Post by Graveyardbride on Dec 26, 2020 7:46:19 GMT -5
Thirteen 21st Century Christmas Murders
The Christmas season is supposed to be a time for green and red bows of holly, mistletoe, sparkling trees, Yule logs and good will. Even in the 21st century, Christmas isn’t Christmas without It’s a Wonderful Life, Elf and the ghosts who visit the miserly old Ebenezer Scrooge. American children today, like those of years gone by, await the holiday season with anticipation because it means a long break from the drudgery of school and, for most, a plethora of toys and other gifts from overindulgent parents. But as with just about everything else in this old world, there’s a dark side, as evidenced by the following accounts of murder during the most joyous season of the year:
Double Murder/Suicide on Christmas Eve (Lakeland, Florida). It was Christmas Eve of 2019 and 30-year-old Racheal Ramsey was getting her two daughters, ages 7 and 5, ready for services at the nearby Methodist church. She had invited her new boyfriend, Christopher Pine, 27, and his two young children, a boy and girl, to her small home on Atlanta Avenue so they could all go together. Although Racheal was employed as assistant manager at a daycare center, she had a degree in criminal justice from Keiser University and was working toward her master’s in criminal psychology, which lends an element of irony to this case.
According to family and friends, she and Leighton Josephs, her long-time partner and the father of her children, weren’t getting along, however, they were still sharing a house. This was a strange living arrangement and those close to the couple were concerned that Racheal was dating another man and actually invited him to her home while Josephs was still in the picture.
Neighbors had mixed feelings about both Josephs, who was black, and Ramsey. One woman, who found Josephs friendly and Ramsey “standoffish,” recalled seeing the family leaving for church with the little girls dressed in matching outfits. She also mentioned how hard Josephs had worked stringing Christmas lights along the eaves of the house.
But a second neighbor was less complimentary, describing Josephs as “a cruel son-of-a-bitch,” who shot cats and squirrels with a BB gun. “He shot one little ol’ grey kitten in the eye and it went around with its eye and the whole side of its face swelled up until somebody caught it and took it to the animal shelter,” the elderly man remembered. “I don’t like cats myself, but that’s no reason to mistreat them. That son-of-a-bitch could have hit a kid in the eye with that damned BB gun.”
By 5:30 that cool, cloudy Christmas Eve, the sun was almost gone and the row of Christmas lights adorning the ugly, low-slung house sparkled in the darkness, hiding the unattractive dwelling and unkempt yard. Then the shots rang out and the twinkling decorations were soon overpowered by the flashing emergency lights of police cars and emergency vehicles. Neighbors came out to watch as one blanket-draped body after the other was rolled out of the house on gurneys. They quickly learned Racheal Ramsey and Chris Pine had been shot to death by Leighton Josephs, who then turned the handgun on himself. During the melee, the four children, all under age 10, were inside the 1,004-square-foot residence, where they had likely seen, and definitely heard, the shots and screams, and whatever precipitated the slaughter.
Moral of story: Never entertain Boyfriend No. 2 in the house where Boyfriend No. 1 strung the Christmas lights.
‘You ready to party with Jesus tonight?’ (Houston, Texas). On the same day (December 24, 2019), Carolee Taylor (pictured above) turned 46 and around 15 family members had gathered at the home of her uncle, Dominic Ortiz, to celebrate both her birthday and the Christmas holiday. Carolee had recently broken up with her boyfriend, Al Simon, and one of the reasons her uncle’s home had been chosen for the party was because it was in a gated community.
Ortiz had stepped outside when he saw a black Jeep Cherokee pull up to the curb. The visitor was none other than 52-year-old Al Simon, who exited the vehicle armed with both a rifle and pistol. “I have a bone to pick,” he announced as he approached the older man. Ortiz, attempting to defuse what he correctly perceived to be a dangerous situation, greeted Simon, who barked, “Don’t smile at me, motherfucker, we’re going inside!” as he used the rifle to push Ortiz into the house.
