Tweet
Hi, it appears that there is a (possible serial?) killer operating in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where many US soldiers are stationed. Apparently the Zodiac Killer is an "inspiration" to this monster. Here is a story about the first girl, written by "BIZARRE CRIME OF THE WEEK BLOG"
The case officially began on Saturday, June 21, 2008 when a maintenance man at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott, located in the 5000 block of Morganton Road in Fayetteville, North Carolina complained to an assistant manager about a foul odor emanating from the vicinity of Room 143. When the assistant manager investigated, a "Do Not Disturb" sign hanging on the room's door was observed. It was approximately 11:25 a.m., and since the registered guest's checkout time of noon was fast approaching after a more than week-long stay, the assistant manager entered the room. There was no longer any doubt about where the foul odor was coming from. The body of a young woman, whose demise was not immediately known, was found in the bathtub of the motel room.
According to a Fayetteville police affidavit for a search warrant, the room was registered to Spc. Megan Lynn Touma, 23, an Army dental specialist who was being reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, located a few miles slightly northwest of Fayetteville, from the U.S. Army Dental Clinic in Bamberg, Germany. She had arrived in Fayetteville on Thursday, June 12, and had checked into the motel a short time later after turning down Army accommodations. She was last seen on that same day at Fort Bragg at a day's end formation.
Although the police affidavit mentioned that the bed in the room had been pushed a small distance from the wall, according to the Fayetteville Observer, and that the nightstand and lamp next to it were awry, there was no mention of a struggle having occurred there. Keys belonging to a 2008 Trailblazer that had been rented from Enterprise Rent-A-Car were found lying on top of the dresser. Aside from what was contained in the public information document, including the fact that the cops were looking for items such as weapons, articles of clothing, cellular telephone, digital camera, computer, and so forth, the police played it close to the vest and were not releasing additional information at that time. They had also instructed motel employees not to talk to the press.
According to Fort Bragg officials, Touma apparently was divorced, but information about her former husband was not released. It was possible, said an official, that she may have been recently engaged to be married again, but no substantiation of that possibility was released. Maj. Angela Funaro, public affairs officer for the base's 18th Airborne Corps, told reporters that Touma was born in Seoul, South Korea, but had also resided in Cold Spring, Kentucky. She had joined the Army in 2003. Shortly after joining, she had been stationed at Fort Drum, New York, until being sent to Germany in 2005.
By the time that she arrived at Fort Bragg, she was 7 months pregnant.
It appeared that Touma had been dead approximately two days by the time her body was found, and the condition that her body was in due to decomposition made it difficult to immediately determine how she had died.
"I just want to express, on behalf of the entire U.S. Army, our deepest, heartfelt sympathies to the family and loved ones of Spc. Megan Touma," Funaro said. "We are saddened by her tragic death and the death of her unborn baby…by all accounts, she performed honorably…we want to convey the pride we feel in the job Spc. Megan Touma was doing serving our country."
Among the awards and decorations that Touma had been awarded during her Army career were the Army Achievement Medal, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the Army Service Ribbon.
At first it seemed like a typical homicide investigation—until a smudged envelope containing a letter confessing to Touma's murder and promising that there would be more to come, arrived at the editorial offices of the Fayetteville Observer, according to news reports that were published by WorldNetDaily. The letter, dated June 17 but not postmarked until June 24, was released through publication by the Fayetteville Observer, after an initial delay, over the objections of the local police department investigating the case. The letter read, in part: "I am responsible for the dead body…it was a master piece (sic). I confess that I have killed many times before in several states, but now I will start using my role-model's signature. There will be many more to come."
The letter writer also seemed to want to lash out and further taunt the police investigating Touma's case by writing that "Fayetteville law enforcement are (sic) very incompetent. I basically sat there and watch (sic) while investigators were on site."
The role model's signature that the letter writer referred to appeared to be that of crosshairs as seen through a rifle scope, like the one used by the Zodiac killer that were placed at the bottom of the cryptograms, or ciphers, that were sent to the San Francisco Police Department during that killer's reign of terror in Northern California during the 1960s and possibly as late as 1970. Although the numbers of deaths attributed to the Zodiac killer have reportedly been as high as 37, only five murdered victims and two who had survived were ever officially confirmed. The Zodiac killer was never apprehended, and the case remains open to this day.
