Book Cover
THE END OF AUTUMN
Blurb: To keep from paying child support for his three children, Rodney Williams, plots with his parents to kidnap his estranged wife, 25-year old Autumn, in broad daylight. This 2011 crime shocked the small community of Logan, Ohio.
Excerpt: March 22, 2011, could have been just an ordinary Tuesday evening for the small industrial town of Logan, Ohio, population 7,152, if it were not for the glass-shattering screams of a female, emanating from the alley next to the Bancroft National Bank in downtown Logan.
The first witness was a twenty-one-year-old named Richard. He told police he was walking in the area of the bank when he saw a girl curled in a ball on the ground, with two grown men standing above her, Tasing her. When he got approximately one foot away from the woman and the men, a woman driver yelled to the men that someone was behind them. Richard was then pepper-sprayed by one of two male attackers when he tried to intervene. He raced off to an adjoining fitness center.
A woman named Rachel, who was outside the fitness center, called 911 to report that a man was pepper-sprayed while attempting to help a woman who had been attacked. According to Rachel, Richard was in severe pain when he ran up to her while holding his eyes and yelling for help.
Richard gave descriptions of the attackers as being two large dark-haired men, with the driver of the white Buick or Crown Victoria being an older female, with “bleached blonde,” hair.
Bob, an architect working in his upstairs office in the adjoining building next to the alley relayed that he had heard the commotion and told the persons to ” keep the noise down.”
At the same time, two female joggers witnessed a young woman being shoved into a white Crown Victoria. Reportedly, they were near the same bank as was Richard, when they heard a girl scream and heard a Taser go off. They proceeded to cross the alley, beside the bank, noting that as they neared the commotion, the woman being Tasered, seemed to be in a violent struggle with her attackers.
The joggers, too, described the young woman as screaming while two men stood over her with a Taser. The men were dressed in black and had ski masks covering their faces. The woman on the ground wore her hair in a ponytail, which they described as being a dirty-blond color. Then a woman’s voice from the driver’s seat yelled, ” “Get the hell in the car.”
From there, the joggers witnessed the victim tossed into the back seat of the vehicle, which then frantically sped away. The woman driving the vehicle was “frenzied” and “the blinkers and turn signals” were being used erratically.
After talking with Richard, officers located the area of the attack. The victim was no where in sight, but what was found was one car in the bank parking lot, the back of a phone, a box of Tic-Tacs, a used container of Mace, a Mountain Dew bottle, a ball cap and a set of keys on the asphalt. Found in soft soil behind a hedge, said one officer, were what appeared to be foot and knee prints as “if someone lay in wait.” After checking with the bank, officers found it unlocked and entered. Inside the bank, all they found was an iPod lying on a counter.
Not until 11 o’clock that night did police identify the kidnapped victim as twenty-five-year-old Autumn Renee Williams. The green-eyed Culinary Arts student, who stood five-foot-four, was reported missing by her mother and stepfather, Candice and Mark Stevens, when she failed to return home around 9:30 that evening after her cleaning position at the Bancroft National Bank.
Shortly after arriving at the bank, seeing no sign of Autumn, the Stevens’ contacted the Logan Police Department. Two different officers then responded. From Mrs. Stevens, authorities learned that Autumn was a mother of three, and involved with a tumultuous pending divorce with her estranged husband of six-years, twenty-six-year-old Rodney Williams.
The center of the couple’s disagreements was custody of their three children, all under the age of five. According to Candace, Rodney did not want to pay child support for three kids.
THE POSSESSION
Blurb: When 29-year-old Valerie Harris severs the penis of her sexually abusive father, it makes national news in 2007.
Excerpt: When a frantic 9-1-1 call came into the police station at 8:30 p.m. on July 7, 2009, a sobbing twenty-nine-year-old Valerie Harris told the dispatcher she wanted desperately to save the life of her bleeding father, Harry Ridge.
She gave the operator her apartment address. She would later tell authorities that she did not want to kill her sexually abusive father, but only to disable his weapon of abuse-his penis.
