# 7 Chilling Cold Cases That Netflix Won't Cover | 191

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 20 Mar 2026, 1 h 07 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO2909072985.mp3

Join me for 7 chilling cold cases that are too dark for Netflix. Episode 191 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 unsolved mysteries, true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, creepy mysteries, true crime storytelling, crime reconstruction, chilling cases, investigative reporting, modern forensics, victim advocacy, unidentified remains, crime scene forensics, disturbing cases, true crime analysis, hidden clues, infamous crimes, real crime stories, forensic evidence, heists, art theft

## Transcript

[0:00] At 3:30 in the morning on December 11th, 1995,
[0:05] firefighters forced their way into a Georgetown row house and
[0:08] found something that didn't make sense.
[0:11] The fire was small, barely $15,000 in damage, confined
[0:16] almost entirely to a bed in an upstairs bedroom.
[0:19] But lying on that bed, barely breathing, was a 38 year old
[0:24] woman with third degree burns over more than 80% of her body,
[0:30] the kind of injuries 1 paramedic later noted that you'd normally
[0:34] only see when an entire building burns to the ground.
[0:38] Her name was Lynn Amos, and she'd been set on fire while she
[0:42] slept. She would survive 10 agonizing
[0:45] days before dying in the hospital, and to this day,
[0:48] nobody has ever been charged for this unthinkable crime.
[0:54] Lynn was, by every account, a brilliant and ambitious woman.
[0:58] Born and raised in Alabama, she earned her undergraduate degree
[1:01] from the University of Alabama before completing her MBA at the
[1:05] University of Texas. Her career in finance took her
[1:09] first to New York City, where she negotiated leveraged buyouts
[1:14] and later worked for the prestigious management
[1:16] consulting firm Booz Allen. She was single, well liked, and
[1:22] had a wide circle of friends who described her as gregarious and
[1:25] sharp. In August of 1995, just four
[1:29] months before her death, she made a major career move.
[1:34] She relocated to Washington, DC to join a consulting firm called
[1:38] Barron's Group, a subsidiary of KPMGA global accounting firm.
[1:44] Her new role was specific in high stakes.
[1:48] She was being sent to Mexico to evaluate the lending practices
[1:51] of several large banks. One of these institutions was
[1:55] tied to the Mexican equivalent of the Federal Reserve.
[1:59] It was the kind of work that could make a career.
[2:02] Instead, it may have ended her life.
[2:07] In the weeks leading up to the fire, Lynn's behavior began to
[2:11] shift in ways that alarmed the people closest to her.
[2:14] She'd always been open and social, but she started pulling
[2:18] back from conversations about her work about a month before
[2:22] the fire. She had lunch with a friend
[2:24] named Emily Smith, who worked in a related field.
[2:28] During that meal, Lynn confided that she'd uncovered deeply
[2:32] problematic lending practices during her investigation.
[2:36] She said her eventual report was going to be ugly.
[2:40] She wouldn't elaborate further, and she declined to share
[2:43] specifics. But the implication was clear.
[2:47] She'd found something serious enough that it troubled her to
[2:50] talk about it openly. Around the same time, colleagues
[2:54] reported that Lynn had begun receiving a string of mysterious
[2:57] hang up phone calls at home. She told Co workers she believed
[3:02] the calls were connected to her work in Mexico.
[3:05] Then on December 10th, the day before the fire, Lynn attended a
[3:10] brunch with a group of friends. During the gathering, she let
[3:15] slip that she'd encountered some dangerous things during her
[3:17] investigation, but again, she wouldn't go into detail.
[3:23] That evening, between 10:00 and 10:30, she spoke to a friend on
[3:27] the phone. She sounded clear, lucid, and in
[3:31] good spirits. She also called her office to
[3:34] say she had a doctor's appointment the next morning and
[3:37] would be late for work. After that, nobody heard from
[3:41] her again until firefighters broke down her door roughly 5
[3:45] hours later. When first responders pulled
[3:50] Lynn from the bed, someone asked her if she knew what had
[3:53] happened, and a barely conscious Lynn shook her head.
[3:57] She lingered for 10 days, barely conscious and unable to speak,
[4:02] before dying on December 21st, 1995.
[4:07] The initial assessment by fire investigators pointed toward a
[4:10] tragic accident. They found a single cigarette
[4:13] butt among the bedding that had been swept onto a deck by
[4:16] firefighters, and Lynn's blood alcohol level registered three
[4:20] times the legal limit. The early conclusion was grim
[4:25] but straightforward. A woman had gotten wasted,
[4:28] fallen asleep with a lit cigarette, and paid the ultimate
[4:32] price for an innocent mistake. But Lynn's friends and family
[4:37] immediately pushed back, and they insisted she wasn't a
[4:40] smoker. She wasn't even someone who
[4:43] occasionally lit up while under high stress situations.
[4:46] She simply never smoked, ever. Interestingly, no ashtrays,
[4:51] lighters, matches or cigarette packs were found anywhere else
[4:56] in her home. The cigarette appeared to have
[4:58] been planted. And then, more than a week after
[5:02] the fire, an insurance company investigator submitted a
[5:06] devastating report to cops. After examining the bedroom, the
[5:12] investigator found accelerants on the mattress, the pillow, and
[5:16] the floor. The fire hadn't been started by
[5:19] a cigarette at all. Rather, it had been deliberately
[5:22] set using a combination of gasoline, kerosene, turpentine,
[5:26] and paint thinner. Doctors who had treated Lynn
[5:30] confirmed that her burn patterns weren't consistent with an
[5:33] accidental fire. On January 25th, 1996, the
[5:38] medical examiner officially ruled her death a slaying over,
[5:42] ruling the preliminary finding that it was an accident.
[5:47] By the time the case was reclassified, critical damage
[5:51] had already been done. Because investigators initially
[5:54] treated the fire as an accident, the crime scene was never
[5:58] properly secured. Within hours of the blaze, a
[6:02] contractor arrived to board up the windows and padlock the
[6:05] front door. By that same afternoon, the
[6:09] building's owner, a Georgetown University professor, his fiance
[6:14] and insurance representatives had all walked through the home.
[6:19] The medical examiner later stated publicly that only police
[6:23] investigators should have been allowed inside.
[6:26] Whatever trace evidence might have identified A perpetrator
[6:29] had likely been trampled, disturbed or destroyed.
[6:34] The family's attorney would later say the failure to
[6:37] preserve the scene effectively crippled the investigation from
[6:41] the start. Despite the setbacks,
[6:44] investigators did piece together a likely sequence of events from
[6:48] what little evidence they did have.
[6:51] There were no signs of forced entry, which meant the
[6:54] perpetrator either had a key or was someone Lynn knew well
[6:58] enough to let inside. The prevailing theory is that
[7:01] sometime after her last phone call, someone entered the
[7:05] townhouse, likely under false pretenses rather than any sort
[7:09] of force. This individual then forced Lynn
[7:12] to consume enough alcohol to incapacitate her and then doused
[7:16] her body in bed with accelerants before setting her on fire.
[7:21] The cigarette butt was placed deliberately in an attempt to
[7:23] stage the scene as an accident. It was, according to the
[7:27] family's attorney, an attack that bore every hallmark of a
[7:31] professional hit. The most haunting detail in the
[7:36] entire case may be this. Lynn Amos's report on the
[7:40] Mexican banks was never completed.
