The Elisa Lam Mystery

The Elisa Lam Mystery

Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old college student from Canada with Bipolar Disorder. She was on a west coast tour &, on January 1st, 2013, she checked into the Cecil Hotel. The Cecil Hotel opened on December 20th, 1924, in Downtown Los Angeles. Ever since it opened its doors, it has been the center of too many issues making it one of the most notorious places in the US. It even hosted famous serial killers like Richard Ramirez & Jack Unterweger.

She initially checked into a type of hotel room where she had roommates but had to be moved because of odd behavior. We can get a grasp on what behavior they’re talking about in the security camera footage that went viral of her in the elevator taken on February 1st. If you have never seen it, the general rundown is that she walks in, presses most of the buttons to the floors, walks out of the elevator, walks back in. She then jumps in & out of the elevator, hides in the corner, slowly looks out, leaves, & starts doing hand gestures, & finally leaves the elevator for good. Mind you, during all of this, the elevator never once closed its doors or left the original floor until after she walked away from the elevator at the end. This is the last sighting of Elisa Lam alive. People were immediately worried, her family flying over to help look, her case being on the news, & police searching the hotel to the fullest extent. They even brought dogs on the roof, but they didn’t detect her scent.

18 days after the security footage the hotel starts receiving complaints from guests complaining that the water pressure is very low, tasted funny, & even discoloration of the water, some of the people’s water even being black. The hotel sent Santiago Lopez, a hotel maintenance worker, to check out the 1000 gallon tanks on the roof. There he found the lifeless body of Elisa Lam, naked with her clothes floating around with her. They were the same clothes seen on the security footage. To get on the roof you would need to enter with either a keycard or if the alarms were disarmed which only Santiago could do. After getting on the roof you would need to climb the ten-foot tanks, move the 20lbs lid, climb in, & close it again. This would be impossible since there wasn’t a ladder on the roof or any other way up there. She also could’ve gotten there from the fire escape but still couldn’t have climbed up there. The reason the dogs didn’t find her when they had searched on the roof, it’s because the lid was closed. The tanks are very tightly closed, & of course, they didn’t suspect the tanks at the time. That’s all we truly know about the case, but there are a million theories out there, some of those we will now go over.

 

Drugs

A theory is that she was on drugs or hallucinogens which would explain how she was acting in the elevator. This theory was quickly debunked however because a toxicology report says she was not on any drugs or alcohol.

 

Bipolar Episode

Since she had Bipolar disorder this was an obvious cause of death to many. She was off of her four medications according to the toxicology report, it would explain the behavior, & more. Though it still wouldn’t make sense how she made it up there since she was a small woman who wasn’t very strong.

 

Suicide

Another theory was that she killed herself because she was depressed. She had a blog where she was very open about her disorder, & many people think based on how she had been recently she did it herself. But, many things still didn’t add up with that theory.

 

Murdered by a hotel worker

This is one of the most plausible theories. In the elevator video, there is about one minute of missing footage & the only people who could have corrupted it would be staff members. In the video, she also could have been hiding from workers & stuff but stayed out of frame because they know where the cameras are pointing. They are also the only people who could get on the roof & could have easily pretended to be fixing something in the water tank so they brought a ladder, brought her up, dumped her body, & left. The workers at that hotel even had a history of sexually harassing, & in some cases, raping their tenants. An investigator said she seemed to have been strangled, & raped before her body was dumped which would explain why her clothes were off. The LAPD failed to do a rape test as well as a rape drug test.

 

Possession

Many people believe this theory because the Cecil Hotel is said to be haunted. Many people claim to have been choked by thin air, someone even dying by choking with no culprit. They think she was possessed & was forced into killing herself. If you believe in possession it seems fairly plausible but, if you don’t like most, it sounds dumb.

 

Elevator Game

The elevator game is a Korean game in which you travel to an alternate dimension. It is said that when you return you are extremely disoriented & confused which could explain her behavior. I don’t know much about the game, but the rules are to the right. However, she is never seen  playing the game or following any of the rules. 

 

Dark Water

A movie from 2005 titled Dark Water, perfectly portrays everything that happened to Elisa. People in the hotel were saying that their water was really weird, & then found a decomposing body in the water tank. In the movie, there were also elevator problems, & the main character was also talking to some imaginary thing. The main character was even wearing the same clothes as Elisa. The theory is that she or someone else wanted to recreate the events of this movie. We have seen this theory in many cases before, so it isn’t too odd.

 

Tuberculosis Test Coverup

At the time of her stay, there was an outbreak of tuberculosis in the downtown LA area. The strange thing was that the tests that were being conducted were called LAM ELISA. The main drug of treatment for tuberculosis is said to cause delusion & abnormal behavior. But, once again, the toxicology report shows she had no drugs in her system.

 

The autopsy report determined that her cause of death was accidental drowning but, we will never truly know. There are so many things that could have been investigated that were not. Believe whatever you want, either by researching more theories, creating new ones, agreeing with one here, or a mix of any of them. Unfortunately, We will never know what happened, & her family will always be asking questions.

The Skinning of Katarzyna Zowada

The Skinning of Katarzyna Zowada

 

0-1.jpgOur story begins on January 7th, 1999, in Kraków, Poland. A large tugboat is chugging down the Vistula river when one of the operators has to open the hatch to the propeller to get something out. It seems as though something had been stuck in it since the night before &  but hadn’t worked itself out yet. Expecting to find debris or branches the operator is stopped in his tracks. Not sure what he’s looking at, he thinks it is a pale sack. Then he noticed the human ear at the top of the sack & the rancid smell. 

