an original song called Sign of the Crab. Her lyrics included, “Go ahead and slash me up and throw me all across town because you know you are the one that can’t be found.”
Of course, it seems as though when any notable person dies young, journalists dig up something foreboding the person said about death. Mia said she wrote the song in response to the violent crime happening everywhere. Her own murder was only one of 33 that had taken place in town in roughly the first half of 1993, according to the Seattle Times.
Outpouring of grief. But it was also the highest-profile crime Capitol Hill had suffered.
“A thousand people attended her dusk-to-dawn wake in Seattle — a thousand tattooed, pierced, wailing, fringe-dwelling, guitar-banging friends,” the Seattle Times reported. “Her father paid for the beer.”
Police kicked into high gear, following hundreds of leads and tips and interviewing dozens of prospective suspects. They included Mia’s on-and-off boyfriend, a Vietnam vet who played with a band called Hell’s Smells. But he had a solid alibi.
TV comes knocking. Because Mia’s body was reportedly found in a crucifix-like pose, with her ankles crossed and arms outstretched to the sides, some theorized that an unknown religious zealot committed the murder. That idea went nowhere and, according to one report, rescue workers had placed her arms in that position while trying to save her.
America’s Most Wanted threw its hat into the investigative ring, traveling to Capitol Hill to produce a segment on the case.
Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood today
“Host John Walsh paced on the sidewalk outside the Comet while cameras recorded his earnest narration,” according to the News Tribune of Tacoma.
No fading. Robert Stack also got in on the act, when his show, Unsolved Mysteries, included a vignette about the murder.
Still, no one could find a viable suspect. The chalk outline drawn around Mia’s body remained visible for years, but the case went cold.
Here’s where the best of human nature took over.
Hired help. The Gits drummer Steve Moriarty spearheaded fundraising efforts to hire a private detective to investigate the case. The band held benefit concerts, joined by the likes of Courtney Love and Joan Jett & the Black Hearts.
Joan Jett — already a huge star thanks to MTV and the hit “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” — even recorded some of her own versions of songs written by the Gits for an album called Evil Stig that was produced to benefit the investigation.
After raising $80,000, the band engaged private investigator Leigh Hearon, a former journalist. When the money ran out, she continued to work on the case pro bono.
Personal safety. In the meantime, Richard Zapata had rented an apartment in Seattle so that he could retrace Mia’s steps and look for clues.
Mia’s death spurred the creation of Home Alive, an effort to protect women against predators. It offered self-defense classes priced at a sliding scale depending on what participants could afford to pay, according to All Things Considered.
“I lived in downtown Seattle a few years after her murder and Home Alive was a blessing!” said a YouTube reader comment left at Murder in Seattle: The Mia Zapata Story. “They would come and walk you home if you didn’t want to walk home alone.”
Jesus Mezquia in court with Mia’s sister, Kristen Vittitow, and Steve Moriarty in the background
CODIS ‘winner.’ As the murder case wore on, something significant happened in the field of forensics. A Nobel prize-winning breakthrough from U.S. chemist Kary Mullis enabled forensic scientists to identify the DNA in amounts of genetic material normally too small to test — including the foreign saliva found on Mia Zapata’s body. A specimen had been saved and kept refrigerated since 1993.
In 2003, the Combined DNA Index System, commonly known as CODIS, matched the specimen to Jesus Mezquia, a 48-year-old ex-con working as a fisherman in Marathon, Florida.
He was a tall, large-handed Cuban exile who was living in the Seattle area at the time of Mia’s murder.
Justice and joy. Investigators believed Mezquia caught sight of Mia walking home, stopped his car, abducted her, raped and murdered her, and then dumped her body.
On March 24, 2004, a jury convicted Mezquia of murder. The verdict elicited cries of “Viva Zapata” in the courtroom. Some of the jurors shook hands and hugged Mia’s loved ones in court, the Seattle Times reported.
Mia’s sister, Kristen Vittitow, was so excited about the verdict that she did handstands, according to Donna Zapata. Mia’s mother told the Seattle Times that she didn’t attend the trial of her daughter’s killer because “I never wanted to lay eyes on the person.”
Gone guy. Mezquia received a sentence of 36 years.
Steve Moriarty told the Courier-Journal of Louisville that he was glad Mezquia would rot in jail and that people could live more freely. (Mezquia died in a prison hospital in 2021 at the age of 66.)
