Christian Kenny is an independent occult researcher and creator whose work bridges archetypal symbolism and behavioral analysis. His killer Kards Tarot project asks big questions about how tarot and numerology aren’t just spiritual tools; they’re structured languages for mapping personality and subconscious drives. Christian’s approach has drawn surprising parallels between metaphysical symbolism and criminal psychology, framing tarot as a practical tool for understanding shadow traits and mapping behavior.

What’s truly rare is his creation of AURORA, a proprietary analytical software tested in collaboration with NYC detectives and private investigators. It integrates over 1,600 data points to identify archetypal risk patterns in suspect pools, and preliminary trials demonstrated up to 89% predictive alignment. While AURORA never determines guilt, it highlights probability clustering for investigators to prioritize leads.
​
Christian’s research lies at the intersection of ancient wisdom and the mysteries of human behavior. ​

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Narration by a human, never AI

Interview with Rob McConnell on XZone Radio.

What secrets and spirits may be hiding beneath the neon lights and tropical atmosphere of Miami? In this captivating episode, Marlene Pellicer explores Miami Ghost Chronicles, sharing stories of hauntings, paranormal encounters, and unexplained mysteries connected to one of America’s most vibrant and historic cities. Drawing from investigations, local legends, and firsthand accounts, Marlene discusses haunted locations, eerie experiences, and the unique blend of cultures and histories that contribute to Miami’s paranormal reputation. From historic buildings to forgotten stories, she explores how the city’s past may still echo into the present. This episode invites listeners into a world where mystery and history intertwine. Why do certain places become associated with paranormal activity? How do local folklore and cultural traditions shape ghost stories? And what keeps investigators and experiencers searching for answers in the face of the unexplained? Join us for a thrilling and atmospheric conversation that journeys deep into Miami’s hidden paranormal side—where tropical beauty meets ghostly mystery, and where every shadow may hold a story waiting to be uncovered.

Host - M.P. Pellicer
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Inna Segal, the visionary behind the 'Awaken The Healer Within' programs, is a celebrated author renowned for her groundbreaking works such as The Secret Language of Your Body and The Secret Language of Color Cards. Her latest contributions to the healing community include The Secret Language of Your Soul card deck and the insightful book Understanding Modern Spirituality.
 
Her innovative approach in energy medicine and human consciousness has marked her as a trailblazer, capable of intuitively identifying and resolving the root causes of illness and emotional blockages, guiding countless individuals on their path to self-healing.

Host - M.P. Pellicer
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Narration by a human, never AI

Step into the dusty shadows of the American West where saloons echo with phantom laughter, mesas run red with ghostly stampedes, and headless riders gallop under blood moons. From haunted brothels tied to the James brothers to vengeful spirits and demonic camels, this long-form tale uncovers the high strangeness that still haunts the trails from California to Texas. Old West legends, true hauntings, and curses that refuse to die.
​

​Across the American West, from sun-baked California valleys to the lonely mesas of Texas and the rugged badlands of South Dakota, the land remembers. It remembers blood spilled on frontier trails, desperate cries swallowed by canyons, and the restless dead who refuse to ride into the final sunset. These are not mere campfire tales. They are the high strangeness of the Old West—hauntings, curses, and apparitions that still echo through saloons, mines, and storm-lit plateaus.

The Red Door Saloon – Paso Robles, California
Nestled along the Salinas River, Paso Robles began as Indian land, then Spanish mission territory, before exploding into a resort town once its healing hot springs drew travelers. In the 1880s, Mexican War veteran Drury James—uncle to the infamous Jesse and Frank James—claimed land along the Camino Real Trail and promoted the thermal waters. Settlers followed. Cattle ranches, vineyards, and orchards bloomed. The Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1886, and the town was incorporated in 1889.

While the grand El Paso de Robles Hotel welcomed presidents and celebrities like Theodore Roosevelt, Douglas Fairbanks, and Bob Hope, the rougher element gathered on Pine Street. Originally a stagecoach stop, Pine Street became the town’s tenderloin district—saloon after saloon filled with miners, ranchers, gunslingers, and outlaws drinking, gambling, and raising hell.

One of the most notorious was the Red Door Saloon: billiard parlor and card room below, brothel upstairs. The James brothers were known to frequent it. Later renamed the Pine Street Saloon, the old building still stands with its swinging doors and weathered Old West flavor. Perhaps that is why the ghosts remain—reliving their glory and sins. Bottles rattle untouched. Footsteps echo upstairs where no one walks. The Dead Files investigated in 2017 and Ghost Adventures in 2021, both teams left convinced the past still drinks at the bar.

Stampede Mesa – Crosby County, Texas

Further east, in the Texas Panhandle near the Red River, sits a grassy plateau once known simply as the holding point on the North Blanco. A steep 200-foot drop made it a natural corral for trail herds. In 1889, everything changed.

A trail boss named Sawyer faced a new homestead blocking prime grazing land. Instead of detouring, he chose violence. As a storm rolled in with lightning and thunder, Sawyer fired his pistol into the air. More than 1,000 steers stampeded straight through the homestead, crushing everything—and everyone—in their path. The panicked animals never stopped at the cliff. They hurled themselves into the abyss.

Sawyer rode on with the surviving cattle, leaving men, women, children, and hundreds of steers dead on the rocks. He was never hired again and vanished from history. The place became known forever as Stampede Mesa.

And there is another version of this dark story. As Sawyer was driving through Dockum Flats on the way to the mesa, about 40 cows of a nester, an old settler came bellowing into the herd.

"Drive 'em on!" Sawyer yelled tersely, for he was short of hands, it was late, and his cattle were thin and tired. He planned not to disturb them just to cut out a few cows.

"I'll stampede the whole bunch if you don't get out of my cattle,” the nester threatened, but Sawyer, who was characterized as "hard as nails," told the nester to "go to hell!" and went on with his business.

That night, the settler made good on his word. Riding wildly around, he waved a blanket, shot his gun, and shouted.

The herd stampeded over the edge. Two of the cowboys were swept over the bluff, but the nester escaped by the mysterious way he came.

The next day, Sawyer ordered the nester to be brought in dead or alive, and when they found him, he was tied with a rawhide lariat to the back of his horse. The animal was blindfolded and backed off the mesa. Thus, the nester was killed.

Old cowpunchers told of seeing the nester's ghost astride his blindfolded horse galloping over the country behind a crowd of phantom steers. At times, he's heard calling out to the herd, and their answering lows echo across the landscape.

Whichever of these was the most accurate, the hauntings began almost immediately. Another herd later plunged to its death in the same spot. In 1902, cowboy Lon Schuyler and his partner George Ramp stood night watch there. What they witnessed became legend: glowing white “ghost cows” floating silently out of the brush. They made no sound. They left no tracks. Schuyler’s steady horse panicked. When the spectral herd charged, the cowboys barely saved the living cattle—200 head still went screaming over the edge.

Since then, ranchers report ghostly cowboys on spectral horses, glowing stampedes in the clouds, disembodied shrieks, and entire herds plunging off the cliff during lightning storms. The mesa is avoided after dark.

The nightmare inspired Stan Jones’ 1948 classic “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky,” one of the most recorded Western songs of all time. It influenced The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” and may have shaped the Marvel character Ghost Rider. But the deeper question remains: Was something evil already on that land—something that whispered to Sawyer and triggered the massacre?

There are other phantoms seen. In the remote, rugged expanse of the Big Bend country along the Rio Grande in Southwest Texas, the desert and mountains guard many secrets. Among them is the tale of a lost canyon said to shelter a phantom herd of buffalo—placid, grazing animals glimpsed only by accident or by a lone Mexican rider from across the border. Like a mirage, the valley and its ghostly herd vanish when pursued, existing somewhere in the folds of the hills yet forever elusive. This sighting dates back to scores of buffalo that had been decimated from the land.

The Fatal Roundup of January 28, 1891

Tied to this land of apparitions is a more tangible yet equally haunting figure: a spectral brindle bull, branded forever with the word “MURDER” and the date of a killing. Known as the Murder Steer or Ghost Steer, its legend embodies the violence, range feuds, and lingering curses of the open-range era in Brewster County.

​The story begins during a winter roundup near Leoncita Springs in Brewster County. In the days of the open range, small outfits and large cattle companies gathered unbranded calves (mavericks) in the fall and again in January for late stragglers. A respected roundup boss settled ownership disputes, often by examining brands on mother cows.

The largest outfit in the area, Wentworth and DuBois, viewed smaller ranchers as parasites who built their herds by rustling calves. They sent a hardened representative—a gunman named Fine (Finus) Gilliland—to protect their interests and intimidate rivals.

Also present was the notorious Emanuel “Mannen” Clements, cousin to the infamous gunslinger John Wesley Hardin and connected by marriage to assassin “Killin’ Jim” Miller.

A motherless brindle bull calf became the flashpoint. One-armed Confederate veteran Henry Harrison Powe (pronounced “Poe”), a mild-mannered rancher with the HHP brand, claimed the calf. Multiple witnesses, including the roundup boss, confirmed they had seen it following a cow wearing Powe’s brand. Gilliland disagreed and aggressively separated the calf, driving it back to the main herd.

Young Bob Powe, Henry’s son, told Gilliland the boss had assigned it to them. Gilliland snarled that Powe could have it only if he produced the mother cow.

Henry Powe, unarmed at first, saw the commotion and confronted Gilliland. Words grew heated. Powe borrowed a pistol from Mannie Clements, returned to the herd, and tried to cut the calf out again. Gilliland attempted to rope it and missed. Powe fired at the calf (missing) in frustration or desperation.
Gilliland dismounted, dropped to one knee, and opened fire. Several shots were cracked at close range. When the smoke cleared, Henry Powe lay dead. Gilliland seized Clements’ horse and fled.
​
Bob Powe rode to Alpine to alert authorities. Days later, Brewster County Deputy Sheriff Thalis Cook, and Texas Ranger Jim Mitchell Putnam tracked Gilliland. In a snowy canyon, Cook asked the stranger if he was Fine Gilliland. The man drew and fired, wounding Cook in the knee and killing his horse. Putnam dismounted, took cover with his Winchester, and waited. When Gilliland raised up from behind his fallen horse, Putnam shot him between the eyes. The canyon where he died still bears the name Gilliland Canyon.