She informed the operator she was walking in the direction of the police station, and then hung up. She recalled walking to the nearby Hudson River, and tossing the penis into the ocean. She never arrived at the police station.
Instead, she called her big sister Carleen, and confessed to her of what she had just done to their Liberian-born father. Carleen recalled being in total shock at her baby sisters gruesome confession. She begged Valerie not to discard the appendage, saying, doctors had the medical technology to reattach such things.
Valerie, her hair adorned with cornrows cried into the telephone. “It was the evil in our father. Now the evil is gone. He can hurt no more!”
Carleen advised Valerie to come to her home, and called an ambulance when her sister arrived. After seeing Valerie, her face stained with tears and splattered with blood, with the scalpel in hand and in a “zombie-like state of mind,” the ambulance crew, decided to check her into the Richmond University Medical Center psychiatric ward.
Meanwhile, back at Valerie’s apartment, two responding beat cops arrived. What the officers found, they said, they never forgot, and neither did the two million five hundred thousand other citizens.
Initially, the officers thought the man lying in a pool of blood had been shot or stabbed to death. Not until they turned him over onto his back did they realize the sadistic nature of his wounds.
MAIL-ORDER MURDER
Blurb: The last thing the beautiful Russian mail order bride Anna dreamed of in 2001, was being murdered by her controlling and older American husband.
Excerpt: Few women find themselves in such a bizarre relationship, as did eighteen-year-old Anna Tonkov, a Russian native. Speaking minimal and badly broken English, the family expressed high expectations for their tall, voluptuous raven-haired daughter. Anna was the only child of senior and ailing parents, and her mother said she and her husband only wanted the best for her.
In a country where the average yearly income was three hundred dollars per person, Mr. and Mrs. Tonkov, believed that Anna’s future happiness lay with the United States.
Mrs. Tonkov recalled how Anna did not want to leave. It was the parents’ idea for her to be a mail-order bride. According to Mrs. Tonkov, Anna said, “what if I don’t find a husband? What if you and papa waste your money?”
Mr. Tonkov recalled telling her daughter, that she was never a waste of their money. She was everything to them, and they wanted her to have everything America offered.
Mr. and Mrs. Tonkov then took Anna”s photograph in a dress she had made, not like many of the other women posing for the magazine-loose women, half naked. “No good man wants them,” they said.
Anna was a lady, explained Mr. Tonkov-a good Christian girl. Hardworking and responsible. She was raised the right way, they both said.
In the spring of 2007, Anna became number M245 in a Russian mail-order catalog with a circulation of over twenty million viewers. The magazine was bursting with dozens of glossy, full-color photographs of young hopeful women, all looking for husbands to rescue them from their poverty, stricken and unhappy lives.
It was not long before Anna had her first letter from a perspective admirer. She returned to her small four-room home from her part-time job at a nearby bakery, and her glowing parents greeted her just inside the front door.
Mrs. Tonkov recalled how surprised Anna was when she saw her and her husband smiling. She then handed her daughter the pink envelope with trembling hands.
At first, Anna was afraid to open the letter, said Mr. Tonkov, but he told her it was from an American man. He said he and his wife watched as Anna read each word silently; her large dark eyes wide with anticipation. They said she was hesitant to respond to the sender. Maybe friendship would bloom. “If not you brush up on language skills,” said Mrs. Tonkov.
That made Anna laugh, recalled Mr. Tonkov. He still remembers her pretty laugh, “as if (she were) a small child without cares.”
THICKER THAN WATER
Blurb: When 52 year old Kim Michaels is found dismembered inside her burned out home in 1996, officers find the crime more confusing than a jig saw puzzle.
Excerpt: According to fifty-eight-year-old Fire Chief Reginald Whitehall, a phone call came into the station around 9 pm, on August 18, 2010, sending the short, plump, salt-and-pepper-haired man and other personnel rushing to the scene. When they arrived, it appeared a Molotov cocktail, had been thrown through a living room window-a homemade device considered a simple and cheap form of arson. Minute’s later, area police arrived.
