Post by Joanna on Oct 31, 2016 2:19:20 GMT -5
Creepy Unsolved Halloween Murders and Disappearances
Halloween is the one night of the year on which being scared is supposed to be good fun. However, amid all the harmless activities like trick-or-treating and costume parties, sometimes genuinely frightening and disturbing things happen. October 31 has been the date of some horrific murders and unexplained disappearances which are far more terrifying than any ghosts, goblins or witches. Because they happened to take place on Halloween, the following mysteries have attained an extra aura of creepiness and they remain unsolved to this day.
Baby in the Trash. Around 6:30 on the morning of Monday, October 31, 2004, a housekeeper at the Hilton Resort and Marina in Key West, Florida, found something in the trash can in the ladies’ room. She may have initially assumed it was a Halloween prank until she realized she had discovered the body of a newborn infant girl. The child still had the umbilical cord and placenta attached to her body, an indication that a woman had recently given birth to the infant and decided to just toss her into the trash. It did not take authorities long to figure out who was responsible.
Hours earlier, a young pregnant woman and three male companions came into the lobby and she entered the ladies’ room while the men waited outside. A woman later reported she had gone into the restroom and heard a woman moaning inside a stall. When the witness asked the three men if they knew the lady, one of them claimed to be her boyfriend and mentioned her name, which sounded like “Samantha” or “Sonia.”
The pregnant woman remained in the bathroom at least 40 minutes and a security guard saw her clutching her stomach when she exited at approximately 2 a.m. When he asked if she was all right, she said she had gotten sick while partying at the nearby Fantasy Fest. The four individuals were escorted out of the hotel, but the child was not discovered until several hours later. Fingerprints, blood samples and DNA evidence were gathered from the restroom and compared to several suspects, including Casey Anthony. Despite the incident’s having been featured on America’s Most Wanted, the mother and her companions have never been identified and no one has been charged with the child’s death.
Death by Drowning. Chris Jenkins (pictured above) was a 21-year-old student at the University of Minnesota who visited a downtown Minneapolis bar on Halloween night in 2002. After leaving the bar around midnight, Chris vanished without a trace. He remained a missing person for four months until his body was discovered in the Mississippi River. Because he was still wearing his American Indian Halloween costume, all indications were that he died shortly after his disappearance. Jenkins was heavily intoxicated that night and because it was determined he had drowned, the authorities initially believed they were dealing with an accident or suicide. His parents refused to accept this explanation and pressed for a more thorough investigation. Finally, in 2006, their son’s death was reclassified as a homicide.
While the investigators withheld specific details, it was claimed an incarcerated suspect told police he was present when Jenkins was murdered and thrown off a bridge into the river. Although the authorities found the man’s story credible, no charges have been filed. One possible theory is that Jenkins could have been one of the victims in the mysterious “Smiley Face Murders.” During this time period, approximately 40 male college students in the United States died in a series of bizarre drownings. In some of the cases, unexplained “smiley face” graffiti was discovered near the body of water where the victim drowned. This led some to theorize the deaths were connected and that the victims were drugged before being thrown into the water to disguise their murders as accidental drownings. While no “smiley face” graffiti was ever discovered in connection with the death of Chris Jenkins, investigators have not overlooked its similarities to the other unsolved cases.
Bunny Ears. Hyun Jong “Cindy” Song was a 21-year-old South Korean student attending Pennsylvania State University. For Halloween in 2001, she dressed in a bunny costume and attended a party at a nightclub in State College. After leaving the club, Cindy spent the next few hours hanging out with friends before she was dropped off at her apartment at 4 a.m. This was the last anyone saw of her. After Cindy was reported missing, her apartment was searched. There was no sign of a struggle, but many of her belongings, including the false eyelashes from her costume, were there, indicating she had gone inside after being dropped off. But what happened then is a mystery.
Murder in the Dorm. Chaim Weiss (above) was a 15-year-old Orthodox Jewish boy attending the Mesivta of Long Beach, a yeshiva high school in New York. The morning after Halloween in 1986, the entire school was horrified when Chaim was found dead on the floor of his dorm room. He had been bludgeoned to death after a sharp blow to the skull and repeatedly stabbed in the head. No murder weapon was found. Because there was no evidence of a struggle, it seemed likely Chaim was killed in bed while he slept and his body was then pulled from the bed onto the floor. From all accounts, Chaim was a well-liked boy, so no one could think of a possible motive for the crime.
However, there were signs the killer was familiar with the religious customs of Orthodox Judaism. Although it had been a chilly night, the window in Chaim’s room was open and it is customary to open a window to allow the spirit to escape. Following the murder, one of the school’s rabbis left a memorial candle to burn in Chaim’s room and two days later, a second candle appeared, but no one ever admitted placing it there. There were no signs of forced entry anywhere, an indication the killer was probably familiar with the dormitory. During the night, another student on Chaim’s floor remembered being momentarily awakened when the door of his room was opened and immediately shut again. Could the killer have initially entered the wrong room by mistake? Authorities have never named a suspect or determined why Chaim Weiss was murdered in such a brutal manner.
