May 2022 - George Pallas

2022/05/302023/03/24

Lori Ann Auker: New CSI Breakthrough Catches a Killer

Welcome to the hundredth post in the Old Crime is New Again blog! Last week, I reported the case of Corey Parker, a young Florida coed murdered by an obsessive stalker. This week, we look at the death of Lori Ann Auker, a young Pennsylvania mother killed by her ex-husband. It took sophisticated technology—and her cat—to solve her murder.

Lori Ann Auker

Lori Ann Auker was only 19 but she had a child and an ex-husband. She told friends and coworkers that her ex, Robert “Bob” Auker was stalking her. This became significant on May 24, 1989. That day, Lori Ann didn’t show up for work at a pet shop in the Susquehanna Valley Mall. Her parents found her 1976 Pontiac Le Mans in the mall parking lot and alarmed, reported her missing to police.

Three weeks later, on June 12, a woman walking along a dirt road to her grandparents’ house discovered a body. Despite severe decomposition, dental records identified the body as that of Lori Ann Auker.

Ex-husband Robert Auker was naturally a suspect. For one thing, he had a shaky alibi. Also, witnesses saw him meticulously scrubbing his 1984 Chevrolet Celebrity on the evening of May 24. He traded in the car three days later. And if that weren’t enough to raise suspicions, Auker took out an accidental death and dismemberment policy on Lori Ann. He took out the policy even though the couple been divorced for six months. But police lacked hard evidence to link him to Lori Ann’s death.

Who Killed Lori Ann Auker?

In 1989, video surveillance cameras were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are today. But one place that did have cameras was bank Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). And it was a bank ATM camera that captured a telling image. It was Auker’s Celebrity pulling in front of Lori Ann as she tried to walk from her car to her job. When his car drove away, Lori Ann was gone.

Unfortunately, in 1989, surveillance cameras recorded their images on video tape, recording over old images with new ones. The tape in this ATM was almost worn out. But with help from NASA, they had enhanced images to work with. Unfortunately, the license plate was still not readable. But automotive experts identified the car in the picture as the back end of a 1983 or 1984 Chevrolet Celebrity.

Entrance to the Susquehanna Valley Mall where Lori Ann worked at a pet shop

Even though Auker had sold the car immediately after the murder, investigators tracked it down. They were able to locate the car and prove it was the car in the bank ATM video.

Technicians also recovered several hairs that were “similar” to Lori Ann’s (decomposition prevented establishing an exact match). Moreover, three cat hairs found in the Celebrity’s trunk proved to be an exact match for Lori Ann’s cat.

Epilogue

Robert Donald Auker went on trial on October 26, 1995. The video of Lori Ann disappearing into his car destroyed his alibi. The cat hairs proved Lori Ann’s body had been in his trunk. And a forensic entomologist testified that insect activity on the body proved death had occurred very close to May 24, the day Lori Ann disappeared.

Robert Auker in a 2021 prison photo (Pennsylvania Department of Corrections)

The jury found Auker guilty of murder. He was sentenced to death for murder plus a consecutive sentence of ten to twenty years for kidnapping. On July 31, 1996, an appeals court vacated the death sentence, but Robert Auker will spend the rest of his life in prison. He currently (2022) resides in State Correctional Institute Phoenix in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

SCI Phoenix in Collegeville, Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania Department of Corrections)

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2022/05/222023/03/24

Corey Parker: Murder of a Beautiful Young Coed

Did you catch my blog last week? Of course you didn’t. I played hooky and took a week off. Two weeks ago, I featured the story of Donald Harvey. Harvey was an Ohio serial killer who stalked hospitals for nearly twenty years before he faced justice. This week, we consider the case of Corey Parker, a young Florida woman who became the victim of an obsession.

Corey Parker

Corey Lynn Parker was a native of Rochester, New York. Like many, she came to Jacksonville, Florida for the sun and water. But, according to the Dateline episode Rear Window, she stayed for the people. She attended college and worked part-time at the Ragtime Tavern in nearby Atlantic Beach. She had had many friends.

Corey didn’t go home for Thanksgiving break in 1998. Instead, she stayed in Florida to pick up some extra shifts at the Ragtime Tavern. Wednesday, November 25, Corey met friends at The Ritz, one of her favorite hangouts. The next day, of course, was Thanksgiving Day.

Nobody saw Corey on Thanksgiving but, being busy with the holiday, no one gave that much notice. It wasn’t until she didn’t show up for work on Friday, November 27 that people became worried.

Corey Parker Found Murdered

With Corey a no-show at the Ragtime Tavern, one of her coworkers, a friend, volunteered to go check on her. He went to her nearby apartment, but Corey didn’t answer the door. Sent back a second time, the worker peeked through an opening in the blinds and saw a bloody foot. He raced back to the restaurant to call the police (this was before cell phones).

