THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF UNSOLVED CRIMES THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF UNSOLVED CRIMES Michael Newton The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes Copyright © 2004 by Michael Newton All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Checkmark Books An imprint of Facts On File, Inc. 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Newton, Michael, 1951– The encyclopedia of unsolved crimes / by Michael Newton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8160-4980-7 (hc : alk. paper) ISBN: 0-8160-4981-5 (pbk) 1. Crime—Encyclopedias. 2. Homicide—Encyclopedias. I. Title. HV6251 .N48 2004b 364.1'03–dc22 2003064286 Checkmark Books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Text design by Erika K. Arroyo Cover design by Cathy Rincon Printed in the United States of America VBHermitage10987654321 This book is printed on acid-free paper. For Margaret Contents Introduction ix Entries A–Z 1 Bibliography 329 Index 335 Introduction It is not true, as pop star Bonnie Tyler suggests in her ticed, for that matter) is unknown. Authorities cannot hit song “Driving Me Wild,” that everyone loves a agree on the number of children who vanish yearly in mystery. While fictional enigmas exert an enduring America, much less on what has become of them. As appeal, from the Sherlock Holmes adventures for missing adults, barring obvious signs of foul play, penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the best-selling no agency even attempts to keep track of the lost. novels of Patricia Cornwell, real-life mysteries are In the face of those odds, a curious researcher may something else entirely. be startled to learn how many cases do get solved Police officers and prosecutors hate mysteries, (albeit slowly in some cases, taking years or even preferring their criminal cases tied up into neat, eas- decades). During preparation of this volume, late- ily explained packages. Defense attorneys generally breaking investigations forced deletion of various share that sentiment—unless a phantom suspect tantalizing cases, including (but not limited to) the helps win an acquittal in court. Friends and family of following: crime victims or missing persons crave nothing more than an absence of doubt. Archaeologists, psycholo- • A stalker of prostitutes in Vancouver, British gists, medical researchers, “intelligence” agents—all Columbia, theoretically linked to the disappear- these and more devote their lives to the proposition ance of 67 victims since the 1970s; that no riddle should remain unsolved. • Seattle’s “Green River Killer,” blamed for the And yet . deaths of 49 women between 1982 and 1984; These plentiful exceptions notwithstanding, there • The stabbing deaths of at least eight gay men, is something in an unsolved mystery that appeals to murdered around Chesapeake, Virginia, many of us. Some go so far as to publicly hope that between 1987 and 1995; this or that classic case will never be solved, compar- • A series of hit-and-run murders that claimed ing mysterious cases to gaily wrapped presents for- two female joggers and a male bicyclist during ever unopened, never losing their appeal for 1991, in Porterville, California; armchair detectives. When the package is opened, its • New York’s “Last Call Killer,” linked to the contents revealed, no amount of excitement or pleas- slayings of five men, lured from gay bars and ure can ward off the inevitable letdown. We want to dismembered before their remains were scat- see the gift, possess it . but perhaps not yet. tered along New Jersey highways in 1991–92; In the real world, as it happens, unsolved mysteries • The mysterious deaths of 48 patients at Truman are distressingly common. The solution rate for U.S. Memorial Veterans Hospital in Columbia, Mis- murders has declined from 90-odd percent in the late souri, between January and August 1992; 1950s to an average 70 percent (and less, in some • The grisly deaths of three Minneapolis prosti- regions) a half century later. Lesser crimes are even tutes in 1996, stabbed and beaten before they more likely to go unsolved. Fewer than half of all were doused with gasoline and set afire in rapes are reported to authorities, much less “cleared” Theodore Wirth Park; by arrest and conviction. Thousands of thefts go • The kidnap-murders of three adolescent girls at unsolved every year; the number unreported (or unno- Spotsylvania, Virginia, in 1996–97. ix The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes Homicide investigators frequently remind us that • Miscarriages of justice, including cases wherein the first 24 to 48 hours are critical to solving a crime, innocent suspects are convicted (or otherwise