Cases Old and Cold

[HairOfTheDog]

BABY HOPE: RAPE/MURDER SUSPECT IDENTIFIED, ARRESTED, CONFESSES.

So happy to see this one solved - after over 20 years.



In 1991, the body of a naked malnourished little girl was found inside a blue cooler by the side of a Manhattan freeway. The baby girl had never been reported missing.

The detectives assigned paid for the burial and headstone and never stopped working the case.

She was unidentified for years and years, until a tip led NYPD to her sister and mother (confirmed by DNA).

Baby Hope has now been identified as Anjelica Castillo.

Her cousin, Conrado Juarez, 30 at the time of the murder, was arrested on Friday and arraigned yesterday. This is the POS:
/////////////////////////

Based on Juarez's confession, Hope/Angelica was sexually assaulted and killed by him at her aunt's home. Juarez and his sister then stuffed her in a cooler and dumped it along the Henry Hudson Parkway.

Full story:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?sectio...id=9284889

[HairOfTheDog]

The Martha Moxley Murder - Kennedy Cousin Wins Appeal

It took decades before an arrest and conviction were made in the bludgeoning murder of Greenwich, Connecticut 15-year-old, Martha Moxley. The crime took place in 1975.


Martha Moxley, murder victim

In 2002, Michael Skakel, a Kennedy cousin, was charged and convicted of the crime and got 20 years to life. His brother Thomas had also been an early suspect.

Michael Skakel, murder suspect - through the years

The trial received a massive amount of media coverage.

Well, Skakel was just recently granted a new trial as a result of a successful appeal. His conviction was overturned and today he is out on $1.2 bond until his retrial - he must wear a monitoring device and remain in Connecticut.

The appeal included claims of "incompetent representation", based partly on the fact that prominent defense attorney Mickey Sherman didn't focus enough on Thomas as an alternate suspect, and also because Sherman was unable to locate an alleged alibi witness.

Here's a good top level overview of the very interesting case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Skakel

Here's a more in-depth article.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notor...ted_8.html

Side note: Ex-detective of OJ Simpson infamy, Mark Fuhrman, garnered a lot of media coverage, and redemption in some eyes, for his private investigation of the case. In 1998, he wrote a book concluding that Skakel was the killer.

[HairOfTheDog]

SUSPECTED KILLER ARRESTED AFTER DNA TIES HIM TO AXE MURDER - 40 YEARS LATER

Love it when cold cases are solved using newer technology, finally offering some answers and closure to surviving family members decades after the crime.


^ Murder victim Eileen Ferro, 21, was a dental hygienist who was stabbed to death in her home on Ladyslipper Drive in Shrewsbury, Mass. Her husband found her dead in the utility room of their home on Feb. 22, 1974.


^ Suspected murderer - Lonzo Guthrie, 69, of Austell, Georgia

Guthrie was a furniture deliveryman who had a job at Ferro's home the day before she was stabbed, Worcester County, Massachusetts, District Attorney Joe Early Jr. said. He was never on investigators' radar at the time of the killing, Early said.

In Massachusetts, investigators resubmitted evidence from the 1974 crime scene to a lab to re-evaluate it for any traces of DNA. At the same time, Guthrie violated parole for a crime he committed in Los Angeles and was required to provide a DNA sample.

These two sources of DNA submitted separately generated a match in the system and provided the break that had eluded investigators for years.

Guthrie was being held without bond and was fighting extradition to Massachusetts. Guthrie is a registered sex offender stemming from a rape conviction in California, also in 1974.

Refs:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/06/justice/ma...?hpt=ju_t2
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...found.html

[Duchess]

We are lucky to live in a time of such wonderful technology.

[HairOfTheDog]

We are lucky to live in a time of such wonderful technology.

It's good to see LE reviewing more old evidence and submitting DNA. Great tool, when there's something there, for sure.

In the murder of Eileen Ferro, it was disappointing to read that Guthrie was never even on LE's radar, though he'd delivered furniture to the home the day before.

Nothing takes the place of good old fashioned detective work and workers and delivery men who'd recently been to the home should have been on top of the list of potential suspects, then and now. Guthrie was convicted of rape the same month that he allegedly killed Eileen. Sounds like it was a sloppy investigation, IMO.

I'm so glad her surviving loved ones will get to see her killer brought to justice, hopefully.

[HairOfTheDog]

Break in case of Maryland Missing Sisters - 40 Years Later?



It was the start of Easter break from school and the 12-year-old and 10-year-old sisters, whose birthdays were only a day apart and were approaching, had walked to the pizza parlor to celebrate, as was common back in 1975.