According to Taylor’s daughter, Mya, the group had just finished singing “Happy Birthday” to her mother when Simon burst into the room. “You ready to party with Jesus tonight?” he snarled, pointing the gun at Carolee. “You and I are going to talk!” He then forced the the terrified woman out of the house, warning the others, “If I see the police, I’m going to blow her fucking head off!”
Those inside the home were deathly quiet as they strained to hear what was going on. Suddenly, the silence was shattered by five deafening blasts and Ortiz rushed to the door to find his niece lying motionless on the porch. Simon had shot his former girlfriend in the head at point blank range and after she fell, shot an additional four rounds into her body.
After shooting Taylor, Simon fled the scene. Four days later, he was accosted at Houston’s Herman Park, where he was shot by a deputy sheriff after making a sudden move. He died shortly thereafter at a local hospital.
Simon had a criminal history and had stalked at least one other woman.
Killed, Strung up like a Pig and Cannibalized (Bennington Township, Michigan). On Christmas Day 2019, Mark Latunski, 50, killed, strung up and cannibalized Kevin Bacon, a 25-year-old man he had met on Grindr, a network geared toward gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. Bacon, a hairstylist and student at the University of Michigan, Flint, was reported missing by family members, who said he was last seen on Christmas Eve when he left to meet his “date.”
It turned out Latunski had been on law enforcement’s radar for past transgressions, one of which occurred October 10, when police received a call from a man who claimed he had been drugged and woke up chained in the basement. Another incident occurred on a cold, windy day in November, when neighbors called police after seeing a man clad in nothing but a leather kilt fleeing Latunski’s rural home. Unfortunately, neither victim was prepared to press charges.
It wasn’t until December 28 that law enforcement officers searched Latunski’s house and found the missing Bacon hanging upside down in a secret room Latunski had created in the basement of his rather attractive domicile. During questioning, the suspect admitted to killing Bacon by stabbing him in the back, just below the hairline, with a knife, then slitting his throat. Afterwards, he tied a rope around the younger man’s ankles and strung him up to allow the blood to drain into the ground through a trap door. He then used a knife to cut off Bacon’s testicles, which he pan-fried and ate. But he insisted he and Bacon had an agreement that he would kill the young student and put his body to good use. He intended to dry the body parts and create bone meal to fertilize tulips, use the intestines to grow chestnuts or peach pits, and turn the muscles into jerky. Following the murder, the post office intercepted a package addressed to Latunski containing a dehydrator.
Latunski suffered from mental health issues and often went off his medications, but was found competent to stand trial. His attorney claimed the evidence indicated Bacon was a willing victim and his client was guilty of nothing more than assisted suicide. The judge, however, disagreed and Latunski is scheduled to stand trial for murder and mutilation of a human body.
‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ (Phoenix, Arizona). On Christmas Day of 2017, Anthony Milan Ross, 45, a popular black vegan cook, author and motivational speaker known as “Milan Ross,” uploaded a video of himself and his 11-year-old son, Nigel, singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” on his Facebook page. Around 90 minutes later, residents of The Highlands Apartments heard two gunshots and a woman, later identified as Iris Ross, screaming, “No! No!” Many ran outside and someone yelled “What’s going on?!” at Ross, after which several more shots rang out. When someone else asked if the lady was okay, Ross snarled “No!” and pointed the gun at the gawking neighbors.
“All of a sudden I heard two to three pop, pop, pops,” one witness later recalled. “Everybody thought it was fireworks, but I own a .9 millimeter. I know the sound of a gun. He came down and he had a glass of something in his hand. The wife was yelling, ‘Help! Please help! Help!’ So we’re all running and then he threw the glass of whatever it was in her face. She was kind of staggering and stuff and he cocked his gun and shot her. My wife and son saw the actual smoke coming from all of the bullet discharge.”
