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Season Five Sick Killer's Brain Pt. 2: Just Driving Around
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In Today’s Episode, we talk about some true crime news and a series of serial killings that may indicate the work of several serial killers in the same geographical area outside the PNW.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Warning and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Recap of 'Little Miss Murder' and Unsolved Cases
00:00:49
Speaker
This is True Crime XS
00:01:00
Speaker
where we left off last episode was with the little miss murder. But that's not the last in this series of murders that happened. And it's it's one of those things where like trying to capture how this happened over time, it always makes me wonder if if I were to go digging through an unidentified persons cases in that area between like 1983 and 1988, or if I were to find unsolved murders that maybe were outside of the the kind of very specific lumping they've done to make these cases be together.
Unidentified Killers: Janelle Johnson and Lisa Marie Kimmel
00:01:36
Speaker
Like would I find more? Now, as far as we talked about Janelle Johnson, her killer is unidentified. And then we talked about Lisa Marie Kimmel, who you pointed out that if Dale Wheaton had buried her with her car, like we would never know about him.
00:01:53
Speaker
um I did note that there was a she you' been killed there was an autopsy report indicating she had been killed just hours before her body had been found. and ah Ultimately, local authorities said that they believed that she had been held captive by her killer, which in this instance would be Dale Wayne Eaton. She had stab wounds and bruises. Her body showed ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. And after she was buried, a note signed Stringfellow Hawk was found on Lisa Kimmel's grave. Are you familiar with that character? Only from this case. Okay, so Stringfellow Hawk
00:02:33
Speaker
in the show Airwolf, which ran originally from 1984 to 1986, and then moved, that was on CBS, and then it moved over. In 1987, it ah became a USA production, I believe. So that was the lead character on that show, played by J.M. Michael Vincent. I thought that was interesting, that that's the name that was left on this note.
00:02:59
Speaker
I don't think it has anything to do with the case. I just thought it was an interesting thing in passing. The next case that we have is Vicki Lynn Perkins.
Vicki Lynn Perkins and Suspected Serial Killer
00:03:08
Speaker
Have you followed her case before? I have, but mostly having to do with this. Vicki Lynn Perkins, ah she was 19 years old when she goes missing in March of 1989. So it's about a year after Lisa Kimmel has vanished. She's last seen in Portland, Oregon. And on May 13th of 1989, a couple of months later, her body is found in Emory County, Utah, off of I-70 there. The remains were mostly skeletal, but police were able to identify the victim as Vicky Lynn Perkins through fingerprints.
00:03:51
Speaker
One of the sheriffs that talks about her described her as a, quote, known prostitute or sex worker who had been working at truck stops at the time. I found an article that mentions kind of what went on there. This is from March 29th of 1992.
Scott William Cox: Past Crimes and Investigations
00:04:11
Speaker
It's from the Deseret, but it's from the archive, like on a web archive or internet archive.
00:04:18
Speaker
It says, Trucker linked to slaying a woman whose body was found near at 70. Emery County law enforcers have identified a woman found slain alongside Interstate 72 years ago. They're looking into the possibility her death may be connected to a suspected serial killer. Sheriff Lamar Guymon said that Friday detectives from his agency had been in contact with an Oregon task force Piecing together the travels of a 28-year-old trucker, authorities say is a possible suspect in as many as 20 slayings throughout the West. On May 9th of 1990, passerby's discovered the nude body of a woman in the brush along the eastbound lanes of I-70 near Green River in eastern Utah. She had been dead for about three months. The Utah medical examiner ruled the death a homicide and said evidence indicated she had been strangled and beaten.
00:05:15
Speaker
Guy Mons said the body was decomposed, but that officials managed to obtain a set of fingerprints. And about a month ago, he said a new computerized fingerprint identification system purchased by the state identified the victim as 19 year old Vicky Lynn Perkins, who was a known sex worker from Portland. That information led detectives to Scott William Cox, who's a long haul trucker jailed in Newburgh, Oregon, on charges that he murdered two other Portland sex workers in 1990 and 1991.
00:05:46
Speaker
According to Geiman, he said he's pretty handy. We spent a week up there and found out that she'd been running around all over the place, including apparently working at truck stops. Cox is also a suspect in an attempted homicide in Washington.