The Branded Outcast

In the shock and remorse following the killing, no one claimed the calf. The cowboys dragged it to the branding fire and seared “MURDER” on one flank and “JAN 28” (or “JAN 28 91”) on the other. They left it unearmarked and uncastrated, turning it loose to roam the range.

The animal grew into a huge, mean bull with glowing red eyes in the telling. It became the Murder Steer—an outcast harbinger of doom. Sightings spread across West Texas. Crossing its path supposedly brought bad luck or death. One tale claims cowboys in the Wentworth and DuBois bunkhouse saw the red-eyed beast staring through a window at a man; the next day, that cowboy died in a tragic accident.

Folklorist J. Frank Dobie popularized the story in The Longhorns, and it inspired variations, including an episode of the TV series Rawhide. Some versions claim the steer appeared as an omen whenever foul play was afoot or justice was closing in.

​Fact, Embellishment, and Legacy

The real steer reportedly lived until around 1905, when it was driven north in a herd to Indian reservations in Montana and presumably slaughtered. Yet the legend outlived the flesh-and-blood animal. Storyteller Wigfall Van Sickle, a lawyer and later Brewster County judge, added colorful embellishments—including claims of personally seeing the branded bull—that helped cement its ghostly status.

The Murder Steer endures as a symbol of the Big Bend’s violent frontier past: range wars between big outfits and small ranchers, quick-trigger justice, and the harsh code of the open range. Like the phantom buffalo herd in the lost canyon, it appears when the land chooses—ephemeral, ominous, and impossible to fully capture.

It's said the Murder Steers' hide was kept at the Museum of the Big Bend until it was stolen some time between 1979 and 1980. It's never been recovered.

In the lonely draws and mesas of the Big Bend, where the Rio Grande carves ancient stone, and the wind whispers through greasewood, the Murder Steer still roams in memory. A branded reminder that some feuds never truly die… and some ghosts wear brands instead of chains.

The Watch Dog of the Badlands

In South Dakota’s rugged Badlands, another spirit keeps eternal vigil. Known as the Watch Dog or Badlands Banshee, she appears by moonlight on a barren hill—silent, staring at travelers. She is said to haunt the "Watch Dog Butte" area. Call out to her, and she throws her arms skyward with an ear-piercing shriek before vanishing, leaving behind crushing silence.

She is sometimes accompanied by a fleshless skeleton that appears at the edge of campfires when music plays. It nods in rhythm. Hand it an instrument, and it plays with unearthly skill, its hypnotic melody capable of driving men mad or luring them into the wilderness, never to return. Some say she died in an Indian raid. Others believe the skeleton is a cowboy who perished mid-song and cannot rest until it is finished.

Wildlife and cattle shun the butte. Orbs of light streak across the hill. The legend lingers like smoke around old campfires.

La Llorona and the Lady in White

Her tale echoes the Southwest’s most famous weeping ghost: La Llorona, the woman in white who, in a fit of jealous rage, drowned her children and now wanders riverbanks and lakes, forever searching and sobbing their names.

In Utah’s Spring Canyon, another Lady in White haunted the coal mines. Miners glimpsed her in the gloom—beautiful, beckoning—only to be led deeper into tunnels that collapsed behind them. Even after the mines died and the boom towns crumbled, she still calls from the darkness, hoping to entice the next lost soul.

El Muerto – The Headless Horseman of Texas

In the lawless strip between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers in 1850, notorious rustler Vidal stole from Texas legends Creed Taylor and Bigfoot Wallace. Captured and killed, Vidal was made into a warning. The men severed his head, strapped the corpse to his horse, fixed his sombrero to the skull, and turned the animal loose.

For decades, travelers reported the headless rider--El Muerto—galloping through the brush. His horse breathed fire and struck lightning from its hooves. He screamed, “It is mine! It is all mine!” Sightings continued into the 1960s near Headless Horseman Hill in Duval, Jim Wells, and Live Oak counties. Even after his remains were finally buried, the phantom rider still rides.

The Red Ghost of Arizona
​​
In 1883, near Eagle Creek, Arizona, two women tended children while their husbands were away, and Geronimo’s warriors raided nearby. One woman stepped outside for water. Screams split the air. The second woman glimpsed a massive red shape “ridden by the devil” thundering past. They found the first woman trampled to death, surrounded by enormous cloven hoof prints and tufts of reddish hair.

Prospectors and ranchers later encountered the beast: a huge red camel with a dead man lashed to its back. Skulls and scraps of flesh dropped from it. It wailed like a demon. Years later, rancher Mizoo Hastings shot the creature. Its hide was scarred and embedded with old rawhide strips—remnants of the long-ago U.S. Army Camel Corps experiment.

The Red Ghost--El Fantasma Colorado—became legend. Whether the rider was tied on for revenge or cruel humor remains unknown.

The Phantom of Misery Hill

Tom Bowers worked his claim alone on Misery Hill, near Pike City. He kept no partner and showed no patience for the rough men who drifted through camp. Then one day, he vanished.

Miners followed his tracks through fresh snow from his cabin to the lip of a steep slope where he had been digging. There, the trail stopped cold. A landslide had swallowed it whole. They later pulled his body from far below and gave him a proper burial. Still, whispers spread—men swore they saw Bowers walking at the mouth of his abandoned shaft. Before long, no one dared work that ground.

Then came thriftless Jim Brandon. Seized by a rare fit of ambition, he took up Bowers’s claim. For a spell, the mine paid. Gold dust filled his poke, and he even squared accounts with men who had long since written him off. But the mountain does not share kindly. Each morning, Jim found the sluice disturbed, the water running, though he had shut it tight the night before. Someone worked his claim under the cover of darkness.

Jim searched the gulch and timber, but he found no trespasser. He warned the boys in camp that the joke had gone stale.

One night, he primed his rifle and took up watch from a shadowed nook. The tamaracks crooned in the wind. The Yuba whispered through the canyon. The Sierras gleamed pale and distant beneath a hard scatter of stars. Moving slowly and quietly, Jim crept for a better vantage—and came upon a tree with something nailed to its trunk. It glimmered in the dark like a struck match.

By its own faint light, he read: "Notice! I, Thomas Bowers, claim this ground for placer mining."

Jim reached to tear it free. A cold shock shot through his hand, and his arm fell useless at his side. The notice vanished.

Then came the sound of water running.

Jim cursed, snatched up his rifle, and turned toward the sluice. Behind him, the words flared again—burning pale on the bark. Now came the scrape of metal in gravel. Jim dropped low and crawled closer.
There, bent to the work, stood Tom Bowers.

Dead. Drawn thin. His head and face hid beneath a wild growth of white hair. From hollow black sockets, his eyes burned like coals. Jim raised his rifle and fired.

The shot cracked through the canyon. A terrible yell answered it—and the dead man charged, swift as a storm wind, brandishing pick and shovel in either hand.

Jim ran.

He tore uphill through brush and ditch, through timber and stone, the specter close behind him all the way to the edge of Pike City. In the saloon, miners drank hard and danced to celebrate a new strike. Boots thundered, glasses rang, laughter spilled into the night—until a crash split the noise, followed by a single scream.

Then silence.

The men rushed into the road. They found Jim’s rifle lying in the dust. Nearby rested a pick and shovel, the handles carved with the letters T. B.

Jim Brandon never returned.
​
And on Misery Hill, the sluice still runs—every night.

The Forever Riders
​
Among the sandstone columns of the Colorado foothills rose the lodge of Ta-in-ga-ro—First Falling Thunder. Swift in the chase and fierce in battle, he kept apart from neighboring tribes. He chose the quiet company of his wife, Zecana—The Bird. Together, they often rode to a lonely trading post along the New Mexico frontier, where they bartered beaver and wild sheep skins for powder, cloth, and steel.

At that post, a Spanish trader set his eye on Zecana. Her beauty stirred a darker hunger in him. He devised a scheme. With honeyed words, he sent Ta-in-ga-ro deep into the mountains on a false errand, promising that Zecana would rest safely within the fort until her husband’s return.

On the trail, Ta-in-ga-ro paused at the sacred spring of Manitou Springs. He drank, then cast beads and wampum into the bubbling water as an offering. The spring rejected his gift. The beads rose and scattered upon the surface. As he stared, troubled, the water gathered into a vision—Zecana’s face, twisted in anguish.

He wasted no breath on prayer. He leapt to his horse and rode hard, sparing neither himself nor the animal beneath him. Hunger gnawed, thirst burned, yet he did not slow. At last, he reached the trading post.

The Spaniard had fled.

Ta-in-ga-ro turned without a word and drove his weary horse toward the foothills. Morning light broke as he neared his lodge. Hope flared when he saw Zecana standing at the door, her voice lifted in song. He called to her.

She glanced at him with empty eyes and turned away, her song unbroken. She did not know him.

Madness had taken her mind. From her broken words, Ta-in-ga-ro learned the truth—the trader’s betrayal, the ruin left behind. His cry split the air, a sound of grief and fury that shook the hills. For a single heartbeat, clarity returned to her gaze. She looked upon him with sudden recognition—and unbearable sorrow.

Then she drew his knife. Before he could move, she drove the blade into her own heart and fell at his feet.

He stood for hours, silent as stone, the world drained of meaning. At last, the old strength returned. He set his lodge in order, fed his horse, and wrapped Zecana’s body in buffalo hide. Exhaustion claimed him, and he slept like the dead.

Two nights later, he entered the trading post like a shadow. No man saw him pass the guards. He slipped into the Spaniard’s room and waited.

In the black hours before dawn, Ta-in-ga-ro struck. He clamped a belt across the sleeper’s mouth and dropped a lariat over his throat. The Spaniard woke choking, thrashing—but Ta-in-ga-ro bound him fast, hands and feet. He tore open the low roof, forced the captive through, and lowered him outside the fort’s walls.

Then he lit his revenge.