 

00.PNGUpon further investigation, it was confirmed that those were the remains of a Polish 23-year-old religion study student named Katarzyna Zowada (cat-er-a-zee-na). Her legs were missing as well as her arms & face. What was found was just her torso connecting her neck & ear. But what was even weirder was that it was like a skin suit. As in she was skinned, & a bodysuit was made out of it, leaving all the internals behind. This is why the operator thought the body was a sack. The medical examiner concludes that this portion of her skin had been in the water for roughly 2-3 weeks before getting stuck in the propeller. Investigators found a part of her sweater at the scene & one of her legs was found nearly a week later in a dam. 

 

The Investigation

It’s concluded that Katarzyna was Skinned alive & a lot more. It is also discovered that she was reported missing on November 12th, 1998 but police told her mother to hold off. They assumed she had just run away. She was going to Jagiellonian university but two weeks prior had stopped attending. At the time though she wasn’t missing because people were still seeing her, she just wasn’t going to class. She had been diagnosed with depression as well after the death of her father in 1996. All of these combined led her mother to be extremely worried about her wellbeing for those two months before her body was found. 

Investigators & experts from other counties were eventually asked to help because they had no leads. Even the FBI helped for a while but still nothing. The case was then dropped about a year later & considered cold. It isn’t until 15 years later, in 2014, when the FBI decides to take another look at the case. 

 

The reopen

In 2016 they decide that the murderer must have been trained in a specific type of martial arts because of the way she was beaten but they never disclose how she was beaten or what that has to do with martial arts. In 2017, 19 years after the murder, police finally arrest after finding new evidence. 

The man was 52-year old Robert Janczewski. He lived off of the bank where Katarzyna’s body was found, he fit the profile, & was trained in martial arts in this specific category. He also knew Katarzyna before the murder. In the past, he worked in a dissection lab so he knew how to dissect human bodies. He had also worked at a zoology lab, specifically how to prepare animal skins. He was even fired from that same job for killing all of the test rabbits during one of his shifts for no reason. He was even a person of interest in 1999 but was not looked into enough.

The police were made aware of Robert because one of Robert’s friends had written them a letter about him and the case. The contents of the letter were never disclosed publicly beyond that quick summary. 

 

What we do know (TW)

Although much of the case remains a mystery, we do know how it all went down or at least, how she was killed. Experts concluded that she was beaten profusely, had her groin, armpits, & neck cut, had her organs taken out, limbs cut off, skinned, and mind you, all of this occurred while she was still alive so she felt all of it. She would eventually die of blood loss. 

 

Current status

To this day, Robert has still not been charged & is in jail until his inevitable trial. So we still don’t truly know why he did it or if it was even him. The case is still going but justice is yet to come. 

Part 2: The Murder of Sydney Loofe

Part 2: The Murder of Sydney Loofe

On November 30th, the FBI finds Bailey & Aubrey in a hotel in Missouri & takes them back to Nebraska on their other charges. It is discovered that at 10:35 am, the day of Sydney’s disappearance, both Aubrey & Bailey purchased a hack saw, duct tape, utility knives, bleach, drop cloths, & tin snips. They were inside the Home Depot for a total of 12 minutes. They are seen clearly on video surveillance. Later, after they had purchased these items, Aubrey is seen going to Menards during Sydney’s shift. He looks at her, into his pocket, back at her, & then calls Bailey.

On December 4th, 2017, the first of Sydney’s remains were found. A search team comes across a trash bag in the middle of a ditch with an arm sticking out of it. It wasn’t her whole body that was found because it had been dismembered. Her organs were missing including her tongue, kidney, & heart. They were able to identify the body fairly quickly because Sydney had a tattoo on her arm that read “ Everything will be wonderful someday.”

Around six months after the first of her remains were found, Aubrey & Bailey are charged with the murder. Aubrey’s defense team immediately tells the media that it was a sex act gone wrong & Sydney had died accidentally of asphyxiation. 

Aubrey & Bailey said that her death was not premeditated & when she died they panicked, put the body in the trunk, cut her up, & dumped her. A note from Aubrey to Bailey tells her what to tell the police & to put the blame on him. This immediately shuts down their story because if it were true Aubrey wouldn’t have to tell her what to tell the police.

It comes out at trial that Aubrey was the leader of a sex cult, Bailey being his sidekick. At the time they were the only two in the cult but several women were in it prior. They wanted Sydney to join the cult. Aubrey claims he also had a history with Sydney. 

Aubrey also claims he is a vampire with special powers & can fly & read minds in the trial. He says only witches could join the cult & if they killed & tortured other women they would also gain special powers like him. He says these killings had to be done as a ritual in the forest under certain moon phases for it to work. 

Three women come forward & testify about the sex cult on trial. One claims she met Bailey on TInder in 2017 & convinced to join the cult. She was given an allowance of $200 a week, lived in the house with them, taken on spa days & overall treated very well. With that though, came some rules like she had to walk naked around the house, she had to participate in any of the events they wanted to do, she had to steal with them, etc.

The prosecution claims at trial that while Sydney was on a date with Bailey, Aubrey came out & strangled Sydney with an extension cord. They claim that she didn’t know Aubrey like he previously claimed. They then cut her body into 14 pieces & dump her into trash bags about an hour and a half away from her home. To this day only 13 of the 14 pieces have been found, that being her upper left arm. 

At trial, Aubrey pleads guilty to unlawful disposal of a body but not guilty to murder & to conspiracy to commit murder. Still claiming that the death was accidental. But there were marks on the back & top of her head & had restraint marks on her wrists.