Although the police had confiscated the letter from the Fayetteville Observer immediately upon learning about it, the newspaper had made a copy and executive editor Brian Tolley, despite the police request to not release its contents out of fear that it would impede their investigation and unnecessarily frighten the public, Tolley nonetheless followed his newspaperman's instinct and published the letter anyway.
"Not printing the letter goes against nearly everything I, and this paper, stand for," Tolley wrote in one of the Observer's articles. "Our job is to gather and report information, not to keep it in the dark."
Tolley also, on Friday, June 27, 2008, confirmed that the symbol at the bottom of the presumed killer's letter had also been found written on a mirror, with lipstick, inside the motel room where Touma's body was found.
"We now know exactly why (the homicide investigators), sitting in my office, were confident that the letter was an important piece of evidence and not a hoax," Tolley wrote.
Fayetteville Police Department Lt. David Sportsman, however, told reporters that even though the letter was important, its purpose had likely been to misinform or to otherwise deceive the police.
"There is absolutely no reason to believe there have been any other killings or that any other killings have occurred related to this so-called confession," Sportsman said, adding that the case was the department's top priority. "We want to solve this thing."
A separate investigation by the Army is being conducted to determine why it took so long before anyone noticed that Touma was missing.
"She was left in the room for two days," Touma's ex-husband told television reporters. "They didn't even bother to go check on her in the motel where she stayed."
Also, according to a statement issued to the Associated Press by Army spokesman Lt. Col. John Clearwater, a soldier in training at a special operations school has been named as a person of interest in the case but has not been charged with a crime.
As of today, police have not determined the cause of Touma's death and are also saying that they have not ruled out natural causes—which seems preposterous considering the letter that was received. Similarly, although the autopsy on Touma's body has been completed, the police have refused to release any details surrounding the postmortem examination, citing the fact that the investigation is ongoing.
I was hoping it was the end, but alas, here's one of today's top stories:
I won't try to post it because there is a picture of the girl that you can see there and I feel that seeing a victim when she was living is important.
Are the two murders related? Maybe, maybe not, but we do know now that Fayetteville police are interested in concealing the facts, and I do think this is worth keeping an eye on. Something doesn't feel right.
The case officially began on Saturday, June 21, 2008 when a maintenance man at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott, located in the 5000 block of Morganton Road in Fayetteville, North Carolina complained to an assistant manager about a foul odor emanating from the vicinity of Room 143. When the assistant manager investigated, a "Do Not Disturb" sign hanging on the room's door was observed. It was approximately 11:25 a.m., and since the registered guest's checkout time of noon was fast approaching after a more than week-long stay, the assistant manager entered the room. There was no longer any doubt about where the foul odor was coming from. The body of a young woman, whose demise was not immediately known, was found in the bathtub of the motel room.
According to a Fayetteville police affidavit for a search warrant, the room was registered to Spc. Megan Lynn Touma, 23, an Army dental specialist who was being reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, located a few miles slightly northwest of Fayetteville, from the U.S. Army Dental Clinic in Bamberg, Germany. She had arrived in Fayetteville on Thursday, June 12, and had checked into the motel a short time later after turning down Army accommodations. She was last seen on that same day at Fort Bragg at a day's end formation.
Although the police affidavit mentioned that the bed in the room had been pushed a small distance from the wall, according to the Fayetteville Observer, and that the nightstand and lamp next to it were awry, there was no mention of a struggle having occurred there. Keys belonging to a 2008 Trailblazer that had been rented from Enterprise Rent-A-Car were found lying on top of the dresser. Aside from what was contained in the public information document, including the fact that the cops were looking for items such as weapons, articles of clothing, cellular telephone, digital camera, computer, and so forth, the police played it close to the vest and were not releasing additional information at that time. They had also instructed motel employees not to talk to the press.
According to Fort Bragg officials, Touma apparently was divorced, but information about her former husband was not released. It was possible, said an official, that she may have been recently engaged to be married again, but no substantiation of that possibility was released. Maj. Angela Funaro, public affairs officer for the base's 18th Airborne Corps, told reporters that Touma was born in Seoul, South Korea, but had also resided in Cold Spring, Kentucky. She had joined the Army in 2003. Shortly after joining, she had been stationed at Fort Drum, New York, until being sent to Germany in 2005.
