Serial Killings:

Unsolved, And Unpublicized,

Slayings Of Women Fill FBI Files

By: THOMAS HARGROVE Scripps Howard News Service

KNOXNEWS.COM

And, Presented Here By:

Bonnie M. Wells

NOTE: Color coding, emphasis and {comments} by by Bonnie M. Wells

Authorities in Indiana and Ohio have launched investigations into suspected serial killings after a Scripps Howard News Service study of FBI computer files found many alarming clusters of unsolved homicides of women across the nation.

Also, police in Nevada confirm for the first time that they are hunting a likely serial killer who has targeted up to seven women, mostly prostitutes, and has scattered their partial remains across three states.

Many of the suspected serial killings detected in the study have never before been disclosed to the public.

All told, authorities in seven cities have confirmed that a statistical analysis of federal crime files conducted by Scripps has detected known - or strongly suspected - serial homicides in their communities.

The study was based on computer records of 525,742 homicides committed from 1980 to 2008. The FBI provided most of the data. But Scripps supplemented these using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain detailed records of 15,322 killings that local police did not disclose to the federal government's entirely voluntary crime reporting system.

The resulting database - which crime experts say is the most complete accounting of homicide victims ever assembled in the United States - was created to determine if serial killings could be identified among the nation's 185,000 unsolved homicides.

"I remember we had three of them, all elderly women who were strangled," said Lake County, Ind., Deputy Coroner Jackie DeChantal of a series of unsolved killings about four years ago in the Gary, Ind., area. "I remember talking about it then. We couldn't get anyone else to say that they were connected." {I've been screaming my guts out for years now, with no one willing to listen to me. Instead of getting the maniacs off our streets, all they wanted to do was call me crazy because I believed we had a serial killer among us.}

DeChantal has since reviewed coroner's case files and added three more suspicious homicides to a list of 14 strangulations identified in the Scripps study, some dating back to the early 1990s. She plans to review the cases with investigators from the Gary Police Department.

"We thought it was just odd when they happened," she said. "Why would you kill somebody old like that, unless you were robbing them? But that didn't appear to be the case at the time." {Might want to check out the cases of Ella Mae Grant down in Ross County Ohio and Ruth Robinson in Wood County West Virginia}

The Scripps study also prompted police in Youngstown, Ohio, to begin a fresh review of decades-old files and evidence storage boxes related to several homicides.

"In the early 1990s, we thought we had a serial murderer running around. Yes, we definitely thought we had one," said Capt. Rod Foley of the city's homicide squad.

Foley is contacting other police departments, looking for any physical evidence from a series of suspected rape-murders in his area that could be shipped to Ohio authorities for DNA analysis. {He might want to contact Washington County Ohio sheriff Larry Mincks. Lord knows I supplied his predessor Robert Schlicher a ton of information and evidence on serial killings and a serial killer. All of which was promptly ignored, while the sheriff told slanderous lies about me. And yes, I have witnesses. }

"We had a suspect back then," Foley said. "We thought he had a pattern. He would rape them. Sometimes he'd shoot them or do some other things to them." {This web site is filled with cases in which I have spent years showing the pattern and the connections between the cases. }

The Scripps study highlighted communities where police failed to solve at least three-quarters of the homicides of women who were of similar age and killed through similar methods. The study focused on women because officials at the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program report that 70 percent of all known serial murder victims were female.

The study identified 161 clusters in which 1,247 women of similar age were killed through similar means. At least 75 percent of the cases in each cluster were unsolved at the time they were reported under the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Report program.

"No one has done what you have done," said University of Maryland criminologist Charles Wellford, who in 1999 published a landmark study into how police can improve murder investigations. { I wouldn't be too sure about that!}

Nevertheless, experts warn that the Scripps study is unlikely to detect mobile serial killers like homicidal truck drivers, a group that was targeted in the FBI's Highway Serial Killings Initiative. {How about a dude that runs east to west - home based out of Michigan - whose name was given to that same Washington County sheriff many years ago? Contact me. I'll tell you what it is.}

"Your method is fine, but it certainly underestimates the true number of serial killings," said criminologist Jack Levin, co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University and a nationally prominent scholar of serial and mass murder.

He said the problem is that serial killers often vary their methods and even their choice of victims, which makes detection more difficult. "They get bored," Levin said. {I told everyone this too. I figured they'd wait for some man to step forward and take the wheel. Well, this web site is going to be difficult to discredit - and so am I. I won't back down and I sure as hell won't run, so someone is going to have to deal with the facts sooner or later.}

Contained in one of the study's four clusters of unsolved female killings in Las Vegas was the grisly death of Misty Saens, a prostitute whose torso was discovered off Nevada Route 159 west of Las Vegas in March 2003. It took police two years to identify her.

It took even longer for police to discover that Saens was the first victim in an apparent sequence of gruesome killings.