At the embers of a dying fire, he kindled an arrow wrapped in cottonwood and loosed it into a haystack. Flames leapt high. Smoke and panic spread through the compound. Amid the chaos, Ta-in-ga-ro slipped away. A lone sentry glimpsed him and opened his mouth to cry out—but the Indian struck like a panther and silenced him with a single knife-stroke.

Ta-in-ga-ro dragged the Spaniard to a waiting horse and rode for the foothills.

At his lodge, he fed the prisoner but answered none of his pleas. He bound him tighter still. Outside, he readied a half-trained horse, wild-eyed and strong. He stripped the Spaniard and lashed him to a crude saddle with rawhide thongs.

Then he brought forth Zecana.

He tied her body to the man, face to face, death staring into life.

With a sharp cry, he loosed the horse.

The animal bolted, plunging into the open desert. Ta-in-ga-ro followed close behind on his own steed.
At first, the Spaniard fainted. When he woke, terror seized him. He struggled, but every movement pressed him closer to the cold flesh before him. The sun rose high and burned his skin. Sweat poured. Blood ran where the cords bit deep. Night fell, and the desert turned cruel with cold. Sleep came only in snatches, each broken by a savage shout from the rider behind.

Ta-in-ga-ro gave him water, never food.

Days stretched into torment. Hunger hollowed the man. At last, driven beyond reason, he sank his teeth into the dead flesh before him and fed like a beast.

Still, they rode.

Ta-in-ga-ro watched, never far, his gaze fixed on the suffering he had forged. At last, a broken, gibbering cry rose from the Spaniard’s lips. Madness claimed him.

Only then did Ta-in-ga-ro draw rein.

He watched the horse carry its burden—dead and living, bound together—far across the пуст desert, until both vanished into the yellow haze.

He turned away from his lodge, from memory, from all that had been his life.

Across the plains—through brush, sand, and bitter alkali—the riders still wander. Two forms lashed together, driven by a phantom will, circling the endless waste.
​
Forever.

The Ghostly Train of Marshall Pass
​
Soon after the rails climbed across Marshall Pass—twelve thousand feet above the sea—an old engineer named Nelson Edwards took charge of a mountain run. For months, he hauled passengers over that savage grade without mishap. Then one night, as he set out for the divide, the world seemed wrong. The silence pressed deeper. The canyon darkened. The air cut colder than any he had known.

That morning, word came down of a defective rail and a treacherous bridge somewhere along the line. Edwards felt it in his bones as he began the long climb.

He cleared the first stretch of snowsheds when a whistle cried out among the ice and stone—thin, distant, and wrong. At that same instant, the gong in his cab rang sharply. He threw the brakes.

The conductor came scrambling forward. “What stopped you?”

Edwards shot back, “Why’d you signal?”
​
“I didn’t. Open her up. We’ve got to meet No. 19 at the switch—and there’s a wild train climbing behind us.”

Edwards wasted no more breath. He pulled the throttle, dropped sand on the rails, and drove the engine forward. The train gathered itself and climbed. Behind them, the whistle came again—closer now—shrill with warning.

Rounding a curve, Edwards leaned out into the night.

A train bore down on them.

It came fast—too fast—closing the distance with murderous intent. Sweat broke across his face. He wrenched the throttle wide and drove his engine harder. The train lunged through a drift and burst into another snowshed, flinging powder aside like smoke.

Ahead lay the stretch with the broken rail.

He did not slow.

A greater danger hunted his rear.

The fireman shoveled as a man possessed, coal flying, sweat soaking his clothes. Flame roared from the stack. In the cars behind, word spread. Passengers dressed in haste and crowded the windows, pale and wide-eyed. Rumor ran among them—a mad engineer chased their train through the mountains.
At the summit, Edwards cut the steam and let gravity take hold. The train plunged down the grade. He glanced back. In the faint glow of fresh snow, he saw the pursuing engine—its driving wheels larger than his own. A tall figure stood atop its cars, arms flailing in frantic signals.

At a sharp bend, the truth closed in.

Two hundred yards.

That was all that separated them.

As Edwards swept the curve, the chasing engineer leaned from his cab and laughed. His face looked pale and slack—like dough left in the cold.

Snow thickened. Wind screamed down the canyon. Bridges trembled as the trains thundered across them. The cursed bridge loomed ahead. Edwards felt his heart choke his breath—but the train seemed to leap the gap and tear onward.

The switch came into view.

No. 19 was nowhere to be seen.

Edwards released the brakes. The train shot forward like a bullet.

Then—a red lantern swung on the track ahead.

It rocked side to side, a warning… or a trap.

Behind him, the phantom whistle shrieked.

He reversed the lever and set the brakes hard. For a few terrible seconds, he lived inside pure dread—caught between the crash behind and the ruin ahead.

Then— Nothing. No impact. No scream of metal.

Edwards turned. The wild train surged forward, almost upon them—then the rails seemed to split apart beneath it. The engine pitched sideways, toppled from the grade, and dragged the cars with it. The whole black mass tumbled into the canyon and vanished.

Silence swallowed the mountain.

No cries rose from below. No hiss of steam. Only the long, hollow moan of wind through the dark.
The red lantern ahead had vanished too.

Edwards did not linger. Another danger still lay ahead. If No. 19 moved before he reached the next switch, death would greet him there instead. He drove the train onward through the night and made the second switch in time.

By dawn, he rolled into Green River—ahead of schedule, though the run had aged him years.
As he shut down the engine, he noticed something on the frost that glazed his cab window.

Words. Scrawled as if by an unseen hand: "A frate train was recked as yu saw. Now that yu saw it yu will never make another run. The engine was not under control, and four sexshun men wor killed. If yu ever run on this road again, yu will be recked."

Edwards read it once. He did not wait to read it twice.

That very morning, he quit the line. He rode east to Denver and took work with the Union Pacific Railroad, leaving the mountain run behind him for good.

They searched the canyon the next day. They found no wreck. And no engineer who crossed that divide after Nelson Edwards ever spoke of a train that followed in the dark.

F.K. Sterling doesn't just write about the unexplained—he hunts it. From the mist-shrouded hollows of the Ozark highlands to the forgotten ruins of lost civilizations, Sterling has built his career on asking the questions history left unanswered and then weaving those mysteries into the fabric of unforgettable stories. 

As an established researcher and author, Sterling has contributed to Ancient American, Fate Magazine, Nexus Magazine, and Land of Promise Magazine, exploring alternative archaeology, cryptozoology, and ancient enigmas that challenge conventional narratives. His Lost Race of the Giants" trilogy established him as a compelling voice in the field. At the same time, his appearances on History Channel's Ancient Aliens and Coast to Coast AM brought his research to audiences hungry for the truth behind the myths.

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​A single wave on a sunny ridgeline — then nothing. Rocket scientist Monica Jacinto Reza, co-inventor of the critical Mondaloy superalloy used in U.S. national-security engines, vanished in clear weather. ​Months later, the Air Force general who oversaw her program disappeared the same way. Three key figures in one unbreakable chain of knowledge — all gone. Total institutional silence, a premature grave memorial, and scent trails that end abruptly. Long-form suspense investigation into the severed chain behind America’s rocket edge.

In the clear morning light of June 22, 2025, a 60-year-old woman in a bright red shirt paused on a ridgeline in California’s Angeles National Forest. She was 30 feet behind her hiking companion. She waved.

That was the last confirmed sighting of Monica Jacinto Reza.

What followed was not reported as the disappearance of an ordinary hiker. Because Monica Jacinto Reza was anything but ordinary. She was the co-inventor of Mondaloy — a nickel-based superalloy that solved a decades-old problem in rocket propulsion and now sits inside the engines powering America’s most sensitive national-security launches.

Her vanishing act set off one of the most intensive search operations in recent memory — yet left behind almost no trace. Eight months later, the trail led to another disappearance that mirrored her own. Together, the two cases suggest a human chain of custody for a critical strategic technology has been quietly severed.

For years, U.S. rocket engineers faced an impossible tradeoff. Soviet-designed oxygen-rich staged combustion engines ran hotter and more efficiently than anything America could reliably build. The physics were understood. The materials were not.

Inside a rocket preburner, superheated gaseous oxygen slams through components at extreme pressures. Metals strong enough to contain that force tend to ignite. Metals that resist ignition are usually too weak to withstand the pressure.

In the mid-1990s at Rockwell Science Center, metallurgist Dallis Hardwick and her research assistant Monica Jacinto cracked the code. They developed a bare nickel-based alloy — no coatings, no liners — that could withstand the inferno without burning or failing. They called it Mondaloy. The “Mon” honors Monica.

By 1999, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) began funding development. NASA joined later. Two production variants emerged: Mondaloy 100 and Mondaloy 200. The alloy proved castable, forgeable, and 3D-printable after years of rigorous testing.

Today, twelve critical components in Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR1 engine — the domestic replacement for Russia’s RD-180 used in national-security satellite launches — are made of Mondaloy. These include preburners, turbine rotors, housings, ducts, and hot-gas manifolds. The same material supports the Air Force’s Hydrocarbon Boost Technology Demonstrator program.

The patent is public: US 2010/0266442 A1, “Burn-Resistant and High Tensile Strength Metal Alloys,” listing Jacinto et al. as inventors. Monica led the effort from lab-scale to full qualification and integration at Aerojet Rocketdyne, where she rose to Technical Fellow for Materials and Processes Engineering. She was also an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Later records show her quietly affiliated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge — located roughly 30 miles from the ridgeline where she disappeared. The move from Aerojet Rocketdyne (acquired by L3Harris in 2023) to JPL occurred without public announcement.

On the morning of June 22, 2025, three hikers departed the 6000 Foot Day Use area along Angeles Crest Highway. Monica had carpooled with the group; her own car remained at a companion’s house. One hiker, designated Subject C, stayed at the bottom of a steep section. Monica and Subject A — a younger yogi and wellness guide operating outdoor excursions, whom she was paying as a client — continued to the summit of Mount Waterman and began descending the west ridge.

They moved quickly, covering ground at approximately 3.5 mph on descending terrain. Photos taken shortly before the disappearance show roughly 60 feet of separation between them.

