The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (the mammoth book of ...)

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Then came a double murder which the OVRCRC ascribe to the first killer. On 11 November, two 15-year-olds went missing in Galveston. Ball High School students Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson left Ball High School to shop for Thanksgiving gifts at a Galveston mall. Two days later, fishermen saw their bodies floating in Turner’s Bayou in Texas City, close to I–45 and Highway 3, and ten miles from where they had disappeared. Both girls were shot twice in the head before being dumped in the water. Their hands and feet were bound and both were partly naked.

  Sixteen-year-old Kimberly Pitchford was last seen at a driving school in Pasadena, Texas, near I–45 on 3 January 1973. She was supposed to phone home to get picked up, but the call was never made. Two days later, her body was found two days later in a ditch on Highway 288 near Angleton, some 30 miles south of where she had last been seen. She had been strangled. Her uncle Ray Pitchford maintained a suspected serial killer was known to have attended the driving school about the same time. The OVRCRC believe that Kimberley’s murder was the work of a third serial killer, who went on to kill again in the 1980s.

  The OVRCRC link the first killer to another unidentified woman, whose body was found in a wooded area on the east side of Houston on 19 September 1989. She had been dead for between one and three months. She was a brunette aged between 14 and 19, weighed between 110 and 130 pounds and between 5 foot 2 inches and 5 foot 5 inches tall. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head.

  The same killer was thought to be responsible for the abduction and murder of 14-year-old Lynette Bibbs and 15-year-old Tamara Fisher. The two friends disappeared from a teen club in Houston on 1 February 1996. Two days later their bodies were found on the side of a rural road near Cleveland, Texas, some 40 miles to the north. Lynette was partially clothed and shot twice in the back of the head and once in the thigh. Tamara was fully clothed and died from a gunshot wound to the head.

  None of these victims seems to have been sexually assaulted and the use of a gun by a serial killer is unusual. They usually prefer to strangle, bludgeon or stab so that they can savour their victim’s pain, panic and death throes close up. Guns kill from a distance. They can kill quickly. They make a lot of noise and can be traced easily. In this case, the killer clearly had somewhere private where he could take his victims to kill them.

  It is thought that the killer got his pleasure from hunting his victims. There is even a theory that he is some type of law enforcement officer, some other authority figure, or someone posing as one. The OVRCRC believe that he may have stopped killing because he no longer found hunting his victims fun.

  On 6 September 1974, 12-year-old Brooks Bracewell and 14-year-old Georgia Geer skipped school. They were last seen in a convenience store in Dickinson, just four miles down the I–45 from League City. Both had been beaten to death and their bodies were found in a swamp near Alvin.

  Other profilers connect these two killings to those above. All the victims were 19 years old or younger. They were all dumped in or near bodies of water, and all had died from either a gunshot to the head or some sort of head trauma. And the killer showed a distinct preference for pairs. Only Brenda Jones was abducted alone and found alone.

  There was even a link between these cases and those found in the “killing fields”. Brooks Bracewell and Georgia Geer were last seen at a convenience store pay phone, just like Heidi Fye and Laura Miller. Both sets of victims show the same mixture of murder methods—some being beaten to death or shot. However, the method of body disposal is quite different. In the “killing field” they were laid out on land. The others were dumped in or near water. The “killing field” victims were naked and had been sexually assaulted. The others were fully or partially clothed and showing no signs of rape.

  The OVRCRC tie three other murders to the killer of Kimberly Pitchford, as strangulation was the method of murder. On 1 November 1980, a truck driver found the naked body of an unidentified brunette aged between 14 and 17 dumped on I–45, about five miles north of Huntsville. She had been strangled with pantyhose and there were human bite marks on her body. She was 5 foot 4 inches tall and weighed 110 pounds. On 7 June 1987, 14-year-old Erica Ann Garcia went missing from a teen club. This showed a similarity with the abduction of Lynette Bibbs and Tamara Fisher. However, they had been shot. When Erica Garcia’s body was found, she had been strangled.