Ross then retreated into his apartment where he was when police arrived. Some witnesses claimed the gunfight between Ross and law enforcement continued for approximately 15 minutes, after which officers sent a robot inside the unit to check on Nigel and the couple’s 10-month-old daughter, Anora: both children were dead of gunshot wounds. Ross wasn’t injured during the shootout with police and following a long standoff, was taken into custody.
Later, Mary Wogas, sister of the slain woman, told authorities she received a call at 2:52 p.m. Christmas Day, saying, “I just killed Iris and the kids.” A second message came immediately thereafter which simply read, “with a gun.” Wogas added that she had never cared for Ross and from the beginning, felt her sister would be sorry she married him. “I knew that man was very unstable,” she insisted. “I knew he had a very, very dark side. I didn’t know it was this dark.”
It turned out the vegan chef’s dark side was even darker than anyone suspected, with the possible exception of his wife and those who had known him in his former life. Before marrying Iris, who was white, he had been married to a black woman in St. Louis, Missouri, with whom he had four daughters. According to Ebony Ross, one of the daughters, “He kept us a secret – a dark, dirty secret,” explaining that her father mistreated his entire family, physically and emotionally. “He would withhold food from us,” she claimed, describing a year-long punishment in which he forced the children to remain in their rooms, curtailed their food intake and even limited the time they were allowed in the bathroom. He also taunted them, blowing “the smell of chili cheese sauce” in their faces, while forcing them to subsist on a diet of rice, butter and sugar.
In 2003, he abandoned his family and after five years of attempting to find her husband, Nicol Ross, his wife, filed for divorce. He never paid any support for his four daughters and they had no idea of his whereabouts until he became a public figure, promoting a vegan diet and claiming he had lost 220 pounds after giving up meat.
A family friend in Missouri was also extremely critical of Ross, accusing him of thinking he was “too good” for his own kind and setting out to marry a white woman. “He was ashamed of his family in St. Louis, even when he was living with them,” the individual posted on social media, “and he treated them like dirt.”
When Iris Ross learned of her husband’s secret life and the fact he had abandoned his former wife and family, she filed for divorce, which was granted in September 2020, with the pair sharing joint custody of the children. She had gone to Ross’s apartment that Christmas Day to retrieve the kids after their visit with their father.
Ross has been charged with three counts of murder and numerous counts of assault on police officers. There’s a possibility prosecutors could seek the death penalty.
Thugs Aren’t Angels (Washington, D.C.).
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares. – Hebrews 13:2.
Had St. Paul the Apostle been familiar with modern-day American thugs, it’s doubtful he would have written the foregoing. Nonetheless, it’s possible this verse was what Tricia McCauley, a 46-year-old actress, was thinking about when she offered Adrian Duane Johnson a ride on Christmas Day of 2016. Or perhaps he reminded her of one of the pseudo-thugs in the musical Step Up, wherein she had served as Jenna Dewan’s understudy. Another possibility, of course, is that she was carjacked, but because those who knew McCauley described her as a kind, considerate individual who “loved the idea of making your life the best journey it can be,” it’s more likely she was simply being kind to the young black stranger, whom, as a staunch Democrat, she automatically assumed came from a deprived background and as such, was owed something by society. But regardless of how the 27-year-old man came to be in her car, things quickly turned ugly and McCauley was soon forcibly raped, severely beaten and strangled to death.
Assuming she, indeed, offered him a ride, after killing the Good Samaritan, Johnson stuffed her 5-foot corpse into the backseat, covered her with a blanket, tuned the radio to a local rap station and turned up the volume full blast. He then went on a joyride around Washington, using the dead woman’s money and credit cards, and at one point, picked up a hooker and engaged in a sex act in the front seat while McCauley lay dead in the back.
