September 2021 - George Pallas

2021/09/272021/09/24

John Jourbet: The Truth About a Loathsome Serial Killer

After last week’s Olympic Park bombing case, this week we look at Nebraska serial killer John Jourbet. Over fifteen months in 1982-1983, Jourbet killed a young boy in Portland, Maine and two in the Omaha, Nebraska area..

John Jourbet

John Jourbet clearly had a troubled childhood. He entered the world in Lawrence, Massachusetts on July 2, 1963. His parents divorced soon after his birth, and his mother did not allow Jourbet to see his father. In 1971, Jourbet and his mother moved out of the family home into a run-down apartment. Jourbet’s mother was very controlling, and by this time, he had begun to hate her as a result.

His schoolmates considered young John something of an outcast. He joined the Cub Scouts trying to find a way to “belong.” But it was also at this time when he began to have disturbing fantasies about murdering strangers on the street.

When Jourbet was 13, he stabbed a girl with a pencil and felt stimulated when she cried in pain. The next day, he sliced another girl with a razor blade as he biked past. In yet another incident, he beat and nearly strangled a boy. Unfortunately, he was never caught for any of these attacks.

John Jourbet Begins Killing

It was Sunday, August 22, 1982. Richard “Ricky” Stetson, 11, went jogging on the 3.5-mile Black Cove Trail near Portland, Maine. His parents notified police when Ricky had not returned home by dark. The next day, a motorist on I-295 discovered the boy’s body. Police arrested a suspect, but the forensic evidence did not match him. However, the suspected stayed in jail for nearly a year and a half before authorities released him.

Ricky Stetson, the first boy Jourbet killed

Over a year later, on Sunday, September 18, 1983, 13-year-old Danny Joe Eberle went missing while on his newspaper route. Danny lived in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue, Nebraska and had a route for the Omaha World-Herald. He had only delivered 3 of the 70 papers on his route.

Danny’s brother also had a route for the World-Herald. He hadn’t seen Danny that Sunday but did remember a white man in a tan car following him on previous days.

Danny’s bicycle and undelivered papers turned up at the address of his fourth customer, but there was no sign of Danny. Sadly, his body was found three days later, about 4 miles from where he left his bicycle. His hands and feet were tied, and surgical tape covered his mouth. The rope used to tie Danny was quite unusual and didn’t match samples in the FBI’s database.

Another young boy disappeared from nearby Papillion, Nebraska three months later, on December 2. Christopher Walden was 12 years old. His body was found two days later, stabbed and nearly decapitated. Although there were similarities to Danny Eberle’s murder, there were differences as well.

Christopher Walden, the last Jourbet murder victim

Arrest and Trial

January 11, 1984 was a Wednesday. A preschool teacher noticed a young man driving around in the area of the murders. She thought he looked suspicious, so she wrote down is license number. When the driver saw her doing this, he stopped and threatened her before driving off. The car wasn’t tan, but it turned out to be a rental. The renter was John Jourbet, a radar technician from Offutt Air Force Base, which is in the Omaha area. His own car, a tan Chevrolet Nova, was in the shop.

When police and FBI agents searched Jourbet’s room, they discovered rope matching the rope used to bind Danny Eberle. It has been specially made for the U.S. military in South Korea.

Pioneering FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler worked up a profile for the case. The profile matched Jourbet in every respect. Ressler presented the case to a class at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. There a policeman from Maine noted similarities to the case of the Stetson boy. Jourbet had been living with his mother in Portland at the time of that murder. Ressler and Maine authorities hypothesized that Jourbet joined the military to get away from the Stetson killing.

John Jourbet prison photo taken shortly before his execution in 1996

Jourbet confessed to the Nebraska murders on January 12, 1984. Charged with the murders, he initially pled not guilty but changed his plea to guilty. A three-judge panel sentenced him to death. He also received a life sentence in Maine for the Ricky Stetson murder (Maine doesn’t have the death penalty).

Epilogue

After exhausting his appeals, John Jourbet died in the Nebraska electric chair on July 17, 1996.

A book on the case by Mark Pettit and Marcelo Galvao, A Need to Kill, appeared in 2013.

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2021/09/202021/09/20

Olympic Park: Powerful Bombs Make for Terror and Panic

This week we leave the mountains of southwestern Utah, where last week we learned about the massacre at Mountain Meadows. Now we focus our gaze on Atlanta, Georgia. It was there, in 1996 that powerful pipe bombs exploded in the Centennial Olympic Park. Miraculously, the blast only killed one person (another died of a heart attack). The low death toll was because of the heroic actions of security guard Richard Jewell. Sadly, the FBI initially suspected Jewell and the media vilified him, but the real bomber was Eric Rudolph.