00:05:59
Speaker
Oregon State Police Lieutenant Carl Nelson, who is directing the task force, said evidence shows Cox traveled extensively throughout the West, apparently including Utah, during the past several years. It's all pretty preliminary right now, but I don't know of anything that would preclude Cox as a suspect in the Utah killing. Of course, we're interested in the fact that she was from here. The task force is gathering information on Cox's whereabouts during the past several years through trucking logs and other information.
00:06:29
Speaker
Once completed and correlated, according to Nelson, the information will be made available to law enforcement officials on request. Now, I just wanna point out that we have a date issue here. This is saying that May 9th, 1990, the body was discovered. If you go back and look at other sources, they say she goes missing March of 1989 and she's found May 13th, 1989. I currently do not have confirmation of which one is true I think they're slightly different in terms of this fingerprint technology, but I wanted to ask you, have you ever heard of Scott William Cox? Yes. All right. So so far we have an unknown killer. Then we have Dale Wayne Eaton, and now we have Scott William Cox.
00:07:19
Speaker
Now he is an interesting dude. According to various sources, he has a lot of pseudonyms, so I thought that was interesting. He went by Seth Scott Cutter, Thomas Wood, and Thomas Perkins. He has convictions for two counts of murder, ah multiple counts of forgery, gun theft, and a parole violation. He is one of those with 20 plus next to his name as the potential victims.
00:07:52
Speaker
Scott William Cox is born in 1963, on November the 3rd. Since 1975, when he would have been 12 years old, he has been admitted to hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, and mental institutions more than 115 times. He had been convicted of forgery and of larceny of a firearm prior to these convictions for murder we're going to talk about in just a second.
00:08:20
Speaker
He was actually on post prison supervision at the time of his first arrest for murder for the crime of forgery. Now he had been working as a long haul truck driver. He had operated mainly within the Pacific Northwest. He had traveled as far as Canada and Mexico and as far East as Ohio.
00:08:39
Speaker
On November 24th of 1990, a 34 year old woman was found in front of a Portland Oregon Safeway store. She had been severely beaten. She had cuts on her chin, neck, and her back. She had been handcuffed and stabbed in the heart. She was found alive, but in tri and critical condition. So she gets taken to the hospital. Her name is Rina Ann Brunson. But soon after she gets to the hospital, she is pronounced dead.
00:09:09
Speaker
A few months later, on February 19th of 1991, the body of Victoria Rohn is found in a train in a Portland rail yard. She had been tied up with the attacker's shirt and strangled to death. Both of these murders are gonna stay unsolved for a couple of years. On May 30th of 1991, so a few months after Victoria's found,
00:09:36
Speaker
A woman is found alive in downtown Seattle who has been beaten, bitten, raped, and left for dead. She had ligature marks around her neck and a wine bottle had been forced into her rectum. ah A witness at the scene of where she's found reported seeing the victim thrown out of the cup a cab of a large truck.
00:10:01
Speaker
So the victim lived, but required hospitalization. She ends up being interviewed by a local detective and this detective advises her that she needs to assist the prosecution, but she doesn't pursue charges and she subsequently left the state. At the time in the press, local detectives believed that this would be an attempted murder perpetrated by someone who was a serial killer or a quote serial killer in the making.
00:10:28
Speaker
The witness described to detectives the truck that they believed the victim was thrown out of as having a specific company logo. Part of that logo was the words Woodland Trucking. So detectives contact Woodland Trucking, and it's revealed that the person who would have been driving a truck in that area that night was an employee named Seth Scott Cutter. Detectives go and interview Seth Scott Cutter,
00:10:56
Speaker
He says that he's innocent, and he stated that he had been trying to help the woman. The detectives don't believe him, and they attempt to pursue charges against him. However, DNA evidence found at the crime scene is not ready for comparison. The victim has left, so the detectives are unable to follow through with charges against this man, Seth Scott Cutter.