At a northerly right turn on the exposed ridgeline, Subject A signaled the direction. According to his account, Monica waved in acknowledgment from about 30 feet behind (an initial report mentioned 30 yards before being corrected). He made the turn and descended roughly 150 feet before realizing she was no longer following.

When he returned to the ridgeline 8–10 minutes later, she was gone. His shouts carried clearly to Subject C more than 1,600 feet away and 500 feet below, yet Monica did not respond.

What ensued was an “extraordinary search,” according to Acting Captain Ryan A. Vienna of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Crescenta Valley Station. Teams from multiple counties, supported by unnamed federal partners, deployed helicopters with FLIR thermal imaging, algorithmic pixel-matching calibrated to her red shirt, canines, drones, and extensive ground teams. They mapped search areas meticulously on CalTopo to avoid overlap across a 40–50-mile radius.

The only physical evidence recovered was Monica’s beanie, found the next morning in a steep ravine south of the ridge, descending toward Devil’s Canyon. Scent dogs successfully tracked her trail from the upper ridge directly to the beanie — then lost the scent entirely. No exit trail extended in any direction.

Independent civilian investigators later noted the beanie’s location seemed inconsistent with her reported trajectory. A report of a woman screaming in the vicinity surfaced, but the witness was never publicly identified. A lip balm, later found far from both the last known position and the beanie, was claimed by Subject A as Monica’s and “looking new,” though the provided photo showed it was weathered.
​
Criticism arose over information control by civilian search organizers, believed to be connected to Subject A and the hiking group. Routes were not fully shared, leading to repeated coverage of the same areas. Subject A reportedly remained deeply involved in searches, at times appearing irritated when teams focused north of the ridge and insisting searches should prioritize the south — despite having directed Monica to turn north.

On June 26, 2025 — just four days after the disappearance and while helicopters were still flying — a Find a Grave memorial (ID 284387277) was created for Monica Jacinto Reza. It listed her death date as June 22, 2025, in Angeles National Forest, with “green burial” noted. Green burial requires remains. No body has been publicly reported recovered. No obituary, death certificate details, or official statements have surfaced from JPL, NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne, or the AIAA.
​
As of March 2026, Monica Jacinto Reza remains missing. The case was transferred to the LASD Homicide Bureau Missing Persons Unit.

The story does not end on that ridgeline. 

Dallis Hardwick, Monica’s mentor and co-inventor, left Rockwell for AFRL at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. By 2005 she led the Materials Directorate, overseeing government qualification of Mondaloy while Monica handled contractor-side production and scaling at Aerojet Rocketdyne.

In May 2011, then-Major General William Neil McCasland assumed command of the entire Air Force Research Laboratory, responsible for a $4.4 billion R&D portfolio. This included the Materials Directorate under Hardwick and the Mondaloy-related contracts flowing to Aerojet Rocketdyne.

The three formed a precise triangle: the commander authorizing the funds, the senior civilian scientist qualifying the material on the government side, and the lead engineer producing and integrating it on the contractor side. They represented the complete human chain of custody for a strategic alloy essential to U.S. rocket engine independence.

Hardwick retired in 2012 after a stage-four cancer diagnosis and died on January 5, 2014.
​
Monica Jacinto Reza vanished on June 22, 2025.

On February 27, 2026, retired Major General McCasland walked out of his Albuquerque home into the Sandia Mountain foothills. He left behind his phone, glasses, and wearable devices, taking only a gun and his wallet. He has not been seen since. The only item recovered was a gray sweatshirt found 1.25 miles from his home, its connection to him unconfirmed. His wife publicly addressed speculation tying the case to UFO topics, stating there was “nothing to see here.”

Two experienced outdoors enthusiasts. Two familiar terrains. Two cases with minimal physical evidence and scent trails that abruptly end. Two instances of near-total institutional silence from the organizations that benefited from their expertise.

The aerospace community’s response has been striking. Neither JPL, NASA, nor Aerojet Rocketdyne issued public statements about Reza’s disappearance. The AIAA offered no acknowledgment. SpaceNews, which profiled her work in 2017, did not cover the case. Aviation Week and Defense News remained silent.

A single Reddit comment from a user claiming to be a JPL employee stood out: “Something is not right about this story. She needs to be found.”

Broader online speculation has linked the case to other 2025–2026 incidents involving scientists in fusion, astrophysics, and chemical biology, alongside renewed discussions of UAP transparency and potential classified knowledge. While some deaths in that cluster appear resolved as personal matters or local crimes, the two linked disappearances — Reza and McCasland — share a direct professional overlap through Mondaloy and AFRL programs that others do not.

No official investigation has publicly framed these events as connected. Yet the severed chain remains: every known individual who held the full picture of how Mondaloy moved from invention to operational rocket engines is now dead or missing.

Monica Jacinto Reza and General William Neil McCasland remain missing.

Unanswered questions:

• Why was a premature Find a Grave memorial created while active searches continued?
• Why did search organizers appear to control information flow and redirect focus?
• Why has every major institution tied to Reza’s career maintained complete silence?
• What explains the behavioral contradictions and the abrupt end to scent trails in both cases?
• Why is there no background information on Monica Reza; no birthdate, no family of origin, no present family ties, including a spouse or partner?

The wave on the ridgeline was brief. The silence that followed has been absolute. In the world of strategic aerospace materials, some chains are never meant to be broken — yet this one has. Whether by accident, foul play, or something more coordinated, the full story of Mondaloy’s human guardians may never be told.

Until then, the ridgeline remains quiet… and the questions linger, and as every day passes, there are more questions as more significant individuals connected to these fields die or disappear.

Silenced Before Disclosure: The Mysterious Death of an Intelligence Insider

On May 12, 2024, 39-year-old Matthew James Sullivan died inside his Virginia home. It would take two years for the medical examiner's report to be released.  It was ruled an accidental drug overdose from a lethal combination of alcohol, alprazolam, cyclobenzaprine, and imipramine.

Ipipramine is a medication used to treat anxiety and bedwetting in children; cyclobenzaprine is a potent prescription muscle relaxant that acts on the central nervous system; and alprazolam is a generic version of Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug.

The conclusion closed the case—but it failed to quiet the questions: was it suicide or something more sinister?

Weeks before his death, Sullivan committed to testify at a congressional hearing scheduled for November 2024. He intended to speak about alleged covert UFO crash retrieval programs—operations long denied, whispered about only in classified corridors and dismissed in public as fiction.

Sullivan’s record carried weight. He served as a decorated Air Force intelligence officer with top-secret clearances. He worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and within some of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence environments, including the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, the Air Force Intelligence Agency, and the NSA. His credentials did not suggest a man prone to fantasy—they suggested access.

​The DRACO Anomaly: The Death of Joshua LeBlanc
​
On July 22, 2025, a pillar of fire on a lonely Alabama road consumed Joshua LeBlanc, a man who held the keys to the stars. At only 29, LeBlanc reigned as a titan of NASA’s nuclear thermal propulsion—the radical technology designed to bridge the void between Earth and Mars. He had spent half a decade mastering the Space Nuclear Propulsion (SNP) project before taking the helm of DRACO (Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations). His mission: to build the engine that would conquer deep space.

Then, the lead engineer became a ghost. His death came one month after Monica Reza disappeared.

The Huntsville Incident
The disappearance defied every protocol of a rational mind. LeBlanc vanished from his Huntsville home, leaving behind the tether of modern existence—his wallet and his cellular phone. No word. No warning. No mention of a voyage.

Three days passed before medical examiners could identify the charred remains fused to the interior of a Tesla Model 3. The impact against a guardrail and a stand of trees had triggered an inferno so intense it bordered on the surgical.

The Four-Hour Gap
Digital breadcrumbs from Tesla’s tracking system reveal a chilling itinerary. Before the terminal impact, LeBlanc spent four hours idling at the Huntsville International Airport—a site mere miles from the Marshall Space Flight Center, the high-security nerve center for the classified nuclear propulsion programs he commanded.

What transpired in those four hours remains a vacuum in the official record.

Signal Interference
The fatal crash has reignited a silent war of whispers within intelligence circles regarding the vulnerability of autonomous systems. Tesla’s own telemetry raises a harrowing specter: the possibility of remote terminal access. If a vehicle can be commandeered from the ether, the car becomes a weapon, and the driver becomes a passenger in their own execution.

The Thirteen
LeBlanc’s end is not an isolated tragedy; it is a data point in a lethal trend. Since 2022, a shadow has fallen over the global scientific community. At least thirteen elite minds specializing in nuclear energy, advanced propulsion, and orbital technologies have vanished or met sudden, violent ends.
​
As the bodies pile up at the frontier of human innovation, a desperate question emerges from the wreckage: Does the path to the future require total disclosure, or is the knowledge itself a death warrant for its inventors?

On April 17, 2026, a Mooney M20 spiraled out of the sky over South Carolina and slammed into the earth, erasing all four souls on board. At the controls sat James “Tony” Moffatt, 60 — a decorated veteran, elite test pilot forged at the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, and a man who had flown 14 space-shuttle missions as payload and flight-crew specialist at Johnson Space Center, helping stitch the International Space Station together in orbit. His wife, Lessa, 61, and their sons — William, 28, an IT specialist, and Andrew, 30, a research engineer at the University of Alabama — died with him.

Moffatt left the Army in 2008 and built an aerospace consulting firm that dove straight into the Pentagon’s most shadowy programs: the Degraded Visual Environment Mitigation initiative and the Next Generation Unmanned Aircraft System technology demonstration. At every press conference, officials carefully avoided naming the true nature of his work. After all, the government still buries the classified aerospace research he mastered beneath layers of black ice.

He is the twelfth name on a lengthening roster of sudden deaths and vanishings among scientists, engineers, and insiders tied to aerospace, propulsion, and nuclear research.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has now fired formal demands at four federal agencies, warning that "something sinister" is clearly at work. Rep. Tim Burchett has openly scorched the intelligence community’s "alphabet agencies" for stonewalling and obstruction.