In the middle of trial one day, Aubrey sitting in the corner of the room yells “Bailey is innocent & I curse you all!” & slits his own throat. Everyone jumps up & freaks out of course & he is immediately taken to the hospital where he survives.

Once Aubrey is done healing he is taken back to finish the trial, this time handcuffed to his seat.

After only three hours of deliberation, Aubrey is found guilty by the Jury of first-degree murder & conspiracy to commit murder. He was then sentenced to the death penalty. 

Bailey was found guilty of first-degree murder, Unlawful disposal of a body, & conspiracy to commit murder. In early November 2021, Bailey was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. She too showed little sympathy but was grateful she wasn’t getting the death penalty for the sake of her daughter whom she had with her ex-husband.

Part 1: The Murder of Sydney Loofe

Part 1: The Murder of Sydney Loofe

In honor of the fourth anniversary, & a sentencing occurring only earlier this month, I thought it would be good to inform people about this case. 

The day is November 14th, 2017, in Lincoln, Nebraska. 24-year-old Sydney Loofe who worked as a cashier at Menards had just matched with a girl named Bailey. They talk on Tinder back & forth & share roughly 140 messages before deciding to meet up that night. They hung out, smoked a bit, but in all, they hit it off & had an amazing time. The next day they decide to go on another date. She is extremely excited to go on another date & is telling her friends all about the first one & how happy she is. The last message from Bailey to Sydney is at 6:45 pm stating that she is outside waiting to pick up Sydney Loofe.

The next day, November 16th, 2017, Sydney doesn’t show up for her shift at Menards. Friends & family begin to worry & panic as no one can get a hold of her. It was all so unlike her & everyone knew something had gone wrong. Sydney’s mom reported her as missing after no one in Sydney’s life had heard from her since before the date. With not much to go off of & Sydney being an adult, her family didn’t know what to do. No one knows the name of the tinder date she went on but it seemed like a good place to start since that was the last time she had been seen. Since Sydney had shown some of her friends a picture of the girl she was going on a date with one of them thinks maybe if they were to see the picture again they could identify her so the way they do that is by making a tinder account & swiping until they see the picture. 

This is when they find 26-year-old Bailey Boswell. They take her contact info & give it to the police since Bailey is the last known person with Sydney before her disappearance. Upon investigation, they find out Bailey has a 51-year-old boyfriend named Aubrey Trail whom she lives in Wilber, Nebraska. They try to locate Bailey after seeing that Sydney’s phone last pinged in Wilber but it seems as though Bailey & her boyfriend have taken off. This is seen to law enforcement as suspicious behavior; they are granted a search warrant to the couple’s home after the landlord stated there was an extremely strong bleach-like odor coming from the home. They find the apartment has been cleaned with bleach on every surface & even bleach smears throughout. The police then decide to announce that they are suspects in the case. News outlets start sharing this information. Aubrey & Bailey then see these news stories.

While still in hiding, Aubrey & Bailey post a series of videos on social media stating their involvement with the case. They seem to be in a car in the videos wearing black hoodies with the hood on & Bailey is wearing large sunglasses. They talk about how their names are being slaughtered because of Sydney’s disappearance & think they get to have their side of the story shared. They say they aren’t hiding out from police like what is being said & have spoken to the police several times (which was untrue). Bailey says she dropped Sydney off late that night at a friend’s house due to request after having yet another wonderful time & hasn’t seen or heard from her since. They also mention how they have other warrants out for them which would mean they could get arrested for those offenses since you can’t get arrested if you are just a person of interest. People are confused as to why they kept saying they weren’t in hiding even though they basically had disguises on, were not living at home, & even brought up the fact that they could be arrested if the police found them. At this point, the FBI gets involved in the case.

Part 2: The Missing Student, Yingying Zhang

Part 2: The Missing Student, Yingying Zhang

Hours turn into days and no one is even one step closer to solving this case. But then, a campus police officer finds a piece of evidence that ends up solving this case. 

SGT James Carter spends hours looking over the footage of the car. But on June 14th, five days after she climbed into that car, he saw something no one had noticed yet. He was looking at the wheels on the car & noticed on the passenger side hub cap there was a black spot near the edge. The spot was not on any of the other hub caps & assumes it was an oddity with this specific car. It looked like almost a piece of the hub cap was broken off. This sets the car aside from the other 57 cars in the state. There were 18 cars & people that they originally suspected but cleared, but with this additional evidence, they decided to reinvestigate them. 

The first car they double-check fits the description of the car exactly. The owner of this car is named Brendt (pronounced Brent) Christensen. Brendt was a 27-year-old student at the school. They knock on his door this time with a warrant. He seems extremely calm though and invites them in. Brendt has a wife who is half-naked on the couch & they tell her to go put clothes on because she didn’t do it upon seeing the police. They immediately see mirrored sunglasses sitting on a table. 

They asked Brendt to come to the & he cooperated. The two interrogators play good cop bad cop with him but he sticks with his alibi of playing video games. He also insisted that it wasn’t him even though he had the same car. Once they can convince him that they know it was him he goes silent for a couple of minutes. He says he did pick up an Asian girl but he thought it was on Saturday so he didn’t say anything. He also said he didn’t recognize her photo which is also why he didn’t say anything. He says he saw a girl on the side of the road looking distressed & pulled over & asked if she was okay. He told her he would give her a ride so he got in. According to him she randomly freaked out & he pulled over to let her out & that’s the last time he saw her. Throughout this explanation, Brendt was stuttering a lot & very fidgety but beforehand he was very calm & confident almost as if he knew they were onto him. But eventually, he asks for a lawyer. 

