Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. Well, if you are watching on YouTube, you may have noticed that my artwork has changed a little bit and don't worry, it's still the same old podcast. We just had a little bit of a change because I want to do broader things than just binged on here and so no worries. I didn't mean to alarm you, but that's what's going on.
This week's episode will be exploring another under-the-radar serial murder case that remains mostly unsolved. And I say mostly because at least one of today's murder cases did have at least a partial resolution. And there are so many killings in this series that there's no doubt there was more than just one killer responsible. But the question is, how many killers? And which ones are connected?
You know, writing or telling stories about an unsolved serial murder case presents a unique set of challenges. From the outset, when you tackle a story like this, you know the story's ending has yet to be written, and quite possibly may never be written. In stories about serial killers who have been identified, storytellers can easily find a linear thread in the story of the killer himself.
But when it's an unsolved case, that's an entire half of the story that's missing. So it becomes an anthology of sorts with each crime, each victim, its own story. And if there's a theme in today's stories, it's the absolutely appalling way that law enforcement in Broward County, Florida in the mid-70s characterized many of these victims.
This series has been alternately called the canal killings, the flat tire murders, and most significantly, the lifestyle murders. And that's because investigators laid part of the blame on the victims themselves for their so-called lifestyle. Today's episode takes us back to one of true crime's favorite places.
places, and that's the good old U.S. state of Florida. One of the many unique things about Florida is its extensive network of canals. There are more than 2,000 miles of canals in Florida, especially in southern Florida cities, where canals cut through nearly every community. Canals where people fish, people boat, where alligators dwell, and where rainfall collects.
Florida's canals fulfill many functions, flood control, drainage, irrigation, and even recreation. But for a very tiny segment of the population, Florida's canals serve another purpose. They're a place to dump dead bodies.
And in 1975, nearly a dozen women were found dead across Broward and Miami-Dade counties dumped in or near canals. And it all started on a spooky, desolate stretch of highway US 27 near a place called Andytown.
Andytown is the ultimate ghost town. It's a town that not only does it no longer exist, but any evidence that it ever existed has been obliterated. It's not the kind of ghost town where there's abandoned buildings, rusted out cars, and remnants of what used to be. No, there's nothing.
If you look up Andytown, Florida on Google Maps, all you'll see there now is a highway interchange surrounded on all four quadrants by the swampy Florida Everglades. I was so curious about Andytown that I did some digging and learned that all the town ever consisted of was a single bar, a single restaurant, a single motel, and a gas station spread across four acres of land. Andytown's population at its peak was just nine.
And by the time it was demolished, that population had dwindled to just four people. Even throughout its brief existence, most South Florida residents were unaware Andytown even existed. And for those who were aware of Andytown, it represented the end of civilization, the gateway to Alligator Alley, which is an 80-mile extension of I-75 that cuts through the Everglades and connects Fort Lauderdale to Naples on the Gulf Coast.
Even now, Alligator Alley and much of Florida's portion of US 27 are two-lane highways with absolutely no lighting. At night, the only illumination on these roads is furnished by the stars, the moon, and vehicle headlights. On a moonless night, it's virtually pitch black out there.
Anyone who's ever driven up that stretch of US 27 can only imagine the terror that Barbie Schreiber and Arlene Zetterauer must have experienced when they were driven out there at gunpoint
in the summer of '75, raped in the black of night, made to lie down on gravel road on the back of a canal, and each shot to death. Barbie and Darlene were both eighth graders at Audix Middle School in Hollywood, Florida, and they were best friends, inseparable. Darlene loved poetry, both reading it and writing it, and Barbie, whose striking appearance turned heads in the halls between classes,
was already modeling part-time by the age of 14. Like many teenagers, both girls were thirsty for greater independence and freedom. Darlene's parents were separated, and she lived with her mom, Joyce, who was a strict mother. Barbie lived in the upscale community of Emerald Hills in Hollywood, Florida, but despite the comforts of growing up in suburban luxury, or maybe because of those comforts, she still sought excitement and escape.