The girls' brother, Jay Lyon, was 15 at the time and had seen them eating pizza at the shopping center before they were later spotted walking home by another witness. Jay Lyon became an LEO a few years later and fought to keep the investigation alive. The girls haven't been seen since that day nearly 40 years ago and no remains were ever found.

Today, LE is expected to hold a press conference identifying a possible sex-offender suspect and will ask the public for help in compiling information about him. Source: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/11/justice/ma...?hpt=ju_c2

[HairOfTheDog]

^^ Person of Interest in Lyons' Sisters Case Identified


57 year-old Llyod Welch was 18 at the time the sisters went missing

Police in Maryland have identified Lloyd Welch, a 57-year-old convicted child sex offender, as a person of interest in the 1975 disappearance of two sisters who never returned home from a Montgomery County shopping mall.

Authorities said Tuesday at a news conference that Welch is believed to have been at the shopping mall on the day the girls disappeared and has been in a Delaware prison since 1997.

Welch traveled extensively throughout the United States from the 1970s through the mid-90s, authorities said. He worked as a ride operator for a carnival company, which often set up at malls. He has a criminal history that includes arrests in several different states for sexual offenses against young girls, according to the station. Police believe there may be victims who have not come forward.

Twelve-year-old Sheila Lyon and her 10-year-old sister Katherine went missing March 25, 1975 while walking home from Wheaton Plaza in Kensington.
earch and investigation ensued, but no one has been charged in the case.

Authorities are seeking the public's help to learn more about Welch. Anyone with information is asked to call investigators at 1-800-CALL-FBI, or they can submit a tip online at http://tips.fbi.gov.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crim...story.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cops-person-...ppearance/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

I wonder what put Welch on LE's radar after all of the these years; that wasn't covered in the press conference.

[Eat Shit And Die]

I hope they have the right guy, I hate to think that someone got away with something like that for 40 years, you can only imagine the crimes of his in that 22 years he was free they don't know about not the ones they do, people who do stuff like that don't just stop, they are opportunistic individuals who act on their chances till they slip up, I imagine he has quite the reseme if the guy they are accusing is the guy who did it.

22 years is a very long time to not do their thing...

Kill the bastard if its him.

[HairOfTheDog]

It wasn't me...it was him!


Donna Perry, Serial Murder Suspect


Yolanda Sapp, Kathleen Brisbois and Nickie Lowe -- Murder Victims. RIP.

In 1990, Sapp, Brisbois and Lowe were prostitutes whose bodies were found in the Spokane River. For 22 years, their murders went unsolved.

Then, in 2012, a transgender woman named Donna Perry was arrested on federal weapons charges. When her fingerprints and DNA were entered into the system, they matched with evidence collected from the 1990 murders.

At the time of the murders, Donna Perry was Doug Perry. Donna Perry is charged with the murders and being held on $1million bail. Her first court appearance was supposed to be on Tuesday, but she refused to attend because the name on the court docs wasn't her's (she's listed as Douglas Perry).

Donna Perry's defense: Donna didn't kill anybody, it was Doug. That's why after he got the sex change operation in Thailand, the killings stopped.

This one should be interesting.

Sources:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national...-1.1727064
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/19..._ref=crime

[ZEROSPHERES]

I hope he/she doesn't really think that defense will float. He/she needs a lawyer to advise IT to plead guilty.

[Duchess]

If I think about it too much I get a little freaked out that these people walk among us.

[HairOfTheDog]

Gotchya!


Pictured: 14-year-old Amber Creek and her suspected murderer, James Eaton

In January 1997, Amber Creek was a troubled 14-year-old who was a ward of the state after spending the first half of her short life with her mother and the second half with her father. She had struggled with depression, drugs and alcohol.

She ran away from her juvenile detention facility but was not reported missing for 15 days. Her body was found by hunters near a stream in a wildlife refuge area in Wisconsin in February 1997. It took Racine County investigators 16 months to identify Amber.

Amber had been raped, beaten and suffocated with a plastic bag. Her body was posed and the word “hi” was written on her palm, which was turned upward.

DNA evidence was extracted from Amber’s body. Fingerprints were taken off the bag used to suffocate her and sent to LE agencies across the country, but no match was made…until, Stacy Hirschman -- a criminalist at the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation -- was working on cold cases and came across the finger prints that had been sent to OSBI nearly two decades earlier. She ran them through the upgraded version of the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System or IAFIS and got a hit.

