Regional Murder Mysteries

[sdreid]

Another unresolved murder in my area is that of Mary Maynor. On May 31 of 1974, she was found dead in her Pekin, IL apartment. The cause of death was multiple stab wounds.

[Magpie]

Every couple of years they cops get tip and drag the local marshes for a body, but they've never found anything. The cops are pretty sure who did it (as are a lot of other people) but there's no case against them.

[sdreid]

Thanks Magpie. I hadn't heard of that one either but I guess that's a reason for this thread.

[Magpie]

The disappearance of Tom Gencarelli has been a much discussed local mystery for as long as I can remember:

http://officialcoldcaseinvestigations.com/showthread.php?t=11150

http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2223351&archive=true

http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090220/OTT_Unsolved_Murders_090220/20090222/?hub=OttawaHome

[sdreid]

Yes Octav, they have many good ones there. The only one there and on my local list is Mary Jane Hanselman.

[OctavBotnar]

Wiki has a good list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_murders

[curious]

I had not seen that one before curious. It's pretty much absent on the web too.

A $15,000 reward was offered 9 years after the incident.

http://greenevillesun.com/story/268066

[sdreid]

The panic was heightened even further when the body of yet another woman was discovered in a different field. That case, however, later turned out to be solved as a domestic murder.

[sdreid]

9 -- Twenty-one-year-old Tammy Zywicki left New Jersey on a trip to her college in Iowa. Along the way, she dropped her brother off at his college in Chicago. On August 23 of 1992 near Utica, IL, her derelict car was found. Passers-by later told of seeing Tammy talking to a truck driver with the hood of her car up. Nine days later, her stabbed body was found in Missouri. The truck had a rather unique paint scheme but it was never traced. With the close proximity to Veronica Blumhorst, some thought a serial killer might be about. The so-called Truck-Stop Killer was mentioned but the case is still unresolved.

Adding to the serial killer question, the remains of a deceased Caucasian female were discovered in a farmer's field that was proximate to where Veronica and Tammy disappeared. This woman, who was found on September 13 of 1991, has not been identified and her cause of death hasn't been determined.

[sdreid]

I had not seen that one before curious. It's pretty much absent on the web too.

[curious]

Tennessee Unsolved Murder

On Jan. 4, 1995, Edwin Frazier Jones was found murdered in his small grocery store in Baileyton, Tenn. He had owned and operated Jones Grocery in Baileyton for approximately 38 years. Interstate 81 had just carved its way through northeast Tennessee a few years earlier, and his store was located just off I-81.

So far as I know there is no clue as to who robbed and murdered Frazier Jones (as he was known). He was an older man at the time of his death. It is my understanding that his murder is the only unsolved murder in our little county.

My suspicions are that Jones was not the only person to be killed in this way. I wonder how often someone drives off the Interstate in a rural area, robs someone and glides away before the crime is discovered?

I know more places are equipped with security cameras, etc, now but some of those little places along the Interstates are pretty exposed.

[sdreid]

I say that because Guatney lived in the south during the winter then came north in warm weather to work at fairs and carnivals. This crime happened in January in Illinois.

[sdreid]

I have decided to add another to my list.

Richard William Griener disappearance and presumed murder in Pekin-1972

I did not include this on my original list because, although there was never a conviction, I was fairly certain this boy was killed by serial child killer William "Freight Train" Guatney. That is no longer my assumption.

[sdreid]

Thanks Sarah! I particularly find the 1957 murders of little June and Royston Sheasby intersting.

[SarahLee]

I hadn't realised that I had so many unsolved murders in my area until I had a look into it

Just for starters, here are 28 unsolved cases that South Wales Police re-opened in 2009.
Some of these I'd heard about, some I hadn't . . . but out of all of them it saddens me to see that there are two cases where the bodies of baby boys were found (1955 and 1972) and the authorities didn't even manage to put an identity to them.

Then just over the water in Bristol there are a further 24 unsolved murders since the 1940s. Among them we have the case of Glenis Carruthers in 1974, which early on was rumoured to be connected to the Christmas killing of Joanna Yeates.

Almost certainly not a murder, but something of an unsolved mystery anyway: Henry Thomas a 73 year old from Ebbw Vale, a purported victim of "spontaneous human combustion" in 1980.