00:11:21
Speaker
They continue to investigate, and it's revealed that Cutter had previously assaulted another woman on November 26, 1990. A witness reported seeing Cutter in a Mazda with Oregon license plates. So, Cutter at this point in time is revealed to be a resident of Newburgh, Oregon. It's said that he lived in a motel in the town when he was not on the road.
00:11:46
Speaker
but police believe he may be a serial killer. So they put out a bulletin in Oregon and Washington for Seth Scott Cutter. Detectives in Newburgh, Oregon, they recognize Cutter, but they know him as Scott William Cox, which it turns out to be his real name. He gets charged and convicted of forgery for creating fake identification under a pseudonym.
00:12:14
Speaker
And around the same time, he is charged and convicted of a gun theft in Medford, Oregon, and he's given a six month jail sentence. So Newberg detectives opened a murder investigation at this time into Scott William Cox. And ultimately he ends up confessing to the murder of Rina Ann Brunson. According to his story, he was mad at his girlfriend and he wanted to release his anger by beating up a prostitute.
00:12:41
Speaker
So he drinks whiskey, he does a few lines of cocaine, he picks up Reena in his car and he begins to beat her. As she attempts to escape him, he stabs her once in the heart, he leaves her for dead and he drives away. In the course of this period of his life, he also confesses to the murder of Victoria Rome. He ends up confessing to having beaten several other women, but he denies having killed anyone else.
00:13:10
Speaker
Prior to the murder convictions, Cox was already on the radar of multiple detectives nationwide because his job was a long haul truck driver.
Truck Drivers and Unsolved Murders
00:13:22
Speaker
Detectives estimated that this work would take him to 3,000 different locations throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. He became a prime suspect in at least 20 other murders.
00:13:35
Speaker
which many of these murders to this day remain unsolved. He was also looked into early on by the Green River Killer Task Force, but detectives at the time believed that he was probably too young to have been such a prolific killer. So he comes into the mix now with this set of victims, specifically related to Vicki Lynn Perkins. Next up on our list,
00:14:02
Speaker
We have a body found on October 26th of 1990. Deer hunters discover skeletal remains in what's known as Millard County, Utah. At the time, the victim could not be identified, but she was known under the name Jane Doe I for the next 13 years.
00:14:22
Speaker
In May 2003, forensic scientists from the University of Arizona, after comparing x-rays at the victim's jaw, they were able to identify her as 24-year-old Patricia Candice Walsh. Walsh and her 26-year-old husband, Douglas Scott Zyskowski, they were both from Seattle, Washington, and they had gone missing shortly after leaving the city in 1989.
00:14:49
Speaker
Douglas' remains had been discovered in January of 1990 in Ozona, Texas, which is near I-10. He is identified in 1992. It was later revealed in 2012 that both of them had been killed by another long haul serial killer trucker. Let's talk about these two victims for a second.
00:15:13
Speaker
ah I don't think the classification of Vicki Lynn Perkins as a sex worker is very fair, but they have ah apparently decided in some of these different sources that she's a potential victim of Scott William Cox. So we do have the potential for sex work to have put her at these truck stops. I don't have a lot more information on her case. Did you come up with anything else on Vicki Lynn? No, I didn't. it's not There's not a lot.
00:15:42
Speaker
Yeah, I noticed that and I think that's sort of indicative of these higher risk victims being sort of written off. We're still in the 80s at the time. um It's going to be another 10 or 15 years before those type homicides begin to be taken seriously as sort of precursor murders in serial killer cases. I think that's fair to say, don't you?
00:16:05
Speaker
I do. I think that um I don't know that it matters so much to the perpetrator. um It just makes them more of a target because of the willingness. right The implication is they're willing to they were willing to travel with the truck driver. Right? Right. And I don't know that. um i would be I wouldn't say, you know oh, she was a known prostitute or whatever. ah She got rides with truckers clearly. Correct. You don't necessarily have to be a prostitute to do that, right? But it's an explanation, I feel like, that they're trying to put her somewhere and get her you know from here to there. And the answer is, well, she hung out and would get rides with men who were driving trucks.