Centennial Olympic Park

Summer of 1996 saw the Olympic Games came to Atlanta, Georgia. As part of the millions spent on infrastructure improvements, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games created a 22-acre park. The ACOG envisioned the park, named Centennial Olympic Park, as the “town square” of the Olympics.

On July 27, 1996, thousands of people gathered in the park for a late-night concert by Jack Mack and the Heart Attack.

Bombs in Olympic Park

Shortly after midnight, someone planted a military field pack under a bench near the concert’s sound tower. The pack contained three bombs consisting of nitroglycerine dynamite and a pipe filled with smokeless powder, surrounded by 3-inch masonry nails. The pack contained steel plates intended to focus the force of the bombs in a specific direction. When the bombs exploded, the nails would act as shrapnel, ripping into anyone and anything nearby.

Olympic Park security guard Richard Jewell noticed the field pack under a bench leaning against the 40-foot-tall NBC sound tower. He alerted agents of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to the suspicious package. The GBI in turn called in the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). As the bomb squad prepared to investigate, Jewell and other security guards began clearing the area.

Two to three minutes into the evacuation, and while it was still underway, the bombs exploded. However, because security personnel had started moving spectators away from the area, the human damage was much less than it could have been. There was only one fatality from the explosion. Forty-four-year-old Alice Hawthorne died when a masonry nail pierced her skull. Another man, 40-year-old Melih Uzunyol died of a heart attack while running to the scene. Uzunyol was a cameraman for Turkish Radio and Television Corporation.

Shrapnel damage (R) to Olympic Park sculpture

Richard Jewell Falsely Suspected

Security guard Richard Jewell’s actions in discovering the bomb and starting to evacuate the area probably saved many lives. Yet before long, the hero came under suspicion of setting the bombs. Although the FBI never arrested Jewell, they identified him as a person of interest and searched his home. Agents also dug extensively into Jewell’s background. Eventually, though, it became clear that Jewell had nothing to do with the bombings.

Bomb damage to the NBC sound tower at Olympic Park (Don Ramsey Logan)

After clearing Jewell, the FBI had little to go on until the following year. Then additional bombings in Georgia and Alabama made it clear that the real Olympic Park bomber was still active.

The bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama killed police officer Robert Sanderson and seriously injured nurse Emily Lyons. However, Lyons was able to give investigators a partial license plate number, which led them to identify Eric Robert Rudolph as their suspect.

Olympic Park Bombing Solved

Eric Rudolph went into hiding, dodging law enforcement for more than five years. He made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 1998 with a $1 million reward offered

On May 31, 2003, at 4:00 a.m., rookie Murphy, North Carolina police officer Jeffrey Postell was on routine patrol. Postell saw what he though was a burglar prowling around behind a Save-A-Lot grocery store. It was Eric Rudolph, foraging for food in the store’s dumpster.

On April 8, government officials announced that Rudolph would plead guilty to four bombings, including the one at Centennial Olympic Park. Rudolph’s rabid anti-abortion and anti-gay views motivated the bombings. His confession formally exonerated Richard Jewell.

Epilogue

Richard Jewell did achieve his goal of becoming a police officer and later worked as a deputy sheriff. He died at age 44 on August 29, 2007, of complications from diabetes.

Eric Rudolph is serving four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole at the ADX Florence supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He still manages to have vitriolic screeds published through ultra-right-wing outlets.

Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwin published a book on the case, The Suspect, in 2019. That year also saw the release of Richard Jewell, a biopic about the hero security guard.

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2021/09/122021/09/12

Mountain Meadows: Pioneering Families See Terror and Murder

Last week, we saw how, in 1990, Danny Rolling inflicted terror on the college students in Gainesville, Florida. This week, we look back more than 160 years to an incident even more terrifying. In 1857 Utah, Mormon militia members massacred between 120 and 140 people travelling from Arkansas to California at Mountain Meadows.

The Mountain Meadows

An oasis of grass in mountainous southwestern Utah, the Mountain Meadows was a spot where travelers could graze their animals. It was, if you will, a nineteenth-century rest stop on the old Spanish Trail. Utah in 1857 was not yet a state but a territory. Its governor was Brigham Young, who was also president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In effect, Utah then was a theocracy and Young was virtually its absolute monarch.

Joseph Smith founded the LDS church in western New York in 1830. The next year, Smith moved the church to Kirtland, Ohio. He also established an outpost in Jackson County, Missouri, where he planned to eventually move the church. But Missouri residents, perhaps jealous of Mormon success and definitely concerned about their growing political power, drove the Mormons out. Their next stop was Nauvoo, Illinois. Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were jailed in Carthage, Illinois in 1844, accused of treason. While in jail, a mob killed both men. Brigham Young then took over as leader of the LDS church and, in 1847, led his followers west to Utah.