The caller identified herself as being fifty-two-year-old Kimberly Michaels, owner of the bombed house. The tall round woman with gray hair and brown-eyes, made it safely outside and waited on the sidewalk. She was being comforted by her neighbor, thirty-six-year-old Bonny-Jean, a petite red–head with blue-eyes, when fire trucks arrived.
The first thing forty-four-year-old veteran Detective Erick Bowers said he noticed was that the glass from the alcohol bottle was mostly on the outside of the window, lying on the ground. That alone screamed “inexperienced arsonist,” such as a young person, said the sandy-haired and green-eyed bachelor. That area was known as a drug-infested high-crime neighborhood.
According to the Fire Chief, the home was insured. There was minimal damage to the burned area. He knew of Kimberly’s neighborhood watch, and within that area, she was considered a hero. He said it took guts to stand up to drug dealers and gang members, but she did it.
Kimberly kept tabs on the officers assigned to her home arson case, recalled her older sister Rachel. According to Rachel, Kimberly said she wanted the crime solved. She wanted the bastard responsible for setting her beloved home on fire to pay. She was a determined woman, and she was not letting up.
According to Det. Bowers, he had his officers out in full force. Officers canvassed the entire area for five city blocks, looking for any witnesses, who might have seen or heard something peculiar around the time of the bombing. Reportedly, they found nothing useful to explain the bombing, or who might be the bomber.
Unfortunately, before the minor damage was repaired, the home was bombed again. This time two bombs came through the master bedroom of the home, Kimberly’s bedroom.
The Fire Chief was not the only one involved with the initial investigation who thought it strange for the same house to be bombed twice within two weeks. He said he wondered whether maybe the Good Samaritan had video taped the wrong crime, and her good luck had run out.
Talking with Rachel, police discovered Kimberly was a very caring daughter to their ailing parents. The father had built the couple’s house in 1940, when he and his wife first married. Kimberly grew up in that house and kept it immaculate. She never married or had children. She worked hard throughout her life and saved her money.
With the fires happening so close in time to one another, the Fire Chief theorized they might be retaliation bombings. Kimberly Michaels, was known for video taping the streets outside her house for drug activity. She then turned the tapes over to police, which had resulted in the arrests of several drug dealers.
ALL FOR THE FAMILY
Blurb: In 2003, as a way to erase her 22-year-old husbands criminal past, 19 year old Molly Abbott devises a ghoulish and desperate strategy.
Excerpt: If nineteen-year-old Molly had listened to her mother, perhaps the slender, freckle-faced felon and her now-divorced felon husband Ernie would not be sitting in a Texas prison. The way the auburn-haired Molly chose to make a new life for herself and Ernie shocked the town and became forever known as the cruelest and dumbest action one could take when one wants to do “all for the family.”
Candy will say she tried to talk her daughter out of marrying the lazy, drinking, sandy-haired, blue-eyed Ernie. But Molly was “starry-eyed head over heels in love,” or so she thought.
Molly insisted she knew the seldom-employed Ernie well enough to be his wife and allow him to be the only father her four-year-old son Mathew knew. Even though Mathew was conceived from an earlier relationship, Molly insisted that the uncouth and chain-smoking Ernie treated him respectfully. “He loves me and Mathew,” Molly would say.
After a two-month courtship, Molly married twenty-two-year-old Ernie Abbott. According to Candy, she hated Ernie and wanted everyone including Molly to know it. She told Molly she was making a drastic mistake by marrying Ernie, but her eldest daughter, insisted the two were soul mates. “He’s the one,” Molly said.
In a simple backyard ceremony with the theme of Harley Davidson motorcycles, the pair exchanged wedding vows. As if straight from the pages of American Rider, the bride wore jeans and a sleeveless Harley shirt. The groom donned black leather chaps and a vest emblazon with the famous cycle logo.
Friends and relatives surrounded the glowing couple and, happily toasted them with keg beer. A reception followed, with grilled hotdogs and burgers as the main course. They received numerous wedding gifts and money, to help them on their way to a long and happy life together”¦or so the giddy couple thought.