She ran away from home in early June 1975, but it wasn't long before she felt guilty and homesick and returned home. It was then on June 18th that Darlene told her mom she was heading out to spend the night at her best friend Barbie's house. It was a weeknight, but it was summer break, so Darlene's mom had no objections. Later that afternoon, Darlene called home and told her mom there had been a change of plan.
She and Barbie were going to spend the night somewhere else at their other friend Valerie's house. Valerie would later tell police she knew nothing of these plans. And after Darlene got off the phone, that was the last time Joyce Zetterauer would ever talk to her daughter.
Around 9:00 a.m. the next morning, a father was out fishing with his two kids near the Sawgrass Recreational Park alongside US Route 27 when he found the two girls lifeless bodies, fully clothed, lying on their sides facing away from each other. The man could see the blood on Darlene's mouth and he knew instantly this was a murder.
He scooped up his two boys and hightailed it from the area, fearing that the killer or killers might still be lurking about. He drove south for seemingly miles until they reached a phone, and he was able to call the Broward Sheriff's Office. From the amount of blood at the area, crime scene investigators believed the two girls were killed at the scene.
Barbie had been shot through her shoulder and in the chest and Darlene had been shot in the head both with a 45 caliber gun.
They were positively identified the next morning by their parents, two eighth graders. In the examination of the victims at autopsy, it was found that the victims had likely been sexually assaulted. Now, the location where the two girls were found, remote as it may have been, was only 200 yards from where another young woman's body had been found,
just four days earlier. And that young woman was 19-year-old Nancy Lee Fox, who had moved down to West Palm Beach from Long Island just two years earlier. After a romance went south and left her heart aching, Nancy relocated to Fort Lauderdale where she got a job waiting tables at a taco restaurant.
On June 14th, she had left work early, complaining that she wasn't feeling well. The last time anyone saw her was later that evening when she set out on foot from her apartment to the local laundromat. She had a bundle of clothes with her and some reports indicated she may have intended to hitchhike that short distance. Whatever the case, Nancy Fox never made it to the laundromat.
Two days later, three fishermen found her body fully clothed, floating face down in the water in the same canal next to which Barbie and Darlene would be found just two days later.
Nancy Fox had been choked and struck on the head with a blunt object, a fatal blow, before being dumped in the water. And the evidence suggested she too may have been sexually assaulted. Overseeing the investigations was Captain Elihu Ferris, chief of the Broward Sheriff's Office Detective Squad.
Captain Ferris told the press that he saw no reason to believe the two cases were connected. In fact, Captain Ferris would have a lot to say over the course of the next few months. We'll be hearing from Captain Ferris throughout the story because Captain Ferris talked to the media and told them about all of his theories and his different opinions. And at least based on what I read,
I will say Captain Ferris turned victim blaming into something of an art form a little bit. Early in his investigation, after Ferris learned that Barbie and Darlene sometimes like to hitchhike in eighth grade, he was quoted in a newspaper article as saying, quote, they were always going somewhere with their thumbs out. He also described the victims as, quote, habitual hitchhikers, drug users, sexually promiscuous,
with poor school records. According to an article in the Miami News, both girls were adventurous, constantly going from one friend's house to another, as if this isn't typical of girls their age. One of the few leads developed in the investigation surfaced early on when a beige 1974 Chevy Vega was found abandoned at a rental car agency in Miami with a spent .45 caliber bullet inside of it.
Employees at the agency recalled the car having been rented for only one day by an attractive young couple in their 20s, a well-dressed dark haired man and a woman from out of the States. The car was never returned to the agency. Instead, like I said, it was found abandoned. Police impounded the vehicle and found grass and weeds in the undercarriage that were similar to vegetation in the area where Barbie and Darlene were killed.
And in the time between when the car was rented and when the car was abandoned, someone put over 600 miles on the odometer. However, authorities were not able to link the bullet they found to bullets used in the murders. They weren't even the same caliber and nothing else found in the vehicle suggested there were any connection. So the investigation was seemingly back as square one, despite having what they thought was a good lead.
Captain Ferris and his colleagues continued interviewing people inside the two girls' shared social circle. A 17-year-old boy who lived near Barbie said he had given the girls a ride on his motorcycle around 8 p.m. the day they went missing, and an hour later, he dropped them off near a shopping center on State Road 7. Barbara had told him she had to go home, but later on, he saw the two girls around 10 p.m. hitchhiking near Hollywood Boulevard.