The surviving Gits went on performing under the name the Dancing French Liberals of ’48, but eventually broke up and went their separate ways. “We lost our sister together,” said Moriarty. “We always will be brothers even if we’re in different parts of the country.”
A wee Mia Zapata
‘Concerted’ effort. Mia Zapata’s memory has never flickered out. You can watch the The Gits documentary on Daily Motion. A Phoenix New Times article in 2023 quoted singer Kayla Long as citing the way Mia de-evolved on stage as an influence.
On July 7, 2023, the 30-year anniversary of the murder, a Mia Zapata tribute concert called Viva Zapata was held at The Skylark in Seattle.
As for Mia’s father — who didn’t appear on Forensic Files but gave interviews to other media outlets — he is still heartbroken but says he tries to use humor to cope with the loss of his youngest child.
“She was on loan to me,” Richard Zapata said, “and she now belongs to all of you.”
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Oba Chandler Turns a Florida Visit into a Triple Homicide (‘Water Logged,’ Forensic Files)
If anyone deserved a vacation, it was Joan Rogers. She worked full-time on her family dairy farm in Ohio, then drove across state lines to Indiana for a factory job. In fact, her life had been pretty much nonstop labor since she got married and had a baby as a teenager.
Joan Rogers in a yearbook photo
“Water Logged,” which tells the story of the murder that befell her and her daughters while on holiday in Florida, was voted as having the second-best crime reenactment of all 400 episodes of Forensic Files. The story also stands out as a reminder of what can lurk beneath a pleasant exterior — in this case, that of Oba Chandler, who many women found charming until his true self bubbled up to the surface.
For this post, I looked around for information that might reveal the origins of Oba’s depravity and also for the story of his bitter end. The Florida Department of Corrections lists him as deceased but doesn’t say whether he died of natural causes or was helped along by the state. I also searched for more details about the Rogers family. The random collision of their integrity with the killer’s dissolute lifestyle reminded me of the book In Cold Blood, the birthplace of true-crime storytelling.
Sadistic thrill. So let’s get going on the recap of “Water Logged” along with information from internet research:
On June 4, 1989, pleasure boaters began reporting bodies floating in different areas of Tampa Bay. The Coast Guard ultimately recovered three half-naked females. A killer had taped their mouths, bound their wrists and ankles, and tied them to concrete bricks with yellow ropes.
The authorities believed the victims had been raped, although three days in the sea had washed away any forensic evidence.
“I think he left their eyes uncovered because he wanted each one to see what was happening to the other one,” said lead investigator Glen Moore during his Forensic Files interview. “I think he wanted to see the fear in their eyes.”
Too few pounds. The presence of water in their lungs meant they were alive when thrown into the bay. “This was not just a murder,” narrator Peter Thomas said. “It was an execution.”
Nonetheless, according to the Bradenton Herald, the police felt that an amateur (or anyone who didn’t watch enough mafia entertainment) committed the homicides because a professional would have used heavier weights to ensure the bodies didn’t surface.
Authorities named the victims Jane Doe 1, 2, and 3.
Willshire, Ohio has a post office, a few thousand people, and farmland
Hotel hint. Psychics offered to help the police identify the victims, and hundreds of concerned citizens called in with tips. The St. Petersburg police offered a $5,000 reward for information that would help solve the case.
Fortunately, police got a break on June 8, when an employee at the Days Inn on Rocky Point Island reported that a woman named Joan Rogers and her two daughters had checked in on June 1 and hadn’t been seen for days since then. Their makeup, stuffed animals, bathing suits, etc. were still in the room at the Tampa hotel.
Police got in touch with Joan’s husband, Hal Rogers, who had stayed behind to tend to the couple’s 200-acre farm in Willshire, Ohio. Hal gave them access to dental records that positively identified the victims as Joan, Michelle, and Christe Rogers.
Fast start to adulthood. The three, who normally worked on the farm alongside Hal — the daughters milked 80 Holstein cows every day at 5:30 a.m. — had gone for a weeklong vacation.
As noted, Joan really needed a break.
Oba Chandler in an early mug shot. As a boy, he enjoyed killing rats, according to his sister
Born on November 12, 1952 in Van Wert, Ohio, Joan Mae Etzler, known as Jo, was outgoing and friendly. In high school, she began dating her classmate Hal Rogers and became pregnant senior year, a situation that mortified her parents. The couple quickly married and had Michelle, who looked like her mother. A few years later, they welcomed Christe, who inherited her father’s cute puppy-dog features.