[7:42] Whatever she'd found, whatever practices she deemed ugly,
[7:47] whatever dangerous things she'd witnessed, all of it died with
[7:50] her. Emily Smith, her friend from the
[7:54] financial world, speculated that Lynn had likely stumbled onto
[7:58] fraudulent loans or money laundering connected to
[8:01] international drug trafficking. It's a theory that's never been
[8:05] proven, but it aligns disturbingly well with the
[8:08] timeline of threatening phone calls, increasing secrecy, and a
[8:12] method designed to make her death look accidental.
[8:16] The Baron's group declined through a spokesman to comment
[8:19] on Lynn's work, and they're chilling.
[8:21] Silence has persisted for three decades.
[8:25] The investigation eventually stalled due to the lack of
[8:28] physical evidence and the absence of witnesses.
[8:32] No suspects have ever been publicly named.
[8:36] The case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries in December
[8:39] of 1996, but it produced no breakthrough leads.
[8:45] Lynn Amos's mother, Helen Amos, has spoken publicly about the
[8:48] toll of not knowing who eliminated her daughter or why.
[8:53] She said the family will never recover from losing Lynn, but
[8:56] that the absence of answers makes the grief immeasurably
[8:59] worse. Her brother Doug has been
[9:02] equally blunt, calling the case a straightforward professional
[9:05] hit and expressing frustration with the initial failures of the
[9:09] investigation. Some have also questioned, given
[9:13] the stakes involved, whether the initial investigation was
[9:17] botched or whether it went perfectly to plan.
[9:21] It's been speculated that the politically powerful hands
[9:24] involved in this crime may have crossed international boundaries
[9:28] and played a role in the investigation as well.
[9:32] More than 30 years have now passed since that December night
[9:36] in Georgetown, and the case remains exactly where it was in
[9:41] 1996. Somewhere, somebody knows what
[9:45] Lynn Amos found in those Mexican bank records.
[9:48] And somebody knows why a brilliant, ambitious woman was
[9:51] silenced in her own bed while the rest of Washington slept.
[9:59] On the afternoon of October 19th, 1978, a building employee
[10:03] at the Osborne Apartments on West 57th St. in Manhattan heard
[10:08] two gunshots ring out from Ste. 1B.
[10:11] Five hours later, police discovered the bodies of 64 year
[10:14] old actor Gig Young and his 31 year old wife Kim Schmidt.
[10:19] Both had been shot in the head. Young lay face down on the
[10:22] bedroom floor with a Smith and Wesson revolver still in his
[10:25] hand. Schmidt was face down beside
[10:28] him. There was no note.
[10:31] A diary lay open on a nearby surface turned to the entry for
[10:35] September 27th, which read simply that they'd gotten
[10:39] married that day. It had been just three weeks
[10:42] since the wedding. Police also found three
[10:45] additional revolvers and roughly 350 rounds of ammunition in the
[10:50] apartment. Young's Academy Award for best
[10:53] supporting actor sat nearby. The motive for what happened in
[10:57] that room has never been determined.
[11:00] It's a strange thing when a man wins the highest honor in his
[11:03] profession and then, less than a decade later, dies in
[11:08] circumstances so grim that the achievement becomes a footnote.
[11:14] But that's the story of Gig Young, an actor whose talent was
[11:18] real, whose demons were relentless, and whose final act
[11:22] of violence remains one of Hollywood's most baffling
[11:25] unsolved mysteries. The man who became Gig Young was
[11:30] born Byron Barr on November 4th, 1913 in St.
[11:35] Cloud, MN. His father, John, worked as a
[11:39] chef, and his mother, Emma, struggled with illness
[11:43] throughout much of his childhood.
[11:46] The family relocated to the nation's capital and later to
[11:49] Waynesville, NC. He discovered acting through
[11:53] high school plays and after graduating worked as a used car
[11:57] salesman while studying acting at night.
[12:01] When a friend offered him a ride to Hollywood if he'd split the
[12:04] cost of gas, he took the risk. He earned a scholarship to an
[12:09] acting school and eventually caught the attention of Warner
[12:12] Brothers, who signed him for bit parts.
[12:16] In 1942, he appeared in a film called The Gay Sisters as a
[12:21] character named Gig Young. The studio liked the name and
[12:25] insisted he adopted permanently, partly to avoid confusion with
[12:29] another actor working under the same birth name.
[12:32] Notably, this means that Gig Young is credited in the film as
[12:36] Gig Young, but he wasn't playing himself.
[12:39] But he was about to be interrupted by the events in the
[12:42] world at the time, and he ended up serving in the Pacific in the
[12:45] fight against the Japanese Empire.
[12:49] He expected to return to his previous contract, but Warner
[12:53] Brothers dropped him either while he was enlisted or soon
[12:56] after, and he began freelancing. Throughout the late 1940s and
[13:01] 1950s, Young carved out a reliable niche as the charming
[13:05] second lead. He was the best friend, the
[13:08] brother, the man who never got the girl.
[13:11] He earned his first Academy Award nomination for Best
[13:15] Supporting Actor in the 1951 drama Come Fill the Cup, playing
[13:20] an alcoholic opposite James Cagney.
[13:23] A second nomination followed for the 1958 comedy Teacher's Pet,
[13:28] where he held his own alongside Clark Gable and Doris Day.
[13:32] But stardom in his own right always seemed to elude him.
[13:36] He was good enough to be noticed, never quite big enough
[13:39] to carry a picture. Young's personal life was a
[13:43] revolving door of failed marriages and escalating
[13:46] dysfunction. His first wife, Sheila Stapler,
[13:50] was a classmate from his acting school days.
[13:53] His second wife, Sophie Rosenstein, was a drama coach at
[13:56] Paramount who was several years his senior.
[14:00] Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the
[14:03] wedding and died less than two years later.
[14:07] Young was then briefly engaged to actress Elaine Stritch, A
[14:11] fellow heavy drinker whose own account of their destructive
[14:14] relationship would later surface publicly.
[14:17] In 1956, Young married actress Elizabeth Montgomery, who would
[14:22] go on to star and bewitched her father.
[14:26] Television producer Robert Montgomery opposed the union and
[14:30] reportedly refused to attend the ceremony.
[14:34] The marriage lasted 7 years before Montgomery divorced
[14:38] Young, citing his worsening alcoholism and general
[14:41] dysfunctional behavior. Those close to the couple
[14:45] confirmed that Young's conduct had been volatile and at times
[14:49] violent. Nine months after the divorce
[14:52] from Montgomery, Young married real estate agent Elaine
[14:55] Williams, who was pregnant at the time.
[14:58] Their daughter Jennifer was born in April 1964.
[15:03] The marriage collapsed within three years, and during the
[15:07] subsequent child support battle, Young denied that Jennifer was
[15:10] his biological child, despite there being no evidence to the
[15:14] contrary. He fought the case for five
[15:17] years and lost, and the relationship between father and
[15:21] daughter never recovered. In 1969, Young's former agent
[15:27] Martin Baum, who had become head of ABC Pictures, pushed to cast
[15:32] Young to play a sleazy character in the movie They Shoot Horses.
[15:36] Director Sydney Pollack hadn't wanted him.
[15:39] Jane Fonda, the film's star, was reportedly unhappy with the
[15:44] choice, but Baum insisted and Young delivered the performance
[15:49] of his career. He won the Academy Award for
[15:52] Best Supporting Actor, beating out a strong field.
[15:56] He wanted it to be the beginning of leading man status, the start
[16:00] of what people could finally call a Gig Young movie.
[16:03] But it never happened. Instead, the Oscars seem to mark
[16:07] the beginning of the end. Young is sometimes cited as an
[16:11] example of the so-called Oscar curse.
