The Killer Book of Cold Cases: Incredible Stories, Facts, and Trivia from the Most Baffling True Crime Cases of All Time

206 Pages·2012·2.04 MB·English

by  Tom Philbin

Copyright © 2012 by Tom Philbin Cover and internal design © 2012 by
Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Dawn Adams Cover images © spxChrom/istockphoto.com,
livingimages/istockphoto.com, redhumv/istockphoto.com Internal images ©
Bloomington Police Force, p. 118; Chris Humphrey, p. 51; El Segundo Police
Department, p. 3, 4, 11; Federal Bureau of Investigation, p. 91, 97, 105, 187,
194; John Robinson Task Force, p. 58, 60; New York Police Department, p. 26;
Public Domain, p. 19, 27, 37, 66, 68, 76, 113, 125, 136, 146, 156, 161, 201, 202;
United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, p. 88
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Philbin, Tom
The killer book of cold cases : incredible stories, facts, and trivia from the most
baffling true crime cases of all time / Tom Philbin.
p. cm.
1. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)—Case studies. 2. Crime—Case studies.
I. Title.
HV6515.P483 2012
364.10973—dc23
2011040740
Printed and bound in Canada.
WC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1:
Ice Cold
Chapter 2:
Judge Crater, Where Are You?
Chapter 3:
The Mad Bomber
Chapter 4:
Pyromaniac
Chapter 5:
Slavemaster
Chapter 6:
In Broad Daylight
Chapter 7:
Death in the Mail
Chapter 8:
The Legendary D.B. Cooper
Chapter 9:
Shocker
Chapter 10:
Whatever Happened to Jimmy Hoffa?
Chapter 11:
The Enemy Within
Chapter 12:
The First Use of DNA
Chapter 13:
The Cold Case That Chills My Heart
Chapter 14:
Permanent Relief
Chapter 15:
More Cold Cases: A Capsule Guide
Chapter 16:
How Criminal Investigations Go Wrong
Glossary
About the Author
Introduction
Most crimes are simple to solve. It is clear who the perp is and why he or she
committed the crime. Cops call those cases grounders, but that’s not the kind of
story you will find in this book. The Killer Book of Cold Cases rounds up some
of the most baffling cases of all time. Many have never been solved.
One of the cases you’ll read about is the disappearance of a prominent New
York judge, Joseph Crater, in 1930. Crater had dinner in New York City with a
lawyer friend. After dinner, Crater bid his friend good-bye on a New York City
street and was never seen again. People were so gripped by the case that for
years, Crater’s name became synonymous for someone who disappears. If
someone didn’t show up at a particular event, someone else was sure to say, “He
did a Crater.” The case remains unsolved, but in this book I provide a reasonable
explanation of what might have happened.
Most of the stories in this book are typical cold cases that have gone
unsolved for a long time. One is a case that I call “Ice Cold,” in which two cops
were gunned down one night in a little town in California. The case went cold—
ice cold—for more than fifty years and then, astonishingly, was solved.
Then there’s the case of the Mad Bomber, who drove New Yorkers half
crazy in the fifties by planting bombs all over the city.
Or the serial rapist who prowled Bloomington, Illinois, for four years. Not
only was the case itself baffling, but so was the identity of the perp.
You’ll also read how the murders of two young girls in little English villages
stymied investigators for four years until the father of one of the suspects
suggested that they use that new thing called DNA testing to try to find the
killer.
A variety of crimes are covered, from murder to kidnapping to rape, and as
in the other Killer tomes, this book offers a wide variety of trivia related to the
crimes and cold cases in general. You’ll find Q & A’s, Notable Quotables, “Who
Am I?” quizzes, and other trivia sections throughout each chapter.
In addition, a special section, “How Criminal Investigations Go Wrong,”
details how all kinds of cases remain unsolved and sometimes grow cold because
investigators—from the first officers at the crime scene to the guys in the lab—
screwed up.
Thanks very much for being fans of the Killer books. I hope you enjoy this
one as much as the others.
Tom Philbin
It all started one sweltering night, July 21, 1957, when two teenage couples,
returning from a night out in a 1949 Ford, decided to stop at a lovers’ lane in an
oil field in Hawthorne, California. “Oil field” doesn’t sound romantic, but in the
darkness, the lovers could feast their eyes on the Pacific Ocean, and on the far
coastline, they could see glittering lights. The lane had been used by many
couples, so the teenagers had no reason to feel fear that night.
Where Did the Term “Cold Case” Originate?
In his book Cold Case Homicides, a text for professional cold-case
investigators, Richard Walton says, “The practical application of the
phrase and of the concept of ‘cold-case’ homicide had been coined by
the news media of the Metro Dade region of Florida.”
It started with the unsolved murder of a twelve-year-old girl in that
area in the early 1980s. The murder drew so much media attention that
the authorities assigned a team of a sergeant and two detectives to the
case, and they succeeded in solving it. The team continued to work on
unsolved cases, calling themselves the extremely dry “Pending Case
Squad,” but a Miami reporter dubbed them “the Cold Case Squad.”
Walton says the term “cold case” had been used before, such as in
Western book or movie when a trail goes “cold.”
And although the term wasn’t used in law enforcement until the
1980s, police had similar squads working cases before that. For
example, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has had the
“Unsolved Unit” of its Homicide Bureau investigating cold cases since
the 1970s.
But there was plenty to fear. At one point, the teens saw a hulking, shadowy
figure approach the car on the driver’s side, and just like that, a gun was shoved
in the window.
The sixteen-year-old driver said later, “I thought it was a prank of some sort.
But it wasn’t, and then I thought he was going to kill us. But he said he
wouldn’t.”
The stranger ordered the terrified kids to strip to their underwear, give him
their watches and cash, and get in the backseat of the car. They did. He broke out
some surgical and duct tape, and taped their mouths shut and their eyes sightless.
Then he took one of the fifteen-year-old girls to the front seat of the car and
raped her.
After that, he ordered all four terrified and crying kids out of the car and
marched them toward the nearby woods. As he did so, he said, “I think I’m
going to kill you.” Once they reached the woods, he told the teens to lie down.
They waited to be shot, but the next thing they knew, they heard him getting
into the Ford, closing the door, and speeding away. The kids wandered around,
looking for help.
The man drove about five miles to the junction of Sepulveda Boulevard and
Rosecrans Avenue in El Segundo. The light was red. He stopped, and then
perhaps eager to get as far as he could away from the scene of the rape and
robbery, he went through the red light.
But someone else was around. Sitting on a side road in a black-and-white
police car were two young patrolmen, Richard Phillips, twenty-eight years old,
and rookie Milton Curtis, twenty-five years old. They had watched the car as it
came to a stop at the red light, and then they saw the driver run the light.
Immediately, they pursued the car and pulled it over, making one of the most
dangerous acts a policeman can do—a traffic stop. The reason traffic stops are so
dangerous is that the patrolman never knows who he will encounter. The driver