True Crime Stories

This blog will not only quite honestly likely be very long, maybe my longest, but will prove difficult to write. So often the victim of a murder crime gets lost in the shuffle of things within the investigation and the legal proceedings. This is just such a case and I honestly cannot see a way around it so I am going to do things a bit differently here. I want to start off this blog telling you what I can about Heidi Allen. Let's get to know her as best as I can tell you and then we will talk about her disappearance and all of the legal wranglings and questions that have been asked for nearly thirty years. I do want to say that I did not know Heidi personally, nor do I know her family or any of the other families involved. Heidi Allen was born September 14, 1975 in New York to Kenneth and Susan Allen. She had an older sister, Lisa and I saw reports that she may have had a brother also but I cannot confirm this. Her mother passed away in 2015 and there was not a son liste...

While a spouse against spouse crime is the most common and of course I have blogged about several of those types of cases here, it is not my primary focus on cases. Sadly they are just so “commonplace.” The spouse is the first one suspected in a crime, we all know that. When blogging about such cases I try to find the “more interesting” ones. They are the ones that have multiple murders or interesting legal proceedings. This case has both. Lois Music married Phillip Huff in 1974. They appeared to have a few children and then in February of 1983 Phillip was murdered in Orange County Indiana. I believe the couple lived in the town of Paoli but they could have just as easily lived in the town of French Lick, most famous as being the place basketball great Larry Bird grew up. Okay, I always wonder if people like Larry Bird and John Mellencamp are as “big” outside of Indiana as they are in the state. There are very few details about Phillip Huffs murder but apparently his wife c...

Once again I have come across a case in which I simply could not find a lot of information. However, the information I did find was quite interesting. The last case that I discussed this issue it was a very cut and dry case. There was a perpetrator, there were victims and there was a conclusion even if I was unable to fill in the blanks in the middle. This case is much different. Of course there is a victim. But it is unclear just who the perpetrators in this case were. Every prosecutor has a theory on how a crime was committed based on the their idea of who the perpetrator(s) is. Even when that theory falls apart it is difficult to change that theory, especially when that theory involves more than one person. So to tell this story will be a little difficult. What I can tell you is that on the night of December 10, 1982 in Fort Wayne Indiana, twenty year old Carmen Zink lost her life. She had been shot in the head. Carmen was with another woman, someone I was unable t...

This may prove to be one of the shortest blogs that I have written. There is not a lot of information to be found about this case but it is one that for if no other reason should be remembered for the victims. David Hollis was twenty-one years old in early 1982. He had a young daughter, who was said to be “just over two” at the time. David and his wife, Debra, who was eighteen at the time had separated in November of 1981. In January Debra filed for divorce. One can only assume after hearing what happened next that the marriage was likely riddled with domestic violence. Debra and her daughter, Nina, lived in an apartment in Hammond Indiana with another, unnamed as I could find, woman. On February 27, 1982 Debra was being visited by a neighbor, eighteen year old Kim Mezei along with Kim's two year old son, Craig. David entered the home and by the time he left, Debra, Kim and Craig were all dead. Debra had been stabbed several times and all three victims were strangled. ...

This case is unusual on many levels. I am sure I could find plenty of criminal cases involving Catholic priests but there are only a few that also involve murder. Today we may see cases that are solved with the perpetrator deceased but let's be fair and note that most of those are coming from forensic genealogy and basing things on DNA. There of course are the cases in which the perpetrator has died and they are highly suspected as being responsible in a case but there are few cases, such as this one, in which there is an actual court proceeding where a judge and/or a jury are asked to make a decision. Some would argue that Ottis Toole was announced to be the murderer of Adam Walsh posthumously. They would be correct in this statement but that was announced by the police department, not a judge or jury. Of course there have been some bodies identified over the last several years that were determined to be victims of John Wayne Gacy, but in most of those cases they already kne...

I came across this case when I was working on some genealogy. Where I live they have a local genealogy site and within that site they also have an archive of old newspaper articles. First I had come across a death card for Arthur Lindsey's victim. Basically these are cards that are compiled either by that particular local funeral home, or in later years compiled by obituaries that are listed in the newspaper. The older ones especially have some interesting information. For example the death card for Julia Zink told me not only that she was twenty-one years old and living in the nearby town of Mount Vernon, but it told me her relatives. Julia's card went on to say that she had been “killed and tossed into Ohio River nude.” A notation at the bottom said “accused: Arthur Lindsey, 25.” Arthur Lindsey was apparently from the Mount Vernon Indiana area but he had apparently spent some time in California. One report stated he lived there for two or three years. By November of...

George and Alene Jenkins had tried to have children for several years without success. Eventually they adopted two children but the specifics on how, when, or how old the children were upon their adoption are unknown to me. By 1995 the couple lived in Las Vegas with their fifteen year old son, Joshua and ten year old daughter, Megan. It is unclear how old Joshua was when he began having behavioral issues but it was said that by the age of five he was in “treatment for his educational, behavioral and mental health obstacles.” It seems that things did not get better as he got older. Sometime in late 1995 or early 1996 it was discovered that Joshua was “plotting” to kill George. He armed himself with a crossbow and a rifle and attempted to attack him. His plot failed and his parents sent him to Visa del Mar, a boarding school in Los Angeles for troubled children. This was apparently not the first issue they had with Joshua as it was said that the police were called several t...