Spring break. Hal acknowledged that as hard as he worked, his wife worked harder. She drove a forklift and manned the assembly line at her second job, at Peyton’s Northern product distribution center, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Joan and Hal “always looked happy but tired,” Susan Reynolds, a waitress at the Village Restaurant, where the couple often ate, told the Bradenton Herald. “You could see that the hard work took its toll on them.”
Michelle and Christe had never experienced leisure travel, so the thought of going 3,000 miles away to the Sunshine State must have been magical even before they laid eyes on Cinderella’s Castle.
Final correspondence. On May 26, Joan loaded the girls into her blue Oldsmobile Calais and gave Hal — who was unloading corn gluten feed—a kiss goodbye before heading south on Interstate 75 with plans to visit a number of spots, according to Angels & Demons, Thomas French’s seven-part Tampa Bay Times series, which won a Pulitzer Price in 1998.
After spending the night in Georgia en route to Florida, Joan and the girls traveled to the Jacksonville Zoo, then went to Disney World and Epcot Center. A post card Joan sent to Hal said that they had ridden in a glass-bottomed boat.
On June 1, Joan and the girls drove to Tampa and checked into the Days Inn at Rocky Point.
Christe was a cheerleader and often practiced her routines in front of the cows.
On the blocks. Police got a lucky forensic break after locating Joan’s abandoned 1986 Oldsmobile at a boat launch. Inside, they found a brochure with some handwritten directions to either a boat launch or to the Days Inn (accounts vary).
A handwriting analyst determined that a note in the car was written by someone other than the victims.
Another note, in Joan’s writing, mentioned something blue and white, probably the colors of a boat.
Police did an aerial search to look for the source of the concrete blocks that the killer used.
Nightmare cruise. A tipster told police about an ex-con named Jason Wilcox who owned a blue and white boat and ran sunset cruises without a license. Jason had been in jail for aggravated assault, and police saw concrete blocks on his property.
Separately, they found out that on May 15, 1989, a boater in Madeira Beach offered a ride to a Canadian tourist and threatened to kill her if she wouldn’t have sex with him. He told her that sharks would get her if she jumped into the water. After the rape, he let her go.
Michelle was described as the quiet sister, Christe the high-spirited one, with “a mane of mall hair,” reporter Thomas French wrote
But the Canadian woman, a 24-year-old social worker, said her attacker didn’t resemble Wilcox’s photo.
Monetary incentive.Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but there was another false yet disturbing lead. According to Oxygen True Crime, Hal told police that his younger brother — a partner in the dairy farm — had sexually abused Michelle. But John Rogers, 31, was already locked up for another sex crime when the murders happened. (Hal and Joan Rogers never pressed charges against John because Michelle didn’t want to testify.)
Meanwhile, the community of Willshire and the surrounding counties reeled from the news about the murder of three of its own. “This grief is forever, a scar no one can remove,” said Rev. Gary Luderman of the Zion Lutheran Church, where the Rogers belonged.
A wholesaler who did business with Hal’s farm announced plans to fund a new reward for information on the killer.
On autopilot. But that didn’t mean Hal had everyone’s moral support. He hadn’t reported his wife and kids missing until three days after they were due at home. Investigator Stephen Porter said that the widower seemed cold and unemotional about the tragic events.
His reaction spurred some Ohio locals to suspect he was involved in the murders. Hal would later explain that he did what he had to do to function and keep the farm operational after the murders, and he felt like a third person viewing the devastation.
Hal had a huge pile of alibis because he ate his meals at local restaurants every day while his family was in Florida, and tons of people saw him.
Michelle Rogers, seen here working on the farm, reportedly watched out for her younger sister to make sure she didn’t fall prey to their Uncle John
Dedicated sleuths. But rumors persisted. He had recently withdrawn $7,000 in cash from the bank, perhaps for hired guns?
“There was controversy swirling around that maybe I did this,” Hal said without rancor during an interview on the TV series The Investigators. “The people who [still] aren’t sure are scared to death because something like that could happen to them.”
Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg detectives assigned to the murder case “were working day and night, working weekends, putting off vacations, losing weight, gaining weight, growing pale and pasty and haggard, waking at 3 a.m. with a jolt and scratching notes on pads kept beside their beds,” Thomas French wrote.
Still, none of the tips led anywhere, and the case went cold about a year after the murders.