Another friend who saw them that night said the girls told them they were going to meet, quote, an older guy to get some really good drugs. Their friend Gail remembered sitting with them on a bench in Hollywood that day and seeing a white van pull up to give them a ride. The girls asked her to come along, but Gail's father said no. Whoever was driving that white van, as well as the identity of the older man with drugs, was never determined.
And that's where our first unsolved case ends. Our next one picks up here.
Robin Leslie Loesch was also 14 years old, and by all accounts, she was a model teenager. She was an award-winning swimmer, family-oriented, and a good student, earning solid grades at Stranahan High School in Fort Lauderdale. She regularly attended Catholic Church with her parents and four siblings. And in the summer of 1975, she would, just like Nancy Fox and Darlene and Barbie, end
End up dead in a canal alongside US 27 with a six mile radius of Andytown. The last person known to have seen Robin alive was the assistant manager of a local market, a convenience store located less than a mile away from where she lived. That owner of the store had his eye on Robin because he suspected she was high on marijuana and he was uncomfortable having this in his store. So he had his manager kick her out.
A short while later, the manager saw the young woman walking south on Riverland Road, which would have been in the direction of her home. The time was about 3 p.m. on July 8th. Two days later, a family traveling from the Gulf Coast stopped to picnic at a rest stop off of US 27. And while they were setting up, they saw something that spoiled their appetites. It
It was an arm protruding from the nearby canal. The Broward Sheriff's Office was called out and a short time later, the body of the young woman, fully clothed, was pulled from the water and soon identified as the missing Robin Loesch. Among the items on her person were a silver bracelet engraved with Robin Fort Lauderdale 32675 and a plastic baggie containing a small amount of marijuana.
The medical examiner determined that Robin, whose lungs were filled with water, had died by drowning and there was no evidence of any kind of violence aside from a small bruise near her right ear. It was estimated she had died sometime between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. the day before she was found.
And although this did not appear to be a murder, investigators could not resolve the 20 or so hour gap between the time Robin was last seen and the time she was believed to have drowned in the canal. A canal that was about 20 miles from her neighborhood.
How she ended up there was a complete mystery. And it was ultimately ruled that Robin died under suspicious circumstances. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out.
That's how it was for me. So I cleared out my cabinet and reset my health with CBD from CB Distillery. And it has been a real change. Now, CB Distillery's targeted formulations are made from the highest quality clean ingredients. No fluff, no fillers, just pure effective CBD solutions designed to help support your health.
in two non-clinical surveys 81 of customers experienced more calm 80 said cbd helped with pain after physical activity and an impressive 90 said they slept better with cbd and you guys i have taken cbd to help me sleep and i all
I always zonk out so fast and have such a restful night's sleep. Those nights that I'm tossing and turning, I always reach for my CBD. So if you struggle with a health concern and haven't found relief, make the change like I did to CB Distillery. And with over 2 million customers and a solid 100% money back guarantee, CB Distillery is the source to trust. I have a 20% discount to get you started.
Visit cbdistillery.com and use code dark for 20% off you guys. If you wanted to give CBD a try, go to cbdistillery.com, code dark. cbdistillery.com, use code dark. All right, let's get back to the episode.
- Okay, most beauty brands don't understand fine color treated hair, but Proz does. They have a formula that can address my specific type of hair needs, which makes sense because it's based on me. If you're wondering whether custom hair care is worth the hype, let me tell you it is, and that's why I'm obsessed with Proz.
Since 2017, Proz has transformed traditional hair and skincare with a made-to-order model that reduces waste, celebrates unique beauty over one-size-fit-all beauty standards, and works better than off-the-shelf alternatives. Developed in Paris and bottled fresh in Brooklyn, Proz combines the know-how of its world-class team of in-house cosmetic chemists with an advanced AI algorithm that personalizes your formulas
based on 80 plus unique factors. You literally go on, take the quiz, it asks you all types of questions and then they personalize your hair care. Since I switched to pros, I've noticed that my hair is so much shinier, stronger, and my color actually lasts longer. And because you're always changing, so is your pros. Your formulas evolve alongside you and pros will address any new concerns, adjust your formulas with the seasons and learn from your feedback with an always custom fit.