  Another victim of strangulation was 13-year-old Krystal Jean Baker, the great niece of Marilyn Monroe, aka Norma Jean Baker. On 5 March 1996, the dark-eyed blonde disappeared after making a call from a payphone in a convenience store in Texas City, ten miles from Dickinson and 14 miles from League City. She had phoned to get a lift to a friend’s house in Bayou Vista, four miles away on the I–45. Her body was found a few hours later under the I–10 Bridge over the Trinity River near Galveston Bay in Chambers County. Her face was pulverized. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted and despatched with a ligature. The OVRCRC believed that the killer had been building up to the sexual assault of Krystal Baker as the Huntsville victim had been found nude. On earlier occasions he may not have managed to become sexually aroused, finding himself impotent or disturbed before he could attempt the act.

  It is thought that Trellis Sykes and Maria Isabel Solis might share a common killer. Sixteen-year-old Trellis Sykes did not show up at Worthing High School in Houston on 13 May 1994. Her loved ones went out to search for her and found her dead body in the undergrowth on a vacant lot on Redbud Street. Maria Isabel Solis was also 16 when she went missing on her way to school in Houston. She lived with her father and grandmother on the south side of the city. Her mother, Blanca Ortiz, still lived in Mexico City. At 8.40 on the morning of 3 March 2003, she left home to go to the George I. Sanchez High School where she was an honours student. She was last seen getting off the city bus near her school. Students and the manager of a nearby motel heard screams. On 13 August 2003, a body was discovered in a wooded area near a closed US 59 turnaround at the Brazos River not far from Sugar Land, Texas, some 20 miles southwest of Houston. However, the remains were only identified as those of Maria by the forensic laboratory on 9 February 2005.

  Other murders in the area might be linked. On 10 May 1978, when Robert Pretty arrived home from work at his house in north Houston, he found cold toast and a half-empty glass of milk on the breakfast table. He heard water dripping in the front bathroom and, when he went to investigate, he found his sons, five-year-old Mark and seven-year-old Scott, face down in the bathtub. In the master bathroom he found his 28-year-old wife, Karen, bound hand and foot, underwater in the bath. The medical examiner said that they had died from a combination of strangulation and drowning. Karen had a telephone cord around her neck. The two boys had been strangled manually. Mark had fought back and been beaten by his assailant. The murders seemed motiveless. Nothing had been taken from the house and only one drawer was opened. Nor had the victims been sexually molested. Karen was still wearing her flowery bathrobe and the boys still had their pyjamas on. The only clue was that the family car, a 1978 Mercury Marquis, was found in an unassigned parking spot at an apartment at 198 Goodson Drive. There is a theory was that the murder of Karen and the two children was a case of mistaken identity. A local drug dealer had been arrested on evidence provided by an informant who lived in the neighbourhood.

  And so the I–45 murders continue. Twenty-two-year-old Tamara Ellen McCurry disappeared in Galveston on 1 July 1982 after being seen getting into an orange or yellow van. The headless body of a woman was found in a garbage bag in a state park in Galveston in April 1986. The victim remains unidentified.

  Shelley Kathleen Sikes, a 19-year-old University of Texas student, was last seen just before midnight 24 May 1986, when she left work at Gaido’s beach-front restaurant in Galveston where she was a waitress. She was heading for her home in Texas City, but never made it. Her car was found at around two the next morning, stuck in the mud alongside the I–45 northbound feeder road just south of the Galveston causeway. The driver’s window was br
oken, and blood was spattered on the door and driver’s seat. Despite an intensive search, Sikes was never found. She was thought to be another victim of one of the I–45 serial killers. But then in June 1987 the police got a phone call from a local motel. Resident John Robert King was trying to kill himself and confessed to abducting Sikes and burying her body. He said he and a friend, Gerald Peter Zwarst, high on drugs, had run Shelley Sikes’ car off the road and abducted her. Safely in custody, both men blamed each other for Sikes’ death and admitted burying the body near King’s home. However, King reneged on his promise to tell police exactly where the body was buried. Zwarst was offered immunity from a murder charge in 1990 if he would help find Shelley Sikes’ body. Under hypnosis he drew a map of a field in San Leon near Galveston Bay, where he said he last saw Shelley Sikes, but her body was not found. Authorities uncovered a white blouse during the search, but lab tests could not prove it belonged to Sikes. However, her family remain convinced the petite, handmade blouse was hers. King and Zwarst were convicted of aggravated kidnapping in 1988—the most severe charge prosecutors could pursue without a body—and they were sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the case remains open.