When McCauley failed to appear at the home of friends, they initially thought she overslept, but when it was discovered she had missed her flight scheduled for later in the day, one of them reported her missing. An all-points-bulletin was issued for her white Toyota Scion, which was spotted two days later in the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy. Police discovered Johnson inside the store and as soon as the officers obtained the keys, which he had in his possession, and unlocked the car, they were assailed by a foul odor – McCauley’s slight body was wedged between the rear and front seats, concealed from view, her legs bound with a seatbelt, and it was obvious she had been badly beaten. According to the autopsy report, the woman had been sexually assaulted and died of “asphyxia due to ligature strangulation with blunt force trauma.” The assault had been so violent she had sustained a broken nose. The ligature that choked the life out of her was a scarf she had been wearing.
Although Johnson’s DNA was underneath McCauley’s fingernails, an indication she had fought her assailant, the suspect stuck to his preposterous story: According to Johnson, after McCauley offered him a ride, they had consensual sex “on a curb somewhere,” after which she gave him her car, credit cards and other belongings before committing suicide. “She was suicidal and hung herself in the car,” he insisted. “If someone is suicidal and gives you all their stuff, is that illegal?” he asked.
Johnson, it turned out, was a career criminal who should have been in jail at the time he assaulted and killed Tricia McCauley. During the prior 12-month period, he had been arrested six times for theft and once for assault with intent, and a judge had issued an order that he be fitted with a GPS monitor. Johnson simply failed to appear as directed and the police were too overwhelmed with other cases to do anything about it. In the end, he pled guilty to killing McCauley and was sentenced to 30 years.
Axe Murder in Paradise (Paradise Township, Pennsylvania). It was the day before Christmas 2014 and Dustin Lee Klopp, 36, and Stephanie Kilhefner Klopp, his 34-year-old wife of three years, got into an argument. At some point, Klopp punched his wife, bashed her in the head with an axe, cut her throat with the sharp blade of the instrument and sexually assaulted her – no one knows if the sexual assault came before or after death – while their two children, ages 5 and 2, were tucked up in bed. Once she was dead, he attempted to clean up the blood and placed her body in a garden shed.
After dispatching his wife, Klopp bundled up the children and took them to the home of his parents where they all enjoyed Christmas dinner the following day. Then at 5:20 that evening, he called law enforcement and turned himself in an hour later. A state trooper found Stephanie Klopp’s corpse in a carrier bag in the shed.
Attorney Cory Miller, who represented Klopp five years earlier on drug charges, was shocked when he learned of the brutal murder. “They both seemed to be very level-headed individuals,” the lawyer observed. “He never struck me as a violent individual.”
Klopp was charged with murder and abuse of a corpse and was awaiting trial when he hanged himself in his cell in February 2015.
Brandon at the Bat (Gulf Breeze, Florida). Back in the late 1980s, Gulf Breeze was known for its UFO sightings – although some of them turned out to be bogus – but as the year 2013 was coming to a close, it was a bizarre murder that had tongues a-wagging. On Christmas Eve of that year, when all should have been calm and bright, 17-year-old William Brandon Aydelott, star pitcher on the Gulf Breeze High School baseball team, became better known for his prowess with a bat than striking out opposing team members, when he took a baseball bat to his mother. Sharon Aydelott, 48, a beloved teacher at Holley-Navarre Middle School, had been teacher of the year in 2005 and those who knew her were dumbfounded when they learned of the manner in which she had died. And it wasn’t a crime of passion: After bashing her with the bat, Brandon slashed her throat and for good measure, plunged the knife into her eye. The teenager then cleaned up, changed clothes and calmly walked to the home of a neighborhood classmate, leaving his mother in a pool of congealing blood.