Brigham Young. Historians continue to debate his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

A decade later, what Young envisioned as a pre-millennial “Kingdom of God” was mostly flourishing in the deserts and mountains of Utah. Although Utah was a territory of the United States, the LDS was notably reluctant to accept federal authority.

The Utah War

Soon after taking office in March 1857, President James Buchanan decided to replace Young as governor. Buchanan appointed Alfred Cumming and ordered about 2,000 U.S. troops under Colonel Edmund Alexander to the Salt Lake valley. They were to establish an outpost in the territory.

In Utah, officials and residents alike viewed the Federal troops as an invading army sent to annihilate them. They prepared for war. Both sides were, in fact, ready to fight. However, although the conflict lasted until 1858, the “Utah War” had a few skirmishes but no battles as such. In the end, both parties reached a compromise. President Buchanan offered a free pardon to all Mormons for acts incident to the conflict. In turn, the Mormons agreed to submit to government authority.

Siege at Mountain Meadows

If you were paying attention to the dates, you noticed that the Mountain Meadows Massacre occurred during the Utah War. The chain of events leading to the tragedy in Utah began on May Day 1857. It was then that a wagon train led by Capt. John Baker and Alexander Fancher left Arkansas for California. The Arkansas emigrants followed the California Trail through present-day Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming before ending up in Salt Lake City.

Refused supplies in Salt Lake, the wagons turned southwest following the old Spanish Trail. They reached the Mountain Meadows on September 5 or 6. There was plenty of grass for their animals and a freshwater spring.

The Baker-Fancher pary's campsite at the Mountain Meadows in 2005 (author's photo) — The Baker-Fancher pary’s campsite at the Mountain Meadows in 2005 (author’s photo)

On Monday, September 7, a party of Mormon militia disguised as Paiute Indians attacked the emigrants in their camp. Despite the surprise attack, the Baker-Fancher party quickly regrouped, chained their wagon wheels together, and returned fire.

However, the Arkansans couldn’t withstand a protracted siege. Their ammunition and food quickly dwindled, and they were unable to reach the spring for fresh water. Although a few actual Paiutes participated, it was clear to the besieged emigrants that white men were among the attackers.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre

After five days under attack, Mormon militia leader John D. Lee approached the campsite under a white flag. He offered to conduct the travelers safely to Cedar City, about 35 miles away. But the emigrants would have to surrender their wagons and their weapons. As outlandish as that sounds, the Baker-Fancher party probably had little choice by then but to accept those terms.

The Mormon militia divided the emigrants into three groups: the men, the women and children, and the wounded. A militia escort accompanied each male member of the Baker-Fancher party. Then, according to a pre-arranged, plan, a signal was given. The militiamen then turned and shot the man they were escorting. More militia hiding in nearby bushes ambushed and killed the women and children. Seventeen children, thought to be too young to tell the story, survived.

Christopher "Kit" Carson Fancher was 6 at the time and survived the massacre — Christopher “Kit” Carson Fancher was 6 at the time and survived the massacre

Every militiaman was sworn to secrecy. The plan was to blame Native Americans for the murders. There was considerable effort to cover up the massacre as well. Although the Los Angeles Star printed a report in 1857, the killings didn’t become general knowledge until two years later. In that year, Brevet Major James H. Carleton, who led the first federal investigation, published his findings.

James Henry Carleton conducted the first federal investigation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre

Epilogue

LDS leaders blamed the Baker-Fancher party themselves for the massacre, citing their allegedly disorderly and violent behavior. Most historians reject claims that the emigrants were overly unruly. It’s likely a combination of war hysteria, violent Mormon sermons, and jealousy of the emigrants’ obvious wealth were all factors.

Sarah Frances Baker Mitchell (L) , then 3, and Nancy Sophrina Huff Cates (R), then 4, both survived the massacre

Seventeen years after the massacre, LDS leader (and Brigham Young’s adopted son) John D. Lee stood trial for the massacre. His first trial ended in a hung jury. A second trial in 1876 resulted in a conviction. Lee was executed by firing squad at the Mountain Meadows in 1877, twenty years after the original tragedy. Lee never denied his complicity but claimed he had not personally killed anyone and was nothing but a scapegoat. However, in his Life and Confessions of John D. Lee maintained that Brigham Young himself instigated the massacre. Historians have debated Young’s involvement ever since. Given the immense power he wielded in Utah, it’s difficult to believe that the massacre could have happened without at least Young’s knowledge.

Memorial at the Mountain Meadows campiste of the Baker-Fancer party in 2005 (author's photo) — Memorial at the Mountain Meadows campiste of the Baker-Fancer party in 2005 (author’s photo)

The Mountain Meadows Massacre remained largely unknown, hidden by LDS obfuscation for almost a century. Then Juanita Brooks, herself an active member of the LDS Church, published The Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1950. This was the first book to shine a critical light on the incident. Although the Church didn’t take any official action, unofficially Brooks faced ostracism for criticizing the LDS. In 2002, Will Bagley built on Brooks’ initial work in his book, Blood of the Prophets.