00:16:57
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I have looked at a couple of those cases over the years. The truth is there are a lot of people that ride along with truckers just to get a ride. There are a lot of people that get some kind of thrill out of that type of travel. A couple of years ago, I went and looked at a truck fire location where there was allegedly a young woman in the truck. When a truck hit a pile on under a bridge and you and I,
00:17:27
Speaker
were absolutely shocked that like there was really no evidence of her having been there. We found a little bit of like circumstantial evidence in like the road debris, but like realistically we could not tell if she was there or if she, like if someone were to come to me and say that guy was a serial killer, she was his victim and he buried her here. I would totally believe that story. Yeah, really? Yeah. Like I don't think that's what happened. I think it was just a tragic accident. She happened to be getting a ride with this guy.
00:17:57
Speaker
Right. and that' And so that's the situation. So that would be like, um it's almost a crime of opportunity. The only thing I would say that would distinguish it from a crime of opportunity is it's whoever's there. Correct. Because the truck drivers know that somebody will be there. And I imagine that
00:18:19
Speaker
expecting, I think a lot of truck drivers don't mind the company. like As far as just having somebody in the cab with them to talk with them, keep them awake on those endless roads, right? And yeah there's nothing sinister, illegal, or having anything to do with sex work about it. There's a whole other world out there there that we we don't know anything about because we're not part of it. And it doesn't really matter. It doesn't lessen her murder, to in my opinion, regardless of why she was in a truck with someone, right?
00:18:48
Speaker
Right. It does make it heinous in that you wonder how many how many of these guys could possibly be operating at the same time. right yeah And and from specifically from the truck driver point of view, right? Because these guys are, well, not so much now, but in the 80s and before, in the 90s, in the early 2000s, they had a lot of unaccounted for time. Correct. And as long as they made it from point A to point B, they covered a lot of miles in between.
00:19:29
Speaker
And I don't know, it seems like the truck drivers are a community. It's entirely possible someone could operate and they're not so much of a community. And and so you just really don't know, right? You don't know how many truck drivers have done something awful or are serial killers or or just normal guys getting you know stuff from where it needs to, where it's at to where it needs to be, right? Yeah.
00:19:58
Speaker
um My dad worked in the logistics industry for years. and like I had a cousin that was like more my dad's age than like my aunt's and uncle's age that we called Uncle. and um He was a long-haul truck driver. and so My dad was more in ah a management position. This guy was more of a driver-driver. He would like be gone for literally five days in a row, come home, be home on the weekend. It's interesting.
00:20:25
Speaker
from what I was able to see of his work, even ah he's passed away now, but like the, the last years of his life, the work that he was, the way he was experiencing having to log things and the technology, cause like a lot of those trucks now carry dash cams and they carry GPS tracking. And it's really so that they're adhering to regulations because they can only drive for so many hours and so many miles unless they're, you know, on a team.
00:20:55
Speaker
And it's it's so interesting to me that that particular profession is as affected by technology as the criminal justice system is. if not more so. If not more so, yeah. Honestly, but yeah, you're right. There is a whole lot more accountability now. And it really, they didn't do it for that purpose. There's a whole lot, there has to be a whole lot more good good truck drivers, good, honest, normal truck drivers out there than there are the ones that are serial killer truck drivers. But the solution to these sort of like widespread missing and murdered cases
00:21:34
Speaker
it lends itself towards some sort of transient, right? It does. And truck drivers, they're not necessarily a transient person, but there their work is transient by nature. And a lot of times, ah truck drivers will ride the same route and it will be multiple days, right? Yeah. It'll be like a cross country or whatever. And so they a a mind at work I feel like is what happens. They start thinking about things that they could possibly get away with. ah The ones that go bad. That's how I think it's even been presented that way with some of the killers, the truck driver killers that have been caught. yeah they They start to realize like, oh, well, I could get away with this. And so it's an interesting look into that, right? And I always wonder,
00:22:35
Speaker
I don't know what your perception is, but my perception of a truck driver is sort of like a grumpy middle-aged man. Well, that's why I mentioned who I mentioned. Like that has been my perception for years. And to me, it would be just as likely that a grumpy middle-aged man gave somebody that needed a ride a ride and got irritated and killed them.
