178 In 2003, a ten-year-old boy rounding up cattle: Afsha Bawany, “Computer Sleuths Solve Vegas Man’s Mystery,” Las Vegas Sun, Sept. 11, 2003.
180 This John Doe was a big guy: The Doe Network Case File 799UMON, “Unidentified male, discovered June 28, 1991, in the Niagara River, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.”
180 a statuesque blonde: The Doe Network Case File 81UFAR, “Unidentified white female located July 10, 1991, in El Dorado, Union County, Arkansas.”
182 earned him the nickname “Bones Man”: Noah Shachtman, “Face on a Milk Carton? Amateur Sleuths Dig Deeper,” The New York Times, Jan. 1, 2004.
182 gone missing from his home in northern Italy: Robert Sears, “Dot-cop: Civilian Uses Internet to Investigate Missing Persons Cases,” Quincy Patriot Ledger, March 26, 2002.
CHAPTER 12
THE HEAD IN THE BUCKET
183 retired trucker Ronald Telfer: Dozens of comprehensive news reports from 2001 to 2006 by Mary Nevans-Pederson, Becky Sisco, Emily Klein, M. D. Kittle, and other unnamed staff writers for the Dubuque Telegraph Herald and the Associated Press provided the details on the discovery of the remains, the arrest and trial of Douglas DeBruin, and the prosecution for perjury of Julie Ann Miller.
184 Jan Buman and her boyfriend, Gregory May: Author interview with Jan Buman.
185 Ellen planned to show me around: Author interviews with Ellen Leach and Keith Glass, as well as Kathie Farnell’s “Gulfport Sleuth Helps Identify Missing,” in DeSoto magazine, April 2008, provided background for this chapter.
190 a skull found at a Missouri truck stop: Among the sources for this chapter are Frank Bender and Paul Plevakas, “The Head in the Bucket: The Murder of Greg May,” Vidocq Society Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 1, 4, 5; Daniel Schorn, “The Girl Next Door: Will Forensic Reconstruction Help ID Nameless Murder Victim?” 48 Hours/Mystery, CBS News, air date Jan. 7, 2006; Investigation Discovery: Extreme Forensics, Season 2, Episode 6, “Road Trip Killers,” original air date May 24, 2010; Ted Botha, The Girl with the Crooked Nose: A Tale of Murder, Obsession, and Forensic Artistry (New York: Random House, 2008); as well as author interviews with Gary Chilcote, Tom O’Leary, and Don May.
192 May moved between two worlds: Stephanie Simon, “In Small Town of Bellevue, Iowa, a Stranger Isn’t Missed,” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2001.
208 Kies wrote to her: Letter from John L. Kies to Ellen Leach, dated Oct. 25, 2005, courtesy of Ellen Leach.
CHAPTER 13
THE HIPPIE AND THE LAWMAN
210 remembered her as an out-of-control teenager: Jonathan Silver, “After 27 Years, Girl’s Cold Case Becomes a Homicide,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 13, 2007.
214 son of the late “man hunter” Cecil Wingo: Breck Porter, “Houston Loses Cecil Wingo, Dr. Joe’s Longtime Running Mate,” Badge & Gun, Houston Police Officers Union, Feb. 2009, http://www.hpou.org/badgeandgun/index.cfm?fuseaction=view_news&NewsID=519.
214 Gault had traveled to Texas from Ohio: Author interview with Kristy Gault.
215 In his heyday as a detective: Matt Wingo, as told to “Serial Killers, Drug Lords, Murder . . . Bodies: The Memoirs of a Cop,” Police News, Gulf Coast Edition, vol. 4, no. 8, Aug. 2007.
215 Gault revealed she was working: Gault’s e-book, Unsolved in America, became available on Amazon.com in Feb. 2013.
216 the bizarre case of Florida death row inmate: Matt Birkbeck, A Beautiful Child: A True Story of Hope, Horror and an Enduring Human Spirit (New York: Berkley, 2004).
217 hosted a funeral service for a headless: S. K. Bardwell, “Chief ME, ‘Dr. Joe,’ Known for Patience, Dies,” Houston Chronicle, Dec. 8, 2004, http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Deaths-Chief-ME-Dr-Joe-known-for-patience-1512992.php.
217 the only web-sleuthing crime: Author phone call with Matt Wingo.
221 an OCCI member called Suzannec4444: Much of the discussion can be found on the Websleuths thread on Tammy Lynn Leppert (started in July 2004 and by late 2012 comprised of twenty-one pages of posts) by user “Ms Suzanne,” who identifies herself as “Sister of missing Tammy Lynn Leppert”: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34183. Lauran Halleck also posts on this thread as “monkalup”; plus a separate, archived portion of a contentious Suzanne-Tammy thread can be found on derkeiler.com, a newsgroup and mailing list archive: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.true-crime/2008-06/msg01620.html.
222 Their mutual animosity: 07020 Edgewater (New Jersey) website, “Jean Marie Stewart,” forums, Of Interest, General Discussion; “Jean Marie, updates and thoughts,” July 2008: http://www.07020.com/forums/index.php.