Candy was not the only one who disapproved of the courtship. Baby-sister Janie was as different from Molly as igloos are from tropical huts. Janie was known as the “pretty” sister and Molly the “plain Jane”. Janie thought Ernie was a loser, as did most of Molly’s family. She believed her big sister thought she was in love, because, according to Janie, Ernie was the first man to pay attention to Molly in a long time.
According to Janie, Molly called her jealous. Afterward, Janie thought it best to let Molly find out for herself what a “bad apple,” Ernie was. She gave the marriage two years, “Good things come to those who wait,” she said.
The next move for the newlyweds was buying the dream home Molly wanted so much. According to Molly, when she saw the two-story ranch-style house in a quiet and family-oriented neighborhood, with an adjoining playground and dog park, she knew, “This is the one for us.”
She said Ernie picked her up and swung her around, telling her the house would be theirs. They called the realtor, and three weeks later they moved in-but as renters, not owners.
According to the loan officer, both had inadequate credit. The loan officer informed the couple that with neither earning more then minimum wage, and Ernie’s upcoming legal matters, he did not see a home in their near future.
Molly was devastated, recalled Candy. Besides being a mother, Molly wanted so much to be a homeowner, she said.
Another person who had doubts about the couple getting the home was Rita, Ernie’s mother. Tall and skinny, with waist-length red hair, Rita dressed and partied like a teenager. When she learned of her son attempting to purchase a home, she told relatives, “With Ernie’s credit and legal matters, he couldn’t get a loan for a candy bar.
A SENSELESS KILLING
Blurb: This 2010 case uncovers how a 40 year old likable barmaid was lured to her death after she rejects her young admirers sexual advances.
Excerpt: It was a grand Thanksgiving evening for all at The Lakeway Lounge on November 25, 2010. The country band kept everyone on the dance floor. The occasional smacking of pool balls was heard above the laughter, and the crowd’s favorite barmaid, June McSween, was serving them. She had asked a co-worker to allow her to work the night shift, to earn a little extra cash. It was a choice she would not live to regret.
“Better times are coming,” said the bubbly blonde, who had only begun working for the small neighborhood pub four months earlier. According to patrons, June was looking forward to moving into her own apartment next to the pub in just a few days. Her forty-ninth birthday was only hours away.
Little did the joyful crowd realize, that that cool autumn evening would be the last time anyone saw June, except for her killer.
According to June’s timecard, she punched out at 3 am. Her last duties were washing glasses and ashtrays. Black Friday was on the horizon. Her birthday party would consist of her daughter and son, and a few close friends. Everything was planned-everything except what actually happened to the tall slender grandmother.
According to the bar owner, fifty-four-year-old Pablo Corteza, he returned to the bar at 8 a.m. the next morning and noticed June’s car with flattened tires in the parking lot, along with two other vehicles with flat tires.
The short, heavy Albanian immigrant said he called police, who did a quick search of the perimeter and canvassed the street, from inside their cruiser, but found nothing and soon left.
Shortly afterward, thirty-eight-year-old James Wager, a boat mechanic, noticed Pablo, and told him he had notified police because two boats at his business, located near the bar, were vandalized. According to the tall, slender man with sand-colored hair, as he walked around surveying the damaged boats, he discovered a woman’s shoe and underwear. He told Pablo, “This doesn’t look good.”
HORRIBLE SIN
Blurb: When 42 year old Fortune Teller Sally Vu and her 21-year-old daughter Veronica are discovered murdered and physically desecrated, in 2001, evidence points to revenge and a spell gone wrong.
Excerpt: It would have been a nice day in California except for two things; the vicious and bizarre murders of two Asian women and the whereabouts of the killer.
According to veteran Detective Marcus Brown, when he and partner Jonas Nutter, entered the mansion-like home, they discovered what looked to be a robbery gone wrong.
Det. Nutter described each room inside the home as having been ransacked as if the killer or killers were searching for something. However, nothing at the time seemed to be missing.