You guys, Proz is so confident that they'll bring out your best hair that they're offering an exclusive trial offer of 50% off your first hair care subscription order at Proz.
at pros.com slash dark. Pros.com slash dark. Go on, take the quiz. See what they come up with. Take your free consultation, get your one-of-a-kind formula, and see the difference custom hair care can make with 50% off at pros, P-R-O-S-E, .com slash dark. Let's get back into the episode. During police interviews with Robin's friends, it was learned that Robin, like the other victims, was known to hitchhike.
So between the hitchhiking and the marijuana use, good old Captain Ferris had all he needed to once again defame and blame the victim in his interviews with local reporters.
So as it turned out, the circumstances of Robin's death were eerily similar to another death that had occurred earlier that year in April. Arietta Marie Tinker, known as Rini to her friends, was a 17-year-old girl who lived in Hollywood with her husband and their 11-month-old son. And although the young couple was separated, they were trying to patch things up at around the time Rini went missing on April 9th.
When her husband filed the report, he told police he had dropped his wife off at around noon that day at the Hippopotamus restaurant on Hollywood Beach.
He said that on the way there, he'd asked her if she needed a ride after work and she declined his offer, telling him she'd find another way back home. He told police that his wife liked to sit on the beach in front of the hippopotamus, which was also known as a hangout for the Outlaws motorcycle gang. And the Outlaws were a rough crowd. In fact, some of its members would be connected to an abduction and sexual assault the following year.
But no link between Rene and the outlaws was ever established. Another witness who knew Rene told investigators they had seen her eating dinner alone near Young Circle in Hollywood at a Lum's restaurant. Anyway, I digress because on April 12th, an off-duty Coral Gables cop was riding his bicycle along US 27 when he found Rene Tinker's body floating in the Snake River Canal just east of the highway.
Based on the condition of the body, it was estimated she had been in the water for about three days, which is exactly how long she'd been missing.
And just as with Robin Loesch, Rini's body was fully clothed and showed no obvious indications of violence. And the cause of death was ruled to have been drowning. Yet, how did she wind up at this spot, 20 miles from where she was last seen? Sound familiar? Suspicion fell on her husband, of course, but he was given a polygraph and passed. And he appeared to investigators to be cooperative and not hiding anything.
What he told police echoed what others who knew Rini had shared, which was that she was well-liked by all and had no known enemies. Her death was deemed suspicious but not ruled a homicide, and in less than a year the investigation would dead-end with no witnesses and no leads whatsoever.
Rene Tinker's death, like that of Robin Loesch, was a mystery, an impenetrable puzzle. And that's where those two cases close, leading us into the next murder that somehow happened in the same area.
The Snake River Canal, where Rene's body was found, had also been the dumping spot for another woman, 19-year-old Judith Ann Osterling. Judith Ann Osterling, whose body was found by a fisherman on January 26th floating face down in the water, clothed but stripped of her jewelry and shoes. She had been raped, beaten, and dragged into the canal with her hands and feet bound while she was still alive.
the official cause of death was again drowning. The location where she was found was just half a mile east in the same canal where Rene Tinker would be found three months later. Captain Elihu Ferris noted to the local press that hitchhiking was how Judith got around and that she was probably killed by someone who picked her up on her way home from work.
By mid-July 1975, that's six young women who had been found dead since the beginning of the year in or along canals along US 27, some in close proximity to one another. Two of the victims had been shot, two had been beaten on the head, one fatally and the other before being tossed in the water to drown, and two had drowned with no other obvious indications of violence.
Four were sexually assaulted while two were not or didn't appear to have been. And all were known to hitchhike. The question remains, was a single killer responsible for these six deaths? If you were to ask a profiler, and profilers didn't even exist in 1975. In fact, the term serial killer didn't even exist yet. But if you were to ask one, a profiler would likely tell you that a single killer was probably one.
not responsible for all six deaths. But this wasn't a question anyone seemed to even be exploring quite yet because despite six dead women alongside US 27 in or near canals in the span of just a year, newspapers had yet to pick up on this pattern.