Two months before Moffatt’s plane fell, Major General McCasland disappeared without a trace. He once commanded Kirtland Air Force Base’s Phillips Research Site and, far more tellingly, the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio — the same fortress that housed Project Blue Book, the military’s official UFO investigation from 1952 to 1969.

Monica Reza is still missing. As of April 2026, the first anniversary of her disappearance draws near like a gathering storm.

Shadow in the Caldera: The Disappearance of Ingrid Coleen Lane

Whenever the public interest in the mysterious disappearances of scientists tied to America's nuclear aerospace and defense sectors starts to fade, a new disclosure inevitably shatters the silence.

On October 15, 2023, thirty-seven-year-old Ingrid Coleen Lane abruptly left a week-long meditation retreat at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center, a remote sanctuary nestled in the New Mexico mountains roughly 51 miles from Albuquerque. She had frequented the center for nearly a decade, yet this time, she departed after spending only a single day. She informed the director that she planned to travel to Los Alamos and Albuquerque before returning home.

Three days later, police tracked her Apple AirTag signal to a remote, rugged stretch of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. At an elevation of 9,100 feet, where cellular service ceases to exist, investigators discovered her black Subaru Impreza abandoned near a volcanic hiking trail.

The state of the vehicle defied simple explanation:

• The Impact: A massive boulder had crashed through the rear hatch window, lodging itself in the back passenger area.
• The Front-End Damage: The vehicle also exhibited severe, unexplained front-end damage.
• The Contents: Inside the cabin sat three laptops, an unactivated burner phone, and the ignition keys.

Despite forensic evidence confirming Lane had been near or outside the vehicle, search dogs failed to catch any scent leading away from the scene. The barren ground offered no footprints, no trail, and no clue regarding her direction.

On the afternoon of her disappearance, two hunters stumbled across Lane on an isolated dirt road near State Route 144 in the San Antonio Mountain area. Recognizing the severe damage to her vehicle, they offered her a ride back to the main thoroughfare.

Lane refused. She appeared entirely calm and coherent, telling the men that she was "determined to get to the top of a mountain." Data recovered from her AllTrails account later confirmed that she had recently downloaded directions to a trail leading directly to the summit of San Antonio Mountain.

Following the discovery of the car, authorities launched a massive recovery effort. Helicopters, drones, and more than eighty volunteers combed the nearly 90,000-acre wilderness of the isolated preserve. They found nothing.

​Lane’s unexpected vanishing immediately garnered intense scrutiny due to her highly specialized professional background. As a neuroscientist and bioengineer, she worked with the Mind Research Network at the University of New Mexico, an institution at the forefront of neuroimaging technology and mental illness research.

Furthermore, friends revealed online that Lane had been working on sensitive projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory—joining a troubling pattern of other missing scientists associated with the facility. For decades, Los Alamos has occupied the dark center of both nuclear weapons development and intense UFO conspiracy theories.

Reports indicated that shortly before her disappearance, Lane had become increasingly distressed over workplace issues at Sandia National Laboratories, another high-security defense site, before pursuing the opportunity connected to Los Alamos.

​In the months following the incident, official narratives framed Lane's disappearance as a tragic mental health crisis. Media accounts painted a picture of a "bipolar Buddhist musician" who made a drastic, fatal decision after fleeing a silent retreat.

Her husband, Louis Scuderi—a former NASA Undergraduate Space Grant intern who studied astronomy at the University of Arizona—told investigators that Lane had previously expressed suicidal thoughts.

Yet, those closest to her rejected this singular explanation. Family members and close friends noted that Lane appeared distinctly calmer, more optimistic, and focused shortly before she vanished into the caldera.

Two years have passed since the boulder struck Lane's vehicle, and the wilderness has kept its secrets. Investigators have chased numerous leads into oblivion.

In June 2025, Lane’s mother, Rebecca, shared a haunting update online. Among the many dead-end tips scrutinized by police was an unconfirmed sighting from a United Airlines pilot, who believed he spotted a woman matching Ingrid's description wandering through a busy airport terminal.

Whether she fled the grid to escape the pressure of America's defense apparatus, or whether the volatile landscape of the Valles Caldera swallowed her whole, the faceless mountains of New Mexico refuse to say.

​Jason J. Tavares was raised in Cranston, Rhode Island. He is an author of many books and stories, as well as a writer, actor, and director of dozens of short films. He recounts his own true-life, eerie encounters since he was a kid, as well as when he was serving in the military.

Host - M.P. Pellicer
Listen to all my podcasts at www.EeriePodcast.com

In 2023, a chilling truth emerged about two Colorado funeral homes. Investigators discovered 189 decaying bodies that had been improperly stored, while grieving families received fake ashes made from dry concrete. Death certificates falsely listed crematories that had never performed the cremations, exposing a profound betrayal of trust. The case revealed that some so-called urban legends about mishandled remains are not fiction at all.

Infamous houses where notorious crimes have been committed often become dark tourist spots. In some cases house numbers are changed or they are totally demolished to erase their history. Places like the rental property where four Idaho students were stabbed in 2022, the site of the unsolved case of JonBenet Ramsey, the homes of O.J. Simpson and his wife Nicole Simpson Brown and the Murdaugh estate in South Carolina are all examples of this.

Marie Beulah Mueller, disappeared on March 5, 1972 and Mary Theresa Simpson was abducted on March 15, 1964. There are recent updates to these cold cases that are over 50 years old. These are considered the coldest cases.

Host - M.P. Pellicer
www.MPPellicer.com

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It's not only Gumbo, Jambalaya and Étouffée which are served in the bayou, but a helping of murder to go with it.    

April, 1937
Ville Platte, Louisiana

Villa Platte is located in Louisiana's Cajun country. The area became a significant center for Acadian descendants, particularly after the 1785 arrival of a second wave of Acadian exiles who had been repatriated to France, and volunteered to settle in Spanish Louisiana.  It is located on what was once the Spanish Royal Road, and incorporated in 1858. It became the parish seat of Evangeline Parish. 

On a mild spring day, Melvin Nicholas Vidrine, 27, told authorities his common law wife Euphrozine “Frozina” Vizinat (Vizena), 24, had gone to the woods after an argument. According to him she said "I am tired of living this way, shoot me." She put a .22 rifle to her head he brought from the house, and asked him to finish her off if the shot was ineffective, and to "bury her deep". She fired a bullet, but didn't die. He shot her in the back of the head and killed her in a move reminiscent of a coup de grace. 

"My blood and nerves seemed to turn to ice and I shot her," he told police. This act was done within sight of their young child, James Buford.

Chances are that Frozina never legally married any of her three husbands as she was still referred to her by her maiden name. Nothing is found in the parish records as well. In some Cajun communities in rural Louisiana they practiced informal unions that resembled common-law marriages, particularly during periods when access to clergy or legal officials was limited.

Marriage usually occurred at a young age. Divorce was rare and difficult to justify, which calls into question how Frozina managed to exit her prior unions. Had she acted so crazily that her husbands were agreeable to ending the relationship? This makes sense since among the Cajun population of those years, the extended family had to approve the marriage of female kin, and probably the end of the union as well. The family cared for each other's children, and socialized and celebrated together.

Frozina's child James Buford went to live with his paternal grandparents.

By 1948 Melvin Vidrine was free. It’s not known if he was pardoned or paroled, but that year he married his fourth and final wife Harley Lemoine, and together they had three children.

Melvin Vidrine died in 2007 at the age of 92. Ironically he outlived his four wives, his parents, and his older sister Atile Guillory who committed suicide in 1959 by shooting herself in the chest. Both of his sons including James Buford died before him. It's unknown what happened with his other sister Leonie Vidrine. 

The story of the murder was written up in True Detective, Master Detective and American Detective.

In 1940, while Melvin Vidrine was serving his sentence, scandals in state politics broke the once powerful Earl Long machine. Earl was the older brother of Huey "Kingfish" Long who served as governor of Louisiana and as a U.S. senator until his assassination in 1935.

The politicians had lost favor in Evangeline, and 1940 turned out to be a bad year for Sheriff Pucheu. He lost the election for sheriff, and was arrested for embezzlement and burning public records of the sheriff's office. By the end of the year he pled guilty to 20 counts of embezzlement on the promise that he would receive only four months to one year sentence on each count. He was admitted to the penitentiary on December 30, 1940 and served until May 14 when he was paroled. He paid $10,000 to settle a civil suit for the money he stole.

In December, 1941 he petitioned the Louisiana board of pardons for a full pardon and restoration of citizenship; he was denied. Charles Pucheu died in 1948.

Evangeline, Louisiana, 1921
​
​It was noted by the local newspapers that the blue-eyed Melvin Vidrine was a distant relative of Euzebe Vidrine, a notorious criminal who had been apprehended by the same Sheriff Charles Pucheu 13 years before when he was newly elected to his office.

​Euzebe Vidrine was born on July 12, 1898 in the town of Ville Platte, Evangeline Parish, Louisiana. By his early twenties he had married Lillian Andrus, and there was nothing remarkable about his early life. According to those close to him, a normal man had become moody, dark and violent.

In 1921, Pierre Vidrine, possibly a distant but not close relative to Euzebe complained that several hogs had been stolen from his farm at Turkey Creek.

Already the men had clashed when Euzebe's dog killed one of his sheep, and Pierre told his neighbors he had seen Euzebe hanging around his farm when the hogs disappeared.

Inevitably Euzebe Vidrine learned of the rumors, and he spent several days in his house ruminating and even weeping in rage over the accusations.

On April 25, 1921 Euzebe headed to where Pierre Vidrine was plowing his field. He carried a loaded 12-guage shotgun, and he waited for the farmer to come close to his hiding spot.  The noise of both barrels going off rent the day, and the man fell to the ground. Euzebe Vidrine fled to his home and hid the firearm. Pierre did not die right away but succumbed to his wounds a week later. Since he had been shot in the back he had not seen who fired upon him. He left behind a wife and five children.

Since no good deed goes unpunished, another kind stranger became Euzebe's next victim. He struck up a conversation with John Roy, and told him he didn't have money for the train fare. Roy gave him a ride, and as they were approaching the town of Eunice, Vidrine asked him to pull over so he could smoke a cigarette.

