Four Unidentified Girls in New Hampshire



Twenty-eight years later, who are these girls?
by Robert A. Waters

Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire is known for hiking, biking, swimming, and deer hunting.  But in 1985, past Beaver Pond and Catamount Pond, past the archery range and the canoe rental facilities, two bodies turned up in a 55 gallon steel drum.  Deep in a heavily forested region of swampy bogs, on private land adjacent to the park, a deer hunter made the gruesome find.

Fifteen years later, police discovered a second drum containing two more bodies.  Incredibly, it may have been lying there for two decades.  Excuses flowed from the cops about why it took so long to find the second barrel, but the fact is that three children and one adult were murdered in the late 1970s to mid-1980s and dumped in that remote forest.

No one has ever come forward to identify the remains.

Investigators determined that each victim died of blunt force trauma to the head.  They estimated the first two victims to be between 23 and 33 years of age and 5 to 11.

In the second drum, one victim ranged from 1 to 3 years old, and the second from 2 to 4.

Police have determined through DNA testing that three of the four were related.  It’s possible that the adult was a mother who died with two of her children.  Further tests are being conducted in hopes of obtaining additional information about the victims.

Police have kicked around several theories about the four.  Were they murdered by a spouse or partner?  Were they in a commune, or some other organization that flew beneath the radar?  Were they transients?  Or from a foreign country, such as Canada?  Truth is, the police just don’t know.

New Hampshire State Police Sgt. Joe Ebert told reporters that child-killers are rare.  “It takes a very certain profile of an individual to kill a child,” he said.

The victims are buried together in an Allenstown, New Hampshire church cemetery.  The inscription on the marker reads: “May their souls find peace in God’s loving care.”

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children recently released three-dimensional facial reconstructions of the victims.  If you have information concerning this case, contact the New Hampshire State Police at 603-223-3856.

Sunshine State’s Permit Holders Fight Crime

One million Floridians are now licensed to carry concealed weapons…
by Robert A. Waters

In my home state of Florida, approximately 1 in 16 residents have concealed carry permits.  Most any place you go in the Sunshine State, law-abiding citizens are likely packing heat. Nationwide, more than eight million Americans legally carry firearms.

What with the drug-crazed walking dead roaming our streets, protection is vital. 

In Ocala, Sam Williams stopped two armed robbers dead in their tracks.  When Davis Dawkins and Duwayne Henderson attempted to rob an internet café, Williams, a customer, shot them.  He became an instant hero after police published a surveillance video of the shooting.  The video, which went viral, showed the robbers scampering to get away like rats on a sinking ship as Williams fired at them.  Dawkins was sentenced to four years in prison—Henderson is still awaiting trial.  The heroic patron, who is licensed to carry a concealed weapon, was not charged.   

In St. Petersburg, Raven Smith took his girlfriend to Applebee’s one night.  As they got out of the car, a masked gunman raced toward them.  Smith, who has a license to carry, pulled out his .380-caliber semiautomatic and fired four shots.  The assailant went down.  His bravado gone, Anthony Hauser begged Smith not to shoot him anymore.  A clear case of self-defense, the shooter was not charged.

In Hialeah, Jason Arnoldo Bonilla attempted to rob a fruit stand vendor.  Instead, he got six bullets for his trouble when customer Ivan Menendez pulled his own gun and opened fire.  Bonilla, hit in the cheek, neck, body, and leg, spent some time in the hospital—now he spends his time behind bars.  Police said Menendez was licensed to carry and would face no charges.

Concealed carry laws are among the most successful statutes ever enacted.  Few licenses are revoked, and most of those for minor offenses.

Because of the law, innumerable lives have been saved. 

Oh yeah, did I tell you about Taquanda Baker?  The owner of Baker’s Mini Mart in Tampa knows the value of concealed carry permits, since she has one.  While working in her store, a robber entered and held a gun to her face.  Baker pulled out her own weapon and opened fire.  When it was over, the thug lay dead on the floor.  The store owner’s mother said, “It's dangerous out there. You've got to protect yourself.” 