The Man in the Pillowcase Mask. On the night of Saturday, October 30, 1982, 69-year-old Marvin Brandland and his wife, Ethel, were handing out candy to young trick-or-treaters at there home in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Their granddaughter, Teresa Trueblood, had just left the house when there came another knock at the door and they opened it to an obviously grown man with a pillowcase over his head with holes cut out for the eyes. “Trick-or-treat. Give me your money or I’ll shoot,” he barked. Mrs. Brandland, believing it was a prank, attempted to remove the hood, but the man held it down with one hand, pushed his way into the house, pulled a gun and ordered the couple to the basement where there was a safe. The Brandlands were suspicious because very few people knew they had a safe. For this reason, Marvin, a veteran of World War II, was still convinced a friend or family member was simply playing a Halloween trick on them. As they were passing through the kitchen toward the basement, the elderly man made a grab for the gun and the intruder ended up shooting him in the throat before fleeing the house and inexplicably leaving his mask behind. Ethel Brandland told police the shooter had blondish hair, blue eyes, stood around 5'8" and appeared to be between 16- and 20-years-old. So traumatized was the poor lady by the violent death of her husband of 46 years that she died nine months later.
Family members believed they knew the killer’s identity and years later, DNA testing was performed on the pillowcase he left behind. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough usable material for an adequate analysis, but as technology evolves, there is still hope the man may be identified. Until that time, Marvin Brandland’s murder remains officially unsolved.
In 1977, Berkowitz was convicted of a series of shootings that took the lives of six victims and left seven others wounded. There has long been speculation that Berkowitz was involved in a Satanic cult – Maury wrote a book* about it – and did not act alone in the commission of the Son of Sam murders. According to the informant, Berkowitz told him his cult was planning to enter a residence near Greenwich Village on Halloween and commit a ritual murder by shooting a couple in the head before ransacking the place to remove incriminating evidence. When questioned, Berkowitz told investigators Sisman possessed snuff footage of one of the Son of Sam shootings and was planning to hand it over to the police in order to avoid drug-related charges. While nothing was ever discovered to corroborate Berkowitz’s claims, he did provide an eerily accurate description of Sisman’s apartment. No one knows if the murders of Sisman and Platzman had anything to do with the Son of Sam case, but the case remains unsolved.
Murder in Walker County. On the morning of November 1, 1980, a truck driver discovered the nude body of a teenage girl next to Interstate 45 just outside Huntsville in Walker County, Texas. The victim had been sexually assaulted before she was beaten and strangled to death. Because the young woman was never identified, she became the “Walker County Jane Doe.” It was estimated she was killed several hours prior to her discovery and a potentially intriguing back story emerged when witnesses came forward to report their interactions with the teenager on Halloween night.
After getting out of a vehicle driven by an unidentified male at a nearby South End Gulf station, Jane Doe had reportedly asked numerous people for directions to the Ellis Unit Prison, claiming she was planning to visit a friend there. (When her photograph was circulated among the inmates at Ellis, no one admitted knowing her.) Later that night, a waitress at a truck stop diner had a similar conversation with Jane Doe. The girl claimed she was 19-years-old, from the Aransas Pass area and implied her parents did not care about her. Jane Doe was killed exactly one year after the “Orange Socks” murder, there were numerous similarities between the two crimes and after Henry Lee Lucas admitted killing the victim found on Interstate 35, he became a suspect in the Walker County case. However, no evidence connecting Lucas to the Jane Doe murder has ever come to light.
‘Orange Socks.’ On Halloween in 1979, the unidentified body (above) of a young woman was discovered in a concrete culvert near Interstate 35 just outside Georgetown, Texas. The victim appeared to be in her 20s and had been sexually assaulted before she was strangled to death. It seemed likely she was murdered the same day and the only unique clue to her identity was a silver, oval-shaped ring she was wearing. The victim was nude and the only clothing she was wearing were a pair of orange socks. Because the young woman was never identified, she was nicknamed “Orange Socks.”
Later, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the murder of Orange Socks. He even claimed to have had sex with her corpse. However, Lucas did not know the woman’s identity. He allegedly picked her up while hitchhiking and remembered only that her name was “Joanie” or “Judy.” After he was sentenced to death for the woman’s murder in 1984, Lucas recanted his confession in order to have his sentence commuted. Indeed, further investigation revealed that Lucas was likely working in Florida on the day of the murder. Lucas was notorious for confessing to murders he did not commit, and no one is sure how many he actually killed. Lucas died in prison in 2001 and Orange Socks is not the only unidentified murder victim to which he has been connected.†
Crib Abduction. On Halloween night in 1977, the parents of 19-month-old Nima Louise Carter placed their child inside her crib at their home in Lawton, Oklahoma. The next morning, Nima’s parents were shocked to discover their daughter was missing. Because the windows in Nima’s bedroom were locked, it was theorized that her abductor had been hiding in the closet and sneaked the child out of the house while her parents were sleeping in the livingroom. A month later, a group of children were playing in an abandoned house four blocks away from the Carter home and when they opened an old refrigerator, they were horrified when the decomposed body of an infant came tumbling out. The child was identified as Nima Louise Carter and the cause of death was suffocation.