[16:14] This is the alleged phenomenon where an award winner's career
[16:18] inexplicably stalls or declines after the win.
[16:22] In Young's case, the decline was neither inexplicable nor sudden,
[16:26] and it was all due to his increasingly unhealthy
[16:28] relationship with alcohol. After a decent supporting role
[16:32] in Lovers and Other Strangers in 1970, Young's alcoholism began
[16:37] destroying what was left of his professional life.
[16:42] In 1974, Mel Brooks cast him as the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles,
[16:48] but on his first day of shooting, Young collapsed on
[16:51] set. Some accounts attribute it to
[16:54] alcohol itself, while others believe it was brought on by an
[16:58] attempt to quit drinking cold Turkey before filming began.
[17:02] Either way, Brooks fired him and replaced him with Gene Wilder,
[17:07] who turned the role into one of the most beloved comedic
[17:09] performances of the 1970s. Two years later, Aaron Spelling
[17:15] cast Young as the voice of the unseen Charlie in the new series
[17:21] Charlie's Angels. Young couldn't even manage that.
[17:25] He was too impaired to record his lines and was replaced at
[17:28] the last minute by John Forsythe.
[17:31] By the mid 1970s, Young was having trouble remembering
[17:34] dialogue during stage performances.
[17:37] At the same time, he was receiving psychiatric treatment
[17:40] from Doctor Eugene Landy. Landy was a controversial
[17:44] psychologist who would later have his California medical
[17:48] license revoked for ethical violations involving his
[17:52] treatment of Brian Wilson. Young's final film was Game of
[17:58] Death, the Patchwork Bruce Lee Project cobbled together years
[18:02] after Lee's death in 1973. While working on the film in
[18:06] Hong Kong, Young met Kim Schmidt, a 31 year old German
[18:11] woman who worked as a magazine editor and script supervisor.
[18:16] Details about their courtship are sparse, but whatever drew
[18:20] them together moved fast. On September 27th, 1978, they
[18:27] married. Schmidt was Young's fifth wife,
[18:31] and she was half his age, a fact that raised eyebrows by most
[18:36] accounts. The couple appeared happy in the
[18:39] brief window between the wedding and their deaths.
[18:42] On the day of October 19th, Young reportedly taped an
[18:46] appearance on a New York City talk show.
[18:49] At some point after returning to their apartment at the Osborne,
[18:53] Young loaded a revolver and shot Schmidt in the back of the head.
[18:58] A building employee heard the shots at approximately 2:30 in
[19:02] the afternoon, but the bodies weren't found until five hours
[19:05] later. The investigation that followed
[19:08] was brief. Police concluded that Young had
[19:11] acted on the spur of the moment and that his actions were not
[19:15] premeditated. They initially considered the
[19:18] possibility of a pact, but ultimately ruled that Young was
[19:22] the sole perpetrator. No witnesses came forward with
[19:26] evidence of an argument or disturbance.
[19:29] The motive was never established and nearly half a century later,
[19:33] remains unknown. There's no clear explanation for
[19:38] what drove him to shoot his wife of three weeks and then close
[19:41] the curtain on himself. But this, of course, hasn't
[19:44] stopped the speculation. Alcoholism, career failure, deep
[19:49] psychiatric instability, a lifetime of broken
[19:53] relationships, and an apparent inability to sustain any form of
[19:57] genuine intimacy all played a role in the arc of his life.
[20:02] But none of it satisfactorily explains the specific
[20:05] circumstances of what happened on October 19th, 1978.
[20:13] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here with a quick reminder to share
[20:16] this video with your friends and family if you're enjoying it.
[20:20] Also, don't forget to like and subscribe and hit that
[20:22] notification bell with all notifications turned on.
[20:29] David Holtzclaw had no reason to linger that fateful day when
[20:32] he'd stopped by Blue Ridge Savings Bank just after 1:00 on
[20:36] the afternoon of May 16th, 2003. He was dropping off some Arby's
[20:42] sandwiches for his mother, Sylvia, a bank teller who was
[20:46] the lone employee on duty. They chatted for a few minutes,
[20:51] said goodbye, and David left. Less than half an hour later,
[20:56] three people inside that bank would be dead, and David would
[21:00] never speak to his mother again. What happened in the intervening
[21:05] minutes remains, more than two decades later, one of the most
[21:09] haunting unsolved crimes in South Carolina history.
[21:14] Blue Ridge Savings Bank wasn't what most people picture when
[21:17] they hear the word bank. It was an Asheville based
[21:20] institution that had expanded into South Carolina's Upstate
[21:24] region in 2002, opening several branches in search of a more
[21:28] stable economy. The Greer branch sat in a single
[21:32] wide mobile home on E Frontage Rd. a dead end stretch
[21:36] overlooking Interstate 85 near the Highway 14 exit.
[21:41] Unsurprisingly, there was no imposing marble lobby, nor was
[21:45] there a security guard at the door.
[21:48] It was a modest trailer, isolated and exposed, with one
[21:52] employee working inside on any given shift.
[21:56] That employee on the afternoon in question was 56 year old
[22:00] Sylvia Holtzclaw. Born and raised in Greer, Sylvia
[22:04] was a fixture of her community. She'd married her high school
[22:08] sweetheart and raised two sons as a single mother.
[22:11] After their divorce, she was a regular at Greer First Baptist
[22:16] Church, and it helped organize a yearly Christmas toy drive for
[22:20] children in need. Sylvia was exactly the kind of
[22:23] person who'd stay late when a Co worker called in sick, which is
[22:27] precisely what happened that fateful Friday.
[22:31] She was supposed to be done by lunchtime, but her backup
[22:34] couldn't make it in and Sylvia agreed to cover the full shift
[22:38] alone. The timeline that investigators
[22:42] later assembled is chillingly precise.
[22:45] At approximately 1:00 PM, David Holtzclaw arrived at the bank
[22:49] with lunch and spent a few minutes with his mother.
[22:52] He left around 1:10. At 124, PMA surveillance camera
[22:57] at a gas station down the road captured a red coupe, later
[23:01] identified as most likely an Oldsmobile Alero, driving toward
[23:05] the bank. 4 minutes later, at roughly 128, a man armed with a
[23:11] Glock entered and confronted Sylvia at gunpoint.
[23:15] Seconds into this confrontation, the situation escalated in the
[23:19] worst possible way. Doctor James Barnes, a 61 year
[23:24] old physics professor at the University of South Carolina
[23:27] Spartanburg, walked into the bank with his wife, Margaret
[23:31] Barnes, aged 58. The couple, married for 38 years
[23:36] since meeting as college sweethearts at King University,
[23:40] had come to do a routine money transfer.
[23:43] Doctor Barnes was nearing retirement after 28 years at the
[23:46] university, where he'd served twice as interim Dean.
[23:50] Maggie worked as a convention coordinator for the National
[23:53] Beta Club and Academic Honor Society.
[23:57] Unfortunately for this couple, they walked straight into an
[24:00] armed robbery in progress. The robber now had three
[24:04] hostages. At 1:30 PM, Sylvia managed to
[24:08] trip the bank's silent alarm, a mechanism built into the cash
[24:12] drawer designed to alert police. What happened in the minutes
[24:16] between the alarm and police arrival is where the case
[24:20] becomes deeply disturbing and frustratingly mysterious.
[24:26] Officers from the Greer Police Department arrived at
[24:28] approximately 1:41 PM, roughly 11 minutes after the alarm was
[24:33] triggered. From the outside, nothing
[24:36] appeared obviously wrong, but inside the bank was empty.