The fingerprints belonged to James Eaton, 36, of Palatine, Illinois – the same town where Amber had been living. Two Racine County investigators then began surveillance on Eaton, and they matched DNA found on Creek's body to Eaton after picking up a cigarette he discarded while waiting for a late train in the Chicago metro area.

Eaton had not previously been a suspect, nor was he even mentioned in any investigative reports. He would have been 19 at the time of Amber’s brutal murder.

Eaton is in custody in Racine County, and a $1 million bail has been set for him. He's facing charges of first degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse.

Ref: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local...6673.story

[HairOfTheDog]

ARREST MADE IN 2007 HIGH-PROFILE MURDER CASE -- PAIGE BIRGFELD, COLORADO

Her father has been on a relentless mission to get justice for Paige. Good to see LE has finally arrested their prime suspect; hope they've got enough for a conviction.


Paige Birgfeld ^, was a Grand Junction, Colorado, mother of three young children who disappeared over seven years ago. The alleged killer is a man police first suspected of the crime within days of her vanishing.

Truck driver Lester Ralph Jones, 63, (pictured above) was arrested Friday morning after returning from an out-of-town work trip and faces charges of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping and second-degree arson.

Birgfeld, who was 34 when she went missing, was known by friends as a "supermom" who juggled several jobs in order to provide for her kids. "She could carry a baby, cook, talk on the phone and do six other things at the same time," her friend Riina Stockemer said at the time of her disappearance. "Everyone wanted to be like her."

But shortly after she vanished on June 28, 2007, detectives learned there was a darker side to Birgfeld. Using the pseudonym "Carrie," she ran an escort service, Models Incorporated, from her home and a nearby office.

After an exhaustive search, Birgfeld's skeletal remains were eventually found by a hiker in a ravine in March 2012. Forensic analysis revealed a head injury, but it didn't appear to be "a fatal one," says Lewis, who adds: "We still don't know what killed her."

The case against Jones, whose criminal record includes arrests for sexual assault, kidnapping and domestic violence, is "largely circumstantial, but we have a large amount of physical evidence tying them together," says Lewis.

Birgfeld's friends were shocked to learn that Paige was running an escort service in an attempt to maintain her upscale home after her divorce. "She was a survivor and was doing whatever she could to provide for her kids," her friend Andrea Land said after her disappearance. "She certainly wasn't doing it to live the high life."

http://www.people.com/article/lester-jon...e-birgfeld
------------------------------------------------
It's an intriguing case and investigation. Here's the "Disappeared" docu for anyone interested in learning more about the case.

[HairOfTheDog]

18 Years Later....Arrest Made in 8-Year-Old's Abduction and Presumed Murder


Kirsten Hatfield ^ was abducted from her bedroom near Oklahoma City in 1997. Blood was reportedly found on Kirsten's windowsill and her underwear was found in her backyard, but the girl has not been seen since.

Earlier this year, an officer was assigned to follow up on the investigation and decided to re-submit some of the evidence for analysis, as technology has changed since the first days of the investigation.

After testing, OSBI reportedly said they located an unknown male's DNA in Hatfield's underwear.

According to the affidavit, the evidence shows that the eight-year-old may have been targeted for sexual assault.


^ Anthony Joseph Palma was a neighbor of the Hatfiled family. He gave a DNA sample in June to investigators. An affidavit released this week says results showed a match of one in 293 sextillion.

Police believe that Kirsten was killed shortly after her abduction, but her body has never been located despite heavy news coverage, advertisements and flyers asking for information -- as well as extensive searches throughout the years.

“We have worked this case continuously for 18 years,” Midwest City police Chief Brandon Clabes said. “We’re emotionally invested in this case and wanted to bring it to a logical conclusion.”

Investigators made the DNA match after collecting samples from men who were brought up in the investigation or had been in Hatfield's house back in 1997.

Kirsten's family says they're hopeful there will be justice for Kirsten. Palma, a groundskeeper, married and had a child after the murder. His wife and friends from his church say they don't believe he could hurt an 8-year-old.

I hope that Palma confesses to his crimes against Kirsten (and anybody else he might have hurt) and gives up the location of Kirsten's remains now that he's behind bars. He still lives in the house next to where the Hatfield's lived when Kirsten was abducted.

Refs:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/affidavit-dn...ma-girl-8/
http://www.newson6.com/story/30253771/ki...mas-arrest
http://kfor.com/2015/10/13/a-look-at-ant...ds-murder/

[Midwest Spy]

Breaking news today in the 26 year old mystery of what happened to Jacob Wetterling.

October 22, 1989, eleven year old Jacob was abducted at gunpoint while riding bikes with 2 other boys.