00:23:03
Speaker
as it would be that it was like this whole serial killer plot. I mean, it happens too much for that to be the case, but you see where I'm going with that. it tell me I could totally see some of some of the guys that I, how I just stereotypically imagine truck drivers to either very sad in their ways. They don't want to hear you yappen and they overreact to, and and it could lead to It's not accidental, but it's like unintended, unintended violence just from being irritated, right? And that would be, that's ironic, obviously, but then, you know, when you have sexual assaults happening and stuff like that, it's more sinister, obviously.
00:23:47
Speaker
Right. So I wanted to talk about this couple I just mentioned because they have, there's an interesting part to them. And then I want to talk about the killer who was a long haul truck driver. So I mentioned Patricia Candice Walsh and Douglas Scott Ziskowski from Seattle, Washington.
Profile of Serial Killer Robert Monroe Rhodes
00:24:05
Speaker
What's interesting about them is Patricia is considered a victim in the great basin murders. Douglas is not. So I'm throwing that out there because I know a lot of people cover this.
00:24:17
Speaker
like a particular killer. He comes up here, so we are going to have to address him. This is Robert Monroe, who I had mentioned a few minutes ago. Are they married? and his has been yeah Yes, married. So that is Robert Monroe, who is a serial killer, long haul truck driver. Now he's known as the truck stop killer.
00:24:41
Speaker
He has confirmed to have multiple victims. For his part, he's raised by his mom. His dad was a soldier in the United States Army. His dad had been stationed in West Germany. And so Robert Van Rhodes goes to elementary school, and his father comes back from duty overseas. And after being discharged from the military, his dad worked as a firefighter.
00:25:07
Speaker
From all accounts, his upbringing was pretty normal. ah Rhodes is an active participant in extracurricular activities and clubs. He involved himself with football, wrestling, choir, French club. His first known criminal involvement that we have a record of is in 1961 when he's 16 years old. He gets arrested for tampering with a vehicle. The following year, he's arrested for getting into a fight.
00:25:36
Speaker
in public, they call it public afraid. It's like a simple assault charge. That's when he's 17. He graduates from Thomas Jefferson High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1964. And then he joined the Marine Corps. During that same year, his father is arrested for molesting a 12 year old girl. And while he's waiting for trial, his father kills himself.
00:26:05
Speaker
Rhodes ends up being dishonorably discharged from the Marines for his involvement in a robbery. After that dishonorable discharge, which is a huge deal, even in the 60s, he goes to college, but he drops out. He attempts to join a law enforcement agency, but that dishonorable discharge from the Marines follows him around.
00:26:29
Speaker
He's married three different times. He ends up having a wife with his first son. And he works a lot of different jobs. He works in various retail stores. He works in a grocery store or two. ah He gets work in a warehouse and he works in multiple restaurants. He eventually makes his way to becoming a long haul truck driver sometime in the early 1970s.
00:26:58
Speaker
Now I mentioned this couple and I'm going to mention them again, and I'm going to kind of go over his crimes because they're not directly related to the Great Basin murders, but he does a couple of things I find highly interesting, even in this short overview I'm going to do. So we started with Patricia Candice Walsh, who she and her husband from Seattle, they go missing in 1989.
00:27:26
Speaker
What we know about them is the husband's remains were found in January of 1990 in Texas. After they identify Patricia Walsh, the Utah State Police Department start talking to the Texas Rangers, but they can't get an identity together for the killer.
00:27:47
Speaker
Much later, when Robert Enrodes is arrested, he's going to confess to these murders. He claims that this couple was hitchhiking and he picks them up in his truck while he's out on one of his long haul treks. He immediately kills the husband and he dumps his body where it's later found. He keeps Patricia Walls for over a week.
00:28:15
Speaker
During this time, according to what he confesses to, he tortures and rapes her multiple times before he kills her and then dumps her body. Okay. That's interesting to me. He's abducted a couple, killed the male, and he keeps the woman. Ostensibly, he keeps her in his truck. What do you think about all that? and Well,
00:28:41
Speaker
I don't know. I have a hard time with that. Um, maybe he was just like really cold hearted and he didn't form the bond or maybe she was Sarah distraught that it just didn't matter because she had watched him kill her husband. Right. I don't know what the ends and outs of that are. I find it very, very strange to fathom.
