Was there a serial killer in the Connecticut River Valley area? All signs point to “yes”. During the middle of the 1980s, at least six women were found dead along the border of New Hampshire and Vermont. Just to give you an example of this possible serial killer’s brutality, it is theorized that he stabbed a woman named Jane Boroski twenty-seven times. Jane was pregnant at the time of her attack (she also was able to survive that attack by nothing short of a miracle).

On April 15th, 2017 Josiah and members of the Brothers United were attending an off-campus party when they were approached by a group of white locals and accused of stealing one of their phones. One of the locals demanded that they empty their pockets. An altercation began that left Josiah Lawson pepper-sprayed and stabbed multiple times.

On July 7th, 2021, the Lawson Family and the City of Arcata reached a confidential settlement on a lawsuit. Part of the agreement between the two parties was a collaboration to donate $25,000 to a scholarship fund in David’s name. Tragically, the case still remains unsolved. The Arcata Police Department is offering a $55,000 reward for any information leading to Lawson’s murderer. To show your support for the Lawson family, visit the Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Justice-For-David-Josiah-Lawson-138429150033811/posts/.

This case centers around seventy-year-old Dorothy Donovan and her son Charles Holden. Holden was a factory worker and often had long shifts. On the night of June 22, 1991, he ended his shift around midnight. After stopping at a restaurant in Harrington, Delaware, Holden found himself in a precarious situation. As he was preparing to pull off in his truck, a man he had never met appeared in his window and asked him for a ride. The strange man told Holden he needed to get to Georgetown so that he could see the birth of his sister’s child. While Holden had initially declined to take him, he soon relented with the agreement that he only drives him up to a certain distance. He made his way to the intersection where he would normally turn to make his way home before telling his new passenger that he’d gone the distance he was willing to go.

It was at this moment where things took a turn.

"On Oct. 6, a group of over 40 former law enforcement investigators, journalists and military personnel known as the Case Breakers claimed to have discovered the identity of the infamous Zodiac Killer.

The Zodiac terrorized Northern California in the 1960s and sent cryptic, encoded messages to the police describing the murders...The group has now identified the serial murderer as Gary Francis Poste, who had passed away in 2018. 

They were able to link the original Zodiac killings to another unsolved murder that happened in 1966, the death of Cheri Jo Bates, whose body was found in an alley way in Riverside, California.

In the letters sent to the police between 1969 and 1974, the Zodiac claimed to have murdered 37 people, however only five of those incidents have been directly linked to the same killer.

 If the Case Breakers are correct, Bates would have been the Zodiacs sixth confirmed murder."

More here: https://oracle.newpaltz.edu/zodiac-killer/

This case involved the murders of twenty-two-year-old Candy Belt and eighteen-year-old Gloria Ross. The pair were two massage therapists (and escorts) at the New Life Massage Place run by a woman named Tammy Papler. During the early hours of September 20, 1994, Belt and Ross were found shot and stabbed to death in a back room of the building. Right away, the county sheriff determined that the crime scene had been compromised. Unfortunately, the complications fall at the hands of the local police. Tammy (the woman running the massage place) had complained to the sheriff that they were being threatened by the police upon their arrival at the crime scene. Her other employees believe that Ed Carter — one of the officers at the scene — was responsible for the brutal slayings of the two women.

On the night of July 6th, 1989, Kaitlyn was shot a mysterious man in an adjacent vehicle while stopped at a traffic light.

As the story continued to develop, so would the theories about what happened. The most prevailing theory was that Kaitlyn was murdered due to the illegal activates of her boyfriend at the time. He was involved in a pretty extensive car insurance scam. It would involve staging car accidents, having a corrupt paralegal assume the case, and then collecting the money from the payout. While Kaitlyn's boyfriend did admit to being part of that insurance scam, he vehemently denied having anything to do with her murder. 

32 years later, he would be vindicated.

Joe was told that Mario killed himself. By hanging. With his sweater. He tied his sweater around his neck and hung himself from a bar that was three feet off the ground. Joe, being reasonably skeptical, asked the detectives why no one stopped him. They claimed that everyone at the station was asleep while all of this was going on — forgetting the fact that this apparent suicide occurred at 5:00 PM, a time where most likely none of these people were sleeping. Mario’s brother wasn’t buying this story. To make matters worse, Mexican authorities wouldn’t even let Joe return to the states with Mario’s body. They needed time to complete an autopsy that would take an undetermined amount of time. Not surprisingly, when the autopsy was finished a week later, it listed the cause of death as a loss of oxygen to the brain from hanging himself. It also turns out that the Mexican authorities were in violation of international agreements by not contacting the United States to make them aware of Mario’s death.