  The murder of 15-year-old Laurie Lee Tremblay is another I–45 case that has been resolved recently. She was last seen alive walking from her family’s apartment to the bus stop, on 26 September 1986. Her body was later found behind a restaurant in the 10600 block of Westheimer Road, Houston. None of her jewellery or possessions were taken. So the motive was not robbery.

  “We knew we had a serial killer working,” said Houston police detective Sergeant John Swain said. “I think that the Police Department danced around that. The powers that be didn’t want to admit that, didn’t want the public to panic.”

  The case remained unsolved until 2003 when 41-year-old Anthony Allen Shore was arrested for the murder of Maria Del Carmen Estrada, 11 years before. The 21-year-old Hispanic brunette was last seen on 16 April 1992 when she left her apartment at 7200 Shadyvilla to walk to work. Her body was found hours later face down in the drive-through lane of a Dairy Queen restaurant at 6707 Westview, Houston. She was partially nude and had been sexually assaulted and strangled. “When he had finished having his way with her, he left her… like a piece of garbage,” said Kelly Siegler, the prosecutor at his trial. The police testified that the nylon cord around Maria Estrada’s neck was so tight that it was not even visible.

  Advances in DNA testing led to a match being made between scrapings taken from under Maria Estrada’s fingernails and Shore, who has been a registered sex offender since January 1998 when he was given eight years probation for the sexual assault of two girls in his own family, aged 11 and 13. Consequently, his DNA was on file. Once in custody, Shore sprang a surprise on his captors.

  “He told me he would give me something that I didn’t know about,” said Lieutenant Danny Billingsley of Harris Court Sheriff’s Office. “And that is when he gave me the Laurie Trembley case.”

  Shore also confessed to murdering Dana Sanchez and Diana Rebollar. Sixteen-year-old Dana Sanchez was a Hispanic brunette like Estrada. She was last seen talking to her boyfriend on a payphone at West Cavalcade and Airline, Houston, on 6 July 1995. She told him that she was going to hitch-hike over to his home, but she never turned up. Her body was found on North View Park on 14 July. She had been beaten, raped and strangled. Diana Rebollar was another brunette, but she was only nine. Her mother had sent her to a nearby convenience store to buy sugar in the 6600 block of North Main. Diana’s body was found behind a vacant building at 1440 North Loop West on 7 August 1994. Again she had been beaten, raped and strangled. Shore was also charged with the 1993 sexual assault of a 14-year-old Houston girl who was attacked by a man who broke into her family’s home in the 1900 block of Portsmouth after she returned from school to find the suspect in the kitchen. He tied her up and raped her.

  “He said in a calm voice, ‘I’m just here to rob your house,’” said the victim, now 25. Shore then covered her eyes and mouth with duct tape and bound her hands behind her back. “He used a knife to cut off my panties. As I was screaming, he got upset and told me I was being too loud.” Then she felt his hands around her throat. “I kind of came out of my stupor and realized I had to do something. If I don’t do something, I’m going to die.” She was able to kick him away, but he threatened her before leaving the house

  “He said he knows everything about me,” she said. “He’d been watching me come home from school. He knew that I played soccer.” During the woman’s testimony, Shore leaned back in his chair and stared at a pen he was tapping on the defence table.

  After Shore was convicted of the murder of Maria Del Carmen Estrada, he instructed his lawyers not to cross-examine witnesses or make any other effort to persuade jurors not to give him a death sentence for the murder of at least four females over a nine-year span.

  “He believes it’s time for him to sacrifice his life for what he has done,” defence attorney Alvin Nunnery told jurors as the penalty phase of the capital murder trial began. Shore, then 42, wiped away a tear as his attorney explained that his client had instructed him to request the death sentence. Nunnery said: “He’s accepted the Lord into his life. He understands that while he would ultimately be free from the pain and the penalty of sin—that is, eternal damnation—he has to pay the consequences for what he did.”