Both men stood outside each smoking a cigarette, when Vidrine pulled the pistol out and shot John Roy in the head. He stole a nickel and watch from his latest victim. Rodney Reed who was on his way to a hunting trip came across the dying man around 4 a.m. Police were called but the man died before regaining consciousness.

On December 5, 1921 Mayor Wyble of Eunice said that a man who called himself Jack Vidrine had been picked up for the attacks on Charles Garbo and John Roy. Vidrine was arrested at the depot of the Gulf Coast Lines in Eunice.

An officer from Lafayette said he was not the man who had killed Charles Garbo, even though he fit the description of the man seen riding with him, including the blue serge suit he was wearing.

Once released Vidrine headed to Pine Prairie where his father-in-law lived. He had run out of money, and spent four days in town, and then left to Orange, Texas.

Soon after his arrival he met Lee Duke, a jitney driver who offered him a ride to Beaumont where he told Vidrine he could find a job. The killer used the same ruse that worked on John Roy. He shot the Good Samaritan, and stole a 38-caliber pistol, a watch and 75 cents after they had stopped for a cigarette.

Vidrine headed back to Ville Platte, with no one the wiser he had killed four men in less than a year.

Another man named Frank Smith was accused of the murder of Lee Duke. He was convicted and sent to serve 15 years at the Texas State Penitentiary. Throughout his trial he claimed he didn't even know who Duke was.

Euzebe might have been crazy, but not stupid. He returned to Evangeline Parish and lay low when it came to killing, however he still suffered from mood swings.

A little over three years since the murder of poor Pierre Vidrine, he crossed paths with Leo Robert Wiggins, 27, who was the son of Evangeline's sheriff. Wiggins was heading to the house he had just built for his new bride, when he saw Euzebe walking down the road. They knew each other since childhood, and Wiggins offered him a ride. As Euzebe was about to enter the car, he pulled his revolver and shot the young man in the chest. He shot him again when he saw the first bullet didn't kill him. He hid Wiggins' body behind a tree, and after attempting to take the vehicle it stalled out on him. He walked back to his house and hid the pistol.

Later he came across men in town discussing the murder of Leo Wiggins. It seemed there had been eyewitnesses who described a young man wearing a blue serge suit run from where the body had been discovered.

Since it had worked once before, Euzebe joined the posse organized to find the killer, however luck turned against him. Bloodhounds were brought in for the search. The dogs followed the scent from where Wiggins was killed to where the group of men had stood discussing the crime, and from there to Vidrine's house, and then to his bedroom. Inside the closet the police found the blue serge suit with a loaded .38 caliber revolver. Later the cartridges would prove to be a match to the bullets taken from Wiggins' body.

Vidrine was arrested, but denied any knowledge of the murder.

On May 21, Euzebe wrote the following statement:

Days after Vidrine was arrested, the sheriff from Lafayette Parish came to Evangeline since it seemed one of the watches found on Euzebe matched the one belonging to John Roy. Fingerprints taken from Lee Duke's crime scene were matched to Vidrine.

Vidrine only admitted to killing Wiggins, but denied murdering all the others. When asked how he felt killing Leo Wiggins he answered that he felt like a weight had been lifted.

Charged with the murder of the sheriff's son, Euzebe Vidrine went to trial on June 29, 1924. He received permission to represent himself, convinced he could sway the jury to give him life in prison instead of death. He told the court his actions were fueled by alcoholic rage and a temporary insanity, which made him a victim of his own actions. His closing statement was: "Please save my life. I'm sorry I killed Leo."

It took the jury only 10 minutes to find him guilty and that he should hang. His execution was delayed until August 8, 1924, after he asked the judge for a chance to write his memoirs as a cautionary tale. He admitted to the murder of Pierre Vidrine, Charles Garbo, John Roy, Lee Duke and Robert Leo Wiggins.

While the condemned man penned The Life of Euzebe Vidrine, his defense team appealed to the court that he was insane, and instead should be sent to prison. A lunacy commission found Vidrine sane, and his comment to the attorneys was:  "Well, I guess that's it. The jig's up."

Euzebe Vidrine met with his family before the execution, and on his way to the gallows paused to be photographed by the newspaper reporters. He seemed pleased with the large crowd his execution had attracted.

After the hood was drawn over his head, and the sheriff was about to release the trap Euzebe asked for a chance to speak.

Granted his dying wish, Vidrine preached his own funeral sermon for 20 minutes. "When the rope is cut that will be the end of me. My troubles will be over. My mother’s troubles, my wife’s troubles and the grief of human beings I have made widows and fatherless will have just begun. This rope now seems easy and kind compared to this dreadful remorse. Maybe the spectacle of my death will heal the hurt."

Vidrine's body was exhibited in an open coffin inside the jailhouse where thousands came to see the first person legally hung in Evangeline Parish.

If any in the town had doubts about Vidrine's guilt, it was settled two days later when rain fell in Evangeline after a weeks-long drought that had parched the land. Pierre Vidrine's widow foretold that rain would not fall until Euzebe was dead, and so it was.

Frank Smith who had been in prison since 1922 for the murder of Frank Smith was set free in November, 1924 after he was pardoned by the Texas governor.

Euzebe's father Arcille "Sony" Vidrine died in 1919, and was spared the hanging of his son. However he was alive in 1917, when another son Rene Vidrine, 23,  was a victim of violence.

On December 2, 1917 Rene Vidrine and Fabien Fontenot, neighbors whose family lived on the edge of Big Mamou met in a strip of woods to engage in a duel.

What passed between them was not known since there were no witnesses. It was said that bad blood existed, and only a night before, Vidrine and Fontenot's brother had almost come to fists at a neighborhood dance.

Rene Vidrine's horse returned home without him, and Fontenot's buggy was found smashed against a tree. His horse went to a neighbor's house.

The appearance of both animals without riders set off a search. 

Vidrine's body was found; he had been stabbed in the heart. By then Fontenot had turned himself over to Sheriff Wiggins, claiming self defense.

​There is no further mention if Fabien Fontenot was prosecuted, but it seems that without witnesses to contradict his version, nothing further came of it.

This encounter was not unheard of since two weeks later two men engaged in a shooting duel on a principal street of Eunice. Dr. Marshall who was killed after the men shot 10 times at each other was a practicing physician of the Mamou section of Evangeline.

​Despite the execution of Euzebe Vidrine someone still desired vegeance against the family, or so it seemed.

The day after Christmas, 1924, Elgee Vidrine was found unconscious on the roadway. He had two deep cuts on the top and left side of his head. His leg was broken in two or three places. A highway builder on his way to work came across the dying man. 

The sheriff and a priest were summoned.

It seemed that Elgee had been drunk since Christmas day. At 1 a.m. he dressed to leave. His wife asked him when he would return home. He gave her the same answer that his brother Euzebe used to give his mother whenever he left home: "Do not expect me till you see me."

At first it was believed Elgee had gotten a ride on a truck hauling gravel and accidentally fell off, and the truck ran him over. However his cap was found 60 feet farther west on the edge of the roadway, and nearby was a heavy piece of steel 2 feet long and 2 inches wide. It had a small projection at the end, and this matched a dent on Elgee's head. The force of the blow crushed his skull. 

It was believed that Vidrine came to town for an appointment with someone, and it ended in an argument. This person knowing he might be armed struck him on the head, and drove him to the edge of town. After throwing him on the road, he ran him over which is how his legs were broken.

Vidrine's money and valuables were untouched, and he had the same pistol that his brother Euzebe had used to kill four men. It had been returned to his mother after Euzebe was executed.

Elgee's sister Anna Vidrine who was engaged to be married to Johnny Deshotels for several weeks, had Father Savy who had given her brother last rites and hour before marry them the same day.

Elgee was buried on December 28 and no arrests had been made, and never were. 

Rene Vidrine, Leo Wiggins and Elgee Vidrine were all found dead in the same strip of woods. 

New Orleans, Louisiana 1926

During those years, it wasn't only men killing each other violently, but a woman was accused of poisoning her entire family.

Renette Bussey, 23, was arrested on February 21, 1926 for the death of her 5-year-old daughter Verdia. Doctors believed she was poisoned. The bodies of Lawrence Bussey, her husband and her other children Clarence and Esther were ordered to be exhumed.

Renette Cure married Lawrence Bussey on December 21, 1921. He died on April 13, 1925, less than four years after their union. Their children followed him to the grave; Clarence on December 5, 1925, Esther five days later and Verdia on February 19, 1926. Four members of the Bussey family died in the space of eleven months.

Verdia (Verda) the last child to die was autopsied and the coroner found her death was due to mercurial poisoning. Before the child died she was alleged to have told doctors and nurses that her mother had forced her to eat bread with soap "and had threatened to beat her if she said anything about it."

​Clarence, age 3, who died in December, 1925 went to Charity Hospital in October, 1925 from the effects of swallowing iodine. His mother said she believed he mistook the bottle for one of cough syrup. Was this a failed attempt by his mother to kill him?

A druggist told police he had sold Mrs. Bussey rat killer containing mercury.

Renette had collected $1,500 of her husband's $3,000 life insurance. Her mother-in-law who had received the other half, turned it over to her to help take care of her grandchildren.

Some believed her motivation in doing away with the children, was her relationship with a lover. It turned out this man had served with her husband in the New Orleans fire department.

A few days after Renette Bussey's arrest, Frank Davis a fireman admitted he had an intimate relationship with her. He was married and had visited the Bussey household with his wife. They were having an extramarital affair before and after the death of Lawrence Bussey.

Taxicab driver Theodore F. Meade told police that he drove Mrs. Bussey from police headquarter to the central station where Davis worked shortly after she was questioned in connection with the deaths in her family. He overheard Davis say to her: "They can't do nothing to me."

Joseph Bussey, Renette's brother-in-law disclosed he did not believe she was his brother's legal wife. He said his brother had married a woman in New Orleans in 1917, and left to war a few months later. When he returned she left him. He met Renette in 1921.