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2021/09/052021/08/29

Danny Rolling: A Strange Serial Killer, Terror on Campus

Our case last week was the story of the racially motivated lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. This week, we meet Danny Rolling. Over four days in 1990, Rolling struck terror into the hearts of students in the college town of Gainesville, Florida.

Danny Rolling

You could hardly call Danny Rolling’s childhood idyllic. His father was a Shreveport, Louisiana policeman who regularly abused his family. He told Danny from a young age that he was an unwanted child. During Danny’s teen and young adult years, he was arrested several times for robberies and once as a peeping Tom.

In May 1990, a family fight led Rolling to try to kill his father. The senior Rolling lived but lost an eye and an ear. August 1990 found Rolling in the college town of Gainesville, Florida, home of the University of Florida. It was there he committed the series of crimes that earned him the sobriquet of “The Gainesville Ripper.”

Danny Rolling Goes on a Killing Spree

It was Friday, August 24, 1990. In the early morning hours, Rolling broke into the apartment shared by Sonja Larson and Christina “Christi” Powell. Both were 17-year-old freshmen at the University of Florida. Leaving Christi asleep on the downstairs couch, he went upstairs where he taped Sonja’s mouth shut and stabbed her to death. She died trying to fight him off.

Sonja Larson, Danny Rolling's first Gainesville victim (Daytona Beach News-Journal) — Sonja Larson, Danny Rolling’s first Gainesville victim (Daytona Beach News-Journal)

Back downstairs, he woke Christi and taped her mouth shut as well. He then cut her clothes off, raped her, and stabbed her in the back five times. He posed both women’s bodies in sexually provocative positions, took a shower, then left.

Christi Powell (Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

One day later, on August 25, Rolling pried open a sliding glass door to break into the apartment of Christa Hoyt. Christ, an 18-year-old honors student at Santa Fe Community College, was not home. However, Rolling waited for her in the living room. When she returned, he subdued her with a chokehold. Then he taped her mouth shut, cut off her clothes, raped her, and stabbed her in the back. Rolling left, but discovering his wallet missing, returned to make sure he hadn’t left it in the Hoyt apartment. While he was there, he decapitated her body and placed the head on a shelf facing the corpse. He wanted to add to the shock of whoever discovered the dead woman.

Christa Hoyt’s high school graduation portrait (findagrave.com)

The Final Gainesville Murders

The final murders in Gainesville occurred on Monday, August 27. By then, the story of three murdered coeds had sparked terror in Gainesville. Since it was early in the academic year, some students withdrew while others transferred to different schools. Those that stayed took extra precautions.

The University of Florida campus in Gainesville, Florida (Tampa Bay Times)

Precautions weren’t enough for 23-year-old Tracy Paules. That Monday, Rolling pried open the glass door to the apartment she shared with Manny Taboada, also 23. He found Manny asleep in one of the bedrooms and, after a struggle, killed him. Investigating the commotion, Tracey encountered Rolling. She tried to barricade herself in her bedroom but Rolling broke down the door.

Manny Taboada (Daytona Beach News-Journal)

Once inside Tracy’s bedroom, Rolling repeated his previous pattern. He taped her mouth shut, cut off her clothes, and raped her. Then he turned her face down and stabbed her in the back. Although he posed Tracy’s body suggestively, he left Manny’s body alone.

Tracy Paules (Daytona Beach News-Journal)

Danny Rolling Faces the Music

Rolling ended up in jail after robbing a supermarket in Ocala, Florida. While there, investigators received a tip that he might be involved not only in the Gainesville murders but three in Louisiana as well.

From the evidence locker, they retrieved a cassette tape player. Police found the tape player at the makeshift campsite where he had been living. Police also found audio diaries that alluded to the Gainesville murders.

Danny Rolling on trial for murder (Jacksonville.com)

Rolling was to go to trial in 1994, nearly four years after the murders. He claimed his motive was to become a “superstar” like Ted Bundy (who also operated in the Gainesville area). But before the trial started, Rolling unexpectedly pled guilty to all charges. Pleading guilty didn’t buy him anything; he received the death penalty.

Epilogue

The State of Florida executed Danny Rolling with a lethal injection on October 25, 2006. Shortly beforehand, he confessed to three additional murders in Louisiana.

Rolling is said to be the inspiration for the 1996 slasher film, Scream.

Like many notorious cases, this one spawned several true crime books. One of the earliest is Mary Ryzuk’s The Gainesville Ripper. Shortly after Rolling’s execution, Sondra London released The Making of a Serial Killer, a book she wrote with his participation. A second edition appeared in 2020. A more recent treatment of the case is J.T. Hunter’s A Monster of All Time.

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