A friend of Sharon Aydelott’s discovered the body and called the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office. Upon arrival, deputies couldn’t help noticing the big plastic Santa (pictured above) positioned beside a gigantic fern at the front entrance and how incongruous it was with the horrifying scene inside. It was several hours before Brandon was taken into custody and when confronted, the pot-smoking teenager smiled and matter-of-factly told deputies how he killed his mother, claiming he did so because he was angry at his parents for enrolling him in a substance abuse program. However, Randy Renfroe, Brandon’s baseball coach, later said he felt the boy was upset because his mother and father were getting a divorce, adding that the 6'3", 189-pound teen, who had never shown any signs of aggression, had been a likely candidate for a baseball scholarship.
When detectives asked Aydelott how he felt about killing his mother, he matter-of-factly replied, “Like I did the right thing.” Despite the savagery of the crime and the boy’s nonchalant attitude, after a psychiatrist testified that the teenager suffered from schizophrenia and experienced “auditory hallucinations” directing him to kill his mother, in a short bench trial, the judge declared Brandon not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered that he be involuntarily committed to the state mental hospital in Chattahoochee. While any efforts to release him in the future will be vehemently opposed by the state attorney and many in the community, there is still a possibility that Brandon Aydelott could one day be a free man.
The Body Under the Christmas Tree (Jacksonville, Florida). In early December of 2011, Paul Axt became concerned when his 67-year-old twin sister, Michele O’Dowd, failed to appear at Audio Images International, Inc., a company owned by Axt, and wasn’t answering her phone. On December 2, he drove to Grand Reserve at Windsor Parke Condominiums on Sutton Park Drive, North, and entered her unit with a spare key. He immediately noticed a big pile of brightly-wrapped gifts beneath a lovely Christmas tree, but there appeared to be something “off” about the manner in which they were displayed. Then he saw it: a human foot sticking out from underneath the presents. “I grabbed her ankle and it was cold,” he told investigators, and knew immediately he had found his sister. She had been beaten and strangled to death, her bloody face covered with a towel.
But Michele O’Dowd, affectionately known as “Aunt Miki” to her 12 great nieces and nephews, wasn’t always alone in her domicile. A family friend, Patty Michelle White, 37, had been staying with O’Dowd recently and she was nowhere to be found. To help her financially, Axt and his sister paid White to clean their homes and do odd jobs and she occasionally babysat Axt’s grandchildren. His sister also paid her to shop for groceries and other items, providing her the PIN numbers of her debit and credit cards.
Following the discovery of O’Dowd’s body, police were keeping tabs on her bank and credit card accounts and when two ATM withdrawals of $500 each occurred at two local banks, investigators checked surveillance video and quickly identified White, who was arrested and charged with murder and three counts of grand larceny.
White later pled guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 45 years. She won’t be eligible for parole until 2055, when she is 84-years-old.
“How can you be so sick,” her brother asked rhetorically, “to bury the victim with children’s gifts?”
Tortured and Burned Beyond Recognition (Houston, Texas). On Christmas Eve of 2010, 12-year-old Jonathan Foster was home alone watching cartoons and playing video games while his mother, Angela Davis, worked. Mrs. Davis had just moved into the duplex at 829½ Oak Street in northwest Houston with Sharon Ennamorato, a friend, to get away from her husband, David Davis, whom she claimed had hit her son. Around 1:45 that day, the stepfather visited the boy, at which time, everything seemed to be fine. Later, however, Mrs. Davis learned her son had called her place of employment asking for Ennamorato’s phone number. When she returned the call, what she described as a “raspy-voiced woman answered” and asked if she was Jonathan’s mother. She then heard the woman ask Jonathan if Angela was his mother and he replied, “Yes, ma’am, Angela’s my mother,” after which the phone went dead.
Police were notified and David Davis quickly became their top suspect, but he was later cleared after video revealed he had spent the afternoon drinking in a local bar. Additionally, despite her apparent distress, investigators had their doubts about Angela Davis, whom Glenn Schrimsher, Jonathan’s uncle, in whose home the boy had lived for four years before returning to his mother, informed officers Angela was an abuser of drugs and alcohol and “just wasn’t fit to take care of him.”