This admission was shortly followed by the story of Ida Bussey Guillory, Lawrence Bussey's former wife. She told police she divorced him for infidelity in January 1, 1921. They married in 1917, and separated two years later. 

Her present husband Adam Guillory met Bussey two weeks after the divorce, and said that Bussey was with a woman and a small child.

Disquieting revelations continued. A few days later Oscar Petrie told police his mother became violently ill and died a few days after after drinking a bowl of soup given to her by Mrs. Bussey. He wanted her body exhumed, however it seems nothing came of this request.

He also admitted to having been intimate with Renette Bussey before and after the death of her husband. They were neighbors that lived a few doors down from each other. As a motive he said his mother discovered the affair through reading letters Renette Bussey had sent him. His mother threatened to tell Lawrence Bussey about the illicit relationship.

The police continued questioning different witnesses, then the city chemist found that poison was found in the body of all 3 children, but none in the father.

Renette went to trial in April, 1926, and on May 1, she was found guilty of manslaughter, even though she was originally charged with murder in the first degree for the death of her child Verda. Her defense had argued that the woman lived in squalor, loved her child and believed it tubercular.

The following month her attorney was seeking a new trial based on that the verdict was rendered contrary to law and evidence. The manslaughter verdict carried a sentence of 20 years. She was sentenced to serve 10 to 15 years at hard labor in the State Penitentiary. The motion for a new trial was overruled.

Surprisingly Renette's family history had not started in poverty. When her grandfather died in 1897 it was noted he was descended from one of the oldest and most distinguished Creole families of New Orleans. He had inherited a fortune from his father, but lost it all in various unsuccessful enterprises. He spent his last years poor but eking out an existence since he was known as a resourceful man.

In October, 1926 the Supreme Court set aside Renette Cure's conviction.

Life behind bars for 8 months seemed to have agreed with her since she gained about 25 pounds, and she was seen giggling frequently while she chatted with her attorney. The reason for  the weight gain became obvious when she gave birth to a baby girl on November 29, 1926, or so it was reported by the local newspapers. Obviously this child did not belong to her dead husband, so who was the father?

She was released on bond in December.

Ryan Gable is a veteran radio personality and producer for his weeknight show The Secret Teachings, named after Manly Hall’s magnum opus. His broadcasts focus on the synchronicity and objective analysis of Parapsychology, Pop-conspiracy, Para-politics, Pop Occult-ure, Health, History, the Paranormal, Symbolism, Alchemy, Magic, Philosophy, and more, in the most distinct ways by finding parallels and patterns often overlooked. Ryan is also the author of several books including his esoteric masterpiece ‘Occult Arcana’, his compendium of synchronicity ‘The Technological Elixir’, and ‘Liberty Shrugged’, which is an unconventional and non-partisan look into the history of the United States. His new book ‘Garden of Hallucinations’ is an esoteric primer focusing on the symbolism of the human body, the relationship between magic and miracle in religious texts, and psychic manifestations. ​

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Guest - Ryan Gable
Website - ​Thesecretteachings.info

James Creachbaum Jr. is a paranormal investigator and one-time antiques dealer. Presently he works as a producer for Forbidden Realms, and for many years hosted a show on Night Dreams Talk Radio Network where he explored ghostly apparitions, Bigfoot sightings, alien encounters, and mysteries like Area 51. ​

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Guest - James Creachbaum
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Tom Sewid was born in Alert Bay off northeastern Vancouver Island which is the homeland of the Namgis Tribe. As a kid he would hear the real Sasquatch always watched children. She was not allowed to take them but if they misbehaved she would come at night and take you while you slept. She would take you deep into the forest to her home where she would boil and eat you. Tom’s father was a commercial fisherman which allowed him to hear and share stories about sasquatch originating in the coastal area of British Columbia, Canada. Tom went on to become a trophy hunting guide specializing in black and grizzly bears, which took him to logging camps abandoned for decades, and places where few humans ever walked. He investigated sasquatch with Dr. John Bindernagel for many years.

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​Website - SasquatchIsland.com

Pat O'Connell discusses the backstory behind her book: Bleedthrough: A true story of aliens, demons, and pure evil in Texas. In the three years between 2010 and 2013, Texas aircraft repair shop owner, Clay Wheeler, his wife, and his employees experienced an array of events at Sparks County Airport that make the events at Utah’s Skinwalker Ranch pale by comparison. UFO sightings, alien intrusions, poltergeist activity, spirit manifestations, demonic presences and possessions, assaults, shootings, a government raid … and plain old murder. This story is about Clay: a man trying to run a respectable business while doing his best to cope with bizarre events and phenomena that jeopardize everything he has built and worked for.

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Guest - Pat O'Connell
​Website - Xperiencers.com

Kemper was a private military school founded in 1844 on 46 acres in Boonville, Missouri. It closed in 2002. Throughout the years, students met sudden and sometimes violent ends. Are they the ones who are said to haunt the buildings? And Kemper isn't the only place where those who are not quite at peace roam the hallways.

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Amy Marohn is a medium, spiritual hypnotist, and founder of Sensorium Hypnosis. With a background in rehabilitation counseling and over two decades of experience in healing and spiritual work, she guides clients and students around the world in aligning with their higher self and purpose.

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Dennis has over 40 years of experience in the field of the paranormal. He has studied, researched, and investigated many aspects pertaining to the paranormal and the supernatural with many personal paranormal experiences. He is also a researcher and Investigator of the occult and the supernatural. He is a well-known authority on folklore, legends, superstitions, cryptozoology, and the occult. Dennis has written several books: Beyond the Shadows: A Field Guide to the Paranormal, and The Road Unseen: A Paranormal Journey into High Strangeness.​

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Guest - Dr. Dennis W. Carroll
​Website - DennisWCarroll.com

Why ghost stories at Christmas? Of course there are ghosts for all times of the year, particularly for example at Halloween, but the Christmas ghosts are special.

STORIES:

The Cracked Smile by Anthony Masters
Crespian and Clairan by Joan Aiken
On Christmas Day in the Morning by Margery Allingham
Thirteen at Table by Lord Dunsany
Christmas Eve in the Blue Chamber by Jerome K. Jerome
The Necklace of Pearls by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Bobby J. Gallo recounts the most interesting investigations he's undertaken as a paranormal investigator along with his family.

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Marlene visits the beautifully scenic and evocative Key West Cemetery. Established in 1847, the history of the island can be found amongst the tombstones of those who lived in paradise.

The cemetery is a 19-acre burial ground at the foot of Solares Hill, situated there to protect the graves from flooding. A hurricane in 1846 had washed out coffins from the original cemetery located at the sand dunes at present-day Higgs Beach.

It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people are buried there, many more than the 30,000 residents who currently live on the island.
It is in the northwest section of the Old Town area of the island.

The cemetery contains a historic Catholic section, Jewish section, the USS Maine Plot dedicated in 1900, and the Los Martyrs de Cuba, a memorial for those who fought in the 1868 Cuban revolution. In addition to these defined areas, Cubans and Americans, rich and poor, are interred throughout. In-ground and crypt style graves range from simple concrete copings filled with soil to elaborate monuments. Plot enclosures of wrought iron, wood, or concrete were often used to mark family plots.

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The Gulf Killer is the nickname given to a possible serial killer who was active in the Pasco County and the wider Tampa Bay area of Florida. A group of unsolved murders of fourteen women and two men were committed between 1971 and 1978. While the victims were grouped together differently at various points, nine were attributed, dubiously, to a single killer. Whether the murders were connected to one or multiple individuals, feuding pimps, criminal organizations, or a sexually depraved killer was never determined. At least eight of the victims were involved in prostitution on the Dale Mabry Strip. Thus these crimes also became known as The Strip Murders or the Red Light Murders.

In January, 1975 Betsy Loden, 22, clad in a nightgown and bathrobe was found in the garage of a home at 2321 E. Fifth Street, Tanglewood Terrace a suburb in New Port Richey, Florida. She was bound hand and foot with medical or surgical tape, and a strip of the tape was placed over her mouth.  She was lying face down next to her yellow Toyota Corona. The car's ignition was on, but the car was not running leading police to believe she may have died from carbon monoxide poisoning, however there were no traces of gas inside the garage. Her body showed no significant wounds or bruises.

Inside the house furnishings were in disarray indicating some type of struggle took place.

Betsy Loden had rented the house two months before. Her ex-husband Charles Loden, 27, was the one to find her when he arrived at the home around midnight after he left work. There was no telephone in the home so he ran across the street and called police from a neighbor's house.

The neighbors later told police they had seen her around noon walking a dog she was keeping for John Moore, manager of the Frankenmuth Restaurant since he was unable to keep it. She had worked there as a hostess until December 12, 1974. Prior to this she worked at Innisbrook as a waitress from October 1973 until August 1974.

Many of these victims would be buried at Tucker Cemetery in Dade City, Florida. It is the oldest cemetery in Pasco County that existed prior to 1855. Family history records the Tucker family lived in the vicinity dating back to about 1790.

Thomas (1788-1865) and Sara Tucker (1778-1855) settled in the area around 1842, and 3 years later planted the county's first orange grove. The oldest markers in the graveyard belong to them.

There are also markers from two Civil War veterans one being W.A. Tucker of Florida Cavalry Co. A and Duncan Bryant of Florida Cavalry Co. B; and a World War I veteran, Eugene D. Tucker.

The community was called Tuckertown until the railroad arrived and then it was known as Richland. Two hundred yards north of the Tucker Cemetery were huge orange trees that once surrounded the Harriet Gill-Tucker-Smith home site from which the home had long vanished.

 The entire front section of the cemetery was deeded to the county as a burying place for indigents in 1965.

The first of these strange and unsolved cases occurred close to where Betsy Loden was killed.

Her name was Bethany Wright Nielson, 55, who was reported missing from her job at the county building on October 15, 1971. New Port Richey police found a back window forced open at her home on Rio Drive. There were blood stains throughout the house, and blood stains and a partial denture in the driveway.