That wasn't until the next two murders in the series, which almost certainly were committed by the same individual. And these were the murders that led some to call this series the Flat Tire Murders. So Flat Tire Murder number one was Ronnie Gorland.
Ronnie Sue Gorlin was 27 years old and lived with her parents in Holland El Beach. Ronnie was a respiratory therapist who had moved to Pennsylvania, met a man named Tom Phillips, got engaged to Tom, and then returned to Florida for just a little while to spend some time with her parents before the wedding, which was set for February of the following year.
Ronnie was very close with her parents. In July, they vacationed together in the Bahamas, and when they got back, Ronnie's mom got sick and ended up being admitted to the hospital. She was recovering, and the prognosis was good, but it was the last thing anyone wanted after a relaxing holiday in the Caribbean.
On July 22nd, Ronnie stopped by the clinic where she used to work, the Children's Asthmatic Foundation in North Miami Beach, and said hi to her former coworkers and friends. She updated them on her life since moving to Pennsylvania and beamed about her new fiance and how she looked forward to married life and hopefully motherhood. She
She hung out at the clinic until about 1:30 and then she had to go. She had plans to visit her mom at Parkway General, she said, and she mentioned she would probably stop first at the 163rd Street Shopping Center, which at the time was an open-air shopping mall located about half a mile from the clinic. Ronnie left the clinic and about six hours later, her father reported her missing after she failed to show up at the hospital to see her mom.
This was totally out of character for Ronnie, who never would have just failed to keep an appointment, and not at least phoned with an explanation. Late that next morning, a Miami-Dade County surveying crew found Ronnie's nude body face down in a drainage canal that ran parallel to a dirt road. It was in an undeveloped area 12 miles west of where she was last seen.
When investigators arrived, they noted a fresh welt on Ronnie's left temple. They also noted that one of her earrings was missing. At autopsy, it was determined that the cause of Ronnie's death was drowning. She had been punched in the head repeatedly, knocked unconscious, and then probably rolled down the steep embankment into the water to drown. There was also petechial hemorrhaging in her right eyelid, suggesting she had been asphyxiated.
Abrasions on her wrists and neck indicated that her killer had forcibly removed her jewelry. A single foreign pubic hair with its root intact was recovered, and on the same day Ronnie's body was discovered by the county employees, a security guard at the 163rd Street Shopping Center found a leased Oldsmobile Cutlass parked at an odd angle blocking the flow of traffic in the parking lot. It looked as though the driver had simply abandoned it.
Upon closer inspection, the guard noticed one of the car's rear tires was flat. He called the North Miami Beach Police and they had the vehicle towed. Inside, they found documentation establishing that the car found in the parking lot was leased to now dead Ronnie Sue Gorlin. Investigators theorized that her killer had deliberately punctured the tire and then presented as a good Samaritan, convincing Ronnie to get into the car with him.
The only problem with that theory was there was a tire outlet at one of the department stores in the shopping center. And Ronnie would have known this since she knew this shopping plaza well. Maybe the killer pretended to use her tire jack and maybe he pretended it didn't work. Maybe he invited her to come along with him to a gas station. Maybe she told him she was late for an appointment to see her mother. Maybe he told her he'd drop her off at the hospital, but instead he just kept going. I don't know.
Ronnie's father felt that knowing his daughter she wouldn't have gotten into a car with just anyone whoever it was it must have been someone she felt she could trust and that leads us to flat tire murder number two which the victim is named Elise Rapp. Elise Rapp was a 21 year old woman who had only been in South Florida for a month.
She had only planned on spending the summer in South Florida, intending to return to her parents' home in Queens come September. A summer adventure in subtropical paradise. A taste of independence after two years in college. Even though Elise didn't know Ronnie, she had a lot in common with her. She was attractive, she was also Jewish, she was close with her parents, she was living temporarily in Hollandale, she planned to return to the Northeast, and she drove a leased car.
Another thing she probably had in common with Ronnie was their killer. On the evening of July 30th, Elise stepped out of her apartment for what her landlord Phyllis assumed would be a quick trip to the store. She assumed this because Elise was usually friendly and chatty with her. But on this occasion, Elise left without saying a word and without taking her cat. So surely she'd be right back, or so Phyllis thought.