[24:40] The cash drawer had been cleared out, though the amount taken was
[24:44] relatively small and consisted entirely of unmarked bills.
[24:49] The cops didn't notice any signs of struggle and proceeded to
[24:52] attempt to secure the small banking facility.
[24:56] As officers moved down the back hallway, they entered a utility
[25:00] room and found all three victims, Sylvia Holtzclaw,
[25:04] Doctor James Barnes, and Maggie Barnes.
[25:08] Tragically, they had all been shot to death with a 40 caliber
[25:12] Glock. Perhaps most disturbingly of
[25:15] all, there was no sign of a struggle and they appeared to
[25:19] have been herded into the backroom where this senseless
[25:22] act of cruelty took place. The gas station camera that
[25:26] captured the red car heading toward the bank at 1:24 PM also
[25:32] recorded it speeding away at approximately 1:33 PM.
[25:37] The entire crime from entry to exit had unfolded in roughly 9
[25:41] minutes. Adding to the investigative
[25:44] nightmare, the bank's own VHS security tape, which should have
[25:49] recorded everything inside, was missing.
[25:52] Further investigation would reveal that the robber took the
[25:55] tape, with some speculating that he had ordered Holtzclaw to
[25:59] remove it before eliminating the witnesses.
[26:04] The investigation that followed was massive.
[26:07] The Greer Police Department partnered with the Greenville
[26:10] and Spartanburg County sheriff's offices, the South Carolina Law
[26:14] Enforcement Division and the FBI.
[26:17] Over the years, investigators followed up on more than 2000
[26:21] tips and the Bureau offered a $100,000 reward.
[26:27] Composite sketches were released of a man seen at the bank
[26:30] shortly before the robbery, described as a white male
[26:34] between 5 feet six and five feet 8 inches tall.
[26:38] He was described as moderately obese, between 50 and 55 years
[26:43] old, with short blonde hair showing touches of Gray and a
[26:47] general clean cut appearance. Every lead for years went
[26:52] nowhere, likely because this man wasn't ever even confirmed to be
[26:55] a suspect. Police eventually looked into
[27:00] Lenal Ditches, a former janitor responsible for 17 bank
[27:04] robberies across South Carolina between 2000 and 2006.
[27:10] But he had a strong alibi and, crucially, nobody had ever been
[27:14] harmed in any of his robberies. That's not to say he wasn't
[27:19] violent, and after all, he was robbing banks.
[27:23] But for him, his eyes were on the loot, not on committing
[27:27] something that could get him a visit to the chair.
[27:30] He was eventually cleared and ultimately spent 15 years in
[27:34] prison for the bank robberies. The strongest lead came in the
[27:39] summer of 2005, when investigators identified a man
[27:43] named Emerson Wright as a person of interest.
[27:46] Wright, a convicted felon from Beech Island, SC, who also went
[27:51] by the names Ernest Wright and Akeem Johnson, had an extensive
[27:56] criminal record. He had convictions in Georgia
[27:59] and South Carolina, including convictions for aggravated
[28:03] assault on police, burglary, and receiving stolen property.
[28:08] Most critically, on May 1st, 2003, just 15 days before the
[28:13] slayings, Wright had used his sister's vehicle to crash
[28:17] through a fence at an Avis rental lot near the bank.
[28:20] From there, he proceeded to steal a red Oldsmobile Alero,
[28:25] the same type of car seen on surveillance footage.
[28:29] To make matters worse, his weapon of choice across multiple
[28:33] robberies in Georgia was a 40 caliber Glock, the same type
[28:38] used during the robbery. The circumstantial evidence was
[28:41] compelling, but investigators couldn't place right in Greer.
[28:46] There were no receipts, no addresses, no physical evidence
[28:50] tying him to the area beyond the stolen car.
[28:54] They needed to talk to him, but they never got the chance since
[28:57] the saga of Emerson Wright was about to take a very bizarre
[29:00] turn. In October 2004, Wright was
[29:05] spotted during a police checkpoint in Georgia and fled.
[29:09] He led officers on a high speed chase before crashing and
[29:12] eventually successfully escaping on foot.
[29:15] Then on August 2nd, 2005, Georgia State Patrol pulled
[29:20] right over in Eatonton. But this time, the fugitive did
[29:24] something rather bizarre. He stepped out of the stolen
[29:28] vehicle and rather than fighting or attempting to run, he pulled
[29:32] out the Glock he was packing and pulled the curtains on himself.
[29:37] Whatever he might have known about the Blue Ridge Savings
[29:40] Bank robbery perished with him. Notably, his Glock was
[29:44] eventually tested, but investigators eliminated it as
[29:49] the specific weapon used during the robbery.
[29:53] Of course, this doesn't actually eliminate him as a suspect, but
[29:56] it does make it less likely that he was the person involved.
[30:00] Also, unlike the possible suspect seen at the bank just
[30:04] before the robbery, Emerson was black, while the potential
[30:09] suspect was white. Investigators now generally
[30:13] believe that Emerson wasn't involved in the crime, though
[30:16] his disturbing final act suggests to some that he may
[30:20] have been. In November 2016, the case took
[30:25] a strange and unexpected new turn involving a serial
[30:29] predator, Todd Cole. Hep, a successful real estate
[30:33] agent from Moore, SC, was arrested after police rescued a
[30:37] woman named Kayla Brown. She'd been chained inside a
[30:40] shipping container on his property for two months.
[30:44] Under interrogation, the police ended up getting more than they
[30:47] bargained for. Cole Hep confessed to the
[30:50] quadruple slaying at Super Bike Motorsports in Chesney, South
[30:54] Carolina on November 6th, 2003. This shooting had occurred less
[31:00] than six months after the Blue Ridge robbery, and it was only
[31:03] 30 miles away. The Greer Police Department,
[31:07] naturally, immediately took notice and wanted further
[31:10] information. There were unsettling
[31:12] similarities between the two crimes, starting with the fact
[31:16] that both involved execution style shots at somewhat isolated
[31:21] commercial locations. Both attacks also happened in
[31:24] broad daylight with no surviving witnesses, and both offered easy
[31:28] escape routes with minimal chance of detection.
[31:32] Cole Hep had also previously been a student at the same
[31:35] university where Doctor Barnes taught physics, with some
[31:39] believing there could have been tension between the two men.
[31:42] However, no concrete proof that the two knew of each other or
[31:46] interacted was ever established. When he was questioned about
[31:51] Blue Ridge, he denied any responsibility for what
[31:54] happened, despite claiming responsibility for 7 confirmed
[31:58] slayings over the course of decades.
[32:01] Personally, I think he looks a lot like the forensic sketch
[32:04] that was released, and Cole Hep is also noticeably obese, much
[32:09] like the potential suspect. However, on the flip side, he
[32:13] was in his early 30s at the time of the attack, far outside the
[32:17] range for the middle-aged man the suspect was described as.
[32:22] Notably, in 2011, someone attempted to rob the Greer
[32:27] branch a second time, unsuccessfully.
[32:30] Later that year, the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks
[32:34] shut down the entire Blue Ridge Savings Bank Corporation and its
[32:38] assets were transferred to the Bank of North Carolina.
[32:42] The Greer branch closed for good in November of that year and the
[32:46] little green trailer has sat vacant ever since.
[32:49] Rusting along that dead end frontage Rd.
[32:55] On October 9th, 1979, a Harvard educated attorney from one of
[33:00] San Diego's wealthiest enclaves was supposed to walk through the
[33:04] doors of a federal prison. Instead, Walter Wink walked off
[33:08] the face of the earth. He left behind a wife of 30
[33:12] years, 2 grown children, a tangled empire of looted
[33:16] companies, and a federal conviction for fraud.