Water Hazard. The investigation picked up steam in 1992 when authorities displayed billboards with the unidentified handwriting from Joan’s car.
Oba Chandler’s boat
A woman named Jo Ann Steffey recognized a police sketch of the killer as belonging to a redheaded contractor named Oba Chandler. She noticed that receipts from Chandler matched that of the handwriting on the billboards.
Oba Chandler was a construction company owner with a criminal record dating back to his teens; it included two sexual assaults. Steffey described him as creepy and not being able to make eye contact with her.
Palm in hand. In photo and in-person lineups, the Canadian rape victim picked him out as the charismatic boat owner who turned into a savage once they left shore.
Law officers arrested Oba, then age 45, on September 24, 1992 for the sexual assault.
In the meantime, they were building a case against him for the triple homicide. Oba’s palm print matched one found on the brochure from Joan’s vehicle.
Family tragedy. So who was this man of contradictions with a personality ranging from warm and friendly to antisocial and sadistic — and a record as a career criminal and a home-improvement entrepreneur?
Oba Chandler was born on October 11, 1946 to a poor family in Cincinnati. His mother, Margaret, was housewife. His father, also named Oba Chandler, was a laborer for National Distillers and Chemical Co., according to the Tampa Bay Times. Oba Sr. was a strict disciplinarian.
Joan Rogers was thinking about having a third child
In 1957, at age 10, Oba Jr. found his father hanging from a rope over a ceiling joist in the family’s home. He had committed suicide.
Corporal punishment. At the funeral, Oba Jr. threw himself upon his father’s open grave. Sources vary as to whether he was acting out of grief or anger, but either way, it marked the beginning of the fair-haired blue-eyed boy’s deviant future, according to The Investigators. He moved around a lot, bunking with various relatives including his mother and her new husband.
Oba started stealing cars and later admitted that he spent much of his life running from police. His sister Lula spent some time in a reform school, so maybe it ran in the family.
“Where I was raised up as a kid, the majority of the time you weren’t arrested,” Oba told The Investigators. “When you were caught doing something…you got beaten with the cop’s nightstick.”
At some point, he joined the Marines but stayed only a year. He used drugs and drifted from job to job.
Cooking up dough. Meanwhile, as a criminal, Oba was growing into a jack-of-all-trades. His offenses included tampering with a coin machine, hustling at pool, and robbing drug dealers. He once broke into a private home, tied up the couple who lived there, and stole their guns and Doberman pinscher.
Oba needed new identities to throw the police and his creditors off track. The Florida Department of Corrections would ultimately list 14 aliases for Oba Chandler, including Ron Howard, Oba Pinson, and Jimmy Wright.
Nonetheless, in the early 1980s, Oba caught the attention of the U.S. Secret Service — and ultimately served time in a Texas prison — for attempting to counterfeit money in his backyard.
Promising in appearance. In addition to his growing rap sheet, Oba acquired numerous romantic liaisons. While still in his teens, Oba had two daughters by a girlfriend and then a son by a different woman.
His charisma won him anywhere from five to eight marriages, but he had a penchant for violence and none of his relationships lasted. Of the half dozen or so children he accrued, only some became close to him.
At times, Oba moved back in with his mother.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, one of his marriages, to Debra Whiteman, represented a relatively stable period in his life. Using $10,000 of her money for the downpayment, the couple bought a house on 10790 Dalton Ave. in Tampa.
Naturally alluring. He was still living at that house when he randomly met Joan Rogers at a gas station. She asked for directions, and he jotted them down for her. He then invited her and the girls on a sunset cruise, and she wrote down directions to a boat launch where they would meet, investigators believe.
“The sun sparkles along the green water of the bay while warm breezes entice divers and boaters,” the Bradenton Herald wrote of the beautiful scene that Joan, Michelle, and Christe Rogers witnessed on the Courtney Campbell Causeway on the last day of their lives
It’s not clear whether Oba knew this, but the Rogers trio had very little experience in the water and Joan reportedly couldn’t swim at all. Once Oba stopped being personable and started tying them up and terrorizing them, they had no way to escape.
Frightening admission. On the night of the murders, Oba had called Debra from the radio on the boat to say he had engine trouble and would be home late.
Around the time police released a composite drawing of the then-anonymous killer, he showed up at the home of his daughter Kristal Mays. He allegedly confessed to Kristal’s husband that he committed rape. The son-in-law told authorities.
Oba Chandler acquired a veneer of respectability with Debra
Oba sold his boat.
