True Crime Stories

On August 7, 1994 a man and his sons went fishing for the day in Portland Oregon. One of the sons decided he wanted to wander on the banks for a while and stumbled upon a body not far away. The boy went and got his brother and his dad. When the father went to investigate he found not one, but two bodies. One was in a sleeping bag. He notified the police. It was quickly discovered that the two bodies were those of brothers, Jeffrey and Dale Brown. There was no weapon found near the bodies but it was obvious that they had been stabbed with some sort of large knife or as they would later determine, sword of some kind. One of the first places the investigators went after the crime scene was Jeffrey Brown's apartment. The landlord let them in. They looked around and saw a jacket inside a backpack but they did not take anything until they could get a warrant to make their search official. They interviewed those who lived around there and someone described seein...

In the early morning hours of June 20, 1987 firefighters in Portland Oregon were called to a motel. Once the fire was out they would find the body twenty-six year old Candice Straub in one of the rooms on a bed. An autopsy would reveal that she had been strangled before her death and a flammable liquid had been poured on her body and set on fire after her death. A few weeks later a man by the name of Marco Montez would tell the woman he lived with, Annie Edmo, in Idaho that he had helped another man, Timothy Aikens, dispose of a body in Oregon where they had been working as strawberry pickers. Edmo would call the local police. They would arrest Montez a few days later on July 12 th on unrelated charges if for no other reason to get him in for questioning. They had also contacted the Portland police. Once Montez started talking he seemed to change his story often. In his first story to investigators he would claim that Aikens had called him to the motel and he ha...

I have a few lists with names of cases for me to look into at some point. These names can really come from anywhere.  Some come from the news; some come from reading about other cases.  Often times I simply write the name down and forget about it until I see it on the list and start researching it.  Most of the time once I start looking into it I will remember where I had seen the name before which had caused me to write it down.  This is not one of those cases.   My list had the name Jeanette Marie Maples on it and just as I do all of the names I start searching I added that name with the word "murder" (since most of my cases are about murder) and clicked on the search button.  I began my search and almost immediately I was reminded of Sylvia Likens. I believe Sylvia's case was one of the first that I ever blogged about here because it was the one case that I think I can say haunts me.  Sylvia was tortured and beaten in Indianapolis Indiana in 1965 no...