But when Elise hadn't returned by the following morning, Phyllis telephoned the young woman's parents in New York and then the police.
That same morning at around 9 a.m., an equipment operator was grading dirt alongside a canal in western Miami-Dade County when he saw something in the water. It was the body of Elise Rapp floating face down in the canal, the very same canal where Ronnie Gorlin had been discovered just a week earlier, less than a mile away. Elise's body was completely nude except for a gold chain around her neck.
Around 11.30 p.m. that night, Elise's rented Chevy Vega was found in the parking lot of the 163rd Street Shopping Center with, as you guessed it, a flat tire, just like Ronnie Gorlin's car. And just like Gorlin, Elise had been struck on the head with enough force to cause a concussion and then thrown unconscious into the canal where she then drowned. The concussion was a serious one.
The construction company that was working in the area where her body was dumped had private security patrolling the area all night long. Police interviewed the security personnel, but no one had seen anything suspicious that night.
The medical examiner noted that Elise had a bite mark on her breast and a bite mark on her thigh, as well as a red mark around her neck that suggested she'd been asphyxiated. There were also numerous marks and abrasions on her face, her head, and elsewhere on her body. There were indications that she had been raped and sodomized. It was concluded that she had been probably unconscious when all of this took place due to lack of injury to her hands that would characterize defensive wounds.
Just like with Ronnie, investigators believed the killer spotted Elise in the parking lot of the 163rd Street shopping center, punctured her tire, waited for her to return to her car, and then showed up and offered her his assistance.
Ronnie and Elise were the seventh and eighth young woman to be found dead in canals in South Florida. And now the press was paying attention on August 4th. The Miami Herald ran a full page spread covering the growing number of women turning up dead in South Florida canals and quoted throughout the article was none other than Captain Elihu Ferris, who was doubling down on his victim blaming quote. Every one of these girls contributed to her own death.
How? By being women? By going to the mall? The latest two victims went to the mall and someone punctured their tires. The common link among the victims, he said, was that they were, quote, wherever time and the tide carried them.
I'm dead serious. These are direct quotes.
Broward County Sheriff Ed Stack lent his voice to backup Captain Eli, who's finger wagging. He said, if you have a segment of the community exposing itself to risk, you shouldn't be surprised if that risk becomes fact.
Sometimes after a particularly long day, I love to play games on my phone to get my mind off things and one game I have been loving is June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. You play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. With hundreds of mind-teasing puzzles, the next clue is always within reach.
Every new scene and chapter leads to more juicy secrets and clues being revealed about this mysterious murder that brings out the detective in everyone. Plus, you get to chat and play with or against other players by joining a detective club. You'll even get the chance to play in a detective league to put your skills to the test.
I have always loved good scavenger hunts and puzzles, and of course, we all know I love a good murder mystery, and this is just the perfect marriage of the two. Right now, I'm on Chapter 2. I have been trying so hard not to use the lightbulb feature to help me search for clues. I seriously look forward to playing it every night. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.
Sheriff Stack dubbed this series of killings the lifestyle murders. He explained,
But the thing is, Elise and Ronnie weren't the first murder victims in Miami-Dade County that year to have been abducted from a shopping mall. So it's a little weird that the sheriff of that area even said that. Back in February, a 23-year-old woman named Barbara Stevens left her parents' house to buy some records at a department store across the street from the busy Dadeland Mall. When she didn't come home that night, her worried parents reported her missing.
The next day, Barbara's car was found in the parking lot of the shopping plaza, unlocked with its keys still in the ignition. Bloodstains were clearly visible on the steering wheel. Two records Barbara purchased from the store were found inside the car, but missing was the shopping bag they came in. Three days later, a blouse and an earring belonging to the missing woman were found in a wooded area south of Miami Killian Senior High School.
These were all very bad signs. Her car, some of her clothing. Barbara's parents publicly offered a $5,000 reward for any information leading to her safe return. They even went as far as to hire a psychic and then a second psychic. Five more days went by and then on February 20th, Barbara's decomposed body was found in a weedy field behind a shopping plaza in South Miami. Her pants were partially pulled down and she'd been stabbed to death.