Another of Oba’s kids, Jeffrey Chandler, defended his father against the rape accusations. Other relatives would go on to accept money for TV interviews, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
Help from up north. At the trial in September 1994, Oba testified that he wrote the directions on the brochure in Joan Rogers’ car but he never saw the trio again. He said he went fishing alone in Tampa Bay but a gas leak emptied his fuel tank and left him stranded.
But the Canadian victim sunk his defense. She testified about how Oba, who introduced himself as Dave Posno and claimed he was a nurse, charmed her into his boat. She said that the interior of the boat — which authorities had retrieved from its new owner — matched that of the crime scene.
At the very beginning of deliberations, the forewoman decided to assess where everyone stood. She asked each juror to write down guilty or innocent.
All 12 said guilty.
Negative superlative. Nonetheless, they pored over the evidence for 90 minutes before officially convicting Oba on three counts of murder.
Chief Judge Susan Schaeffer — known as a capital punishment enthusiast (House Calls) — said that Oba had forfeited his right to live. She gave him the death penalty, which at that time meant the electric chair.
Schaeffer later said that Oba was probably the most vile and evil defendant she’d ever encountered, which says a lot considering all the horrible crimes (Payback, Cold Feet, Muffled Cries) that go down in the Sunshine State.
No friends or family ever visited Oba in prison, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Last meal. As of 1995, Oba, then 48, was cocky about his outlook. “I have no fear of it,” he said, according to the St. Petersburg Times. “If they kill me, they’re going to be killing an old man.”
All his appeal attempts failed.
On November 15, 2011, Oba ate two salami sandwiches and half a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and drank coffee before meeting justice. He wrote a note denying his guilt.
Oba Chandler’s last mug shot
Husband watches. By this time, Florida had retired Old Sparky, and was using lethal injection. The Tampa Bay Times reported:
“Chandler’s eyes were closed when the brown curtain to the death chamber rose. He was strapped onto a gurney, intravenous tubes leading into his arms. His eyes opened when he was asked if he had anything to say. ‘No,’ Chandler said. Then, at the age of 65, he closed his eyes for good.”
Hal Rogers witnessed the execution.
In an interview with The Investigators, Hal lauded his friends for letting him crash at their places when he couldn’t bear being alone.
Begin again. He also said that after the murders, there were some years about which he hardly remembers anything.
Tired of being alone, he took out a personal ad circa 2009 and met and married a widow named Jolene. He told the Tampa Bay Times that he still misses Joan, Michelle and Christe.
“That makes it rough on Jolene. How do you fight a dead person?” Hal said. “But her first husband died too. She understands.”
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
A Small-Town Outcast Finds Redemption (‘Killigraphy,’ Forensic Files)
In the land of Forensic Files, when one spouse murders another, the accused is often a respected citizen (Barbara Stager, Richard Nyhuis) who community members can’t imagine being capable of such a crime — until they see the evidence.
Alvin Ridley’s case was just the opposite.
Virginia Ridley
When paramedics pulled the petite body of Virginia Ridley, 49, out of his shack in Ringgold, Georgia, locals thought he had imprisoned her and then killed her.
They knew Alvin as the reclusive, hostile man who sometimes hid in his own bushes and peeped at passersby.
Batty but benign. At the time of Virginia’s death, in 1997, Alvin had shuttered his TV repair shop on Nashville Street and seemed intent on earning a living via lawsuits. Surely, he strangled Virginia to death to collect on an insurance policy or maybe just because he was a mean husband.
But after Alvin went on trial for murder, his defense team trotted out evidence that persuaded the jury and the media that he might have been a cantankerous oddball but he was no murderer.
For this week, I looked for more background information on the Ridleys and their marriage as well as an update on Alvin. So let’s get going on the recap of “Killigraphy” along with extra information from internet research.
‘Set’ for business. Alvin Eugene Ridley was an only child born on March 3, 1942 in Soddy, Tennessee to Minnie Sue and Bill Ridley, and the family later moved across the border to Georgia. The government drafted Alvin into the military, where he learned how to fix electronics. After his discharge, he moved back into his parents’ house, a small structure lying between a steel mill and railroad tracks.
‘Zenith Man’ was one of the kinder nicknames for Alvin Ridley
Next up, Alvin worked repairing and selling TVs in his store in downtown Ringgold, the seat of Catoosa County. Sources vary as to whether Alvin’s father started the business and then passed it down to Alvin or his parents set up the shop just for their son. They owned the building.