Neighbors were questioned and one remembered seeing a grey or silver pickup truck pull up to the apartment and a heavy, “mannish-looking” black woman get out. That evening, Mona Nelson, a woman fitting the witness’s description, appeared at the door and informed Ennamorato, whom she knew, that she had stopped by that morning and Jonathan, who wasn’t wearing a shirt, answered the door. The 5'11", 225-pound Nelson denied entering the home, but claimed she had the impression someone else was in the house.
Investigators reviewed numerous videos from the afternoon of December 24, but saw nothing of consequence until a recording from around 6 p.m. that day showed a heavy-set black woman exit a grey pickup on East Hardy Road and remove something that looked as though it could be a body. Police rushed to the location and came upon a sight none would ever forget. The boy’s body, which had lain in the culvert three days, was burned beyond recognition and the stench was overpowering. The sandy-haired, blue-eyed child was so disfigured, it could not even be determined if the corpse was male or female because the genitals had been completely burned off. Jonathan was finally identified through dental records. Additionally, his hands were tied behind his back and the burns had formed blisters, an indication he was alive while being burned and tortured to death.
When Nelson’s northwest Houston apartment was searched, authorities found torches and other welding tools, which wasn’t unusual because she had worked as a welder and was currently employed as a maintenance worker. However, the same type twine used to restrain the boy was also discovered in her home.
“She [Nelson] is a cold, soulless murderer who showed an absolute lack of remorse in taking the life of Jonathan Foster,” observed Detective Michael Miller. “She decided when the time was right and she swooped down and took him when she saw the time was right, and she saw an opportune moment.”
Although she admitted dumping Jonathan’s body, Nelson denied killing the child, claiming she was helping David Davis get rid of some trash. The woman had a long criminal history and no one believed her. She was charged with kidnaping and murder and in 2013, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
No one knows for certain why Mona Nelson decided to kidnap and murder Jonathan Foster, but some believe it was because she became angry when he was reluctant to allow her to enter the apartment.
Tristan’s Last Christmas (Port St. Lucie, Florida). In 2008, Eryn Allegra was having financial difficulties, but still wanted Tristan (above), her 8-year-old son, to have a merry Christmas. She and her husband Michael had split up several years earlier, but they shared custody of the child. On Christmas Eve night, Eryn took Tristan to Denny’s, where he loved to eat, and then checked into a Holiday Inn near their home. The two sat up until midnight watching cartoons and the boy went to bed happy, looking forward to opening gifts the following morning.
But there would be no Christmas morning for Tristan because Eryn had given her son eight Advil liquid-gel capsules. It was her intention that he would die in his sleep from the medication, but then she became concerned that he would “turn into a vegetable,” so around 3 a.m., she placed a pillow over his face and held it there until he stopped kicking.
Afterward, she penned several suicide notes, one of which read: Out of selfishness and love, I could not leave you and I was not strong enough to stay ... Remember, please remember I love you best and always. Thanks for being my sweet boy all these years.
She then filled the bathtub, climbed into the hot water and slit her wrists. But her suicide didn’t go as planned either because the razor blades were too dull to sever an artery, and on Christmas Day, she found herself in a hotel room with a dead child.
One of Eryn’s reasons for killing her son was because she didn’t want to leave him alone with his father. Shortly before Christmas, she had written in her journal: I am alone. Nowhere else to go … People move on. I just can’t.
She told police she wasn’t “crazy” or “insane,” insisting, “I knew what I was doing and I did it.”
Eryn Allegra was clearly a woman in distress in dire need of help. Nevertheless, she was charged with premeditated murder and aggravated child abuse and sentenced to life in prison.
Christmas Eve Massacre (Carnation, Washington). Around 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve 2007, Michele Anderson and Joseph McEnroe, both 29, arrived at the home of Michele’s parents, where they had been invited for a family gathering. Wayne and Judy Anderson, her father and mother, had been busy preparing a roast and other goodies and were looking forward to spending a pleasant evening with their family. But Michele and Joe had other ideas.