Then there was the Jacksonville grandfather who stopped an armed robbery in a Dunn Street Dollar General Store.  Two men, Rakeem “Fresh Boy” Odoms and Aundre Krishna Campbell, burst in and ran straight to the counter.  There they held “look-alike” guns to the head of the clerk.  The grandfather, who has not been identified by police, pulled his handgun and killed Odoms.  Campbell escaped, but was tracked down by police and arrested.  The shooter has a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Then there’s this story from the St. Petersburg Times: “Jason Bennett, the manager of a Florida pizza shop, had closed up the restaurant for the evening and was heading out to his car when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.  Suddenly, Bennett saw a man holding a gun to the back of his coworker’s head, demanding money.  Bennett moved quickly, knocking the gun out of the attacker’s hands.  Bennett’s coworker, a concealed-carry permit holder, grabbed his .38-caliber revolver and held the would-be robber at gunpoint until police arrived.”

And so it goes. 

Now if the hurricanes, sinkholes, alligators, and Burmese Pythons don’t get us, maybe we can survive down here. 

Sherlock Holmes Redux

Books of my youth…

by Robert A. Waters

Sometime around 1900, a great-great uncle of mine decided to collect all the “important” books in the English language.  A Confederate veteran, he lived near the one-horse town of Reddick, Florida.  Somehow, after he died, my grandfather ended up with his collection.

Those books sat in an unused room like a treasure trove, waiting for the lucky hunter to strike gold.  As we were growing up, my two brothers and I spent four months of each year with my grandparents.  I read hundreds of books from the collection, but what I remember most is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle.  

“The Adventure of the Red-Headed League” is atypical of most Sherlock Holmes stories in that it contains a thread of humor.  As a young child who had never read a mystery story, I remember not knowing whether to laugh or enjoy the life-or-death game being played out beneath the streets of London.  But I knew one thing: I had to read more stories about Sherlock Holmes and his partner, Dr. Watson.

Sometime later,  I found The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes.  Those tales took me from a stifling, un-air conditioned Florida farmhouse to Victorian London where carriages rattled over cobblestone streets and a great detective seemed to make the mysterious disappear like fog. 

I love all the stories, but some of my favorites, in addition to “The Red-Headed League,” are: “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”; “Silver Blaze”; and “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.”

Doyle himself was a Renaissance man who wrote compulsively about his many interests.  Throughout his long life he published historical novels such as Micah Clarke, The White Company, The Refugees and many other forgettable and forgotten titles.  He also wrote historical non-fiction.

Late in life, after the death of his son, the grieving Doyle turned to Spiritualism and wrote many tomes on that subject.  Finally, as he neared death, the creator of Sherlock Holmes stated that he hoped to be remembered for his “serious” works.  But books such as The Doings of Raffles Haw and The Tragedy of the Korosko quickly sank into the mire of obscurity.  Whatever their merits, Doyle today is remembered only for the great detective he created.

Several times, he attempted to kill off Holmes, but readers wouldn't have it.  Only after World War I was Doyle able to gracefully send an aging Sherlock Holmes into retirement.  

I keep coming back to my great-great uncle.  I always wondered what prompted him to build his vast collection.  Did his books transport him, like me, out of the dull now back to an exciting yesterday?

The game is afoot.  Dr. Watson writes: “I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair…”
 

Baby Assassins

Twins Murdered by Nazi Butcher Josef Mengele

The Philadelphia tragedy
by Robert A. Waters

Now that the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell is behind us, I thought I'd share a few thoughts about this atrocity.  I'll admit, I've had a hard time wrapping my mind around the brutality of it all.  As I watched the case play out, I kept asking myself, Aren't we supposed to take care of children?  

It’s a matter of scale.  Hitler murdered millions.  Stalin tens of millions. 

Dr. Kermit Gosnell likely murdered thousands.

In his bloody Philadelphia clinic, a newborn child was born.  Instead of a mother’s arms to hold it and love it and caress it, the child was laid out on a dissection table.  As it gasped for air, Gosnell produced a scalpel and ripped open the back of its neck.  Then, using scissors, the doctor cut the infant’s spinal cord.

Or maybe his staff, trained in this macabre ritual, performed the deed.

For forty years, day after day, decade after decade, Gosnell and his staff of hired baby assassins “snipped” the spines of living, breathing children.  Thousands of infants, unwanted by their mothers yet struggling to survive in this brave new world, bled their lives away in that filthy room.

It’s the type of thing you’d expect from Nazi butcher Josef Mengele.

If that sounds too harsh, consider this passage from Louis Bulow’s book, Josef Mengele, Angel of Death: “Once Mengele's assistant rounded up fourteen pairs of Roma twins during the night. Mengele placed them on his polished marble dissection table and put them to sleep.  He then injected chloroform into their hearts, killing them instantly.  Mengele then began dissecting and meticulously noting each piece of the twins’ bodies.”