They arrest him for lying to the FBI & although 100% certain that they have their guy, they still don’t have their victim. They can hold Brendt for 24 hours before having to decide to prosecute & they decide not to as they don’t have enough evidence.

Brendt & his wife & recently started an open marriage as their last hope before getting a divorce. His wife was on a trip with her boyfriend at the time of the disappearance & Brendt had a girlfriend named Terra. Terra genuinely seemed to believe he could have done it & the FBI asked her to try & get information from Brendt, They wanted her to “wear a wire”. She agrees but when she asks him he still sticks with his story about her freaking out & getting out. But no new information was found.

There is a memorial walk being held near campus & Brendt invites Terra to go. She is really confused as to why he would want to go when he is the main suspect in this case. But she still goes, once again as a spy. Once she gets there Brendt is drinking & she thinks she actually will get a drunk confession out of him. Yingyings brother performs a song at the vigil & Brendt didn’t get up or clap for it when it was over. Towards the end, he was so egotistical about being there & thought everyone was “there because of him”. Eventually, he does brag to Terra about it & says “no one here knows what happened, I am the only one.”

He goes on to say “ The family will leave empty-handed because no one will ever find her.”

Terra obviously knows what this means but doesn’t make a big deal about it yet because she wants to see what else he will admit to. He goes on to talk about how hard Yingying fought back & was basically boasting about it.

Terra goes home now with evidence & immediately calls the police to tell them about the recording. She is told to go down to the station to get interviewed & to give them the evidence & when she gets there she is visibly shaken & sobbing when telling them what happened. The next day Brendt is arrested. Brendt calls his mom from prison & tells her that he didn’t do it & that they only have circumstantial evidence. At this point Brendt does not know about the recording or that Terra was against him.

They ended up finding more evidence against him after he had already been arrested. A counselor at UofI came forward after his arrest & turned over footage of a session she had done with Brendt back in March. Since she was an intern at the time she had to record it. He admits to alcohol & drug abuse. He also admits to wanting to harm others & that he had been fantasizing about it. He had even purchased stuff to do it. But he said that he didn’t want to anymore.

After confiscating his phone & laptop they find out he was in a group chat called “Abduction 101”. It was a place for people to fantasize about abduction. At this point, the evidence is as large as a mountain. 

In June of 2019, two years later, opening statements start for the trial as a death penalty case. At this point, Brendt still has not told anyone where Yingying’s body is. It comes out at trial that he ended up cutting her head off after failing to kill her in other ways. He also lets out a suppressed laugh while saying this. It also comes out that Yingying was his 13th victim & he had been killing since he was 19.

It was obvious that being here boosted his ego & felt like he was almost famous & kept referring to himself as a better & newer Ted Bundy. You could hear how proud he was of himself, almost seeping out of his voice. 

His story about having killed 12 other people wasn’t holding up though because there hadn’t been any cases that could have been him. His defense used that by saying well if he didn’t kill 12 other people then how do you know it can’t be the same with Yingying even though the evidence was astounding. 

It took eight hours but the jury still couldn’t unanimously decide so by default Brendt was sentenced to life in prison without the ability of parole. This was a huge disappointment to Yingying’s family as one could imagine because Brendt hadn’t shown any signs of remorse & they didn’t get any justice out of it. They also felt as though his counselor visit weeks prior could have prevented all of this from happening if someone just tried helping/stopping him.

To this day Yingying’s body has yet to be found as Brendt disposed of her in 3 separate garbage bags, put them in a dumpster, which then got brought to a landfill.

Part 1: The Missing Student, Yingying Zhang 

Part 1: The Missing Student, Yingying Zhang 

Our case begins at The University of Illinois. It was the spring semester & 26-year-old Yingying Zhang decided to leave home & study abroad. She was a graduate of one of the top universities in China & people described it as the Harvard of China. Yingying’s decision to move across the globe was not surprising to those who knew her as she was very brave & adventurous. She was extremely smart & excelled in her studies. Days before leaving she celebrated her birthday & turned it into a farewell party, a temporary goodbye to her friends & family as she embarked on this experience. She picked The UofI because of the field she was studying which was environmental sciences. She also wanted to begin a Ph.D. program by the fall.

As she moved to a brand new country the move was as hard as you would expect. She had all summer to meet people & finalize plans before the fall semester started. She kept a journal during this time & also purchased a guitar to play in her free time. She jumped into working at the school & tried to stay busy.

On Friday, June 9th, 2017, a normal summer day, Yingying went to Turner hall that morning where she worked in a lab with some other students in her field. She told her coworker that she had an appointment that day at around 1:30 to maybe sign a new lease. She was currently living on the south campus in married housing which was not her situation. So she wanted to move more north which was less expensive &  less married couples. Over the lunch hour, she was going to tour another apartment complex & told her coworker she would be gone for roughly two hours but would be back after. 

As one o’clock rolls around Yingying leaves Turner hall & goes to her appointment. Around 1:30 she texts the manager & tells him she will be late & will get there around 2:10. But then 2:35 rolls around & she still hadn’t shown up. The manager texts her & asks if she is still coming & gets no response. Therefore, missing her appointment that Friday afternoon. 

Around 3:30-4 o’clock, her co-worker back in Turner hall gets worried since she still hasn’t returned. The time dragged on & attempted to call her but was left with no response. 

That night & still no sign of Yingying, her coworker goes to Yingying’s current apartment building to look for her but after knocking on the door several times with no response, her coworker becomes more & more concerned. Her coworker & friends decide to make their way to the university police office & report Yingying as missing.