Judy Anderson was wrapping gifts and engaging in small talk with McEnroe when a shot rang out and both rushed into the kitchen. Michele’s gun had jammed and she had been able to shoot only once, so McEnroe shot Wayne, then turned the gun on Judy, who was, by this point, screaming bloody murder. He actually apologized before shooting the terrified woman in the face. The pair then dragged the two corpses to an outside shed and attempted to clean up the blood with towels and blankets, which they then burned in a fire pit in the backyard.
By the time Scott Anderson and his wife Erica arrived with their two children, Olivia and Nathan, ages 6 and 3, respectively, everything appeared somewhat normal – with the exception of course that Wayne and Judy didn’t seem to be around. In short order, however, Scott lay dead in the living room, where he had been shot four times by Michele. When Erica saw what was happening, she grabbed the phone and dialed 911, but before she could answer the dispatcher, she saw Michele and McEnroe approaching the children and cried, “Not the kids! No! Not the kids!” before she was shot twice by her sister-in-law and finished off by McEnroe. Immediately thereafter, McEnroe shot both the children. In total, 14 shots had been fired and the six family members had all been shot in the face and head.
Once everyone was dead, Michele calmly walked to the driveway entrance and closed the gate. Shortly thereafter, a patrol officer showed up to check on the emergency hang-up call, but because the gate was locked, he departed without checking the house or speaking with anyone.
Had Judy Anderson not been scheduled to work at the U.S. Post Office the following day, no one knows how long it would have taken for the bodies to be discovered. But because she failed to show up for her shift and wasn’t answering the phone, Linda Thiele, a friend, traveled to the home, climbed over the locked gate, walked to the house and entered. When she called police, she had seen only three bodies, those of Scott, Erica and Nathan. She hadn’t realized Olivia’s corpse was actually beneath that of her mother. Before she hung up, Thiele told the dispatcher, “The gate is locked, which makes me wonder if her daughter did it because I might be up here with a murderer.”
Michele and McEnroe drove up while the police were on the scene and claimed they had gotten lost on their way to Los Vegas, where they were going to be married, and had decided to return home. When asked why she thought police were at her family’s home, Michele immediately took responsibility for the murders. “It’s not Joe’s fault,” she insisted. “It’s all my fault.” She then told investigators she had gotten “tired of everybody stepping on” her and that her brother refused to repay $40,000 he owned her and their parents were taking his side. She also complained that her mother and father were demanding she pay rent for the trailer she occupied. She admitted she had been planning the killings for a couple of weeks.
While being interrogated, Michele called herself a “monster” and “bad person,” but would then turn around and blame her family for what happened, accusing her parents and brother of abusing her for years. “I wasted my life because of these assholes. It’s not fair,” she whimpered.
At trial, McEnroe, who spoke in a whisper because of a speech impediment, admitted to the killings, but blamed Michele for what happened. “It’s smoky, it smelled of blood and death,” he related as he described the murders. “She [Michele] starts firing on Scott. Scott, at the same time, goes and gets up and starts charging around the table to where she is at.” He said when he saw Erica grab the phone, he rushed over and snatched it from her, pulling out the batteries and throwing them onto the floor. Erica pleaded with him and begged for her life and that of her children. “I shot her first,” he continued, “so she didn’t have to watch her children die.” Then, he said, Michele began firing at the two children, but did not kill them. He shot Nathan first because he was closest. “He held up the phone batteries and showed it to me,” McEnroe recalled, saying he took this to mean the toddler accepted what was about to happen. Then he finished off Olivia. (He did not explain how Olivia ended up underneath her mother’s body if Erica was shot first.) McEnroe also claimed Michele tricked him into killing her family and accused her of bullying him. “She treated me like an attack dog, a guard dog,” he whined, claiming the reason she wanted her family dead was because “she was jealous, because she felt entitled.”
