True Crime Stories

Around three in morning on December 9, 2010 someone staying at the SoHo House Hotel in Manhattan New York called the front desk to report that there was water leaking in the ceiling, likely from the room above. When the employees entered the room above they found thirty-three year old Sylvie Cachay dead inside the tub. Sylvie was an up and coming swimsuit designer who was making her way in New York. For the last six month she had dated Nicholas Brooks. Nicholas was the son of Joseph Brooks, a moderately successful composer who had won an Academy Award for the song You Light up My Life in the late 70's. Over the years he would direct several B movies but most of his success came from You Light up My Life. He was successful enough that his twenty-four year old son rarely worked and lived off a trust fund created, and when that was not enough he got money from his dad. In articles throughout my research he was often referred to as the “stoner playboy.” Sylvie's...

On September 24, 2007 nineteen year old Tiffany Barwick was at her friend Michael Ruschack's home in Ocala Florida with other friends enjoying a cookout. Tiffany had recently broken up with her boyfriend, Andrew Allred but he had been harassing her. In fact, just that day she filed a report with the police claiming that he had hacked into her bank account and taken money. She also reported that he had sent her threatening emails and that she knew he had recently bought a gun. By the time the day would be over Tiffany would be found dead in the bathroom of Ruschack's home where she had been shot at least seven times in the chest, wrist and legs. Michael Ruschack would also be dead in the kitchen area of the home where he had been shot four times in the back and chest. Michael's roommate, Eric Roberts suffered a gunshot wound to the leg when he attempted to subdue Allred, and survived. Tiffany and Andrew had met in late 2006 when they were both at the Univers...

In 2012 an official report stated that in the state of Florida the leading cause of death for children, ages one to four, was drowning. They were among, if not, the highest in the nation when it came to the drowning of children. Of course it is reasonable to believe this to be true since so many homes have pools of their own due to the weather and then of course the ocean nearly surrounding the state. While so many of us have wondered how Casey Anthony's attorney's were able to get her a not guilty verdict, these statistics may have played a role. If you remember the Anthony case, which so many of us who are fascinated by true crime are, you remember that her attorney's gave out the theory that Caylee had drowned in the family pool, that her death was an accident and that it was covered up by Casey, with the help of her father. The people on that jury were probably used to hearing about children drowning in pools. The vast majority of these drownings are not int...

On January 14, 2009 police in Gilbert Arizona would receive a call from Marissa DeVault. She would claim in the 911 call that an unknown assailant had come into the home she shared with her husband, Dale Harrell and had attacked him. Authorities would arrive at the home and Dale would be rushed to the hospital. Despite her claims of an assailant, Marissa would be arrested that same night on suspicions of aggravated assault. A claw hammer, covered in blood, would be found at the crime scene. This case took on the sensationalism that it did partly due to the Jodi Arias case. It too took place in Maricopa County, just the year before. Jodi too had at some point said an unknown assailant had come into the home of her on again/off again boyfriend, Travis Alexander. She, like Marissa would later do, often changed her story from being the assailant herself to not being responsible. In fact, it seems that Jodi and Marissa would meet each other while doing time. In the end M...

On January 4, 2009 the maintenance man, Michael Hedgepeth, at a Durham North Carolina apartment complex called 911 to report hearing shots fired. Just after hearing what he thought was a shot he had seen a woman come from the back of a building and get into a burgundy SUV. He drove towards that building and stopped the woman who was driving away to talk to her. Hedgepeth would later describe her as a bit hysterical saying she too had heard the shot and she was scared of guns. He asked her where she lived and she pointed out another building. Hedgepeth asked her to stay there while he called 911. Hedgepeth would later testify that he saw the woman still in the parking lot when he was talking to the police but not after he got off the phone. The police would come to the complex and while it does not sound as if they looked to awful hard around the area, they did not find anything and left. About an hour and a half after Hedgepeth had called the police a resident of the...

On the evening of July 1, 1987 Kell Illinois resident, ten year old Amy Schulz, would go out to find her brother who was looking for their dog that had run off to let him know the dog had returned. The problem was Amy would be the one who did not return. The following morning a worker from a nearby oil field just outside the nearby town of Dix would find Amy's body. An autopsy would uncover an unimaginable horror. Amy's body would be found nude, covered in dirt and face down on an access road out in the middle of no where. There was a shoe print left on her back and a pool of blood around her head indicating that her murder had occurred in that spot. An autopsy would determine that Amy had suffered from a 14.5 cm wound from the middle of her through to behind her right ear. It had cut through the muscle and severed her carotid artery and jugular vein. She would also have a cut above her left eye, bruises to her brain, a fractured rib and a torn liver. There ...

On the morning of July 11, 2012 co-workers of chief of pathology, Dr. Joe Sonnier, was found shot and stabbed in the garage of his Lubbock Texas home. He had been shot five times and stabbed a total of eleven times in the back. Losing a parent in this manner has to be extremely hard but sadly for Dr. Sonnier's children it was not something unknown to them. Their mother, Becky Gallegos had been killed almost two years earlier, almost to the exact day. Becky had been murdered by her second husband, Fermin, who not only then shot himself but also shot the family dog. I am certain that no one expects to have a parent murdered, let alone two, in two unrelated incidents. Considering that the Gallegos case was clearly closed quickly and the perpetrator of that crime was obviously dead, it was quickly determined that this was one of the few times in which coincidences, were just that when it came to murder. After his divorce from Becky, Joe had become quite a sought after b...