The police department struggled to take this report too seriously as Yingying was a full-grown adult, it was the summer, & it wasn’t like she was gone for too long, it was only a few hours. But her friends & co-workers knew something was wrong but since the police wouldn’t listen they went to camp out in the parking lot of Yingying’s apartment complex hoping she would show up & it would all be a misunderstanding.

The next morning, June 10th, 2017, Yingying was still missing. No one had seen or heard from her since she messaged the manager the day before. One of her friends calls a news station reporter & tells her that their friend was missing & if there was any way they could mention it on today’s news since no one else was taking them seriously. The news reporter hears the panic in the friend’s voice & thinks running a story on the missing student couldn’t hurt. 

With the release of the article & the persistence of Yingyings friends, police finally make their way to Yingyings apartment to look around. When they arrived they said the apartment was in normal condition. It didn’t look like she was planning on moving or had moved. Since Yingying didn’t have a car & only used buses for transportation which is supposedly how she would have been getting to her appointment, police look at bus surveillance footage to see if she was ever on the bus & if so when she got off. There were about 2000 bus cameras at the time of her disappearance meaning lots of time & manpower to go through all of that footage. Luckily since they knew she would be coming from the lab & going to the appointment, also around what time, they were able to narrow down the footage a bit. 

On June 12th, 2017, They end up finding footage of Yingying boarding the bus at 1:30 pm. She is seen walking towards the back of the bus & sitting down. This bus stop was right outside of her current apartment building so they assume that before she went to the bus stop, she went to her house first which is why she was going to be late. The weird thing about the bus was that it was headed East but she was supposed to be touring North apartments. They keep watching & see she gets off in the middle of campus & then is seen chasing after another bus trying to flag it down. They assume she accidentally boarded the wrong bus, got off, & tried getting on the right one. She did end up missing the bus she was chasing so she ended up having to wait for another one, pushing back her time even more. They immediately get a hold of parking garage footage next to the bus stop since of course after the buses drove away there was no more footage coming from them. You can see her waiting for the bus but before the next bus can arrive, a black sedan passes her, goes off-camera of course, but less than a minute later drives back up to Yingying & pulls over. You can see her going up to the passenger side window, talking with the driver for about a minute, & then hopping in & driving away. This missing person case had just possibly turned into a kidnapping case.

Police try to continue tracking the car with other cameras but eventually, the car would drive out of view of any surrounding cameras. Also, all of the footage was too grainy to make out what the license plate was. This is when the police knew they needed to get the FBI involved. It had only been three days but for all, we know Yingying could be in desperate need of time-sensitive help.

An FBI agent who gets put on the case identifies the car as a Saturn Astra. The cars were very unique. They were only produced for a short period of time & had to be imported into the US once you bought them. If it had been a Honda, Toyota, etc, the model would have been useless. But luckily this car was so rare there were only 58 in the whole state.

Posters began appearing around campus & news reports started to be released for anyone who could help. Luckily word was spread to the right person who had also almost been abducted by him. She identified the car & told her side of the story.

The man had disguised himself as an undercover police officer & told her to get in his car because he needed to ask her a few questions about the neighborhood. She saw this as a major red flag & didn’t cooperate. But she said he was wearing mirrored sunglasses so she wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup of people.

The Colleen Ritzer Case

The Colleen Ritzer Case

Colleen Ritzer was born on May 13th, 1989 in Lawrence, MA. She was a 9th-grade algebra teacher at Danvers high school. The high school was home to around 1000 students & 100 teachers at the time. She was said to be most students’ favorite teacher & was a very sweet person in general. She still lived with her parents as she was still only 24 & had no need to move out.

October 22nd, 2013; that day was the same as any other school day. She would teach & then do a tutor session for about an hour after school around 2:30. & then at 4:00 is when extracurricular activities would start for the kids like sports & stuff. During one of those extracurriculars, soccer, the coach noticed one of the kids was not there, 14-year-old Philip Chism, but as Philip was a new student, he was not too worried about it & thought maybe he was doing stuff to move in.

Philip had recently moved to Danvers with his mom after a harsh divorce between his parents. They had only moved about two weeks prior, so it was probably hard, especially since he had so many friends & even a girlfriend back in Tennessee that he had to leave behind. Philip had also been in Colleen’s 4th-period class & then had attended the tutor session. Though Colleen had voiced to another teacher that she did not know why he was there because he was doing fine in math & usually, the tutor class was invite-only. Later that night, at around dinner time, Philip had not shown up for dinner & his mom tried calling him & he did not answer & since they were still so new to the area, she knew it was unlikely he was with a friend, so that is when she reported Philip Chism as missing.
At around the same time, Colleen’s parents were also wondering where Colleen was. They called her & she did not answer but they thought maybe she was working late, so her dad went to the school. He saw her car when he pulled up, so he was relieved but he still wanted visual confirmation that she was there. He went inside the school but no one had seen her in hours. He called her friends to see if maybe she went to hang out with them but they had not seen her either. He was worried since she usually always told them her whereabouts, so then they also reported their child as missing.

The principal sent out a mass email about Philip being missing at around 8 & almost right after it was sent out, he got a call about a teacher at his school who was also missing. It was very odd that two people from the school were missing, especially a student & a teacher. But everyone assumed that they were together because that would be too much of a coincidence if they were not.