Bill died in 1982, and it was then that Alvin started acting weird, the Atlanta Constitution reported. He would drive around in a red sports car with a plastic dummy of a woman in the passenger seat, according to the Sunday Mail. Folks started referring to him as Crazy Al.
He was not particularly adept at personal hygiene.
Fragile flower. While he was still in the military, he became pen pals with Virginia Hickey after meeting her at someone’s house circa 1964, the Sunday Mail said. So where did this mystery girl-woman come from?
Virginia Gail Hickey entered the world on April 8, 1948 in Rossville, Georgia. According to the Atlanta Constitution, she acquired epilepsy at age 9 after a head injury. With her tiny figure, blond hair, and cute facial features, she resembled a doll.
She was described as extremely shy.
Habitual no-show. At just 18 years of age, she married Alvin. In a photo of the couple celebrating her birthday with her mother, Adell, in 1966, Virginia looks like a child bride. Family members complained that Alvin bossed her around.
Newlywed Virginia and Alvin Ridley
The Sunday Mail reported that the lovebirds originally lived in public housing but were kicked out. After that, Alvin and Virginia moved into the dilapidated house at 134 Inman Street where he grew up.
Virginia didn’t work outside the home and soon began to shun her friends and relatives, even skipping family weddings and her father’s funeral. She didn’t venture outside her and Alvin’s house. Her sister Linda Barber said that when people tried to visit, Alvin would tell them to get lost or threaten to kill them.
Rare glimpse. The Hickeys tried to reach Virginia via a newspaper ad — “Parents Seek Married Daughter” — but never got a reply.
In 1967, Virginia’s family instigated a legal action to force Alvin to “produce” her to make sure that she was alive and well. Virginia showed up to court in the flesh and explained that she liked married life with Alvin and wanted to be left alone with him.
That cemented the break between her and the other Hickeys and also marked one of the last—if not the last — time anyone saw Virginia alive in public.
The Ridleys shared a shanty with no phone service
Toxic visitor. But why did she like to stay hidden? Numerous sources say that Virginia feared having an epileptic seizure in the presence of anyone other than Alvin. But she stopped taking her medicine because she believed God would protect her.
In addition to friends and relatives, outsiders weren’t welcome in the Ridleys’ house. Early on in the marriage, an exterminator who entered their home made a pass at Virginia, which greatly rattled the couple, according to the Washington Post.
When people asked about Virginia, Alvin told them she had left him and moved away, according to the Associated Press.
Litigious local. Rumormongers whispered that Virginia had gone to live in a mental institution, the Washington Post story reported.
In time, some locals forgot that Alvin was once married or thought that Virginia had long ago left him. Others didn’t know he ever had a wife.
After abandoning his TV repair shop, Alvin focused more on his apparent hobby of filing lawsuits. He had already unsuccessfully sued the government over the ejection from the housing projects.
Locals would occasionally see him selling tube socks at a flea market.
Unfazed. According to the Sunday Mail, Alvin “convinced himself he was a pauper, despite the fact that he owned his house, the boarded-up TV repair shop and some valuable land in nearby Tennessee.” The land was reportedly valued at $500,000.
Aside from the litigation and sales, Alvin was not one to interact much. He made eye contact with people but didn’t say hello to them. He posted No Trespassing signs on his fence. The house had metal bars on the windows.
On October 4, 1997, the man the town considered an isolated bachelor used a payphone to report the death of his wife. His voice seemed solemn enough but a little too calm considering the circumstances. “My wife’s not breathing,” he said, according to the Atlanta Constitution. “Y’all hurry up.”
Choking suspicion. First responder Blake Hodges smelled cat urine upon entering the house and noted it was the first time he’d met Alvin in person — he only knew of him as a scary loner, according to Blake’s interview on “The Alvin and Virginia Ridley Story,” an episode of Death in a Small Town, narrated by Bill Kurtis.
Alvin Ridley in a TV interview circa 2001
Hodges found Virginia lying still and looking underfed and unkempt. According to Forensic Files, her hair hadn’t been combed in years.
The house was a cockroach-infested hovel.
Quite a sensation. Alvin said that Virginia died of a seizure during her sleep. But the coroner found a classic sign of strangulation that Forensic Files watchers know well. Virginia had petechial hemorrhages in her eyes (Stefanie Rabinowitz, Jenna Verhaalen).
Alvin was arrested and charged with murder in May 1997.