[33:20] No confirmed sighting, no arrest, no body.
[33:25] Just a blurry photograph on AUS Marshals wanted poster and a
[33:29] trail that goes cold somewhere South of the border.
[33:33] It's the longest running fugitive case in San Diego
[33:36] history, and the man at its center may have pulled off the
[33:39] most successful vanishing act in American white collar crime.
[33:45] Wenk was born on March 30th, 1924.
[33:49] He attended Harvard Law School, spoke multiple languages, and
[33:53] reportedly had some background in intelligence work, though the
[33:56] specifics remain murky. By the 1960s, he'd established
[34:01] himself as a prominent attorney in San Diego, even running as a
[34:05] Democratic candidate for Congress in 1960.
[34:09] He lost that race, but his appetite for influence didn't
[34:12] shrink, not in the least. By the early 1970s, Wenk had
[34:18] shifted his attention to finance, and it was here that
[34:22] his genius for manipulation found its fullest expression.
[34:26] He'd acquire controlling interests in publicly owned
[34:28] companies that were struggling or had minimal real assets.
[34:33] He chose such stellar companies like Time Lenders Inc, Sunfruit
[34:37] Limited, and Santa Fe Financial Corporation to become vehicles
[34:41] for his complex scheme. Once he had control, he'd sell
[34:45] stock in these entities while siphoning off their assets,
[34:49] funneling money through a labyrinth of trusts and
[34:51] corporate shells for his personal benefit.
[34:56] The Securities and Exchange Commission caught on in 1976,
[35:00] and there would be major consequences for this once well
[35:03] respected lawyer. They filed a massive civil
[35:06] action against Wank, his wife Catherine, several associates,
[35:11] and more than 25 corporate and trust entities he controlled.
[35:16] The SEC alleged that Wank had been systematically looting
[35:19] publicly owned companies in violation of federal securities
[35:22] laws. The fraud was enormous, touching
[35:26] investors across the country who'd bought stock and companies
[35:29] being hollowed out from the inside.
[35:33] What made the case more brazen was Wenk's attempt to
[35:35] outmaneuver the federal courts. Before the SEC filed its
[35:40] complaint, he'd petitioned a Nevada court to play Sunfruit,
[35:44] one of the companies he was hollowing out into receivership.
[35:48] Because Nevada law didn't require a disinterested
[35:51] receiver, Wank got himself appointed as the receiver of his
[35:55] own company. The 9th Circuit later found that
[35:59] the state receivership was nothing more than a continuation
[36:02] of the fraud itself, a legal cloak thrown over his ongoing
[36:06] looting. The federal court stripped away
[36:09] that protection, appointed their own receiver and permanently
[36:13] barred Wank from securities activity.
[36:16] In April 1978, a federal jury convicted Wank of mail fraud.
[36:22] He was sentenced to five years in prison.
[36:25] His appeals were denied, and by October 1979, he'd exhausted his
[36:30] legal options. The court ordered him to
[36:33] surrender on October 9th, believing that he would
[36:36] ultimately simply show up to serve his sentence.
[36:41] But he never showed up, and on the very day he was supposed to
[36:45] surrender, Wank vanished from his home in Rancho Santa Fe.
[36:49] He left behind his family and everything that tied him to his
[36:53] former life. The disappearance was clean,
[36:57] deliberate and well planned, investigators learned.
[37:01] He'd traveled extensively before his conviction, visiting the
[37:04] Bahamas, Mexico, Europe and South America.
[37:09] He was almost certainly laying the groundwork for exactly this
[37:12] scenario if his appeals failed. The assistant US attorney who
[37:17] prosecuted the case, Tom Coffin, remembered Wank as exceptionally
[37:21] intelligent, but also arrogant and rude.
[37:24] It was a combination that alienated the jury during his
[37:27] legal proceedings but served him well on the run.
[37:32] Coffin, himself a Harvard Law graduate who owned a dachshund
[37:36] with the same name as Wanks, found the disappearance almost
[37:39] personally insulting. Investigators suspected Wank
[37:43] ended up in China, leveraging language skills and intelligence
[37:47] connections to vanish where extradition was impossible.
[37:52] A number of American intelligence agencies eventually
[37:55] had to publicly deny involvement.
[37:58] And of course, as you know, having three letter agencies
[38:02] come out and publicly say that they weren't involved in
[38:04] something definitely means he wasn't an intelligence asset.
[38:09] After all, there's no one who I would sooner take at their word
[38:13] than representatives of organizations who explicitly
[38:16] deal in deception. Over the decades, the hunt for
[38:21] Wink ebbed and flowed, but never stopped.
[38:24] In February 1989, Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment on his
[38:29] case, generating roughly 120 tips.
[38:33] None LED anywhere. In 1991, federal agents launched
[38:38] a major push, interviewing relatives and former associates
[38:41] across the country, but there was still nothing.
[38:45] Sightings were reported from the Caribbean to Mexico to Europe to
[38:49] various parts of Asia. While in most cases this may
[38:53] have indicated a number of false sightings, with Wank and his
[38:57] shadowy intelligence connections and endless hoard of wealth,
[39:01] these may have been real. The most recent credible lead
[39:05] came in 2011 when US Marshals followed a tip to Taxco, a
[39:11] silver mining town in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
[39:15] The fugitive wasn't there, though there was some indication
[39:18] to suggest that he had been there at one time in the past.
[39:22] Ultimately, though, that's where the trail ends, and no more
[39:26] sightings have been reported in the years since.
[39:29] Meanwhile, the financial wreckage took over 2 decades to
[39:32] sort through. One single attorney, Alex
[39:36] Harper, spent the better part of his career unraveling the cases,
[39:40] tangled aftermath, tracing looted assets, and pursuing
[39:44] disgorgement proceedings through the courts.
[39:48] Interestingly, when Harper died in 2020, his family's published
[39:53] obituary mentioned the case and how the fugitive's escape had
[39:57] haunted him into retirement in all likelihood.
[40:02] What finally caught up with Wank wasn't justice, but the
[40:05] unceasing March of Father Time. Whatever the case, though,
[40:10] Walter White effectively got away with one of the most
[40:12] massive frauds in American history, perhaps with a little
[40:16] help from his friends and intelligence.
[40:22] On the afternoon of December 4th, 2008, a man pulled into a
[40:27] gas station along Auto Route 440 in Laval, QC to fill up his pale
[40:32] grey Nissan. It was the kind of mundane
[40:35] errand that thousands of people run every day without a second
[40:38] thought. But Mario Marabella wasn't like
[40:42] most people, and this wasn't going to be a normal stop.
[40:46] Within moments, 3 or 4 men descended on him, forced him
[40:50] into a waiting minivan, and speed off into the cold December
[40:54] afternoon. That evening, Marabella's Nissan
[40:58] was found engulfed in flames at Guam Blvd. and Lambert St. in
[41:02] East End Montreal. By the time it was found, it was
[41:06] virtually completely destroyed, along with any evidence it may
[41:10] have held. Mario Marabella, known to the
[41:13] Mafia underworld as Skinny, was never seen again.
[41:18] His disappearance didn't make international headlines, and for
[41:22] anyone outside Montreal's underworld, the name barely
[41:25] registered. But within organized crime
[41:29] circles in Quebec, his abduction sent a very specific message,
[41:34] one that reverberated for years, triggering retaliatory violence
[41:38] that would leave multiple men dead.