223 A Florida volunteer who sought: Dinorah Perry, then head of the Pembroke Pines–based Missing Children International Ministries.
224 Jean Marie’s brother held out the hope: Jonathan Silver, “Victim’s Funeral Is Closure for Family: Brookline Girl, 16, Vanished in 1980,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 25, 2008.
224 A Pittsburgh TV station reported that her death: “Family Bids Farewell 28 Years After Teen’s Death,” Pittsburgh TV station KDKA, July 10, 2008.
224 A newspaper article said Jean Marie’s father: Ibid.
225 Other reports referred to a gunshot: Dinorah Perry, Florida missing-persons advocate, wrote on a forum that Jean Marie’s skull had bullet holes: http://www.topix.com/forum/city/cooper-city-fl/T8AAKDQ4TU0VRJTFF.
225 a “bullet in the skull”: Jerome Burdi, “Unidentified Bodies in South Florida to Be Exhumed for DNA Testing,” Sun Sentinel, Feb. 11, 2010: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-02-11/news/fl-missing-bodies-exhume-20100211_1_dna-testing-gregory-vondell-andrews-national-dna-database.
225 He was curious about Stewart’s murder: See this contentious 2008–2009 thread on the 07020 forum “Jean Marie, Updates and Thoughts . . .” in which Matt Wingo (as abcman) describes Lauran Halleck’s alleged hack of OCCI; Kristy Gault’s 2008 banishment of Halleck and his reactions to Jean-Marie Stewart identification and homicide case, with copies of posts he had made as texasx on OCCI; and Halleck’s possibly responding as “barney5” and “mquizical”: http://www.07020.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-5712.html.
225 a victim of “Beauty Queen Killer” Christopher Wilder: Michael Newton, The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (New York: Checkmark, 2000).
CHAPTER 14
THE OLDEST UNSOLVED CASE IN MASSACHUSETTS
230 Serial killer Hadden Clark: Alec Wilkinson, “A Hole in the Ground: Was There a Cape Cod Serial Killer?” The New Yorker, Sept. 4, 2000.
232 Meads died suddenly on Christmas 2011: “Former Provincetown Police Chief James Meads Dies at 78,” Provincetown Banner, Dec. 2011.
239 his fabled history and reputation: Thomas J. Foley, Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected (New York: Touchstone, 2012).
CHAPTER 15
RELIEF, SADNESS, SUCCESS
245 neither Craig nor Todd knew: Author interviews with Emily Craig.
247 Craig herself climbed down into the hole: Emily Craig, PhD, Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America’s Most Infamous Crime Scenes (New York: Broadway Books, 2005).
248 “The Tent Girl is indeed Barbara Taylor”: Charles Wolfe, “ ‘Tent Girl’ Homicide Victim Identified Through DNA test,” AP Online, April 23, 1998.
251 described a missing girl as “an incorporeal mystery”: Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2004) p. 116.
EPILOGUE
253 computer-only dialogue can be rife with misinterpretation: John Suler, “The Basic Psychological Features of Cyberspace,” The Psychology of Cyberspace, www.rider.edu/suler/psycyber/basicfeat.html (article originally published 1996).
254 convened a strategy session in Philadelphia: For the history of NamUs, see http://www.namus.gov/about.htm.
254-255 remarks he had made at a forensi
cs workshop: University of North Texas Center for Human Identification Forensic Science Training Workshop, “Utilization of Volunteer Organizations in the Investigation of Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Cases,” audio recording, April 19, 2010, http://www.cedata.org/cd/HID2010FL/index.html.
256 For a decade Wahlstrom had worked almost constantly: Author e-mail exchanges with Helene Wahlstrom.
257 her ambition was to grow the group: Angela Ellis, “Doe Network Member Profiles: Helene Wahlstrom,” December 5, 2003 http://www.doenetwork.bravepages.com/profiles/HWalstrom.html.
258 law enforcement’s too important to be left to the police: Noah Shachtman, “Face on a Milk Carton? Amateur Sleuths Dig Deeper,” The New York Times, Jan. 1, 2004.
258 Internet groups such as the Doe Network are “digital-age throwbacks”: K. Carlson, “Cyber Sleuths: Shelley Denman’s Sister Was the Private Investigator, Not Her,” National Post, June 9, 2012, http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=cefc5c3c-be1a-4ea9-bc09-79c1e55d4b7f.
258 “The advocate is a tide washing”: Author interview with David Van Norman, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Coroner Division.
259 Adams envisions web sleuths: Author interview with George Adams.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Halber, Deborah
The skeleton crew : how amateur sleuths are solving America’s coldest cases / Deborah Halber.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)—United States. 2. Criminal investigation—United States—Citizen participation I. Title.
HV8073.H2175 2014
363.250973—dc23
2013034949
ISBN 978-1-4516-5758-6
ISBN 978-1-4516-5760-9 (ebook)
The Skeleton Crew Page 31