So now Dr. Kermit Gosnell has been convicted of murdering babies.  Although many of his staff, also convicted, said they regretted their actions, Gosnell has shown no remorse.  His wife, Pearl, who pleaded guilty to performing illegal abortions and racketeering, said: “I am sorry for my part in this horror.  My husband is in jail, which is where he should be.”

Meanwhile, the murdered souls of Dr. Gosnell’s victims cry for justice that will not come.  Like Josef Mengele, the baby assassin escaped execution.

Where did the love go?

Where did the humanity go?

Where did the God-given moral standards that we were raised on go?
 

Who Murdered Little Gregory MaComb?

1954 case will likely remain unsolved…
by Robert A. Waters

Six-year-old Gregory MaComb spent his last night alone in a silent apartment.  Louree MaComb, his mother, worked at a night club in Salt Lake City.  Divorced from her husband, Louree couldn’t afford a baby-sitter, so she asked a friend to stop by and check on her son.  At about 11:45 p.m., Barbara Dinneen looked in on Gregory at the apartment on 1029-4^th East.  She later testified that he was sleeping in his bed.

It was September 16, 1954.  The weather had begun to change, with a refreshing coolness stirring the trees.    

When Louree arrived home at 1:15 a.m., she found the apartment door open.  Rushing in, she discovered Gregory missing.  The frantic mother searched for her son, calling several friends who may have seen him.  Two hours later, she notified police.

At about 4:00, the first officers from the Salt Lake City Police Department arrived.  Police Chief F. Clark Sanford quickly made the case a priority, assigning his two top detectives to head the search.   Cops began scouring nearby apartments, houses, and fields for the missing boy.  Barbara Dinneen, Loureee’s friend, told detectives that she checked in on Gregory not once, but twice, the second time around midnight.  Both times, she said, the child lay asleep.

A neighbor, Renae Brown, who lived in a downstairs apartment, said that at 12:24 a.m., she’d seen an automobile drive up and park in front of the building.  She noticed a short, stocky man wearing “striped bib-overalls and a red shirt.” He took Gregory from the apartment and, opening the passenger door, placed him in the car.

Later that afternoon, the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department received two calls informing them that a body had been found in Parley’s Creek.  Several young boys, out swimming, had discovered a half-submerged corpse.  They called to a nearby adult, who pulled the remains from the water. 

Newspapers reported that an autopsy showed Gregory MaComb had been “criminally assaulted.” His skull had been crushed by a blow to the head, and he’d been strangled.  The coroner stated that during the sexual assault, Gregory had been choked.  The boy had likely fallen to the floor and struck his head, said the coroner, and that resulted in his fractured skull.  The coroner determined that Gregory’s death occurred soon after he was abducted and not at the creek.  This gave the Salt Lake City Police Department jurisdiction.

Police meticulously interviewed everyone they could find who knew Louree.  They also rounded up and interrogated every known sex offender within miles.  The Salt Lake City Tribune reported that “among the suspects, [Norman Ash] Fackrell was singled out for a lie detector test and a ‘truth serum test.’ He was released after both examinations, however, and officers turned to other avenues of investigation.”

After three months, Chief Sanford reported that everyone interviewed had been eliminated. 

And there the case languished for three years.

In 1956, a new police chief was elected.  W. Cleon Skousen immediately made solving the MaComb murder his top priority.  He assigned two detectives, Sgt. T. W. Southworth and Officer D. F. Duncombe, to the case.

Norman Ash Fackrell

Investigators quickly focused on 37-year-old truck driver Norman Ash Fackrell.  A friend of Louree MaComb, he vehemently denied having murdered Gregory.  When he’d been interrogated in 1954 during the first days of the investigation, Fackrell wore a red shirt and a pair of striped bib-overalls.  The right side of his car had been damaged, and the passenger door could not be opened.  Cops also speculated that Fackrell knew Louree kept a key to her apartment underneath a mat near the door, though the suspect denied it.  Those tenuous links seemed to be the only evidence police could find against him.

To make matters worse for investigators, it turned out that Barbara Dinneen had lied about her second visit to check in on Gregory.  After an intense interrogation, she told police that her friend Louree MaComb had asked her to say that she’d been to the apartment at midnight, even though that was not true.  When investigators asked Louree why she’d concocted the lie, she replied, “I thought my ex-husband had kidnapped [Gregory] and I might lose custody, so I made it appear that we made two checks.”