[41:41] Marabella inhabited a world of loan sharks, drug traffickers
[41:45] and the most powerful Mafia family in Canadian history.
[41:51] The Marabella name carried a strange duality in Montreal.
[41:55] On one side, there was Tony Marabella.
[41:58] Born in the early 1970s in the borough of Saint Leonard, Tony
[42:03] was a baseball prospect, and a legitimate one at that.
[42:06] He signed with the Montreal Expos as an undrafted free agent
[42:10] at 16 and spent eight professional seasons grinding
[42:14] through the Miners. Along the way, he suffered A
[42:17] bizarre health scare during batting practice, collapsing
[42:20] with sudden amnesia that landed him on a 1996 episode of
[42:24] Unsolved Mysteries. Despite that brush with fame,
[42:29] Tony never cracked the majors, topping out at AA Harrisburg
[42:34] before drifting into independent ball and then retiring.
[42:38] Mario, on the other hand, took a very different route and he
[42:43] became deeply entangled in the criminal underworld of
[42:46] Montreal's Italian community. He accumulated convictions for
[42:51] loan sharking, extortion, and breaking probation.
[42:55] In 1992, he and Giuseppe de Vito robbed a liquor truck, an
[43:01] escapade that earned Marabella a guilty plea for possessing
[43:04] stolen goods and a 90 day sentence.
[43:08] By the mid 2000s, he was also reportedly involved in
[43:12] trafficking massive quantities of weed as well.
[43:16] None of this was small time freelancing.
[43:18] Mario Marabella was a soldier, a recognized member of the Rizzuto
[43:23] crime family, the most powerful organized crime syndicate in
[43:27] Canada. To understand why Marabella's
[43:31] kidnapping mattered, we need to grasp the state of the Rizzuto
[43:35] organization in late 2008. The family, LED for decades by
[43:41] Patriarch Nicola Rizzuto and his son Vito, had built an empire
[43:46] stretching across Quebec and Ontario.
[43:49] They also had international connections, reaching into New
[43:52] York, Venezuela and certain parts of Italy, mainly Sicily.
[43:58] They controlled drug importation, loan sharking,
[44:01] illegal gambling and construction rackets.
[44:05] American law enforcement considered them a faction of New
[44:08] York's Banano crime family, though Canadian authorities
[44:12] recognized them as independent. They have occasionally been
[44:16] dubbed the 6th Family, as their power rivaled any of the Five
[44:20] Families of New York. But by 2008, that empire was
[44:25] crumbling, and in January 2004, Vito Rizzuto had been arrested
[44:31] on racketeering charges connected to the 1981 slayings
[44:34] of three Bonanno captains in New York.
[44:38] After years fighting extradition, he was sent to the
[44:41] United States in 2006 and ultimately sentenced to 10
[44:45] years. With the boss in an American
[44:48] prison, the family's grip on the underworld began to weaken.
[44:53] Then came Operation Colisei. In November 2006, more than 700
[44:59] police officers executed the largest organized crime sweep in
[45:03] Canadian history. They arrested 90 individuals,
[45:07] including Niccolo Rizzuto, along with key lieutenants.
[45:12] In the vacuum that followed, a power struggle erupted.
[45:16] Agostino Contrera, a senior member of the Allied Contrera
[45:20] Caruana Mafia clan, was tapped as the successor to lead the
[45:24] Montreal Mafia, and Mario Marabella, known on the street
[45:28] as Skinny, answered directly to Contrera.
[45:32] He was, by many accounts, Contreras right hand man.
[45:38] The grab was swift and coldly professional.
[45:41] On the afternoon of December 4th, Marabella stopped at a
[45:45] service station in Laval's Valdebris district, just off
[45:48] Auto Route 440. Several men converged on him,
[45:52] overpowered him, and shoved him into a minivan.
[45:56] The vehicle then drove off at high speed.
[45:59] There was no prolonged struggle, no dramatic standoff, and it was
[46:04] over in moments, with some people in the vicinity seeing
[46:08] nothing at all. And this was before the wall of
[46:12] silence went up from ordinary people who didn't want to get
[46:15] themselves entangled in mafia affairs.
[46:19] Later that evening, police located Marabella's Nissan
[46:23] burning in Montreal's East End. The torching of the car was a
[46:27] deliberate act of evidence destruction, but it was also a
[46:31] statement. In organized crime, burning a
[46:35] victim's vehicle signals that the person isn't coming back.
[46:39] Police developed several theories about why Marabella was
[46:42] targeted. The prevailing explanation was
[46:45] that Marabella had accumulated significant deaths and had been
[46:49] drawing too much attention to himself in the Mafia.
[46:53] Maintaining a low profile is a survival requirement for most
[46:56] members, with flashy members like John Gotti being notable
[47:00] exceptions rather than the rule. Excessive visibility attracts
[47:05] public attention from the general public, which leads to
[47:08] police scrutiny, and scrutiny is bad for everyone's business.
[47:13] But there was a deeper dimension.
[47:15] Given Marabella's position as Contreras right hand man, his
[47:19] abduction was also interpreted as an attack on Contreras
[47:22] authority. By extension, this was also an
[47:25] assault on whatever remained of the Rizzuto power structure, and
[47:29] somebody was sending a message that the old guard was no longer
[47:32] untouchable. Mario Marabella's body has never
[47:37] been found, and while he could technically still be alive,
[47:40] nobody seriously believes that. Quebec's cold case unit lists
[47:45] him as almost certainly deceased, and investigators have
[47:48] long assumed that he was eliminated shortly after being
[47:51] taken. His case remains officially
[47:54] unsolved, but the story doesn't end with his disappearance.
[47:59] In the months and years that followed, the Rizzuto
[48:02] organization continued to hemorrhage.
[48:05] In June 2010, Agostino Contrera himself, the man Marabella had
[48:11] served, was shot down with his bodyguard outside his totally
[48:15] legitimate place of business in Montreal.
[48:18] Then, in November 2010, a sniper's bullet struck 86 year
[48:23] old Nicolo Rizzuto through his own kitchen window, pulling the
[48:27] curtains on this once powerful Mafia kingpin.
[48:31] When Vito Rizzuto was finally released from prison in 2012,
[48:35] the retaliation was immediate. Within a single month of his
[48:39] return to Montreal, several men connected to the campaign
[48:43] against his family turned up dead.
[48:46] In fact, three men who were implicated in another kidnapping
[48:49] of a Rizuto ally were all found dead under mysterious
[48:53] circumstances. Some sources have connected
[48:56] their slayings directly to the Marabella kidnapping, but given
[49:00] the secrecy around these sort of events, nothing was publicly
[49:04] confirmed. The message was unmistakable.
[49:07] The Rizuto's had long memories, and debts would be repaid in
[49:11] kind. Mario Marabella's case occupies
[49:16] an uncomfortable space in the history of organized crime.
[49:20] He wasn't an innocent bystander. He was a man with a criminal
[49:24] record, a soldier in a Mafia family, someone who'd spent
[49:29] years operating in a world where violence was a routine cost of
[49:32] doing business. That context doesn't make his
[49:36] disappearance any less disturbing or chilling.
[49:39] In fact, perhaps it makes it more so because it reveals just
[49:42] how disposable, even connected men can become when the tides of
[49:46] power shift in the brutal arena of the criminal underworld.
[49:52] The Oklahoma City Butcher is the name given to an unidentified
[49:55] serial perpetrator believed to have slain 3 women in Oklahoma
[49:59] City between 1976 and 1986. This case stands out as one of
[50:06] the city's most chilling unsolved mysteries, especially
[50:10] given the horrific nature of the acts which were perpetrated.
