True Crime Stories

I have put together over 800 blogs here. Most, although admittedly, not all involve murder. I have read countless appeals in cases and have almost exclusively true crime books for decades. I am in many true crime groups and even “death hag” groups on social media. I hear stories all the time. I read about them; I see pictures; I study them. It takes a lot to surprise when it comes to brutality; it takes even more to have gasp when I am reading about how a crime took place. This is one of those cases. I often talk about how I come across cases and how they make it to a list I have compiled. Initially I removed the cases from the list when I blogged about them but I found that that hindered me from realizing I may have already done a case. That being said, not every case I have blogged about is on it. I generally have a sub-list started that I add to the bigger list later and when I do that sometimes I will work off that list first and not add them to the larger one. When I...

I am going to start out by telling you that I am completely confused with this case but that is not going to stop me from telling the story. I am confused on the relationship of the victim and the perpetrators as well as a motive for the crime. I found nothing that showed or stated that the perpetrators went to trial and due to the timing of their sentencing I am led to believe that they accepted plea deals or entered a plea of guilty. That all being said, the murder of Nancy Jane Harvill was not only vicious and gruesome, but sadistic as well as the perpetrators led people to believe that she was alive for more than fifteen months after her death. On January 8, 2013 the body of Nancy Jane Harvill was found wrapped in plastic and buried. There were some indications that she was buried in the “backyard” while others say she was buried under a dirt floor in a shed in Fordyce Arkansas. The home apparently belonged to, or at least was occupied by a woman named Sherri Bowen. Sherri ...

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...

I know I have done my last few blogs a little differently than the past ones.  I also realize that they have involved the murder and torture of children, some of the more gruesome cases there are.  It is not so much about telling the stories because of obsession with these types of cases per se, it is more making sure these children who were unmercifully tormented by their killers and that these children, in these cases, need to be remembered. They need remembered because they were truly innocent victims who had a whole life ahead of them; they were victims that were never able to grow to adulthood, marry or have children; but they also need to be remembered when it comes to looking at the behaviors of those who were in a position to help but did not so that these types of murders can hopefully be stopped. This is yet another case of child torture...in Indiana. Aiyana Gauvin was a beautiful 4 year old little girl who lived with her father, Christian, and stepmother, Mic...