True Crime Stories

I am surprised at how often I am surprised in hearing about a case for the first time after seeing how “high profile” the case had been. I admit that some of that is likely due to the fact that I have gone to exclusively streaming television like many of us and by doing so I rarely keep up on new episodes of things like Dateline or 48 Hours. It is not that I do not have the ability because I have several streaming services and they allow me to watch those and several other types of true crime shows. But, when I still subscribed to cable I would use the DVR to tape all the shows I wanted and simply used that more than watching television live. That being said, I am still surprised that I had not heard of this case. On March 23, 2018 police in Blooming Prairie Minnesota went to a home for a welfare check. Friends of David and Lois Riess were reporting they had not seen or heard from the couple in a few weeks. Now, to be fair, it seems like more people were actually looking for D...

  When I sit down to compose a blog I like to try to do that in one sitting with things quiet all around me. Currently I live with two small toddlers and by the time I have time for quiet I am usually too exhausted to think! Let me say, doing this at almost fifty is quite different than doing it in my twenties. At any rate I had finished researching a blog today and I thought I would just spend the rest of the day researching cases and over the next few days, when I may have some down time, I would put them together. But, then I came across this case and I wanted to go ahead and pull it all together. This case has been on my list for a very long time and I have never just really had a desire to dive deep into it. To be fair I think that is because on the surface all of the little information that I found all basically said the same things. This would have a lot to do with the fact that this case took place back in the early 1950's. Today I dug a bit deeper if for no other r...

  I know, I know, you hear me often say “this murder is more senseless than others,” and I truly mean it when I say it. I feel like every time I hear of a murder that just seems to be for nothing I think I have “heard it all.” Then I come across another case that makes all the ones before seem like nothing compared to this one. This is just such a case. Sheilah Doyle was a nurse in Evergreen Park Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She lived in Palos Hills, another middle class suburb of Chicago, about thirty minutes away. She worked the three to eleven shift at the hospital there. At around 12:30 am on July 4, 1993 Bill Doyle had woken up in bed and noticed that his wife, Sheilah, was not there. He looked at the clock and thought it was odd so he got up and looked around. Everything looked exactly as it did when he went to bed. He went out into the garage and saw that Sheilah's new black Toyota Camry was parked in the driveway. Inside he saw her purse and her nurses bag. ...

  While I was watching a television show on this case, one I had never heard of yet, my mind kept going to the unsolved murders of Abby Williams and Libby German in Delphi Indiana. I often find myself looking up information on a case while I am still watching an episode but when it came to this case it was different. I wanted to jump to the part where they caught the perpetrator and compare dates. I was actually a bit disappointed to find out that James VanCallis was found so quickly and had already been convicted before Abby and Libby's murders occurred in 2017. I was convinced that the crimes were so similar that either the perpetrator had not been caught before he murdered again, or had done his time and had somehow been released. I have not done a blog on Abby and Libby's murders as of yet mainly because I do not do a lot of unsolved cases but know that it is one that I follow closely. I lived in their area for about fifteen years and had only been gone a few years wh...

  I heard about this case for the first time on and episode of Paula Zahn's On The Case. I was quite surprised considering not only have I heard, and blogged about, many Indiana “infamous” cases but also by the fact that I actually lived in Indianapolis when this crime occurred. The crime itself was not “technically” committed in Indianapolis, but in the town of Speedway. If you know anything about Indianapolis then you know that Speedway IS Indianapolis. Yes, it is its own incorporated town with their own school system but unless you live there and know it you cannot tell a true difference. While I can sit and tell you that a difference cannot be made, I can also tell you that when you visit the Indianapolis 500 racetrack, you are in fact not in Indianapolis, you are in Speedway. Cynthia “Cyndi” Albrecht was a was a chef who not only worked for the Penske Racing team, traveling with the crew, she had also catered to celebrities. It was said she was well on her way to ...

I have always said that I understand that not everything can be told in the time of a one hour (plus commercials) show and I know that they are almost always bias, leaning one way or another, but this is one of those cases where I felt as if there was a lot of important information left out, as well ask not exactly true. I have also mentioned often that I love appeal records because they go through the case and the trial much better than a simple article, or even a television show. That being said, while I believe I did as much research as I could possibly have done, I feel like there are a few holes and questions to this story. I will be clear in the fact that I do believe that the correct person was convicted of the crime and that his guilt was unquestionable. I have no doubts that E. Keller Wilcox Jr. was guilty from a personal, as well as a legal level. This is not a case where I have questioned the evidence at all, or one in which I will argue that the prosecutors did not pr...

  I am attempting to jump back into research and posting. That generally means that I am also jumping back into watching true crime television shows after a small break. This is a case that I had never heard of until I saw it on Paula Zahn's On The Case . I am working my way through the shows and although I have seen many of the episodes I am coming across a lot of very, very old cases that are catching my interest. This case took place in 1979, but it also helped solve a crime that occurred some four years prior, but then again, no one yet knew it was a crime. One of the most interesting things about this case is it spotlights how much “pull” a medical examiner has. We all pretty much know that it is up to the medical examiner to determine cause of death, but more importantly the manner of death. It is the manner of death that determines whether a death is an accident, suicide or homicide. Apparently the medical examiner at the time in Harris County Texas, that include...