[50:15] All known victims were young, homeless Native American women,
[50:18] a fact that helped investigators link the crimes.
[50:22] The case first came to public attention on April 1st, 1976,
[50:27] when three workers inspecting an abandoned house on 6th St. in
[50:31] Oklahoma City made a horrifying discovery.
[50:35] Inside the dilapidated house, the men noticed a foul odor and
[50:39] stumbled upon a head hidden in a box.
[50:42] Police responding to the scene found that body parts were
[50:45] scattered throughout the house and the victim's face had been
[50:49] given a Glasgow smile. If you've ever seen the show
[50:53] Sons of Anarchy, you'll immediately know what I'm
[50:56] talking about. At the time, the victim couldn't
[50:58] be identified. With no immediate leads.
[51:02] This slaying gained some media attention initially, but soon
[51:05] faded from headlines. Investigators had little to go
[51:09] on. The victim was a young Native
[51:11] American woman, but her name remained unknown for years.
[51:16] It wasn't until 1993 that additional testing finally
[51:20] identified her as Kathy Lynn Shackleford, who had run away
[51:23] from home at 17. This belated identification gave
[51:28] some closure to her family, but came long after the trail for
[51:32] the perpetrator had gone cold for three years.
[51:36] The 1976 act appeared to be a disturbed, isolated incident.
[51:42] Then on April 19th, 1979, another grisly discovery was
[51:47] made in a northeast Oklahoma City neighborhood.
[51:50] In a scene out of a horror film, people observed a dog dragging
[51:55] what turned out to be a head down the street, all in broad
[51:58] daylight. Police were alerted and over the
[52:01] next several days recovered more body parts of the victim
[52:04] scattered around the area, some wrapped in butcher paper or
[52:08] newspapers. Media reports at the time
[52:11] referred to the parts being wrapped up butcher shop style.
[52:15] Unlike the first case, this time authorities quickly identified
[52:18] the victim as 22 year old Arlie Bell Killian via fingerprints.
[52:24] Killian was a young Native American woman known to have
[52:26] struggled with substance issues and homelessness.
[52:30] The community was terrified by the macabre scene that unfolded
[52:33] in their neighborhood. Residents grew anxious, not
[52:36] knowing who could commit such a heinous act.
[52:40] Law enforcement launched an intensive investigation and even
[52:44] developed a couple of early suspects. 1 suspect was the
[52:48] victim's own brother, who had escaped from a mental hospital
[52:52] on the very day Arlie was slain. He had a violent history and had
[52:58] previously been arrested for slaughtering pets with a
[53:00] hatchet. Given this background and the
[53:04] uncanny timing of his escape, police initially considered him
[53:08] a strong suspect and subjected him to hours of questioning.
[53:13] However, as the investigation continued, doubts arose about
[53:17] the brothers involvement. Crucially, additional parts of
[53:21] Arleigh's body kept appearing around the city even after
[53:24] Arleigh's brother had been taken into custody on April 24th,
[53:29] 1979. These were in highly public
[53:33] areas intended to specifically cause fear in the community.
[53:38] Arley's brother was ultimately cleared as a suspect, with his
[53:41] escape coming to be seen as merely a very timely
[53:44] coincidence, and the second investigation hit a dead end.
[53:49] Importantly, and unfortunately, crucial initial investigative
[53:53] resources were ultimately wasted by going down this initially
[53:56] very promising rabbit hole. And that's not a criticism of
[54:00] the investigation whatsoever, especially given the timing of
[54:04] his escape and the brother's history of violence.
[54:09] Community concern led to public meetings of worried citizens,
[54:13] but with no new leads, the case went cold again in the following
[54:16] years. Seven years would pass before
[54:19] the butcher struck again, if indeed it was the same
[54:22] perpetrator, and this time the authorities would try to handle
[54:26] the three cases holistically. On March 6th, 1986, a man in
[54:33] Oklahoma City found portions of a body behind his house.
[54:37] Police were called to collect the remains, and within a week,
[54:40] yet another grim discovery was made.
[54:42] The victim's head was found in a nearby garbage bin nearby.
[54:46] In this case, the perp had attempted to destroy evidence by
[54:49] setting the remains on fire, leaving the head badly charred
[54:53] when found. Despite this, the victim was
[54:56] identified almost immediately as 22 year old Tina Sanders.
[55:01] She had distinctive tattoos on her body, which helped
[55:05] authorities confirm her identity.
[55:07] Like the previous victims, Tina Sanders was a young Native
[55:11] American woman who was experiencing homelessness at the
[55:14] time. Witnesses reported.
[55:17] She was last seen alive just one day before her remains were
[55:20] found. The extreme brutality and the
[55:24] familiar pattern clearly echoed the earlier unsolved cases.
[55:29] Within a few weeks, Oklahoma City police publicly announced
[55:33] that they believed all three slayings in 19761979 and 1986
[55:41] were linked to a single serial predator.
[55:44] Investigators noted the common signature in each crime.
[55:47] Notably, in a shocking twist, the police also revealed that in
[55:51] all cases, the women had distinctive parts of their
[55:54] anatomy removed. These parts were never
[55:57] recovered, unlike the other body parts, leading to speculations
[56:02] as to why this additional cruelty was inflicted.
[56:06] It was also significant that all three victims shared a similar
[56:09] profile. Young Native American women
[56:12] living transient lifestyles, which likely made them targets
[56:16] of opportunity. This was the first time
[56:19] authorities publicly used the moniker Oklahoma City Butcher.
[56:23] For the perpetrator, the revelation that a serial perp
[56:27] had been operating, albeit infrequently, for a decade was
[56:32] shocking for the community, and initially significant
[56:35] investigative resources were assigned.
[56:38] Despite thorough investigations, however, no solid leads emerged
[56:42] after 1986. The cold case investigator, who
[56:47] has led the file in recent years, noted in an interview
[56:50] that he believed that this case could have been solved had it
[56:54] been given sustained significant attention at the time.
[56:58] However, he noted that because the women were homeless, Native
[57:01] American, and had been living on the outskirts of life, resources
[57:06] weren't properly allocated to the cases.
[57:10] Over the years, several theories and suspects have been proposed
[57:14] by law enforcement officials, forensic experts, and amateur
[57:19] sleuths, but none have been proven. 1 prominent theory in
[57:23] the 1980s was that the perpetrator might be Henry Lee
[57:26] Lucas, a drifter from Texas. Lucas was arrested in 1983 and
[57:33] became infamous for confessing to hundreds of crimes
[57:36] nationwide, most of which he didn't actually commit.
[57:41] During his confession spree, Lucas admitted to slaying
[57:44] Arleigh Belle Killian, the 1979 victim, and so he was considered
[57:50] a serious suspect for a time. Oklahoma City investigators
[57:54] travelled to interview Lucas in prison, hoping his information
[57:58] would solve the case. However, as they probed deeper,
[58:03] it became evident that Lucas's story did not hold up and he
[58:06] knew nothing about the case except what was in the public
[58:10] record. Further, he was incarcerated at
[58:13] the time of the third attack, which, if the theory that all
[58:17] three acts were committed by the same person is accurate,
[58:20] obviously discredits him. Given the methods employed by
[58:24] the perp and the use of actual butcher paper, some have
[58:27] speculated that the Oklahoma City butcher was in fact a
[58:31] literal butcher. Others have speculated he may
[58:34] have had medical or other sorts of anatomical training. 1
[58:38] puzzling aspect of the case is the long gaps between the
[58:41] slayings, roughly 3 years between the first and second,
[58:46] then A7 year gap before the third.