00:29:10
Speaker
like the the idea that he's keeping her. Well, we have some corroboration to that. A month after he kills Patricia Walsh, he abducts an 18-year-old woman who escapes and tells police she's escaped, and that she's just been kept for two weeks in a sleeper cab of a truck that was basically a torture chamber. So Robert Ben Rhodes is detained by police, but the victim doesn't want to press charges.
00:29:41
Speaker
She thought that she wouldn't be believed. So in her statement to police, there's a quote that comes up online. She says, I don't see any good in filing charges. It's going to be my word against his. If there's any evidence, I would try and file. I would file charges and I would sue him. She's been kept for two weeks in a sleeper cab of a truck, beaten and raped.
00:30:04
Speaker
She's, you can't blame her. Well, it seems to me like um what had what happened with her is what I would expect, maybe not the two weeks, but like you get out of there, right? yeah it It doesn't seem as likely, except for fear, right? I can imagine a fearful victim doesn't want to, you know, rock the boat or whatever, but you know you're going to die, you would have to.
00:30:32
Speaker
And it's not like there's a whole lot of places to go. And I don't know exactly how that went down, but that's awful. It is awful. So we've got, you know, we have this couple. We now get a glimpse into what's happened to them because this other woman gets away. Luckily now he's going to be on police radar, but that's not going to stop anything. September 29th of 1990.
00:31:03
Speaker
In the loft of an abandoned barn near Greenville, Illinois, a body is found. That body is 14-year-old Regina K. Walters. She had been missing since February of 1990 when she ran away from home in Pasadena, Texas with her boyfriend, who was 18 years old, Ricky Lee Jones. An autopsy reveals that She had been strangled to death and it was believed that it had happened sometime in early March, in early March of 1990. So shortly after she goes missing, they find a photograph of her when they do a search of Robert Benrose home, mid torture. May 26th of 1990,
00:31:51
Speaker
A partial skeleton had been found, you know, Harleton, Texas, that turned out to be her 18 year old boyfriend, Ricky Lee Jones. He had been shot in the head. Okay. This isn't related to the great basin murders. This is related to Robert Monroe's. So this guy picks up another couple, an 18 year old and a 14 year old. He shoots the boy, leaves him for dead. And then he takes the girl with him.
00:32:21
Speaker
But at this point in time, they determined that he keeps this 14 year old girl for what is estimated to be three weeks. And she is miles away from her home when her body is left in an abandoned barn in Greenville, Illinois. That's exactly what I picture when I picture like the truck driver killers. And it's a terrible story, isn't it? It is terrible. Um, he is a monster.
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah, this guy was a monster is putting it lightly. So April 1st of 1990, prior to this body being found in the early morning hours, a trooper named Mike Miller of the Arizona highway patrol, he finds a truck on the side of interstate 10 near Casa Grande, Arizona, with its hazard lights on. He knocks on the door.
00:33:20
Speaker
And he hears a woman inside the truck screaming. There's a man present who identifies himself as the driver of the truck. The driver attempts to talk his way out of the situation and he fails. The woman is discovered to be not only screaming, but nude and handcuffed in the cab of this, in the sleeper cab of this truck.
00:33:45
Speaker
The man is Robert Ben Rhodes. He turns his gun over that he has on him to the trooper. He's arrested. He's charged with aggravated assault, sexual assault, and unlawful imprisonment. He is left handcuffed in the back of Mike Miller's patrol car, and he almost escapes. The arresting detective in this matter, Rick Barnhart, he's able to make a connection to this Houston case from earlier and he's able to notice that there's a pattern of where this guy has been and it stretches out over the course of going backwards at least five months prior. He executes a search warrant on Robert Benrose home and police find photos of a nude teenager. It's the picture I mentioned earlier. It's later identified as Regina Walters. Her body is not found until September.