but these cases and others like them, cracked long officially blamed), and those in which guilty after the fact, serve as a daily reminder that justice is parties are wrongfully acquitted. often delayed. “Cold” cases can be solved by discov- Cases in the text are alphabetically arranged, most ery of new evidence, by confession—and, increas- often by the victim’s name, although some headers ingly, by the scientific miracle of DNA profiling. refer to an event (e.g., St. Valentine’s Day Massacre) That said, what constitutes an unsolved case? or to the popular nickname of an unidentified Typically, the term applies to a crime in which no offender (e.g., “Jack the Ripper”). Cases with multi- suspects are identified, but that need not be the case. ple victims are identified either by the geographical Some crimes are “cleared” by arrest and conviction location (e.g., Atlanta child murders) or by some rec- of an innocent suspect, whether by chance or ognized media label (e.g., “Golden Years murders”). through a deliberate frame-up, thus leaving the real Blind entries link individual victims to entries profil- offender at large. Others, some notorious, remain ing a serial murder or similar crimes (e.g., Eddowes, technically unsolved after a known offender was Catherine: See “Jack the Ripper”). References within acquitted by a biased or dim-witted jury. In some the text to subjects possessing their own discrete cases, authorities have branded a suspect as guilty on entries appear in SMALL-CAPITAL LETTERS. the flimsiest of evidence and without benefit of trial. Special thanks are owed to David Frasier, friend, Other crimes are “solved” by confessions that, upon author, and reference librarian extraordinaire at Indi- closer examination, seem to be the product of police ana University in Bloomington; to William A. King- coercion or disordered minds. For purposes of this man, for sharing his insight on the case of the New volume, we shall consider unsolved cases to include: Orleans Axeman; and to Heather Locken. Every • Crimes in which no suspect is identified; effort has been made to ensure accuracy in the text • Cases in which the offender is known to police that follows. Anyone with further knowledge of the or the public but cannot be charged for lack of cases covered—or of unsolved crimes in general—is concrete evidence; invited to contact the author, in care of Facts On File. x Entries A–Z A ABEL, Robert William See “I-45 MURDERS” ADAMS, Mrs. Wesley See SAN DIEGO MURDERS (1931–36) ABDULLAH, Ahmet: gangland murder victim (1991) An adopted son of the Arif family, a group of Middle ADKINS, Francis Roy: murder victim (1990) Eastern racketeers and armed robbers residing in A suspected London mobster, Francis Adkins was London’s Stockwell district, Ahmet Abdullah was identified as the boss of a narcotics smuggling ring in identified by Scotland Yard as a narcotics dealer, January 1990, in sworn testimony offered to a nicknamed “Turkish Abbi.” On March 11, 1991, Chelmsford court. That testimony was presented by Abdullah was ambushed by rival mobsters at a bet- Charles Wilson, a convicted participant in England’s ting shop on Bagshot Street, Walworth. Witnesses “Great Train Robbery” of 1978, who was himself reported that he begged for his life, then briefly used murdered a short time later (allegedly on orders from another of the shop’s patrons as a human shield Adkins). Police initially suspected that Adkins might before fleeing into the street, where Abdullah was have been killed in reprisal for Wilson’s slaying, but shot in the back and fatally wounded. detectives later determined Wilson’s death to be an Suspects Patrick and Tony Brindle were charged unrelated incident. with the murder, held over for trial at the Old Bailey On the night he was killed, September 28, 1990, court in early 1992. Frightened witnesses to the Adkins met with two Colombians in the Nightwatch shooting testified behind screens to conceal their bar of the American Hotel in Amsterdam, Nether- faces, identified only by numbers in court. Patrick lands. Subsequent testimony indicated that Adkins Brindle declined to testify, but brother Tony pro- was involved in smuggling stolen emeralds through duced evidence that he had been drinking and play- Holland and that he had completed several runs ing cards in a London pub, The Bell, when Abdullah without difficulty prior to the night of September 28. was shot. The defendants’ mother described her sons On the latest run, however, one of the packets con- as softhearted young men who wept when their para- taining hot gems had been stolen, a circumstance keet died, and who made a habit of helping elderly that did not prevent the Colombian suppliers from women cross the street.