In support of some of McEnroe’s allegations, a neighbor testified to having heard Michele yelling, “You’re a loser! You have no job, no money, no life!” at her boyfriend.
In the end, Michele Anderson and Joseph McEnroe were both convicted of six counts of aggravated first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Of interest, Michele had an older sister, Mary Victoria Anderson, who missed the Christmas Eve get-together because she wasn’t feeling well. Following the murders, she told reporters she had no doubts she, too, would have been killed had she been there that day.
Potheads in the Parking Lot (Kingsport, Tennessee). On Christmas Day of 2004, four teenage boys met in the gravel parking lot on Cedar Branch Road near the trail leading to Warriors’ Path State Park. They often got together to smoke marijuana, but on this particular day, Nicholas Overbay, 17, had contacted Bruno Petrovic, also 17, ostensibly about lowering the asking price on some speakers that 19-year-old Josh Tilton had expressed an interest in purchasing. However, the real reason he lured the other teens to the location was because he wanted Tilton’s car. Once all four boys were present, Overbay pulled a handgun and shot Tilton in the head. He then turned the gun on Petrovic, who was shot three tunes as he ran for his life. The second teen was seriously injured, but survived.
Overbay and his partner in crime, Corey Osborne, age 16, then took off for New Orleans in the stolen vehicle. The pair made it to the Crescent City in time for New Year’s Day, but two days later, they were taken into custody and the murder weapon was found in Tilton’s car.
Overbay was charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder and at his trial, Osborne testified that Overbay had an ulterior motive for shooting Tilton and Petrovic. It seems he was convinced the two teens had started a rumor that he was a snitch who would get others into trouble with the police, and wanted to even the score. “He said he could take care of them running their mouths … kill two birds with one stone,” Osborne said. Overbay was convicted and sentenced to life on Count I plus 20 years on Count II, to be served concurrently. Under Tennessee law, this means he will be 71-years-old before he can be considered for parole.
Osborne received 25 years following conviction of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.
Disappearance on Christmas Eve (Modesto, California). Without doubt, the Christmas Eve 2002 disappearance and murder of Laci Peterson is the most well-known and widely-reported Christmas crime of the 21st century. Shortly after the young wife, who was eight months pregnant with the couple’s first child, a boy to be named Connor, was reported missing, investigators became suspicious of her husband, who was involved in an affair with a woman named Amber Frye and essentially living a double life. The story was still dominating the news in April 2003, when what was left of the young woman and fetus washed ashore not far from where Scott Peterson admitted to launching his boat for a solo fishing trip on the day she disappeared. Not only did he come home without any fish, he couldn’t even tell investigators what sort of fish he was hoping to catch.
The remains of the fetus, which the pathologist estimated to be nine months, was gelatin-like, the outer tissue somewhat transparent, and had tape around its neck. “This body was very soft. It came apart very easily,” Brian Peterson, M.D., testified. According to the doctor, the fetus, which still had its limbs and organs, had not been born, but was instead expelled from its mother’s decaying body. “My conclusion ... is that Conner had likely been protected by the uterus,” he told the jury.
Scott Peterson, as most know, was ultimately convicted of killing his wife and unborn son and sentenced to death. However, after spending 15 years on California’s death row, an appellate court determined the trial judge made a series of errors in jury selection, including eliminating jurors who admitted they opposed the death penalty, thus undermining the Defendant’s right to an impartial jury in the penalty phase. This means Peterson’s death sentence has been commuted to life and will remain so unless prosecutors set a new penalty phase trial and attempt to condemn him to death a second time.
Because Peterson has never admitted to the murder of his wife, no one really knows the circumstances of Laci Peterson’s death. Did he kill her accidentally? Was her murder a crime of passion? Or was her fate sealed from the moment he told Amber Frye “I lost my wife,” a few weeks before Laci disappeared?
Author: Graveyardbride.
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