True Crime Stories

This case was recently brought to my attention based on the fact that an episode of 48 Hours: Live to Tell was being re-aired. Now, if you know anything about this particular version of 48 Hours then you know it is often less about the crime and more about the survivors of a crime. Due to the fact that just this month was the re-air, and the fact that the person that the series focused on wrote a book that was published in 2019 it was difficult to get a lot of specifics when it came to this case and crime. I was also faced with a lot of conflicting information which is not necessarily unusual, but it did make it more difficult to sort through since there was seemingly so little information about the crime itself. This was also one of the few, but not the first, cases in which even appeal papers that I found seemed to be inconsistent not just to articles from the media but from known facts. For example in a 2009 appeal when going over the facts it stated that Jeff Pelley was co...

I think I mentioned a while back that I have been binge watching Forensic Files on Netflix lately. While my list of cases was surely not lacking names already, watching the show, one after another, has added several. That is always a good thing because I never know how I will feel when it comes time to sit down and do a case and many of these that I am seeing now are ones I have never heard of before so it keeps things “fresh.” This case was featured on the show and originally aired in May of 2004. While I really enjoy the show there is absolutely no way that they can touch on every issue in a case on a television show, especially one that is only twenty-five minutes long. Larry Moore and Brad Brisbin were said to be friends and hunting partners. Brisbin was a former county sheriff's deputy in their area of West Yellowstone Montana but by 1990 he owned a restaurant and was teaching part time. So many articles about his death refer to him being a former deputy but noth...

This is not your standard, spouse on spouse crime. In addition to that this case brings up a few other questions. First, what are the odds of someone knowing, or being related to more than one person who has been murdered, and secondly, can criminal behavior or mindset be inherited? Of course there are the cases where siblings work together on a crime, but we have also seen them where different siblings commit different crimes and spends time in prison. But, what about a grandson of a murderer becoming a potential murderer? Is it nature verses nurture? Is it just a rare coincidence? I do recall this question being asked at one point concerning a father and son who both had committed crimes in which they had earned the death penalty for several decades apart. Fred and Charlotte Grabbe were first married sometime in the late 1950's or early 1960's. In 1961 they would divorce but they would remarry a year later. By 1981 the couple had two grown children, twenty-two...

As I stated in my last blog, I have several cases ready to put together which I often struggle with. Besides the fact that I seem to lose a bit of luster when I research them without posting them soon and my memory often fails me I also have the issue that to give something the attention it deserves I have to “feel” it. While I may find one interesting when I start my research I may not feel the same later, especially if it has been days. In those cases I tend to want to “just get it done” and so as I said it does not necessarily get the attention it deserves. But, as I was going through the four or five I have ready I saw this one and remembered my excitement from it. I was glad to see it because I have struggled with the fact that I have wanted to research more cases. I have been re-watching Forensic Files, or at least listening to them, on Netflix lately and have heard several cases I had never heard about that I have been excited about digging into. Before I do tha...

Life got busy for a while and although I have several blogs already researched, I have not posted in more than a week. Sometimes that makes it a bit more difficult for me because I like to compose my blogs close to when I researched them so I remember things but, it is what it is. On October 15, 1930 ten year old Leona O'Loughlin was reported missing in Denver Colorado. It is not exactly clear who reported Leona missing. Her father, Leo, was a police detective but he was extremely sick on the day that she was reported missing. In fact, it was said that everyone in the house except for Leona's uncle, Leo's brother, Frank, was sick that day with varying symptoms. Aside from Frank, Leona lived with her father, her step-mother, Pearl, and step-brother Doug Millican, who was seven. It was unclear whether before she had gone missing if Leona was also sick. Leo's symptoms resembled the flu while Pearl's seemed to be acute poisoning, meaning sh...

In late August 2017 the southern portion of the United States, in particular the states of Texas and Louisiana, was preparing for Hurricane Harvey to hit land. Houston Texas resident Crystal McDowell would last be seen on August 25 th , just hours before Houston would be plummeted by the storm. The following day Crystal's uncle, Jeff Waters, who had raised her since the age of eleven, reported her missing. Crystal and Steven McDowell had been married close to ten years when they divorced in June of 2017. Reports of exactly where Crystal was living at the time of her death, two months later were a bit sketchy. Almost all of the information stated that not only throughout the marriage, but also after the divorce, Crystal, who was now a real estate agent working for a family company, had been the breadwinner and had been supporting Steven. But, while some reports claim that she was living in her own townhouse that would be searched after she was found to be missi...