This location was about two miles from where her car was found and there were no signs of a struggle where she was dumped. So it was believed she was killed somewhere else before being brought to this location. So Elise and Ronnie weren't the first murder victims that year to disappear from a shopping center and they wouldn't be the last.
24-year-old Esmeralda Chaviano-Gordon was an elementary school teacher in Miami who, according to her husband, had left her home to go shopping on the afternoon of August 17th.
Esmeralda's husband, Seth, who worked in state government, told police that he had become worried after his wife failed to return home, and when he heard the news reports of a woman fitting his wife's description found murdered on a dirt road 20 miles away near Kendall, he called Miami police. Later that day, he identified his wife's body.
She was found fully clothed, still in her hair curlers with her purse missing and a .38 caliber bullet in her head. And her car was found several days later in a parking garage at the 163rd Street Shopping Center. This is the same place where Elise Rapp and Ronnie Gorland's cars were found. However...
Investigators believed this murder was radically different from Elise and Ronnie's in every other way. And they had an obvious and sole suspect, her husband Seth. It's also worth noting that the detectives who worked the Barbara Stevens case believed that her murder was also unrelated to the later murders of Ronnie and Elise.
but the Miami-Dade medical examiner disagreed. He believed the same killer was responsible for the murders of not just Gorlin and Rapp, but also Barbara Stevens and as well as Barbie and Darlene. So I'm just basically telling you that the medical examiner thought that maybe a lot of these murders were linked. And I do feel it's important to keep in mind that even though there was an explosion of serial murder in the 1970s, again, the term serial killer didn't yet exist.
The newspapers still used terms like sex killer, sex slayer, ripper, strangler, mass murderer. And the concept of serial murder, though it was nothing new, was still so novel to the public at large that if there were a bunch of women being killed and the circumstances were even vaguely similar, for example, last seen hitchhiking, abducted from a mall, strangled, stabbed, dumped in water,
there was a tendency among news agencies to speculate that one killer was probably responsible for all of them, because how could they have more than one killer? In late August, the Miami Herald ran a story whose first paragraph read, "'The canal killings of two young women dumped in a Dade County waterway last month may be linked to 31 similar murders of young women dumped naked in California, Washington, Utah, and Idaho.'
The series of murders in the West that police were referring to were the murders of Ted Bundy, who at the time had yet to be linked to those deaths. So yeah, these murders were just linked to Ted Bundy. But just having a spate of women being murdered and dumped naked stirred up speculation of a possible connection. And then in October of 1975, there was a break in one
in one of the canal killings. It was the murder of Judith Ann Oysterling. Remember, Judith was found in January floating in the same canal where Rene Tinker would be found three months later.
Judith had been sexually assaulted, beaten, bound, and thrown into the canal where she drowned. Judith had last been seen alive returning home from a massage parlor where she worked. The name of the establishment was Tiger's Health Spa, and it was the kind of massage parlor where massage parlor is just a euphemism, if you catch my drift.
The business was owned by a 23-year-old woman named Susan Jane Walter, known around the office as Tiger Sue. And she operated the spa with her boyfriend, a convicted felon named Clarence Carnival, who was known around the office as the Deacon. Shortly after Judith was found murdered, Tiger's health spa mysteriously closed. And in June of that year, Carnival, aka the Deacon, was found shot to death in a neighbor's backyard.
In September, the spa reopened under a new name, and then a month later, Tiger Sue confessed to police that she and her late boyfriend, Clarence, the deacon, were responsible for Judith Oysterling's, their employee's, murder.
She explained to police that she and the deacon became angry when Judith refused to partake in a threesome with them. They bound her hands and feet, Clarence raped her, and then the two drove her to the deserted area where she was found, beat and bludgeoned her, and threw her into the canal with her hands and feet still tied. So at this point, the murder of Judith Oysterling was ruled out as having any connection to most, if not all, of the others.
So you have nine other murders and the newspapers are referring to the canal killer as though there's one killer at work when there's almost certainly multiple killers. But before the year's end, four more women would be killed in the area. Anyway, 1975 soon became 1976.
