The Killer Book of Cold Cases

by Tom Philbin

  Suspects

  The police uncovered a number of suspects in the course of investigation. James W. Lewis sent Johnson & Johnson a letter asking for $1 million. In exchange, he said he would stop poisoning bottles. However, investigators never came up with enough evidence to pin him to the crimes. He was convicted of extortion instead and spent thirteen years in prison, released on parole in 1995. One TV station reported that police considered him guilty of the crimes but couldn’t prosecute him because they didn’t have enough evidence. Lewis continues to deny responsibility for the poisonings.

  Another suspect, Roger Arnold, was cleared but suffered a nervous breakdown during the process. Another tragedy ensued out of Arnold’s belief that he had been turned in by a bartender named Marty Sinclair. In 1983 he shot and killed a man whom he mistook for Sinclair. Arnold was convicted in January 1984 and served fifteen years of a thirty-year sentence.

  Another suspect was Laurie Dann, who shot and poisoned people in May 1988 in and around Winnetka, Illinois, but no direct connection was found.

  Real-Life Drama

  Author Agatha Christie used thallium as a murder weapon in her 1961 novel The Pale Horse. Each victim in the novel suffered hair loss, which was a clue to discovering the type of murder. Her novel is credited with saving at least a few lives after readers recognized the symptoms of thallium poisoning that her novel describes.

  High Marks

  The media gave Johnson & Johnson kudos for the way the company handled the Tylenol murders. The Washington Post said, “Johnson & Johnson has effectively demonstrated how a major business ought to handle a disaster.” The article complimented the company for its honesty and for establishing good relations with the Chicago police, the FBI, and the Food and Drug Administration. Tylenol sales plunged in the aftermath but managed to rebound within a year.

  A horrific event like this always brings its share of copycat psychos out of the woodwork, and a number of similar attacks occurred in the years after. Murder was involved in three Excedrin attacks, and fear of attacks brought one product, Encaprin, to an end. Additionally, the problem led the pharmaceutical industry to move away from capsules, and the FDA established stricter packaging requirements.

  Copycat Killers

  Years ago, I remember hearing about a guy who went berserk in a school and started shooting whoever he could. The police came and finally were able to put him down, but a few days later, a similar school shooting occurred, and a day or so after that, another.

  When I looked through some records, I got a surprise. Violent acts like these tend to occur in threes, and the criminal act doesn’t necessarily have to be a school shooting. It can be one of a wide variety of acts, all violent.

  I have a theory about why violent copycat behavior like this occurs. That is, other people filled with angst and rage are looking for a solution to their problems, just as the first person who went berserk in a school was. These people see the first person’s solution, which answers their need for violence, so they simply copy it.

  Twenty-five years after the killings, in January 2009, investigators reviewed the Chicago Tylenol murder case. They had received numerous tips leading up to the anniversary. In a written statement, the FBI explained:

  This review was prompted, in part, by the recent twenty-fifth anniversary of this crime and the resulting publicity. Further, given the many recent advances in forensic technology, it was only natural that a second look be taken at the case and recovered evidence.

  In January 2010, both James W. Lewis and his wife submitted DNA samples and fingerprints to authorities. Lewis stated, “If the FBI plays it fair, I have nothing to worry about.”

  Who Am I?

  Whenever I came on staff in a hospital, the cold-case count—dead bodies—mysteriously went up, baffling authorities.

  I had a terrible relationship with my father. When he died in 1982, my mother gave me a book of his that bulged with all kinds of horrific stories involving violence and death. It pleased me greatly, and for the first time I thought my father wasn’t such a bad guy.

  The book inspired me to collect more ghoulish stories and photos, and when one of my father’s colleagues commented, I said, “If I’m ever accused of murder, this will prove I’m mentally unstable.”

  I went to medical school and did well when I graduated. Someone asked me why I loved the idea of being a doctor, and I said, “It gives me the opportunity to come out of the emergency room with a hard-on and tell some parents that their kid had just died.”

  On another occasion I gave a woman medication to increase her blood pressure and then had trouble getting her elderly mother out of the room. After her daughter died, it gave me great pleasure to tell the mother, “She’s dead now. You can go look at her.”

  I’ve always liked to read detective novels. And I liked making up stories for the various girlfriends I had. They though my stories were sick and sordid, which is exactly why I liked telling them.

  I also loved Jim Jones, the religious leader who made his congregation drink poisoned Kool-Aid.

  I once described a fantasy I had that went like this: “Picture a school bus crammed with kids smashing head on with a trailer truck loaded with gasoline. We’re summoned. We get there in a jiffy, just as another gasoline truck rams the bus. Up in flames it goes. Kids are hurled through the air everywhere, on telephone poles, on the street, especially along an old barbed-wire fence along the road. All burning.”

  I worked in a VA hospital where author Tom Philbin used to be treated.

  Answer: I am Dr. Michael Swango, a so-called angel of death who worked in a variety of hospitals. When I wasn’t treating people, I was murdering them.