Also hindering the investigation, Renae Brown couldn’t identify Fackrell or the automobile she’d seen parked in front of the apartment complex.

Still, detectives hammered away at the trucker.  Other than a “reckless driving” charge, he’d never been in trouble with the law.  He insisted that he was sleeping in his car the night Gregory was kidnapped.  When pressed about his relationship with Louree, he claimed they had “a mutual friendship with no strong emotional feeling.”

Finally, Chief Skousen decided to roll the dice and charge Fackrell.

The trial began on December 4, 1957.  Prosecuting attorney D. Christian Ronnow presented the state’s case.  With no physical evidence, and no eye-witnesses to identify the suspect, Ronnow seemed to be grasping at straws.

Many of Fackrell’s friends and relatives packed the courtroom.  They watched a masterful display as his attorneys, Phil L. Hansen and Richard C. Dibbee, shredded the state’s case. 

On December 7, the jury returned a verdict of “not guilty.”  The courtroom erupted in cheers, as Fackrell broke down and wept.

So who brutally raped and murdered little Gregory MaComb?

All these years later, no one knows.

A monster, hiding among the shadows, got away with cold-blooded murder in the City of Mormons.

The Chuck E. Cheese Murders

Multiple Murderer Nathan Dunlap

Blood and Politics
by Robert A. Waters

Murder victims don’t vote, so it’s easy for politicians to ignore their cries for justice.

Corrupt Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 death row inmates in Illinois.  Although he became a darling of liberals, and was even nominated for a Nobel Prize, it didn’t stop him from being convicted of racketeering, conspiracy, and fraud.  He is currently serving a six-and-a-half year sentence.

On the day he left office, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour pardoned four killers.  The state Supreme Court ruled that he was within his rights, even though families of the victims complained bitterly.  Barbour’s motive seemed to be that these inmates worked around the governor’s mansion and ingratiated themselves to him and his staff.

Now we have the Nathan Dunlap case.  As this multiple murderer neared execution, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper indefinitely delayed his date with death.  As long as Hickenlooper is governor, Dunlap can breathe easy.  Meanwhile, protests of the victim's families are ignored. 

Here’s what happened to land Dunlap on Colorado’s Death Row.

At closing time on December 14, 1993, employees at Chuck E. Cheese in Aurora began cleaning up.  Dunlap, 19, a former employee, entered the restaurant armed with a .25-caliber semi-automatic handgun.  He’d been fired the week before, and was angry.  He silently approached nineteen-year-old Sylvia Crowell from behind.  The part-time college student was busy clearing the salad bar when Dunlap placed the gun to her head and fired.  With one shot she was dead.

Vacuuming the floor, Ben Grant, a seventeen-year-old high school senior, never heard the first gunshot.  Soon he lay on the floor dying.

The first two murders had been ambush attacks.  But Colleen O’Connor, also 17, saw Dunlap coming.  She dropped to her knees and implored him to let her live.  “Don’t shoot,” she exclaimed.  “I won’t tell.”  Dunlap, unfazed, fired again.  O’Connor dropped dead on the blood-soaked floor.

Bobby Stephens had a seven-month-old baby at home.  Working alone in the kitchen, he heard the gunshots, but wrote them off as balloons popping.  Then the killer walked in, surprising Stephens--a bullet to the face knocked him to the floor.

Manager Margaret Kohlberg, 50, sat in her office tallying the receipts.  At gunpoint, Dunlap forced her to open the safe.  After taking more than $1500, he shot her twice, including a “kill-shot” to the head as she lay bleeding out.

The last place most people would expect this kind of violence would be Chuck E. Cheese, a fun-filled game room where children enjoyed birthday parties and outings with mom and dad.  The restaurant’s staff in Aurora worked hard to ensure an enjoyable, positive experience for each child.  Now, in one chilling act, Nathan Dunlap had left five employees for dead, then drove to his girlfriend’s house for a night of hot sex.

One victim, however, survived.  Bobby Stephens, who had a bullet lodged in his jaw, informed police that the killer was a former worker named Nathan Dunlap. 

Citizens of Colorado were outraged.  While the death penalty is rarely invoked in this liberal enclave, residents demanded the ultimate justice. 

The crime was a brutal, heinous act, and there was no question as to the guilt of Dunlap, but it still took twenty years for his case to wind through the system.  Finally, in 2013, the killer had no appeals left.  While his attorneys attempted to persuade several appellate judges that Dunlap suffered from a mental illness, none bought that argument.  A pardon or stay by Hickenlooper would be the mass murderer’s only chance.