The home contained expensive furnishings and electronics, as was money and jewelry lying around. The detectives’ believed that if a robbery had occurred, the missing items must have much more value than material objects.
According to Det. Nutter, in one rear bedroom, officers discovered several cages containing snakes, and birds, of different species and sizes. The officers found it baffling that one family would have such a large number of birds and reptiles, but in police business, no two cases are alike.
WHERE’S CHRISTOPHER?
Blurb: When four year old Christopher Ellis goes missing, numerous excuses and an odd odor emanating from the backyard in 1991, raises eyebrows.
Excerpt: With a population of 35,313 people, Lancaster, Ohio, the proud birthplace of many notable actors, authors, sports stars, and cartoonist was founded in 1800, and the famous merchant, trailblazer, pioneer and soldier, Ebenezer Zane incorporated it as a town in 1831. Like all cities, however, it was not immune to murder. In fact, Lancaster was the location of the worst murder of a child in the county’s history.
According to twenty-eight-year-old Christina Sims, she hesitated many times before turning in her older brother John Engle for the murder of his four-year-old son Christopher. Torn between her love for John, and Christopher, and doing what was right, the soft-spoken, slender blonde with dark-eyes, said she looked to Christ for guidance. After speaking with her minister, she made the devastating choice of walking into the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Department on July 9, 1991.
Christina recalled that while trailing the short, young dispatcher down the dark hall, she recalled her first meeting with one-year-old Christopher, who was not yet able to stand on his own. It did not take the stay-at-home mom long to realize why the love-starved toddler was behind in his learning.
She described Christopher as her favorite nephew, and said, “All Christopher wanted was to be held and loved.” Christina explained that she occasionally visited her brother and sister-in- law, Edna Mae, and their growing brood. She described Christopher as “pitiful” and told how his siblings were mean to him, and hit him regularly. “He was such a loving child,” she said. When she visited the family in the summer of 1989, she asked where Christopher was. Christina claimed, her brother said the child had gone to live with his maternal grandmother in Columbus, but then he started to cry. He said Christopher was in a better place.
　
THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE
Blurb: This 2011 murder case involved 4 year old Marcie Willis, and her evil stepmother 25 year old Cheryl, from the small bedroom community of The Plains, Ohio.
Excerpt: Home to Ohio University and Hocking College, Athens County, Ohio, was formed in 1805 and held a population of 64,753. Nestled deep in the Appalachian foothills of Southeast Ohio, its lively arts and music scene entertained locals and visitors alike all year round. It owed its eclectic shopping and dining scene to the presence of a large university as well as its rich Appalachian heritage. Hunting, kayaking, bouldering, hiking, cycling, and mountain biking are just some of the county’s most popular outdoor activities.
Boasting more activities then ticks on a dog, the rare action the county was not proudly known for was cold-blooded murder. Monday, May 23, 2011, changed all of that, when the Athens County Emergency Medical Service received a call.
WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
Blurb: In 2011, 53 year old Russell Strothers, and his teenage accomplice find their victims through Craigslist and strike with calculating and deadly force.
Excerpt: Hoping to land a farm job and move close to his family, Jay Davis, then forty-seven, met his interviewer and walked with him through the autumn-colored woodlands of southeastern Ohio on November 6, 2011, at around 7:30 pm.
Everything went fine, said Davis, until he heard a curse word from the man who he knew as “Buck,” and then the click of a gun. He whirled around to find a pistol stuck in his face. He shielded the blow by knocking the firearm from its shooters hand, before running for his life.
Stumbling several times, while being fired upon, Davis raced through the thicket and hid in a creed bed under a tree for several hours; until he felt it safe enough to go for help. He feared bleeding to death he later told police.
This bizarre story was uncovered when a Noble County couple heard a knock on their farmhouse door. They were shocked to discover the terrified and bleeding South Carolina man pleading for help.