When the police arrived at the school, they started checking the security cameras & recently they had installed 140 new cameras in the school but the computer they were connected to was not updated. It was very laggy & kept crashing. It also took forever to load. The cameras were also not labeled yet, so they did not know which ones were the cameras in front of her class. They just let it load anyway while they searched the school. The police had tried pinging Philips phone & it went through, it was pinging towards a nearby movie theatre, so they went there to investigate. They interviewed the employees & found out he was there a couple of hours ago to watch a movie but there was not a woman with him & everyone thought that they were together. But since he had not been there in a couple of hours, they had to keep looking.
Back at the school, they had found Colleen’s purse on the sidewalk outside with all of its important belongings missing, like her ID, money, cards, etc. Near the purse was also a pair of black women’s flats, & soccer cleats. This was concerning since they were in Colleen’s size & Philip was supposed to have Soccer earlier that day. They were later positively identified as theirs. But it was not enough to draw any conclusions. At the theater, they left & found out he had also gone to a Wendy’s after the movie. But after that, they did not seem to find any other traces of him, so they got a hold of the street security cameras to see where he was.

Behind the school was a forest, they went over there to do some more searching & found a recycling bin with blood in it & a note next to it that says “I hate you all”. Since they could not know right off the bat whose blood that was, they went a little farther into the forest. That is where they found the body of Colleen Ritzer, who was naked from the waist down with her clothes strewn about the body. Philip’s backpack was also near the body & reported it but, since the police had primarily been searching for Philip since he is a minor in the situation, they thought his body was found. They almost stopped looking for him to go to the crime scene but, luckily, they kept looking.

They found him walking on a sidewalk in a town about 15 minutes away from the school. He was using a drawstring backpack & when they asked him where he was going, he said nowhere. They investigated his bag & found Colleen’s belongings, the ones that were missing from her purse. When they confronted him, he said he robbed her car at a gas station a few minutes back but, we already know her car was still at the school & undisturbed. He also had a bloody box cutter, bloody gloves, & bloody women’s underwear & when they asked him about that, all he said was “the girl”.

When the security cameras were finally done loading, they found footage of Colleen leaving her class to go to the bathroom. Philip shortly also left the class with his hood on & stalked Colleen to the restrooms. They were in the restrooms for a few minutes before a girl walked in & immediately turned around & left. Philip, seemingly caught, also leaves the restrooms.
Since then, that girl said she did not see Colleen & only saw Philip’s butt & she thought someone was changing, so she left but Philip did not know that. Philip walked around the school for a while, changing clothes several times, & eventually brought a recycling bin into the restrooms & spent a few minutes there. He then leaves with a ski mask on, blood on his pants, & hauling a recycling bin. He takes it downstairs & into the woods.
When interrogated, Philip admits to strangling her when entering the restrooms, he then proceeds to stab her 16 times in the neck before slitting her throat & then sexually assaulting her. He also admits that when he took her into the woods, he sexually assaulted her again for about 30 minutes.

Of course, he was charged for like a million things but, when it comes to the sexual assault portion, he only got charged for one of the two assaults. The reason for that is because they knew she was alive for the first one, but they do not know if she was alive for the second one since she had gone unconscious earlier & those are two very different charges. A sexual assault charge & necrophilia are two very different things, so they did not charge him for that even though that was the worse & more disgusting one. Philip was sentenced to at least 40 years but with a possibility of parole in 25 starting from 2016.

Since Colleen’s dream had always been to be a teacher & she only got to experience that for two years, in honor of her, her family created the Colleen E Ritzer Memorial Fund where students with a desire to teach in Andover & Danvers are given money for tuition. They often do fundraisers like marathons to raise money for the memorial funds. You can donate & learn more online at Colleenritzer.org.

The Abduction of Shauna Howe: The Halloween Abduction (Part 2)

The Abduction of Shauna Howe: The Halloween Abduction (Part 2)

 As time went on, the case grew colder & colder & the family’s spirits were beyond low. The killer was still out there & was still silently terrorizing the citizens of Oil City. 

In January 1998, now six years since the murder, a detective named Rich graham is invested in the case. He visits Lucy Howe & tells her he is going to solve this case. He continued to work on it in his off time. He would go home after work & spend hours reviewing the paperwork on the case. Rich is dyslexic, so he would read over things several times to make sure he was right. He went over the case for the third time & he noticed something he didn’t the first two times. The autopsy photos & coroner’s report did not make sense. He recalls a bruise on her cheek but it wasn’t even mentioned in the report. 

He takes the pictures to a medical examiner to make sure nothing else is weird. The examiner says besides the mark on her cheek not being noted, there are also no signs of restraints on her ankle or wrists. This makes the medical examiner feel like there was more than one person involved in the murder if they never needed to tie her up because someone else could help. This went along with the storyline about a red car pulling up & the tall skinny man pulling Shauna into the car. Obviously, that would be at least two people. They were confused why they didn’t notice this in the last six years. They think the reason they assumed it was only one was that there was only one person’s DNA found. When this bomb was dropped to the police, they decided to look back through reports, looking for a possible duo or group. 

They discovered that in 1992, the same year Shauna was murdered, the fire department was called to a scene where a car was on fire. A red car, & it was Ted Walker’s car. The creepy pizza boy. Even though we already figured out that it wasn’t his DNA, now that we know it could have been more than one person, He might’ve still been involved & it was just his partner’s DNA. They re-interviewed Ted & asked how he found out about the murder. Ted said he found out from James & Tim O’Brien, who were brothers that police originally suspected, as they had attempted to kidnap a girl in July of 1995 but failed. But James & Tim were in jail according to records at the time of Shauna’s disappearance, so they were eventually ruled out. 