By the time that she arrived at Fort Bragg, she was 7 months pregnant.
It appeared that Touma had been dead approximately two days by the time her body was found, and the condition that her body was in due to decomposition made it difficult to immediately determine how she had died.
"I just want to express, on behalf of the entire U.S. Army, our deepest, heartfelt sympathies to the family and loved ones of Spc. Megan Touma," Funaro said. "We are saddened by her tragic death and the death of her unborn baby…by all accounts, she performed honorably…we want to convey the pride we feel in the job Spc. Megan Touma was doing serving our country."
Among the awards and decorations that Touma had been awarded during her Army career were the Army Achievement Medal, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the Army Service Ribbon.
At first it seemed like a typical homicide investigation—until a smudged envelope containing a letter confessing to Touma's murder and promising that there would be more to come, arrived at the editorial offices of the Fayetteville Observer, according to news reports that were published by WorldNetDaily. The letter, dated June 17 but not postmarked until June 24, was released through publication by the Fayetteville Observer, after an initial delay, over the objections of the local police department investigating the case. The letter read, in part: "I am responsible for the dead body…it was a master piece (sic). I confess that I have killed many times before in several states, but now I will start using my role-model's signature. There will be many more to come."
The letter writer also seemed to want to lash out and further taunt the police investigating Touma's case by writing that "Fayetteville law enforcement are (sic) very incompetent. I basically sat there and watch (sic) while investigators were on site."
The role model's signature that the letter writer referred to appeared to be that of crosshairs as seen through a rifle scope, like the one used by the Zodiac killer that were placed at the bottom of the cryptograms, or ciphers, that were sent to the San Francisco Police Department during that killer's reign of terror in Northern California during the 1960s and possibly as late as 1970. Although the numbers of deaths attributed to the Zodiac killer have reportedly been as high as 37, only five murdered victims and two who had survived were ever officially confirmed. The Zodiac killer was never apprehended, and the case remains open to this day.
Although the police had confiscated the letter from the Fayetteville Observer immediately upon learning about it, the newspaper had made a copy and executive editor Brian Tolley, despite the police request to not release its contents out of fear that it would impede their investigation and unnecessarily frighten the public, Tolley nonetheless followed his newspaperman's instinct and published the letter anyway.
"Not printing the letter goes against nearly everything I, and this paper, stand for," Tolley wrote in one of the Observer's articles. "Our job is to gather and report information, not to keep it in the dark."
Tolley also, on Friday, June 27, 2008, confirmed that the symbol at the bottom of the presumed killer's letter had also been found written on a mirror, with lipstick, inside the motel room where Touma's body was found.
"We now know exactly why (the homicide investigators), sitting in my office, were confident that the letter was an important piece of evidence and not a hoax," Tolley wrote.
Fayetteville Police Department Lt. David Sportsman, however, told reporters that even though the letter was important, its purpose had likely been to misinform or to otherwise deceive the police.
"There is absolutely no reason to believe there have been any other killings or that any other killings have occurred related to this so-called confession," Sportsman said, adding that the case was the department's top priority. "We want to solve this thing."
A separate investigation by the Army is being conducted to determine why it took so long before anyone noticed that Touma was missing.
"She was left in the room for two days," Touma's ex-husband told television reporters. "They didn't even bother to go check on her in the motel where she stayed."
Also, according to a statement issued to the Associated Press by Army spokesman Lt. Col. John Clearwater, a soldier in training at a special operations school has been named as a person of interest in the case but has not been charged with a crime.
As of today, police have not determined the cause of Touma's death and are also saying that they have not ruled out natural causes—which seems preposterous considering the letter that was received. Similarly, although the autopsy on Touma's body has been completed, the police have refused to release any details surrounding the postmortem examination, citing the fact that the investigation is ongoing.
I was hoping it was the end, but alas, here's one of today's top stories:
I won't try to post it because there is a picture of the girl that you can see there and I feel that seeing a victim when she was living is important.
Are the two murders related? Maybe, maybe not, but we do know now that Fayetteville police are interested in concealing the facts, and I do think this is worth keeping an eye on. Something doesn't feel right.
Comment