A similar crime had occurred in Lawton in April 1976 when three-year-old twin sisters, Mary and Tina Carpitcher, were lured out of their home by a young woman and forcibly confined inside a refrigerator at another abandoned house. When the sisters were found two days later, Mary had suffocated, but Tina had managed to survive. Tina identified her abductor as a local teenage babysitter by the name of Jacqueline Roubideaux. However, the child’s tender age rendered her testimony unreliable and there wasn’t enough corroborating evidence to file charges at that time. Jacqueline Roubideaux eventually became a babysitter for Nima Louise Carter. She was an obvious suspect following Nima’s murder, but once again, there was no evidence to implicate her. Years later, Roubideaux was finally charged with Mary Carpitcher’s murder and received a life sentence. She died in prison of liver cancer in 2005, but never admitted to the still-unsolved murder of Nima Louise Carter.
Disappearance in Oscoda. In 1969, Halloween fell on a Friday and two teenage girls, Pamela Hobley (above left), 15, and Patricia Spencer (right), 16, of Oscoda, Michigan, left their high school, located at the corner of River Road and Pearl Street, and walked in the direction of the downtown area. It was the night of the homecoming football game in the small, unincorporated settlement on the northern side of the Au Sable River where it enters Lake Huron, and family and friends said both girls planned to attend the game and a Halloween party afterward. When the teens didn’t show up at the party, Pamela’s boyfriend knew something was wrong and the police were notified. In spite of a long and rigorous search, no trace of the girls was ever found. It was as if they had vanished into thin air.
For some time, there was a rumor the teenagers had been abducted by two men who killed them and buried their bodies in a barn in Wilber Township, several miles away. Finally, in 1985, the barn was searched with cadaver dogs, but there was no sign of the missing girls. Forty-four years later, in 2013, a man came forward claiming he picked up the pair as they were walking along River Road and gave them a ride downtown. According to police chief Mark David, there is no evidence the man was involved in whatever happened to the teens and other witnesses reported seeing the girls in downtown Oscoda that afternoon.
Disappearance in Oscoda. In 1969, Halloween fell on a Friday and two teenage girls, Pamela Hobley (above left), 15, and Patricia Spencer (right), 16, of Oscoda, Michigan, left their high school, located at the corner of River Road and Pearl Street, and walked in the direction of the downtown area. It was the night of the homecoming football game in the small, unincorporated settlement on the northern side of the Au Sable River where it enters Lake Huron, and family and friends said both girls planned to attend the game and a Halloween party afterward. When the teens didn’t show up at the party, Pamela’s boyfriend knew something was wrong and the police were notified. In spite of a long and rigorous search, no trace of the girls was ever found. It was as if they had vanished into thin air.
For some time, there was a rumor the teenagers had been abducted by two men who killed them and buried their bodies in a barn in Wilber Township, several miles away. Finally, in 1985, the barn was searched with cadaver dogs, but there was no sign of the missing girls. Forty-four years later, in 2013, a man came forward claiming he picked up the pair as they were walking along River Road and gave them a ride downtown. According to police chief Mark David, there is no evidence the man was involved in whatever happened to the teens and other witnesses reported seeing the girls in downtown Oscoda that afternoon.
The Baby Carriage. On Halloween in 1955, Marilyn Damman took her two-year-old son, Steven, and seven-month-old daughter, Pamela, to a supermarket in East Meadow, New York. While she shopped, Mrs. Damman allowed Steven to wait outside the store with his sister, who was in a carriage. Ten minutes later, the mother exited the store and was shocked to discover that both Steven and the carriage were gone. Shortly thereafter, the carriage was discovered about a block-and-a-half away. But even though Pamela was still in the carriage, Steven was nowhere to be found and has not been seen since.
In many cases in which infants and toddlers are abducted, it is believed the perpetrator wanted a child of his/her own and decided to snatch one with the intention of bringing up the boy or girl under a new name. Over the years, DNA testing has been utilized in an attempt to determine if Steven Damman ever received a new identity. At one point, investigators noticed that Steven bore a resemblance to the infamous “Boy in the Box,” an unidentified child who was found dead inside a cardboard box in Philadelphia in 1957. However, DNA testing would eventually confirm Steven and the Boy in the Box were not the same child. In 2009, a Michigan man named John Barnes came forward believing he might be Steven, but DNA testing ruled him out. It is possible that an adult Steven Damman might be living another life somewhere under a different identity, unaware that he was taken from his real family.
Sources: "The Unsolved Mysteries of Halloween," CrimeLibrary, October 27, 2013; Robin Warder, ListVerse, October 31, 2014; Iowa Cold Cases; The Des Moines Register, April 23, 2016; Eric Meier, WBCK, October 31, 2019; Erin Donaghue, CBS News, October 31, 2014; and WhatCulture.
*The Ultimate Evil: An Investigation Into a Dangerous Satanic Cult.
†In August 2019, the young woman known as ‘Orange Socks’ was identified as Debra Jackson, 23, of Abilene.