  Poison, a Cold Case’s Best Friend

  Murderers, particularly female murderers, favor poison as a means of killing their victims. In some cases, the poison is not detected, either because of a lack of lab expertise or because the body is cremated before it can be examined. In those situations, the cases go cold and never will be solved.

  The following are some frequently used poisons.

  Arsenic. This tasteless, liquid-soluble solid can be added easily to and dissolved in liquid. Its popularity goes back to Roman times and perhaps even earlier. Arsenic is a by-product of lead and copper and became popular in the 1800s in Italy where it was known, almost comically, as “inheritance powder.” It later was used on flypaper and in controlling various rodents and weeds. From there, it became popular as a murder weapon.

  Atropine, also known as belladonna, is taken from the juice of the berries of the nightshade bush. It was a favored poison in medieval Europe. It causes flu-like symptoms, so if someone died, the assumption could be that the death was because of a disease. It also is taken in small amounts for its hallucinogenic qualities.

  Strychnine is extracted from the seeds of a Southeast Asian tree called the nux vomica, which was actually used by doctors as a tonic to help people who were convalescing. In large doses, it is a good poison for rats and other animals. While strychnine is not a well-known murder device, it is easily available and may have been a killer in murders that were never identified as such.

  Cyanide. Years ago, a contract killer named Richard Kuklinski used cyanide to kill people, but not by dropping it into food or drink. Rather, he sprayed victims in the face with it. Cyanide is the fastest acting of all poisons and can kill within minutes. Cyanide was used in the Tylenol and Excedrin murders, as detailed earlier in this chapter. It also was the poison the Nazis used to gas people in concentration camps.

  Thallium. This was the poison of choice years ago. It is water soluble and its effect takes a couple of days, so killing someone with thallium may make it seem like the cause of death was something else. Thallium is frequently used by professional spies.

  Across the pages of history, a variety of criminal cases have remained bafflingly cold. The following is a lineup of unsolved cases that intrigue me. Having said that, I know a solution could be found for any of them at
any time. As Suffolk County homicide detective Jimmy Pavese once said about such cases, “They’re all simple once you know the answers.”

  Leo Burt

  Forty years ago—on August 24, 1970—Leo Burt and three other young men protesting the Vietnam War carried out a predawn bomb attack at the University of Wisconsin–Madison that would stand as the largest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history until the Oklahoma City bombing twenty-five years later.

  Leo Burt has been on the run for decades.

  The three accomplices were eventually arrested and served time in prison for the bombing of Sterling Hall, which caused significant damage and the death of a physics researcher. But Burt—twenty-two at the time and an aspiring journalist—has been on the run ever since.

  Kent Miller was one of several FBI agents to lead the hunt for Burt over the years. Miller says that the Bureau has run down hundreds of tips around the world—everything from Burt reportedly being homeless in Denver to working at a Costa Rican resort. But the fugitive has somehow managed to elude capture, leading some to believe he is dead.

  Miller spent thirty-six years with the Bureau and is now a deputy coroner in Madison. He thinks Burt may still be alive. “If so, I don’t think he’s living in the United States. And if he is alive,” Miller added, “he’s got to be worried every day that he’s going to slip up and get caught. That’s no way to live.”

  Special Agent Kevin Cassidy has been in charge of the FBI investigation for the past three years. “Even after four decades,” he said, “we cover every credible lead that comes in.” Despite the passage of time, agents in the field are happy to help. “If we ever catch him,” Cassidy said, “it will be due to the hundreds of agents who have been so diligent in their efforts.”

  Cassidy prefers not to speculate about Burt being alive or dead. “Until I know for sure,” he said, “we will pursue him. This was the largest truck bombing in the country’s history at the time. It did millions of dollars worth of damage, and Burt killed someone. He needs to be held responsible for that.”

  Lizzie Borden

  Andrew Jackson Borden and Abby Durfee Borden, father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden, were both killed in their family house in Fall River, Massachusetts, on the morning of August 4, 1892, by blows from a hatchet. In the case of Andrew Borden, the blows not only crushed his skull but cleanly split his left eyeball.

  Lizzie was later charged and arrested for the murders because she and a maid were the only other ones in the house at the time of the killings. However, she was acquitted by a jury, apparently leaving the murderer at large. Still today, if you asked crime fans if she was guilty of the crime, most would think that she was.

  Elizabeth Short

  This is one of the most famous murder cases of all time. On January 15, 1947, the body of a 22-year-old woman, Elizabeth Short, was found in Limier Park, a section of Los Angeles. The body had been bound and cut into pieces, and then the parts had been rearranged. The case was fodder for a number of films and books, including the author’s favorite, The Black Dahlia, which had an intelligent and witty script by John Gregory Dunne and starred Robert Duvall.

  Marilyn Sheppard

  One of the most infamous cold-case murders of the twentieth century occurred on July 4, 1954. Marilyn Reese Sheppard was the pregnant wife of orthopedic surgeon Sam Sheppard. She had been beaten to death with a blunt object and was found in her bed with blood spattered everywhere and her face a red mask of blood and destroyed tissue.