And within a matter of months, all of the cases that were alternately referred to as the "Kinnell Killings" or the "Lifestyle Murders" had gone cold. And by September of 1976, investigators acknowledged that the cases no longer had priority status. And after 1977, there was no further coverage or even mention of the Kinnell Killings. And by all outward appearances, the murders had stopped.
But did they? For example, Carrie Ann Dillon, a 17-year-old girl from Plantation, Florida, turned up drowned in a canal on September 6th, 1977 under suspicious circumstances. 24-year-old Sheila Alonsky was found strangled to death and anchored to the bottom of the New River behind a steakhouse in Oakland Park on
on December 7th, 1979. 22 year old Linda Taylor was last seen at a bar and lounge in Sunrise, Florida on November 6th, 1980, a week before she was found strangled near a canal, nude from the waist down with her purse missing. In late October, 1983, a woman named Gayla Ann McNeil was found dumped in a canal 14 miles away at the Western edge of the county, nude and strangled with her throat cut.
On February 18th, 1984, an unidentified woman was found face down in a Davie, Florida canal strangled to death. On March 20th, 1985, the body of 17-year-old Carrie Weldon was found floating in a Davie canal with multiple stab wounds after having been missing for two days.
On April 17th, 1987, the partially nude body of Rachel Anderson, a 26-year-old woman from New Mexico, was discovered in what was described as a secluded irrigation canal in northwestern Broward County. The takeaway from all of this is South Florida was a dangerous place to live if you were a young woman in the 1970s. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. And in August of 2023, there was a break in one of the canal killings.
Broward Sheriff's Office Detective Andrew Giannino, who's one of the good guys and hasn't blamed any of the victims for their murders, had taken a fresh look at the murders of Barbie and Darlene. Remember, those are the two eighth graders that we kind of started the story off with.
He noticed in his review of their case files that in the years since their murders, the girls' clothing had been sent to the lab on two separate occasions with the hope of finding DNA. And in both instances, no DNA was found.
But recognizing how the science of DNA collection has advanced in the years since, Detective Giannino decided to have the clothing sent out for a third time in yet another attempt to develop a DNA profile, and this time the effort paid off. The DNA profiles of two unknown males were developed. One was a full profile and the other one was a partial profile. The full DNA profile was then uploaded into CODIS, the FBI's national DNA databank, and there was a hit.
The DNA profile belonged to a man named Robert Clark Keebler. Keebler was a convicted sex offender with a rap sheet that included arrests in multiple states for crimes ranging from armed robbery to aggravated assault to sexual assault and weapons crimes.
He had moved back to Florida from California shortly before Barbie and Darlene were killed. And an arrest stemming from a traffic dispute in Pompano Beach, Florida, a week after the girls were killed, documented that Keebler drove a white van and kept a handgun inside of it. And if you remember, Barbie and Darlene were
were seen getting into a white van by their friend. However, Robert Keebler would not face justice in these murders because he died in 2019. But because of the presence of that partial second male DNA profile, investigators believe that Keebler did have an accomplice and they're trying to identify who that accomplice was. And also if Keebler can be tied to any of the other murders in the
If you remember, a pubic hair with its root intact was recovered from victim Ronnie Gorlin. And hopefully it was preserved so that DNA might be extracted from it and uploaded to a genealogy database so we may someday know who was responsible for the murder. This episode was hard because so much death. What a grimy time to be alive in the 1970s.
The age of hitchhiking, white vans, porno theaters, sex parlors, scummy buddies, and grungy looking killers like Robert Keebler. But the identification of Keebler as Darlene and Barbie's killers gives me hope that maybe these other murders in this series might soon be solved.
DNA is a powerful tool and so is forensic genealogy. It does look like these cases are now being actively looked at again and it's about time. The deaths of these young women have resulted in so much suffering for their families. And a lot of the parents in these cases have died without knowing who took their daughter's lives.
Hopefully by this time next year, I can return with updates on some of these. That's it for this week. I'll be back next week, bright and early on Wednesday morning. And if you have any thoughts or theories of your own on any of today's cases, don't be shy. Share them in the comments on our Patreon, Instagram, and YouTube pages. We'll see you next week.