Joe went back to the states on a mission. He contacted congressman Howard Berman and gave him a rundown of the situation, as well as his suspicion of the ruling. After getting the congressman on board, Joe went onto hire his own independent pathologist. He conducted his own autopsy on Mario and found internal damage to his liver. This was not only strong evidence that he was punched in the upper abdominal area, but such an injury would actually prevent him from even being able to hang himself. Joe and Congressman Berman came to the (very likely) conclusion that Mario was beaten to death and then a hanging was staged to cover it up. The Los Angeles County Coroner reviewed both autopsy reports and agreed that Mario had probably been murdered.

This story sees the mixture of money and murder. Ed Baker was a wealthy millionaire from Houston, Texas who was able to amass his wealth using the oil industry. Ed Baker was a wealthy Texas millionaire who had made his fortune in oil. His multi-million dollar business — Vanguard Groups International, Inc. — specialized in oil investments throughout the country. Running the business alongside his wife Mary Walker, Vanguard became one of the fastest-growing businesses in the country. Baker was certainly made for the business world. According to his wife, Ed had an uncanny ability to win people’s trust. When it came to getting their business off the ground, he was able to find investors fairly easily using that charm. Although the couple started their business together in 1980, they were divorced in 1984. The divorce — coming from Baker’s side of things — was seen as some sort of a mid-life crisis. After ending his ten-year marriage, Baker spent a lot of time gambling, spending lavishly on cars, and getting cosmetic work done (two face-lifts). With actions like that, it’s pretty understandable why some would see it as a mid-life crisis…because that’s exactly what it looks like.

As Baker’s lifestyle continued on this path, he began to act a little more sporadically. In September of 1984, he got married to a woman named Karen Wallbridge. He would then be divorced from Wallbridge just eleven months later. Two months after that, he was married to Sandra Hoff (one of the employees at his very successful company). Throughout these two marriages, Baker was also still engaging in his lavish spending. To maintain his frivolous expenditures, he began using the money from his investors to either pay off past debt or fund his personal exploits. Either way, Ed Baker was playing with fire. His own attorney advised him against this because he could be looking at prison time if he were ever found out.

I’m sure I am not the only one who has noticed the recent uptick in Ted Bundy-related material. I’m also sure that I’m not the only one who is sick of it. I’ve known of Ted Bundy for a while — just like I’ve known of Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Raider, David Berkowitz, Ed Gein, and John Wayne Gacy for a while. All of them (including Bundy) are serial killers and all of them took the word “heinous” to a shockingly dangerous level. Yet — for some reason — it is Ted Bundy that has remained in the public eye despite the fact that he was executed over two decades ago; it is Ted Bundy that had the Netflix special Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, as well as Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile starring Zac Efron in 2019; it is Ted Bundy that had an Amazon Prime documentary series in 2020; it is Ted Bundy that is having a theatrical release coming out this August.

For some reason, there has been this obsession surrounding Ted Bundy since he was caught. At the root of that obsession is this desperate attempt to “figure him out”. Figure out what, exactly? Well, the answer to that says more about society than it does about Bundy.

The police had the initial thought that Dale suffered from some sort of stroke or medical issue (which is weird because they searched the building and couldn’t find his body) so they brought in a dog to track his scent. Dale’s scent was tracked throughout the plant — even deviating from his usual security route and ending up at the glass furnace. Of course, the immediate thought was that Dale’s body was incinerated in the furnace — especially because the dog picked up no further trace of Dale after that point. The police ruled that out, though, since the furnace hadn’t even been switched on that night. Next, the police checked out the security tapes.

When the police looked at the security footage they almost immediately saw a masked man with a winter coat walking around the back of the plant. At some point, that masked man is seen conversing with Dale but there isn’t really indication as to whether that seemed like a volatile conversation or not. The masked man then coerces Dale to begin walking with him toward the second floor’s exit. As they are leaving, Dale looks directly into the security camera, which soon became a topic of debate. The last time the camera picks up the masked man, he is seen wheeling a large bag out of the building — a bag that most likely contained Dale’s body. Well, that depends on what theory you think is the most believable.