00:34:46
Speaker
also present were photos of Patricia Walsh. Now in time, her body is not found until October. Does that make sense? Yeah. So he's confessed to all of this. He basically ends up, uh,
00:35:06
Speaker
convicted of the murder of Regina K. Walters. He's sentenced to life without parole, but up in Illinois. That's his in 1994. He's, he's finally sentenced. Utah extradites him in 2005 to be tried for the deaths of the couple. But in court, in accordance with the family's victim, the victim's family's request, those charges ended up being dropped. So none of them wanted to testify more than once for these multiple state trials that are happening. And they send him back to prison. He is later extradited to Texas for the murder of Regina Walters and for the murder of Ricky Jones.
00:35:45
Speaker
in In exchange for having the death penalty dropped there, he pleads guilty to their deaths and he gets more life sentences. He is currently serving his life without parole sentences up at the maximum security Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois. What's interesting about him in terms of the Great Basin murders is if he did not kill some of these other victims. we have we And we already know that he likely did not kill Lisa Kimmel unless he's somehow connected to Dale Wayne Eaton. Then we have multiple killers who are keeping women for long periods of time along this track. And that, to me, is terrifying. It is. And maybe I've just, ah maybe my coping with mechanism is to just block it out.
00:36:40
Speaker
Could be. We have more victims in the Great Basin murders. March 22nd of 1991, an extremely decomposed body is found in Salt Lake City, Utah. At the time, she gets the name Jane Doe II. She couldn't be identified at the present time. She is later identified. And where I found her resolution is an article from March of 1999.
00:37:10
Speaker
This is again, the desert news. It just says Florida man charged in 91 slang. The article itself says the body of a woman found dead in Joab County eight years ago has been identified and her husband in jail in Florida has been charged with a crime. Joab County Sheriff David Carter said that the woman was identified as Barbara K. Williams.
00:37:35
Speaker
An aggravated murder charge was filed in the fourth district court in county against a woman's husband, Howell Williams, in connection with her death. Police believe the couple were Salt Lake City residents at the time of the woman's death in 1991. Three Utah law officers delivered a warrant this week to Fort Myers, Florida for Howell Williams, who's being held in that state on a parole violation.
00:38:00
Speaker
According to Carter, we are working on extradition and a plan to bring Howell Williams to face charges in court. The nude body of Barbara K. Williams was discovered March 22, 1991. So again, I don't know how accurate all of these dates are, but this one does match up with what we put together for the summary. She was formerly of Lake City, Florida. Over the past several years, Carter said,
00:38:25
Speaker
The woman's mother had talked to Florida police a few times because she was concerned that she had not heard from her daughter.
Barbara K. Williams Case
00:38:32
Speaker
The Williams's left Florida in 1990, but a formal missing persons report was not filed until 1997. That lack of a report hampered the investigation in the early 1990s by Utah officials. The mother had talked to the sheriff, but had not filed a report, according to Carter. A break in the case came with agent Bill Guti with FDLE, or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, started working on old cases in Florida. Sheriff Carter said that Guti contacted him a few weeks ago and he let us know that our unidentified body and the missing woman could possibly be the same person. He said the weight, size, and physical characteristics of both the body and the missing woman led him to believe they could be a match. The fingerprints collected in Utah matched those Florida officials had on file for Barbara K. Williams.
00:39:23
Speaker
Carter said, and this case has really bothered me for the last eight years. I've made periodic attempts to find out who she might be, and I felt uneasy not knowing why no one seemed to miss her. It would have been nearly impossible to identify Barbara K. Williams without the cooperation of all these law enforcement agencies, which helped our case by sharing information. Okay, so that's a completely different type of murder that has been lumped into all of this.
00:39:50
Speaker
Right, it's a domestic basically. Yeah, this is a domestic. And if Howell Williams, if you go hunting for him, um he's not going to be responsible for any of these other murders. I think it would be highly unlikely, yeah. Right.
00:40:10
Speaker
um I think what stymies the case of Barbara K. Sterling-Williams or Jane Doe, number two, is the fact that the last person seen with her is essentially her husband. Absolutely, right. So I don't have a lot more information on this particular victim. And when I ah went hunting for it, I did see where it looked like he had been sentenced to prison.