Police quickly arrived and found the young woman dead, lying in a pool of her own blood. It was obviously a homicide; an autopsy would later determine Corey suffered at least 101 stab and slash wounds. Her killer had posed the body in a sexually suggestive manner, but there was no evidence of sexual assault.

The first-floor apartment showed no signs of forced entry. But there was evidence that the killer had entered and left by a window in the kitchen. Police found bloodstains on the kitchen sink and on the inside and outside of that window.

Police Look for Suspects

Despite having forensic evidence, it took nearly two years for police to solve Corey’s murder. Their first suspect was a dishwasher at Ragtime named Eric Jones. Coworkers said Jones had a crush on Corey and, indeed, it seemed to be more of an obsession. In the days leading up to the murder, Jones had been calling Corey repeatedly.

Eric Jones was a dishwasher at the Ragtime Tavern. Police cleared him as a suspect. (Cinemaholic)

During his interview with police, Jones said some disturbing things. But his DNA did not match the DNA gathered at the crime scene. Detectives decided he was unstable, but not guilty.

Another suspect was Tiffany Zienta. Tiffany was a friend of Corey who had been out with her at the Ritz the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. Tiffany had been close to Corey, so much so that some people believed she had a romantic interest her. Initially helpful, Tiffany quickly hired an attorney and refused to give a DNA sample. However, the DNA collected in Corey’s apartment had X and Y chromosomes, indicating a male donor. Police wrote off Tiffany as a suspect.

A Hot Suspect in the Corey Parker Murder

Nearly two years passed. Police tested DNA samples from 38 men who knew Corey, but none matched the sample taken from her apartment. This led investigators to question their initial assumption that Corey knew her attacker. But soon the offer of a $20,000 reward generated a new lead.

Robert Denney was 17 at the time and worked in a restaurant only a few miles from Corey’s apartment. Coworkers told investigators that Denney had behaved strangely after Corey’s murder. He came into work crying and said that his son had been killed in a car accident in Texas. But Denney didn’t have a son.

Now suspicious, police quickly determined that Denney lived with his sister in the same complex as Corey Parker. The sister had kicked Denney out because of his odd behavior. It developed that her apartment had a direct view of Corey’s back window. Police found Denney had relocated to Easton, Maryland, where they questioned him.

Without enough evidence for a warrant, investigators tried to obtain Denney’s DNA through subterfuge. However, he took cigarette butts with him and refused to lick an envelope to seal it. Only when detectives shadowing Denney saw him spit several times on the ground did they manage to get his DNA. It was a match.

Epilogue

It took a jury only 45 minutes to find Robert Erik Denney guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. He continues to deny killing Corey Parker.

Robert Denney denies killing Corey Parker in a television interview from prison (Dateline NBC)

When Robert Denney was eight years old, his brother, Patrick, killed a woman by stabbing her 98 times. Some postulate that Robert Denney was trying to one-up his brother when he killed Corey Parker.

You can watch the Dateline episode Rear Window at nbcnews.com.

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2022/05/082023/03/24

Donald Harvey: Insider Killer Stays Hidden for Years

Last week, we saw how Shirley Allen used antifreeze to poison her husband. If you’ve watched her daughter on Evil Lives Here, you get an idea just how twisted this woman was. This week’s case involves another monster in human form, Donald Harvey. For nearly two decades, Harvey quietly killed patients in hospitals in northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Donald Harvey, an Indiscriminate Killer

Born in 1952 in Butler County, Ohio near Cincinnati, Donald Harvey quit school in the ninth grade and got a job as an orderly at Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky. He started killing soon after. He later confessed to killing at least a dozen patients in the ten months he worked there. One killing, his second, took place with a 12-year-old boy in the room.

After leaving Marymount, Harvey went to work at the Cincinnati V.A. Medical Hospital as an orderly and autopsy assistant. He continued his murders there. But he was forced to leave when he was caught stealing body parts for occult rituals.

The killings continued at Harvey’s next stop, Cincinnati’s Drake Memorial Hospital. Misdeeds at hospitals often escape full scrutiny. We saw that in the cases of Kristen Gilbert and Charles Cullen, the killer nurses I’ve profiled in past blogs. In Donald Harvey’s case, he was able to kill repeatedly for 17 years before authorities finally unmasked him.

Donald Harvey’s Murders Finally Come to Light

Donald Harvey may have continued killing for many more years except for a slip-up in March 1987. A man named John Powell had spent several months on life support at Drake after a motorcycle accident. When he died suddenly, the medical examiner conducted an autopsy. The autopsy showed Powell died from cyanide poisoning.

Harvey became a ‘person of interest’ after his forced resignation from the V.A. hospital came to light. When brought in for questioning, he confessed to “euthanizing” Powell with cyanide.