And it happened.  Citing several reasons, such as alleged racism and his belief that capital punishment is not a deterrent, Hickenlooper took the coward's way out.

While the governor is being praised by many for staying Dunlap's execution, families of the victims are left to suffer the distress of knowing their loved one’s lives meant little to him. 

Bobby Stephens, the sole survivor of the massacre, said: “My current reaction is, I feel as if the wind has been kicked straight out of me.  I feel that this is all about Nathan right now.  I feel that Nathan has received more rights and more privileges than any of the victim's families or myself.” 

One of the jurors who voted to put Dunlap to death may have said it best: “If one person can take what a juror came up with and set it aside, then there is no system.  Why do we need juries?”

Elmer Leon Carroll Set to Die on May 29

Elmer Leon Carroll

Pedophile murdered neighbor
by Robert A. Waters

On May 29, 2013, Elmer Leon Carroll is scheduled to be executed for the rape and murder of ten-year-old Christine McGowan.  Twice convicted for assaulting children, Carroll was a time-bomb ticking toward murder.  In 1976, a Pasco County court had sentenced the pedophile to 6 years in prison for “indecent assault on a child under 16.”  In 1982, he got 15 years for raping another young girl.  (Unfortunately, he only served about half his sentence.) 

His third conviction resulted in a death sentence.  Carroll’s Florida Supreme Court Appellate Brief summarizes the crime:

“On October 30, 1990, at about 6:00 a.m., Robert Rank went to awaken his ten-year-old stepdaughter Christine McGowan, at their home in Apopka.  When she did not respond to his calls, Rank went into her bedroom and found her dead.  Shortly thereafter, Rank noticed that his front door was slightly ajar and that his pickup truck he had parked in the yard with the keys in it the night before was missing.  When the police arrived, they determined that Christine had been raped and strangled. 

“BOLO [Be On the Lookout] was issued for the missing truck, which was a white construction truck bearing the logo ATC on the side.  Debbie Hyatt saw a white pickup truck parked near her residence east of Orlando on Highway 50 as she left for work about 6:50 a.m.  About a mile down the road, she saw a man whom she later identified as Carroll walking in an easterly direction along the highway away from the truck. She described him as having long scraggly hair and wearing a brown jacket.  She did not think to too much about it until she later heard over the radio that the police were looking for a white pickup truck bearing the ATC logo described in the radio bulletin, she called the police. When the sheriff’s deputies arrived, she told them about first seeing the truck and the man walking down the road. 

“Carl Young, a state wildlife officer, was traveling on State Road 520 in Orange County on the morning of October 30, 1990.  At a point near the intersection of Highway 50, Young noticed a man with shoulder length hair walking down the highway.  Young thought this was strange because he was not carrying anything.  The man looked back over his shoulder at Young as he passed.  After turning onto Highway 50 and proceeding west, [Young] saw a deputy sheriff behind a white pickup truck with his revolver drawn.  Young went back to the scene to render assistance. 

“By this time, another deputy had arrived, and [Young] heard Debbie Hyatt tell them about the man she had seen walking down the highway away from the truck.  Young recalled that her description resembled the person that he had just passed.  Young drove back to where Carroll was continuing to walk down the road.  Young called to him, but he kept on walking.  Young pulled his gun and ordered Carroll to lie down on the ground.  Young made a search for weapons and found a box cutter razor blade and some keys.  Through radio communication with a deputy who remained at Rank’s truck, it was determined that a number on the keys matched a number on the truck.  Young and a deputy who had arrived to assist him then placed Carroll under arrest.    

“At the trial, two other witnesses testified that they had seen the man they identified as Carroll about 6 a.m. at a 7-11 store near Apopka.  The witnesses said that Carroll was driving a white truck with the ATC logo.  It was also discovered that Carroll was a resident of a halfway house located next door to the Rank home.  A resident of the halfway house testified that Carroll had told him that the girl who lived next door was ‘cute, sweet and liked to watch him make boats.’  She was seen talking to a man next door who may have been Carroll the day before the murder.   Semen, saliva, and pubic hair recovered from the victim were consistent with that of Carroll.  One DNA profile of a specimen obtained from the victim matched Carroll’s DNA profile.  Blood was found on Carroll’s sweatshirt and on his penis.”

Governor Rick Scott has said that he wants to execute the “worst of the worst” on Florida’s death row, once they’ve run out of appeals.  Elmer Leon Carroll certainly qualifies.