"We have a series of cases where we believe six or seven women, mostly prostitutes, have been killed in southern Nevada and other places, possibly by a truck driver," said Lt. Lew Roberts of the Las Vegas Homicide Unit. "We think we have one serial killer who's out preying on these women." {Missing any jewlery? Yeah, he's a trucker; running east and west out of Ohio.}

That statement marks the first time Las Vegas police have said they are hunting a serial killer who targets prostitutes. The city has never issued a formal warning, although local news media published and broadcast stories in 2008 speculating the possibility of a serial killer.

The U.S. Justice Department, as a policy, recommends that police issue a warning when a serial killer has been detected. {Hahahaha, ... that's really funny guys. And exactly what are the consequences when they don't issue that warning - or when the warning is issued to them and they choose to ignore it? Huh, what are the damned consequences? Who stands accountable for all the lives they enabled a serial killer to take? Come on, someone give me an answer.}

"If we determine that there may be a serial killer operating and that a certain population therefore is at risk, then, certainly, warning the public is of paramount concern," said Supervisory Special Agent Mark Hilts of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, which specializes in profiling serial killers.

But he said the final decision rests with local law enforcement. {Well, there you have it folks. If the local yocals want to tell you they can but if they choose not to, well, just too bad for your luck. What a way to have to live.}

"We don't have a policy on this," said Las Vegas police public information officer Barbara Morgan. "We want to be transparent on cases of serial rapists or serial murderers, of course. But I can't remember ever putting out a statement about an active serial killer."

Police will not identify all the killings, or disappearances, that they suspect could be the work of a single person targeting Las Vegas prostitutes. In late September, they issued a statement to Scripps about two related cases: Police in 2003 recovered the torso of Jodi Brewer near Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, Calif., and in 2005 found the severed legs of Lindsay Harris, later identified through DNA analysis, along Interstate 55 south of Springfield, Ill.

The Scripps study flagged Brewer's killing among a cluster of 14 homicides of women who the FBI reported were of "unknown age" killed by "type unknown weapons" in the San Bernardino area. None of those cases was solved at the time they were reported to federal authorities.

"It's my understanding that she (Brewer) was strictly a body dump," said Jodi Miller, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff. "We have a lot of desolate highways here. A couple of times a year, people will come upon a body that we determine was not actually killed in our jurisdiction."

Harris' case has prompted the Illinois State Police to look "at almost every highly publicized case from here to Las Vegas involving dismembered bodies," said Mike Jennings, a special agent with the force.

"You start to realize that there are a lot of these people (serial killers) out there. One's bad. But to know that there are dozens or possibly even more … The general public has no idea." {The ones following my web site have a very good idea, because I've been telling them for years!}

The study failed to detect Lindsay Harris' case because Illinois state authorities do not participate in the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Report, although the Chicago Police Department has chosen to report directly to the federal agency.

Scripps Howard, in the early stages of the study, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Illinois State Police seeking disclosure of the missing homicide records. The state denied the request on the grounds that the information does not exist because Illinois does not assemble computer files detailing murder victims.{Don't forget Janet Miller. She was from Illinois, but was murdered on November 28, 1986 in Wood County West Virginia. Sure I know who did it. No one has ever cared although they certainly have been informed.}

Similar requests of authorities in Florida and Washington, D.C., were successful, however.

Police confirmed the Scripps study has correctly identified previously known serial murder victims in Anchorage, Alaska, Buffalo, N.Y., Los Angeles and Seattle. The study flagged 32 of "Green River Killer" Gary Leon Ridgway's estimated 48 victims in Seattle.

The study identified possible cases of serial killings of women in Detroit, Phoenix or Dallas, but police could not confirm these.

The Detroit Police Department refused a Freedom of Information Act request by Scripps Howard for information about 10 unsolved strangulations of teenage girls and women of undetermined age who were killed from 1991 to 2000.

Since Detroit didn't use computers to track homicides until 2003, reviews of older cases would require a "manual search of all homicide files" that would probably include travel to an "off-site storage facility," according to Detroit city counsel Ellen Ha.

Phoenix police did review 11 homicides of women flagged by the Scripps study, but found no evidence that any were the result of serial murder. However, the city also has about 1,900 unsolved homicides committed since 1990 and is building its own database to search for possible serial killings.

"We have renewed our interest in cold-case investigations," said Lt. Joe Knott, head of the city's homicide unit. "We don't have any specific cases tied to any one individual, but that doesn't mean that there may not be."

The study found six clusters of mostly unsolved killings of 74 women in the Dallas area. Although none was easily identified to be a serial homicide, city police are quick to admit that undetected serial killings are likely among the city's more than 350 unsolved killings of women.

"We've had some horrendous murders here," said Sgt. Larry Lewis of the Dallas Cold Case Homicide Unit. "I'm sure there are serial killers in that pile, but I'm trying to figure out a way to find them."

BACK

November Story & Case Page

Case Directory Page

EMAIL

Bonnie M. Wells

This page posted: Nov. 22, 2010 // BMW