Police arrested 52 year old Danny Heinrich last night at his home on unrelated charges, however, the U.S. Attorney just finished a press conference and Heinrich has been labeled a person of interest.

Everyone in this state feels so bad for his family. It's been such a shitty ordeal for them.

I hope this is the guy and that he confesses.

[HairOfTheDog]

Man, I hope the suspect has the answer as to what happened to Jacob (and is compelled to talk).

I've followed the case through the years and have a lot of respect for the work Mrs. Wetterling has done for missing children.

I'd really like to see Jacob's parents and siblings get some answers and some degree of closure.

[HairOfTheDog]

Here's a summary of the Jacob Wetterling case.

Abduction
On October 22, 1989, eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling, his brother, and their friend, Aaron Larson, went to a convenience store in their hometown of St. Joseph, Minnesota late in the evening and left the store at 9:15pm on their bicycles.

When the three boys were about a quarter of a mile from the Wetterling home, an unidentified man wearing a mask and dark clothing approached them with a gun and ordered the boys to lie down in a ditch. He asked for their ages, and then told Jacob's brother and friend to run away or they will be killed. The man then ordered the boys to run and dont look back. When the boys were to the woods they looked back and the attacker and Jacob were gone.

Suspect Description
The abductor was described as a Caucasian male that was between 40 and 50 years old, 5'8" tall, husky build, with broad shoulders and a low, raspy voice.

The case was requested by the Wetterling family to be on Unsolved Mysteries, but it was denied. It is profiled because of its connection to several other disappearances on the show. (HOTD: It's since been covered by several of the real crime docu-drama programs.)

Leads Pursued Over the Years
Authorities received two possible tips shortly after the abduction: witnesses reported seeing a strange man glaring at customers at the convenience store where the boys had been.

The other lead was about a child molestation that occurred two months after Wetterling vanished. An unidentified man molested a twelve year old boy in Cold Springs, Minnesota, ten miles away from St. Joseph. The boy was walking home from ice skating when he was grabbed by the man who pulled him into his car, molested him, then pushed him out and told him to run away or he would shoot him. The two cases seemed identical to police, but no new leads surfaced and the case remains unsolved.

In September of 2004, a man in Warrod, Minnesota, was believed to be Jacob because the man's co-workers noticed that he matched the age progressed photograph of Jacob. However, the man denied this and he refused to do a DNA test. Eventually, detectives were able to get the man's fingerprints, but they did not match.

In 2010, a farm where a person of interest lived was searched for the possible remains of Jacob, but nothing was located. This suspect still remains a person of interest, and Jacob remains missing.

[Midwest Spy]

The POI from 2010 was another creepy looking guy who, in 1989, lived on the family farm with his parents. He's a music teacher/instructor of some sort, and I bet it's tough living in the community with all the suspicion that surrounds him.

This Heinrich guy looks like an evil creep. All kinds of male child pornography (pre-pubescent) discovered at his home. That includes video he's shot of kids from the St. Cloud area.

Something tells me this is the guy. I'm guessing because the boys in 1989 described the suspect as 40ish, they've ruled this guy out over the years (he was 26 at the time).

However, if you can see the original sketch of the suspect from 1989 and look at Heinrich from 1989, there's a very strong resemblance.

This guy has been on the cops' radar for 26 years, but they're not commenting on why they've never moved further along with him.

[HairOfTheDog]

Thanks MS.


^ This is Jacob Wetterling shortly before his abduction.


^ This is the piece of shit who is a person-of-interest in his abduction now, alongside a suspect sketch from back in 1989. If he's the guy, he would have been 26 when Jacob was abducted.

^ Danny James Heinrich, 52, was arrested at his home Wednesday night on suspicion of receiving and possessing pornography and have linked him to the abduction of the 11-year-old boy. He has not been charged in the Wetterling case.

Heinrich’s home was searched on July 28 by Stearns County authorities seeking possible evidence, including Jacob’s jacket. The warrant said no jacket was found, nor was any evidence directly linking him to Jacob’s disappearance.

But DNA was discovered on some clothing that may link Heinrich to a boy who was sexually assaulted in 1989, and Heinrich lives in an area where several other boys have been assaulted.

Heinrich was interviewed after Jacob disappeared, according to a search warrant. He was reinterviewed in 1990.

Full story: http://www.startribune.com/new-developme...8399961/#1

[ZEROSPHERES]

The Jacob Wetterling and Johnny Gosch cases have always been a great mystery and of interest to me. I wonder if there is a mid west abduction ring whose members take special requests from molesters who pay for a 'made to order' victim.