The detective was confused why three previous suspects knew each other & why they were all getting brought up again so, he checked records to solidify all of their alibis. He was pretty confused since supposedly Tim & James were in jail, but how would they know about Shauna first of all & how would Ted find out from them before it got to him from everyone living there. 

He gets a hold of a trooper & asks to check jail records to make sure they were in jail at the time of the disappearance. The trooper comes back & asks where he got that false information from because they were not in jail that day. They had been in jail prior to the abduction, but the night of, they were not & since everyone thought they were in jail, they had never been questioned or tested. Detective Graham & the team have now found two new leads & decided they need to interview the O’Briens. 

He decides to test Tim O’Brien since he was currently in jail again for a sexual assault. Tim hesitates when asked & tells the detective he will have to ask his attorney first. At this point, it was around ten years since Shauna died & Detective Graham was on the cusp of solving it. In February 2002, the lab called him about James’ & Tim’s DNA. After all of these years, they had a match for the DNA found on the bodysuit. James O’Brien’s Semen was stained on a costume of a murdered 11-year-old girl ten years prior. The same James had been looked into weeks after Shauna’s death but was pushed aside because no one cared to double-check the information.

Although frustrating, it all added up, James, Ted, & Tim had to be the abductors. Ted Walker was then arrested. Since Tim & James refused to talk to the police, the only proof we have of what really went down is from Ted’s perspective so of course, he tries to make himself sound like the best guy out of the three. 

What Actually Happened

Ted Walker tells police that on October 27th, 1992, an eyewitness saw him walk up to Shauna on the way back from a Halloween event. So he admits he was the tall skinny man who they originally suspected. He says he asked her if she was selling girl scout cookies, to put her at ease & to not scare her. James & Tim O’Brien then pulled up in Ted’s red car. Ted put Shauna around his shoulders, making her scream. He then hands her off to Tim, Gets in the car, & they all drive to Ted’s house. The brothers carry Shauna into the house & take her upstairs & give her candy to keep her quiet. He says they picked Halloween because it was only supposed to be a “prank” Ted says he doesn’t know what happened upstairs & he only heard her screaming even though it’s very obvious that he does know. Ted tells them that after that, the brothers took her to Coulter’s hole alone & since Ted didn’t go with them, he doesn’t know what happened there. This is where police have to fill in the blanks but, they believe she was assaulted once arriving & was kept alive in the trunk all night. This is where they think the scrapes on her knees came from because she was probably getting rug burn all night, which eventually turns into scrapes. Police then believe they threw her off the bridge that morning. They believed James was the leader, Tim was the follower, & Ted was just along for the ride but not any less guilty. 

Ted Walker was convicted of kidnapping & 3rd-degree murder. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison at the state correctional institution in Albion in Erie county, Pennsylvania. 

The brothers were convicted of kidnapping & first-degree murder. They were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. James is at the state correctional institution – Phoenix in Collegeville, Pennsylvania & Tim is at the state correctional institution – Greene in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

The Abduction of Shauna Howe: The Halloween Abduction (Part 1)

The Abduction of Shauna Howe: The Halloween Abduction (Part 1)

Our case begins on October 27th, 1992, in oil city PA. 11-year-old Shauna Howe loved Halloween & was a loved child. Although her parents were divorced, she had a good relationship with both of them. She was born in July 1981 in PA. She woke up that morning to remind her mom, Lucy, about her girl scouts event at the nursing home later that evening. They were doing an event where each of the girl scouts adopted a grandparent to spend time with. So as the time came for her to meet at her friend’s house to go to the nursing home, she got ready in her gymnast costume. She says goodbye to Lucy, &  leaves. 

It was around 7:30-8 when the event ended & she started walking home with her friend. As they got closer to their homes, her friend kept walking straight & Shauna turned the corner. As 8:30 rolled around  Shauna still had not arrived home, Lucy’s boyfriend, John,  called her work & told Lucy, Shauna did not arrive. They assumed maybe the event was going long & waited another hour before worry overcame them. No girl scout event had ever run this long, especially at a nursing home. 

When Lucy got home before Shauna at around 10:30, that’s when they called the police. The police began to investigate & assumed she got lost or went home with a friend. Then a man named Dan Paden had reported witnessing an abduction of a little girl that night. 

He reported that he was walking west on 1st street in oil city that night when he saw a little girl walking alone on the other side of the street. It was dark out, but he said he did see her wearing what looked like a bodysuit & tights, which is what Shauna was wearing. He then noticed a tall skinny man wearing a baseball cap. Also on the other side of the street. He looked away, but then he heard what sounded like a scream. He turned around & now there was a red car where the two had just been standing & when it drove away, they were gone too. Dan panicked & started knocking on every door he could to use a phone to call the police. Since it was the 90’s, he doesn’t have a cell phone. 

The police send out 20-30 officers to look for her & set up a roadblock to talk to people. Police were on foot & in cars & were asking everyone they could. They knew the chances of finding her alive were statistically decreasing by the minute. Lucy & John are told to stay home with the phone just in case someone calls, either it is someone with information, Shauna, or the abductor calling for ransom. By the next morning, the news was made public about Shauna’s disappearance & hundreds of people volunteered to help. 

By October 29th, two days after her disappearance, spirits were low. The searchers had now made their way to Coulter’s hole, which is a secluded hunting area a little out of town. There was a deep stream in which locals swam in, people liked to drink there, etc. In the area there were campsites & it was this day where a man was driving away from his campsite & caught a glimpse of something under one of the bridges. 