  Shore’s sister Regina Shore Belt testified for him at the penalty hearings. She said that her brother had always displayed a “high, genius-level” intelligence, particularly as a musician.

  “He could pick up an instrument he’s never seen before and play it like he’s been playing it his whole life,” she said. But Belt did not ask the jury for mercy. “I and the rest of my family believe that he should have the death penalty,” she told the court.

  “Evil lives among us,” said the prosecutors. “And sometimes evil, as the evidence will show, comes in the form of someone who looks completely normal.” But he was in fact “a monster, absolute horrendous monster, capable of things that made this jury cringe as we showed them this week”.

  Shore was sentenced to death for the murder of Maria Del Carmen Estrada. Consequently he will not stand trial for the other three murders. He is now on death row in Texas and is free to boast about his musical prowess on the internet while soliciting for pen pals.

  Shore is a suspect in other I–45 slayings but apparently has not been linked to any of the other cases. Many things point to him as a good suspect, however. He lived in League City until he was 13. He attended Clear Creek High School. Police questioned him in connection with the Calder Road Killings. Also, his past jobs as a telephone service man and a tow truck driver took him far and wide in the Houston area, giving him ample freedom and opportunity to stalk or kill. Shore also abducted Dana Sanchez and Diana Rebollar at or near convenience stores, an oddly common abduction method in the I–45 killings.

  One case in particular intrigues investigators. It involves a set of bones found just blocks from where Shore was living when he was arrested. The medical examiner’s office was able to determine that they belonged to a young female, but little more. The victim was only wearing a T-shirt. A looped cord was found nearby. Shore used a ligature to strangle.

  “We don’t have the person identified and until then there is not a lot that can be done,” said Lieutenant Billingsley. “There is not a lot in that regard except being able to tie it to some missing person’s report.”

  There are plenty of other related I–45 cases that remain unsolved. In March 1997 a 13-year-old girl was abducted at gunpoint as she was walking home from a shopping centre. She leaped out of her abductor’s truck in 200 block of East Fairmont in La Porte, Texas, on Galveston Bay. A police officer driving saw the girl falling out of the pick-up. It made off, but the officer identified it as a green late-model Ford Ranger and the suspect was a man aged between 35 and 45, and between 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall, with greying black hair and beard. Neither
the truck nor the man were found.

  Some other I–45 murders have been solved. In late January 1999, drifter William Ray Mathews walked into the office of Country Time Mobile homes in Shenandoah, Texas, some 30 miles north of Houston on the I–45. He was carrying a briefcase and sat down and wrote sales assistant Tracy Vickery a note. It said he had a gun and, if she did not do what he said, he would kill her. He forced Vickery into his truck, then he drove off down I–45. But she leapt from his speeding truck. He tried to pull her back in by her hair but he could not hold her. She got away and ran to the Gulf Coast Trades Center to save herself.

  Just weeks earlier, on 17 January, 18-year-old blonde Wanda May Pitts had disappeared from the Lodge Motel on the other side of the I–45. She had worked there for about two months and did not have a car. She was on duty in the lobby when Mathews abducted her. He took her to one of the motel rooms and sexually assaulted her, later boasting that she had been a virgin. Within hours of abducting Wanda Pitts he strangled her. After he was arrested for the attempted abduction of Tracey Vickery, Mathews said that he could not remember where he had put Wanda Pitts’ body, but about a year later her remains were found off an abandoned gated driveway.

  A plea bargain prevented him from being charged with Pitts’ murder, but he was convicted of attempting to abduct Tracy Vickery.

  In the 21st century the I–45 killings continued. On 12 July 2001, 57-year-old Tot Tran Harriman, a brown-eyed Oriental with black hair streaked with grey, left her son’s home League City at around 5 a.m. to drive to Corpus Christi, Texas. She has not been seen since. Weighing 130 pounds and 4 foot 11 inches tall, she was driving a 1996 maroon Lincoln Continental with personalized Florida licence plate on the back, saying “TOTSY”. As Florida only requires a rear plate, she had a Navy Seal emblem where the front plate would normally be. Circumstances of her disappearance led police to suspect foul play.