Television reporter Pat Minarcin from Cincinnati television station WCPO decided to investigate further. He quite reasonably assumed that Harvey hadn’t suddenly started killing at age 35. He was right. His investigative report found several nurses at Drake who had raised concerns with administrators over the increased number of deaths after Harvey joined the hospital. The hospital ordered them to keep quiet.

Pat Minarcin broke the Donald Harvey story wide open (WCPO-TV)

Minarcin soon had enough material for a half-hour on-air report. In it, he identified at least 24 deaths linked to Harvey over a four-year period.

Donald Harvey Takes a Plea Deal

Based on the evidence in the Minarcin report, Harvey’s attorney negotiated a plea deal. He offered to plead Harvey guilty to all 24 murders if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. In August 1987, he pleaded guilty to 24 counts of first-degree murder and received three concurrent life sentences.

But the justice system wasn’t done with Donald Harvey. He later pleaded guilty to nine murders at Marymount in the 1970s. He received a sentence of life plus twenty years to run concurrently with his Ohio sentences.

Donald Harvey prison mugshot (Ohio Department of Corrections)

Ultimately, Donald Harvey pled guilty to 37 murders. But he confessed to killing as many as 50 people. The total number of murders is probably even higher. In his confessions, Harvey tried to claim he killed only to ease the suffering of the terminally ill. But he also admitted he killed some patients because he was angry with them.

Epilogue

On March 28, 2017, guards found Donald Harvey severely beaten in his cell at the Toledo Correctional Institution. He died on March 30. Fellow inmate James Elliot was convicted of Harvey’s murder.

You can read more about the case in Angel of Death: The Life of Serial Killer Donald Harvey. Another perspective on the case comes from Harvey’s court-appointed attorney, Bill Whalen, in Defending Donald Harvey.

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2022/05/012023/03/24

Shirley Allen: Her Obsession with Murder for Money

Last week, I presented the sad case of Tera Smith. Tera was only sixteen when she vanished from Redlands, California. More than twenty years later, her disappearance remains unsolved. This week’s case is that of the many-married Shirley Allen. In 1982, Shirley poisoned her sixth husband with ethylene glycol. She probably poisoned at least two of her previous husbands as well, one fatally.

Shirley Allen

Shirley Allen entered the world as Shirley Elizabeth Goude in 1941 in St. Louis, Missouri. Little information exists about her early life, but she was obviously unlucky in love. She married a total of six times to five different men. Several of her husbands developed health problems shortly after the wedding.

In October 1968, Shirley married her first husband, Joe Sinclair. Eight months later, Shirley tried to get rid of him with rat poison. Sinclair informed authorities, but they did not file any charges. Instead, Sinclair wisely divorced Shirley and got away from her.

Shirley married for the fifth time in 1977, when she wed John Gregg. The following year, after being married to Shirley for less than twelve months, Gregg collapsed and died. Initially, authorities ruled it a natural death. Shirley had hoped to collect on Gregg’s life insurance. She was furious when she learned he’d recently changed the beneficiary of the policy, leaving her nothing.

Shirley Allen Poisons Husband Number Six

Lloyd Allen married Shirley in 1981, her final spin of the matrimonial wheel. Lloyd’s health soon began a precipitous decline. When he complained that his drinks tasted “off,” Shirley explained she’d added iron supplements “for his health.” Unfortunately for him, he took her at her word. Lloyd Allen died on November 1, 1982, leaving behind a $25,000 life insurance policy.

Whispers about the unnatural nature of Lloyd’s death began to circulate. An autopsy determined Lloyd’s body contained a lethal amount of ethylene glycol. Ethylene glycol is a sweet-tasting, odorless substance. It is the main ingredient in automotive antifreeze and is a deadly poison if ingested. With an autopsy confirming foul play, police arrested Shirly on November 6.

The old Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla, Missouri where Shirley Allen stood trial for poisoning her husband, Lloyd

Shirley Allen went on trial two years later in Rolla, Missouri. Her two daughters from a previous marriage, Norma Hawkins, 18, and Paula Hawkins, 17, agreed to testify for the prosecution if they didn’t seek the death penalty. On the stand, the girls testified they’d seen Shirley put antifreeze in Lloyd’s drinks. They also said Shirley sent them to buy antifreeze so she could “finish him [Lloyd] off.” And they further testified that their mother sent them to look for tainted Tylenol capsules in the wake of the infamous Chicago Tylenol poisonings.

Epilogue

It took the jury less than three hours and only three votes to convict Shirley Allen of first-degree murder. With the death penalty off the table, the judge sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 50 years. Shirly died in prison on April 2, 1998. She was 56 or 57 years old (her exact birthdate is uncertain).

Some sources report that another husband, Daniel Null, died mysteriously. Authorities exhumed the body, but an autopsy failed to reveal proof of ethylene glycol poisoning.

The Discovery Channel series Evil Lives Here featured the Shirley Allen case in Episode 11 of Season 5, Poisoned by Love.