  Her husband was convicted of killing her, but the conviction was overturned by a higher court and he was acquitted during the next trial. Sheppard claimed that his wife was killed by a mysterious, bushy-haired intruder. Their young son was asleep in a nearby room down the hall that night, but he did not hear anything. As an adult, Sam Reese Sheppard has struggled for years to try to clear his father’s name. Attorney F. Lee Bailey defended Sheppard in the second trial and became famous. Bailey brought in a blood-spatter expert named Paul Kirk whose testimony was pivotal in winning Sheppard a second acquittal.

  Zodiac Killer

  The seemingly random brutal murders of five people in California’s Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, and a series of taunting, cryptic notes sent by their killer, terrorized Northern California for years. The self-proclaimed “Zodiac Killer” sent local newspapers a three-part coded message explaining his motive for the killings in 1969 and, in a separate letter to the editor, suggested that his identity was buried within an elaborate cipher message. The decoded message did indeed reveal the killer’s twisted motive, but his identity remains a mystery.

  The unsolved nature of the murders and the Zodiac Killer’s elaborate methods of communicating with the public and his pursuers still capture the imaginations of screenwriters, authors, true-crime buffs, forensic scientists, and, of course, law enforcement.

  The murders did not fall under federal jurisdiction, so the FBI never opened an investigation. But a glance through the FBI’s public records on the case shows how local law-enforcement agencies called on the FBI’s expertise in handwriting analysis, cryptanalysis, and fingerprints to aid their investigations.

  The FBI’s role in 1969, much as it is today, was to support local law-enforcement in their investigations. In the Zodiac Killer case, correspondence between law-enforcement agencies in Northern California and forensic experts at the FBI’s laboratory—in what was then called the Technical Evaluation Unit—shows efforts to analyze handwriting samples and lift latent fingerprints from the letters and envelopes sent by the purported killer. FBI cryptanalysts, or code-breakers, were also enlisted to unravel a complex cipher that used more than fifty shapes and symbols to represent the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Ultimately the code was made public and broken by two university professors.

  The Boy in the Box

  In February 1957, an unidentified boy between the ages of four and six was found beaten and naked inside a cardboard box in Philadelphia. He was dubbed the “Boy in the Box” and also referred to as “America’s Unknown Child.” The emotionally charged case received loads of attention from the media, including a spot on America’s Most Wanted, but to this day, the case remains unsolved.

  Bob Crane

  The body of Bob Crane, the star of the TV comedy Hogan’s Heroes, was discovered in a hotel room in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 29, 1978. Crane had been bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never found (but was believed by police to be a camera tripod). The actor had allegedly called his friend John Henry Carpenter the night before to tell him their friendship was over. Crane was involved in the underground sex scene and had filmed his numerous escapades with the help of Carpenter, who was an audiovisual expert.

  Police reportedly found blood smears in Carpenter’s car that matched Crane’s blood type, but no charges were filed against Carpenter for more than a decade. When he finally was charged in 1994, he was acquitted. Carpenter maintained his innocence until his death in 1998, and the case is now officially cold.

  Archbishop Oscar Romero

  The fourth archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, was killed by a shot to the heart on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass at a small chapel located in a hospital. It is believed, but never proven, that the assassins were members of Salvadoran death squads. During the funeral ceremony, a bomb exploded on the cathedral square and shots were fired. Many people were killed during the subsequent mass panic.

  Dian Fossey

  Dian Fossey was an American zoologist who observed and studied gorilla groups for eighteen years in Rwanda. She was brutally murdered in the bedroom of her cabin on December 26, 1985. Her skull had been split by a native panga, a type of machete that she had confiscated years earlier from poachers and hung as a decoration on the wall of her cabin. Fossey was found dead beside her bed, two meters from a hole that had been cut in the cabin wall on the day of her murder.

  Amber Hagerman

  Amber Hagerman was the victim of an abduction and murder. On January 13, 1996, the ni
ne-year-old was riding her bike near her grandparents’ home in Arlington, Texas. She was kidnapped soon thereafter. Four days later, a man walking his dog found her body in a creek bed. An autopsy revealed that her throat had been cut. Although a $75,000 reward was offered for information leading to Hagerman’s killer, the perpetrator was never found. Her murder would later inspire the creation of the AMBER Alert system, which provides alerts about child abduction emergencies.

  JonBenet Ramsey

  She was a six-year-old girl who had competed in child beauty pageants and was made famous by her Christmastime murder and the subsequent media coverage. She was found dead in the basement of her parents’ home in Boulder, Colorado, on December 26, 1996, nearly eight hours after she was reported missing. The official cause of death was asphyxiation due to strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma. After several grand-jury hearings, the case is still unsolved. Her parents were the target of intense media coverage that suggested they were suspects, but authorities eventually confirmed that the couple had been cleared of any involvement.

  Serge Rubinstein

  When Serge Rubinstein was murdered in 1955, one NYPD detective commented, “It’s going to be hard to catch his killer. We have enough suspects to fill Yankee Stadium.” Indeed, Rubinstein played by his own nasty rules. The law and morality were for other people.