Can You Help Solve these Cold Cases?

Julie Fuller

Two decades-long mysteries  

by Robert A. Waters 

A Sad End for Baby X 

Rupert, Idaho has a population of nearly 6,000 souls.  This quiet town near the Snake River seems an unlikely place for a gruesome mystery to unfold.  But on November 17, 1989, Robert Boseiger located a burned-out 50-gallon drum near the Minidoka Landfill.  Peering inside, he saw what he thought was a dead monkey.  When sheriff's deputies arrived, they determined the remains were those of a child.  Lawmen reported that the three-week-old female victim "had been disemboweled, was missing both hands, missing her right arm, had her abdominal organs cut out, was possibly skinned, and then burned."  After nearly 30 years, no one has identified the child that became known as "Baby X." 

During that time, lots of theories surfaced.  Was the baby sacrificed by a devil-worshipping cult?  Worse yet, was the child bred and born specifically to be tortured and murdered?  Or was the case as simple as Minidoka County Sheriff Ray Jarvis's theory that a "migrant worker" gave birth to a child who died of pneumonia or some such natural disease.  Not being fluent in English, and from a culture that fears authority-figures, maybe the mother and her family placed the body in the barrel and burnt it so they wouldn't have to report it to cops.  And maybe, he continued, animals ate the hands and arms and its internal organs.   

Who knows?  One thing is certain: this case is as cold as it gets, and, unless some guilty soul confesses, the true answer will likely never be known. 

Who Murdered Julie Fuller? 

On July 27, 1983, in Arlington, Texas, eleven-year-old Julie Fuller stepped outside of her room at the Kensington Motel to take trash to the dumpster.  Less than a minute later, she was gone.  Vanished.  Julie's family, which had recently immigrated to the U. S. from England, launched a frantic search of the area, then called police.  The next day, her nude body was found in Fort Worth, raped, strangled and discarded in a ditch.  Thirty-five years later, the case is still unsolved. 

Recent advances in DNA technology have allowed investigators to create an image of what the killer might have looked like.  It's called phenotyping, and can predict physical appearance, including eye color.  Ft. Worth police recently released pictures of what the suspect may have looked like at various ages.  A detective stated that since there were no eyewitnesses to Julie's abduction, they hope these images can spark someone's memory.