Immediately the victim was aided by the farm owners, and the authorities notified. Paramedics arrived, and the man was transported to the area hospital with a bullet wound to the right elbow. After interviewing the man in his hospital room, officials with the Noble County Sheriff’s Office, discovered that he had recently responded to an ad on Craigslist for a job on an Ohio cattle farm.
According to the victim, he had earlier that day met up with an older man who introduced himself as “Buck”, and a much younger male, who he was told was Buck’s nephew. The three ate breakfast in Marietta, paid for by “Buck”, before driving to the alleged cattle farm. Once there and according to Jay Davis, “Buck” told him the road to the cattle farm was closed due to a landslide and they needed to walk to the property through a heavily wooded area. A walk that nearly ended with murder.
THE GIRL NOT FORGOTTEN
Blurb: This cold case took 26 years to solve, but brought justice for 13-year-old Holly Buford, and put serial rapist, 40-year-old Stanley Snead, behind bars.
Excerpt: When a frantic thirty-six-year-old Jake Buford drove to the police station to report his thirteen-year-old daughter missing, little did the father of three realize she was already dead and buried.
The brown-haired man with a thick mustache, built like a lumberjack, recalled how the middle-aged and pleasantly plump dispatcher had looked up at him blankly and quietly said. “Has your daughter been missing for at least twenty-four hours?”
He told her “no,” and she nonchalantly told him the girl was probably hanging out with friends and would return home shortly. She then returned to her snack. When Jake told her, he and his older daughter and ex-wife, had contacted everyone the young girl knew, the dispatcher shrugged her shoulders while washing her sandwich down with a soda.
Jake said he felt his fear for his missing daughter, turning to anger at this arrogant, non-caring person who took his dilemma with a grain of salt. He again asked her to allow him to make an official report. She said “no exceptions,” then closed the window. The desperate father turned and left.
HOME TOWN HERO-Solving the Deaf School Murders
Blurb: When deaf students are murdered in the prestigious Rose Brick College of the Deaf in 2008, everyone is shocked when discovering the killer is one of
Excerpt: According to Dillon Short, Jose Nezda, would never realize the amount of pain he caused his victims’ families’. The tall father with the receding hairline and glasses said there was no amount of apology from Jose that would fill the emptiness in their hearts. Jose, said Short, was exactly where his kind belongs.
At a time when young people are a step closer to their future, and parents look forward to being empty nesters, a parent’s worse nightmare took place, in a small college town, in up–scale Massachusetts’.
Using sign language, forty-two-year-old Sandy, said good-bye to her eighteen-year-old son and youngest child Jeremy, as he excitedly exited her vehicle in front of the Prestigious Rose Brick School for the deaf. “Call me every night,” the slender freckle faced mother said in sign.
“Don’t worry,” signed the scrawny red-haired boy who suffered from Cerebral Palsy, as he smiled and walked into the four-story brick building.
Forty-seven-year-old Dillon, recalled how thrilled the family was upon hearing of Jeremy’s acceptance into Rose Brick. “It was his first choice of college,” he said.
The energetic and always smiling student, shared his west wing dorm with similarly knowledge-craving and elated students, many far from home like him. Nineteen-year-old Mitch, a slender dark-haired and dark-eyed drama student, who dreamed of being the next Steven Spielberg, recalled how Jeremy religiously kept the door of his room open. He said the two became “fast friends.”
Everyone seemed to like the outgoing Jeremy with his infectious smile. He talked to everyone. No matter how late it was, if someone had a problem to talk out, Jeremy’s shoulder was readily available.
A female student recalled that Jeremy had two older sisters, and it didn’t embarrass him to discuss girl stuff, such issues as boys or weight or jealously. He always gave good advice, she said. His advice and their talks were what she said she would miss the most about him.
Everyone at school missed Jeremy that early morning, just one short month after the start of the semester. Mitch, who had the room two doors down, reported Jeremy missing from math class. He recalled that when leaving his room that morning, he had noticed Jeremy’s door closed. He thought that strange, because Jeremy’s door was always open. “He liked watching people walk down the hall and would wave at all of us,” Mitch said.
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