00:40:39
Speaker
Uh, he is convicted. He is later convicted of her murder and sinister present in Utah. Uh, so her case ends up being resolved, but ultimately unrelated to any type of serial killing. So next up on our list of victims is bitter Creek Betty. Now she disappeared from names. Did you notice this? No, I didn't. Um, she's an unidentified young woman who's found on March 1st of 1992.
00:41:08
Speaker
And she's found in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, in what is known as the Bitter Creek Stream.
00:41:15
Speaker
The medical examiner who but medical examiner who conducts her autopsy, he ends up suggesting that the victim's body had been left near I-80.
00:41:29
Speaker
Between mid October of 1991 and late February of 1992, her body was well preserved due to low temperatures and heavy snow. She had dark hair, dark colored eyes. She was approximately five feet, eight inches tall and weighed around 125 pounds.
00:41:47
Speaker
Her age at the time of her death was believed to have been between 24 and 32 years old. She had a rose tattoo on her left, on her right breast, and she had a cesarean section, she had a C-section scar on her abdomen. and there was a gold ring on one finger of her right hand, and a gold necklace was around her neck. She had been brutally beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled before she died, but the cause of death was a blow to the head with an ice pick that caused cranial trauma and severe blood loss. According to investigators,
00:42:24
Speaker
The victim had defensive wounds and had fiercely resisted her attacker and probably had wounded her as traces of blood that did not match her blood group were found at the crime scene. ah There are photos of her face, tattoos, and other distinctive features that have been published in local media by the police over the years in an attempt to identify her.
00:42:47
Speaker
Soon afterwards, they were contacted by a man who stated he had seen a woman with a similar tattoo in Tucson, Arizona, but this led nowhere. According to what I've read, Bitter Creek Betty still is unidentified, but her NamUs page was removed sometime in 2022.
00:43:08
Speaker
I'm checking one more thing here.
00:43:15
Speaker
ah She was known as Rosedale, by the way. That was one of the other things about her. Basin Creek Batty? Yeah.
00:43:26
Speaker
Okay. I wonder why she's removed. Oh, well, so here's what I found. um According to the unidentified awareness fandom wiki page, this is what it says about her. And this will kind of round out this episode.
00:43:41
Speaker
She was known as ah Bitter Creek Betty or Rose Doe, and she was found murdered in Wyoming in 1992. She is one of three known victims of a previously unidentified serial killer. the case So the case summary here says that the body was found unclothed face down after it appeared to have been dumped from a vehicle at the top of a heel top of a hill. The victim's body was completely frozen.
00:44:06
Speaker
She had suffered injuries to her face and neck and a wound to her left nostril which damaged the underlying bone. Examination failed to confirm whether the puncturing was inflicted by the suspect or a curd post-mortem perhaps during the retrieval of the body.
00:44:21
Speaker
The exact cause of her death remains undetermined, but it was classified as a homicide. They did know that she had been sexually assaulted in both lower body cavities. Her case was linked through DNA to another unidentified victim who was discovered in the same state during the same year. And additionally, those two murders are then linked to the 1991 killing of Pamela McCall in Tennessee near Interstate 65.
00:44:51
Speaker
The suspect that we have here is Clark Perry Baldwin. So this is what they knew of the suspect. And this is in the summary online. So if some of this is wrong, I'm just pulling what information I can find. The modus operandi of the killer included the following details. All three were either pregnant or had a history of childbirth. They were all under the age of 32. They had brown hair.
00:45:18
Speaker
Pamela McCall was strangled. The other Jane Doe was possibly beaten. Sexual assault was also consistently evident in all three of these murders. Jewelry and footre footwear, if any, were missing from each, although Bitter Creek Betty was the only nude victim. In May of 2020, Clark Perry Baldwin, 59, of Waterloo, Iowa, was arrested and charged with the three victims' murders, along with that of Pamela McCall's unborn child.
Preview of Next Episode and Conclusion
00:45:48
Speaker
So we do get back to Clark Barry Baldwin here.
00:45:55
Speaker
I have a couple more victims here, but I think I'm going to save those for the next episode. And then we have a couple of more suspects to talk about here. Do you have anything that you want to say about Bitter Creek Betty before we wrap up? No, I don't think so.
00:46:16
Speaker
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00:47:22
Speaker
Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
00:47:42
Speaker
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