[58:49] Such long cooling off periods aren't typical for serial
[58:52] perpetrators, who often escalate or operate in closer intervals.
[58:57] This has led to theories that the Oklahoma City butcher might
[59:00] have been unable to attack during those years.
[59:04] Some have speculated that he may have been incarcerated for other
[59:07] crimes or even serving in the military and stationed
[59:11] elsewhere. If, for example, the perpetrator
[59:15] was jailed in the early 1980s and released by the mid 1980s,
[59:20] that could explain why no acts occurred in that window.
[59:24] Alternatively, the individual might have simply left the area
[59:28] and then later returned. Another theory to explain the
[59:32] gap suggests that he was perhaps a long haul truck driver, though
[59:36] there's no direct evidence of this.
[59:39] However, circumstantial evidence suggests that he could have
[59:42] struck in other areas, meaning that the cooling off period
[59:46] issue isn't the factor it appears to be.
[59:50] Still another theory suggests that the first two slayings are
[59:53] independent of the third, suggesting A copycat style
[59:57] attack. This is considered unlikely, as
[1:00:00] many of the details of the 1976 and 1979 slayings weren't made
[1:00:05] public until after 1986. On a quiet autumn morning in
[1:00:12] October 2012, a man walking along Zinnian Beach in Split,
[1:00:16] Croatia, noticed an unbearable stench coming from a discarded
[1:00:20] plastic bag. Inside, to his shock, was a
[1:00:23] rotting leg. This grisly discovery marked the
[1:00:27] start of one of Split's most perplexing unsolved mysteries, a
[1:00:31] dismembered John Doe whose remains would soon surface on
[1:00:35] two different beaches. Over a decade later, both the
[1:00:39] victim's name and his perpetrator remain unknown.
[1:00:43] The gruesome nature of the crime stunned the community at large
[1:00:47] and spurred an exhaustive police investigation, Yet every lead
[1:00:51] only deepened the mystery. The first body part was found on
[1:00:57] October 8th, 2012, when a passerby at Zinion Beach
[1:01:01] stumbled upon a severed leg inside a plastic bag.
[1:01:05] This leg was confirmed to be human almost immediately,
[1:01:08] sparking the initial investigation.
[1:01:11] Just over a week later, on October 16th, another gruesome
[1:01:15] find was reported across town at the Zenta Harbor.
[1:01:19] A partially decomposed human torso was spotted wedged in the
[1:01:23] rocks of a Marina breakwater. The torso had arms attached but
[1:01:27] was missing its head and both legs, clearly linking it to the
[1:01:31] earlier discovery. The following day, police divers
[1:01:35] searching the waters near that spot recovered the victim's
[1:01:38] head, which had been wrapped in newspaper and placed in its own
[1:01:42] plastic sack. No other remains were ever
[1:01:45] located despite extensive searches.
[1:01:50] All the recovered remains were sent for forensic examination,
[1:01:54] which confirmed they belong to one individual.
[1:01:58] Investigators extracted Adna profile from the victim's tissue
[1:02:01] and bone, but it didn't match anyone in Croatia's DNA
[1:02:05] databases. Fingerprints were also lifted
[1:02:09] from the plastic bag that held the head, offering a potential
[1:02:12] clue to the perpetrator, but these prints were of poor
[1:02:15] quality. The autopsy shed further light
[1:02:20] on the crime. The medical examiner determined
[1:02:23] that the John Doe likely died from severe chest injuries
[1:02:26] before being dismembered. He had multiple broken ribs.
[1:02:31] Early reports noted at least 8 fractures, as well as a broken
[1:02:35] collarbone and numerous bruises on his body, all inflicted while
[1:02:39] he was still alive. According to the coroner, these
[1:02:43] traumatic injuries suggested that the man either suffered A
[1:02:46] vicious beating or a catastrophic fall.
[1:02:50] However, given the subsequent events, the investigators were
[1:02:53] very clear that even if this was a fall, he didn't do it
[1:02:57] intentionally. The advanced state of
[1:03:02] decomposition made it difficult to determine how long the victim
[1:03:06] had been dead. Pathologists estimated he could
[1:03:09] have died anywhere from about one month to as much as a year
[1:03:13] Before the remains were discovered.
[1:03:14] A forensic analysis was commissioned to try to figure
[1:03:20] out how the man appeared in life.
[1:03:23] The reconstruction showed an older white male who was balding
[1:03:26] and had short Gray hair. He was likely around 510 and the
[1:03:31] investigation indicated he had significant dental work done in
[1:03:35] the past. Medical examiner's also noted
[1:03:39] signs of kidney and heart disease, suggesting he was in
[1:03:42] poor health and possibly had mobility issues.
[1:03:47] These clues painted a picture of a man in his 60s or 70s who
[1:03:51] lived a quiet, perhaps housebound life.
[1:03:56] Armed with the composite sketch and physical details, Split
[1:03:59] police appealed to the public for help in identifying the
[1:04:02] unknown man. They urged citizens to consider
[1:04:06] whether any elderly male neighbor or relative had gone
[1:04:09] missing from their community. This focus on immobile seniors
[1:04:13] was based on the investigators hunch that the victim had been
[1:04:16] frail and largely homebound. If such a person quietly
[1:04:21] disappeared, it might not immediately spark suspicion from
[1:04:25] neighbors or relatives. The perpetrator may have been
[1:04:29] able to simply pass it off as an instance where the man perished
[1:04:32] naturally, and given his poor health, further questions were
[1:04:37] unlikely to be raised. Despite exhaustive efforts, by
[1:04:43] the end of 2012, the case had grown cold.
[1:04:47] Not a single useful clue had been found, and the
[1:04:50] investigators frustration grew as every potential lead hit a
[1:04:54] dead end. Over the years, several theories
[1:04:59] have emerged about what might have happened.
[1:05:02] Investigators strongly suspect that this man was targeted by
[1:05:05] someone he knew, most likely a caregiver.
[1:05:09] Indeed, police noted that the John Doe appeared to have led a
[1:05:13] very isolated life in Split or its outskirts, which would make
[1:05:17] it easier for his absence to go unnoticed for a long time.
[1:05:22] This profile supports the idea that the perpetrator took
[1:05:25] advantage of the man's solitude and vulnerability.
[1:05:30] Some have speculated that the motive could have been
[1:05:33] financial, for example, concealing the death to continue
[1:05:36] collecting the man's pension or for an inheritance.
[1:05:42] Another idea suggests that the reason why the man hasn't been
[1:05:45] discovered is that he wasn't a local at all.
[1:05:48] Split is an extremely popular vacation destination.
[1:05:52] It's possible that someone from elsewhere in Europe may have
[1:05:55] brought their elderly relative to Split under the auspices of a
[1:05:58] sunny vacation. During the vacation, this
[1:06:01] relative may have slain this elderly man and then covered it
[1:06:05] up using macabre techniques. This theory also has elements of
[1:06:09] the previous ideas discussed, since it may provide a
[1:06:13] convenient excuse for why someone is gone.
[1:06:16] If an elderly and unwell person from, say, France or Germany
[1:06:20] died on vacation in Croatia, this may not raise too many
[1:06:23] eyebrows back home from other relatives.
[1:06:28] Notably, this seems to be a case that would be ripe for solving
[1:06:32] with genetic genealogy if it happened in the United States or
[1:06:35] Canada. That said, it happened in Europe
[1:06:39] and the laws surrounding genetic genealogy are different, so
[1:06:43] perhaps the Split John Doe case will remain sadly unsolved.

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