Back at home, Lucy & John are told to go to the bridge to identify something they may have found. They arrive & John walks down to where police are surrounding something. His fear lessens when he realizes it wasn’t a body since, at that point, that’s all they were worried about. His heart drops though when he sees what the police were surrounding, Shauna’s gymnastic Halloween costume she had been wearing the night she was kidnapped, laying on the ground. It looked as if it had been there overnight since it was wet from the moisture. Although it was a relief it wasn’t her body they found, It was still implying something awful had already occurred. It was tested & found several semen deposits on it. But, there was enough semen on one of the stains to obtain DNA from it. 

On October 30th, 1992, three days after her abduction & one day after the bodysuit was found, a guy who had gone to a nearby cottage in Coulter’s hole called the police. He told them he was walking on a bridge & looked over when he saw something. Just three days after the abduction, Shauna’s body was found in the open at the bottom of the bridge. Police were confused because they were there just the day before across the street investigating the bodysuit. She also was not hidden at all, it was very easy to see her as she was just laying there. Anyone who would have even driven past would have been able to see her. They were confused as to why they didn’t see her & no one else did either & were convinced that she was not there the day before. They assumed that the killer must’ve gone back during the night with the knowledge that the police had just been there, but something wasn’t adding up. They thought either the killer wanted her to be found, or they were taunting the police, but either one doesn’t make sense. They believed she had been thrown off the bridge, which is a 33 ft drop. They believed she was alive when thrown & stayed alive for another 5-10 before she passed from blunt force trauma to the head & chest from the fall. 

Lucy & her brothers (Shauna’s uncles) confirmed the body of Shauna. After the news, Oil City had banned Halloween, which ended up lasting a decade. 

It had been a few years since her disappearance, & every time the police thought they found something, it was a dead end. They had taken over one hundred blood samples & none came back matching the DNA. 

Around this time, it was brought up that the description of the tall skinny man who abducted Shauna fit the description of a local man named Ted Walker, who worked at a pizza shop & was known to be creepy towards kids. He had also had past experiences with being creepy towards Shauna, & Lucy brought this up. He also drove a red car, but again, after testing his DNA, it was a dead end. 

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter is a movement intended to stop racism & police brutality to the African American community. The Black Lives Matter organization was created on July 13, 2013. It was created in response to the death of Trayvon Martin. A 17-year-old boy who died from getting shot. In May 2020, when George Floyd died hundreds of riots started across the united states. Since then, the movement has just gotten bigger & bigger. Many controversial things have happened such as riots yet that’s kind of what the rioters were going for.

 

George Floyd

George Floyd is a man who was killed on May 25th, 2020 in Minneapolis, MN. After buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill the clerk called the police. George was apparently reaching for something when officers arrived which some think was a knife or weapon but it was later learned that he was shoving some of the counterfeit money into the side of his seat. When officers arrived Derek Chauvin pinned Floyd to the ground & kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes & 46 seconds. During this, George Floyd was constantly saying he couldn’t breathe & for him to stop. Chauvin did not stop & when he did Floyd was dead. There were three other officers there with him yet none of them tried to intervene. This entire thing was filmed & later went viral on social media. The day after protests & riots started occurring all over the united states. 

 

Protests & riots

For the next few weeks following his death thousands of people attended protests. And a couple hundred people attended riots. The news only really showed the riots & that’s where it went downhill. Because everybody started assuming that the riots were the protests which they weren’t. The riots consisted of burning down buildings, raiding stores, breaking statues, graffiti, etc. people immediately assumed that the protesters were the ones doing this so protesters immediately got hated on. An important thing to note is it is a right for people to peacefully protest which is what the majority of people were doing. The rioters are not the same. So blame the rioters, not the protesters, & even then, rioters sometimes have reasonable intentions.

 

Rioters

one of the things they were doing was tearing down statues of generals & confederate soldiers. They weren’t tearing them down for no reason though, the statues they were tearing down were slave owners. Some people say they are “changing history” or that the generals owned slaves to give them a better life. These are complete lies though, It’s not like you will completely forget them if there isn’t a statue & they aren’t that important of people in the first place. And people owned slaves because they could & they got more money. And even if they did want to give them a better life why did they have to own them to do that? If they actually wanted to give them a better life they would let them live their own lives, without an owner. They were also burning buildings down & raiding stores, some being Wendy’s & target. They did this since they’ve been protesting for so long & no one has listened to them so they had to take it a step further for people to pay attention to them. And if you actually believe that burning these buildings is more important than the people they are doing it for, you are part of the problem. These buildings can be replaced, lives cannot. 

 

BLM vs ALM

ALM means All Lives Matter. People say this in response to BLM because “their life matters too”. But saying ALM is completely selfish. White people obviously matter, but so do black people. White people do not face police brutality, white people do not have to worry about people being scared of them. Black people do. An example of white privilege is a white boy who murdered several people & got peacefully arrested, not even tased, yet George Floyd died from a fake dollar bill. White privilege is real & if you don’t believe that, again, you are part of the problem. BLM is a movement to raise the voices of black individuals & stop these kinds of things from happening. There is no reason why someone like George Floyd should have died, he & every other black person should get treated the same as white people. 

 

Conclusion

BLM is a good movement whether or not some of the people partaking in it are bad. Obviously, it hasn’t done absolutely astonishing things since there are still black people dying & getting hurt from police brutality, but many officers who have partaken in police brutality have gotten fired, arrested, & more. Protests & riots are still happening today all over America. They will most likely continue to happen until a major change has been made. People will continue to hate this movement until the day they die but that is just how people are. People are going to hate, regardless of the movement. If you care, do what you can to help, may seem small now, but if we are saving people that’s all that matters.

 

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