The runup to the trial of the man who allegedly held his wife hostage for 30 years was big news around the country and beyond. England’s Yorkshire Post ran an item about it. Court TV wanted to film the 1999 trial, but the judge said no.
Chance at absolution. The prosecution suggested that Alvin considered Virginia a liability, a drain on his finances. Medical examiner Vanita Hullander testified that Alvin didn’t give a consistent narrative regarding her death. And the petechial hemorrhages spoke for themselves as proof of deliberately inflicted suffocation, the prosecution contended.
But defense lawyer McCracken Poston, who later acknowledged Alvin as the most difficult client he ever defended, rolled out a wealth of forensic and circumstantial evidence that wore away at what many had considered the county’s slam-dunk case against Alvin.
First off, although Vanita Hullander — who in the early 1980s worked in a space adjacent to Alvin’s store — denied any bias against Alvin, she acknowledged that she was afraid of him.
Voice from the grave. And the reports about the petechial hemorrhages from autopsies conducted by the county as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation didn’t necessarily point to guilt on Alvin’s part. Medical experts testified that seizures could cause such hemorrhages in a phenomenon known as sudden unexpected death in epilepsy — of which failure to take prescribed medication is a risk factor.
And according to the Washington Post, Virginia didn’t die looking unkempt. She had polished toenails and hair done up with pretty pins.
Finally, Virginia herself had left a record of her existence with Alvin that contradicted allegations that she was the prisoner of a tyrannical husband.
Pet peeve. Virginia had hypergraphia, a condition that compels people to extensively write about their own lives. The walls of the shack were covered with notes revealing a simple and contented life with her husband. She wrote about what she and Alvin ate for dinner, that they watched Elvis Presley on TV, and that she and her husband cleaned the basement. One note listed the cast of The Waltons. Virginia penned love letters to Alvin that attested to a good marriage. She also wrote of her feeling that the world was against her and Alvin.
Before they met: Virginia and Alvin
A forensic document examiner verified that Virginia, not Alvin or anyone else, had written the notes.
(And fortunately for Alvin, his lawyer had done some preemptive work to make sure accusations of animal neglect didn’t come up. Before the trial, Poston made Alvin take his and Virginia’s two cats — that they kept as pets on string leashes attached to their coffee table — to the veterinarian. “I said, ‘By the way, when these cats come out of the house, they better have some names,'” he later recalled. Alvin declared them “Meow-y” and “Kitty,” the vet gave them a decent bill of health, and Alvin started giving them free range of the house, according to an interview with Poston on the University of Georgia library website.)
Emotion comes to surface. Against his team’s advice, Alvin took the witness stand. He spoke of his reluctance to trust people and his love for his wife. Alvin said they rarely argued and there was no violence in the marriage.
“The reason I testified then was because I didn’t have nothing to hide,” Alvin told the Walker County Register/Chattanooga County News in 2017. “The main thing was just telling the truth about everything … and I even cried, and the jury saw me crying.”
Within just hours of listening to prosecutors call him a captor and killer, Alvin got to hear the jurors declare him not guilty. Suddenly, he was a free man smiling on the courthouse steps.
Logical explanation. So what happened to Alvin after his legal problems went away?
He moved back into the shack on Inman Street. Poston took him for mental health testing, which yielded a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
Caffeine Addicts is in the spot where Alvin had his store
It explained “the way he and Virginia lived, very seldom leaving their home, the flat emotionless monotone voice when he called for help after Virginia’s seizure, his ‘eccentricities,’ as those were called at the time,” Poston told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
He referred to Alvin as the Boo Radley of the town.
More than 20 years after the acquittal, the two men were meeting regularly for lunch, and Alvin, 81, reportedly snagged at least one girlfriend post-trial.
Alvin died on July 2, 2024 after years of declining health.
The space that the TV shop occupied now houses an eatery offering white chocolate lattes and tomato basil wraps. Poston owns the entire structure today and named it the Ridley Building after the ornery but harmless widower of Ringgold, Georgia.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. – RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube See the Death in a Small Town episode on Daily Motion Follow this blog on Instagram Get new posts in your inbox
Eric Hayden Randomly Preys on a Neighbor (‘Nice Threads,’ Forensic Files)
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.
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?
(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.
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 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.
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
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 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.
Leisha Hamilton
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.
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
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 Timesof 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.
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.
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
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.
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 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 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.
Sallie Collins
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
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.
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