The next day her burned body was found in a shallow grave in Columbia County, Florida near the Georgia border. This was 15 miles north of Lake City. She was found by a fisherman on his way to the Suwannee River. The ground around the grave was scorched, which accounted as to why her features were burned beyond recognition, and she was identified via a dental comparison. The police believed she was killed in New Port Richey and transported to where the body was burned.
Her mother Jessie Wright had died the year before. Her parents were from Hammondsport, New York where she had grown up. She had left after the death of one of her former husbands, of which she had about five or six.
​
Her murder has never been solved.

Wilma Ida Mae Woods, 49, was found December 29, 1973 by a passerby on SR-577 near Wesley Chapel in South-central Pasco county.

She lay face down in a ditch with several inches of water. She was only wearing her shoes. The body was relatively unscarred and there was no indication of violence, but it was suspected she was strangled or suffocated based on blood found in her throat; however her wind pipe was not crushed.

She was identified by 3 tattoos she had on each thigh including a rose and the name "Wilma". Tampa Police were familiar with Wilma, and she had been arrested for public drunkenness only a few days before on December 26. She was released the following day, and was last seen alive leaving a North Franklin Street bar in Tampa with a male companion about 10:30 p.m.

Once an autopsy report was completed it was confirmed she was asphyxiated and the case was considered a homicide.

The police then started to look for the companion she was last seen with, but with no success. Her case remains unsolved.

Her son Robert took her body back to her hometown of Rome, Georgia and she was buried in Oakland Cemetery.
​
Two other bodies would be found in a few years at the same location.

The next body turned up on July 10, 1974. It was the partially unclothed body of John Urbain Villandry, 20, who lived at 5870 56th Ave. N. #183 St. Petersburg, Florida.

Villandry was found by a passing bicyclist along SR 581, which had been dubbed "The Road to Nowhere" since it dead-ended at a barbed wire fence. The name stuck due to the number of murder victims dumped in this rural area of Pasco County. His body was in a water-filled ditch, and he was only wearing a t-shirt and pair of Levi jeans that had been pulled down around his ankles.

The car he was using that night, a 1970 red and black Fiat convertible belonged to his girlfriend Bonnie Bigelow. It was found at Gene's Lobster House in Madeira Beach a week later.

His identity was verified through a device designed to correct spaces between the teeth. A check with an orthodontist led to the doctor who had fitted the victim with this device.

Eight months before he was killed, Villandry was arrested and charged with possession of an estimated 10 to 15 pounds of marijuana.

Police believed his death was connected to the drug trade. His murder remains unsolved.
​
Six months later, Betsy Loden was found dead in her garage.

 The next murdered victim was Diana Lynn Valleck, only 18 years old. She would be the first of what are considered the Strip Murders.

Her nude, badly decomposed body was found in a Land O'Lakes orange grove near SR-54 in May, 1975. She lay in a ditch, and she was shot to death. She was buried at Tucker Cemetery as a Jane Doe. Almost two years would pass before she was identified.

Police estimated she was killed on May 12, 1975, and had lain in the orange grove about 4 day before she was found. Detectives were unsure whether she was killed where she was found or had been dumped there after being murdered elsewhere.

The M.E. found the victim had been shot at least 4 times, however he found 14 small caliber bullet wounds caused by the bullets ricocheting inside her body.

She was reported missing nearly a month after she was believed to have been killed by her mother Mrs. Roy Sander of Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Valleck was identified after police cross-referenced her case with the missing person’s report issued by the Tampa Police Department. They realized her description matched the Jane Doe found in 1975.

Pictures of the jewelry found on the body were sent to Valleck's parents who were able to identify 3 pieces of jewelry.

Detectives came across a dentist who had Valleck's dental charts and they were able to confirm her identity. There was no explanation why it took two years to obtain the dental records. She was ID'd after the case was reopened by the new sheriff John Short.

Valleck was a professional go-go dancer who worked at the Carollwood Bottle Club on North Dale Mabry and frequented other clubs along the strip, including the Sportsman’s Lounge.

She was last seen hitchhiking to work about 7 p.m. on May 15, 1975. She body was discovered 4 days later.

Authorities were unable to locate her husband Frank Michael Valleck III (1945-2003) a seaman from New Orleans.

Detectives said that due to her lifestyle tracing her whereabouts during her final days was very difficult.
​
Her family decided to leave her buried at Tucker Cemetery.

It was noted that John Villandry and Wilma Ida Woods had been dumped in the same area, which was lightly populated and had sparsely traveled roads.

On August 21, 1976, the nude body of Enid Marie Branch, 21, was found in neighboring Hillsborough County on the side of a deserted dirt road on the south side of Lake Rogers, north of Crawley Road. She had been shot several times in the head. Her right leg was almost severed and her face was mutilated. Branch left behind a four-year-old son Patrick (1973-2021) who was later adopted by her mother and stepfather.  She had been studying refrigerator repair at a Tampa trade school. According to law enforcement, she worked at night as a prostitute.
​
Her family lost touch with her a few weeks before her death. She was last seen alive as she left a Tampa restaurant at 4 a.m. on the day she was killed.

Almost a year later on April 18, 1977 Mary Jane Burke of St. Petersburg, 19, was found among discarded toys under a bush in a vacant lot at Iowa Ave and Dale Mabry Highway. The body was discovered by a group of junior high school students walking to school.

The M.E. found she had died of multiple head injuries, and there was also evidence she had sexual intercourse several hours before she died, but had not been raped. She was also strangled, and might have choked on the blood she swallowed after her jaw was broken in three places by her killer. Her blows were dealt by bare hands.

She was described by her neighbors as "a little slow", and was a former student at a Pinellas County exceptional student center. She was frequently seen walking and hitchhiking in the area.

She left behind a two-year-old child she gave birth to when she was 17 years old.

Her mother later related that a month before she was killed she was getting threatening phone calls every night at 3 a.m. She said: "This guy always identified himself as John from MacDill Air Force Base. He breathed heavy. And his voice made him sound strange, sort of crazy."
​
The year before she had been raped by a man in a pick up truck while hitchhiking

On July 18, 1977 the battered, partially clothed body of a woman was found in a shallow ditch along SR-52. A two-man road crew from the state department of Transportation came across the remains. It was estimated she had been killed about 24 hours before she was discovered. The woman was only wearing a bra and a pink blouse that had been pulled up around her neck. There was no indication she had been raped according to the preliminary autopsy report. It seemed she had died from either a blow on the head from a blunt instrument or by strangulation. Later it was found she had suffered massive brain hemorrhages.

Three days later she was identified as Jo Ann Parnell, age 40. A match was made by her fingerprints.
The police department had difficulty finding her relatives and instead quizzed tavern owners along US-41 (Nebraska Avenue) in Hillsborough County.

Detectives retraced her footsteps on the Saturday when she was last known to be alive. First there was the Mecca Lounge, where she had once worked as a barmaid, and then she went to the Liberty Lounge. This was a routine she had followed during the 8 to 10 years she lived in West Tampa. She lived a transient lifestyle in a Skid Row area where she drifted from room to room and apartment house to apartment house, usually in buildings that had seen better days. She was described as a quiet person who didn't talk much about herself. She was well known to winos, barmaids those who lived and worked in the area. She drank heavily, mostly draft beer and dark port wine. She was also a well-known prostitute by those on the Mabry Strip.

It was rumored she had a daughter in Jacksonville, and possibly some relatives in Phoenix, Arizona. Her only criminal record in Tampa was for child desertion. She had tried to sell or give away her son in a Tampa bar.

Friends said she had been living with a man named "Sonny" who lived in a room near the two bars.

Parnell’s case was one of the few which that was solved.

On January 12, 1979, Gene Arthur Wirtjes, 44, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of Jo Ann Parnell. Wirtjes was already serving a one-year sentence in the Hillsborough County Jail for stealing a truck in July 1977. He had killed Parnell to prevent her from testifying in an aggravated battery case involving a stabbing that occurred at a local bar on July 5, 1977.

Parnell's body was discovered two days after Wirtjes stole a van. Two weeks later he was arrested in Midland, Texas. It turned out the van was used to transport Parnell's body to the site where she was found dead. A pair of her pants with blood on them were inside the van.

Victor Schreckengost, Shelby Whitten and Vincent Gallo, all from Tampa  were arrested and charged with trying to cover up the incident.

Parnell was a witness to an argument between Schreckengost and Whitten, and Whitten had stabbed him in the chest.

While Wirtjes was in custody, Ralph "Butch" Brown the only witness who could have testified about the motive for killing Parnell was shot in the back on December 3, 1978, over an argument about cigarettes. He had been at Charlie's Mecca Tavern on West Kennedy Blvd. and died at the hospital.

He had already told investigators that Wirtjes had wanted "certain sexual favors" from Parnell and that he "had had an on-going dispute with her for some time."

Wirtjes was last seen leaving a bar with Parnell, the last time she was seen alive.

Without Brown's testimony, Wirtjes who was originally charged with first degree murder, was allowed to plead to a reduced charge, which would allow him to wait six months for parole consideration. The D.A. estimated he would at least serve 7 years if not more of his 25 year sentence.

When Wirtjes was 18, and had just enlisted in the armed forces both of his parents died in a car accident. He died in 2025, at the age of 80.

On August 21, 1977 16-year-old Cherylstein Orelia Cherry of Thonotosassa was found strangled, beaten and raped in a wooded area of Jackson Heights. She was nude from the waist down. Cherry was a school dropout who frequented local bars, but she had no known connection to strip clubs, and unlike most of the other victims, she was Black. Five days later, another Black woman, 18-year-old Patricia Jones, was found alive, fully clothed, at the foot of the Weedon Island Bridge in St. Petersburg. She had been shot three times with a .38 caliber gun and died after telling police that a client had shot her. Jones was a prostitute active on the Dale Mabry Strip.

Joan Gail Foster, 20, the second of the "Strip" victims found in Pasco was last seen hitchhiking from her home in Lutz to her job as a topless dancer at the Godmother Lounge on Hillsborough Ave. Her car had broken down.

She was found the next morning, September 28, 1977. Her fully clothed body was lying in an orange grove near Pasco Road about a mile north of SR-54 near I-75. She had been shot twice in the left temple with a small caliber bullet. She had come down from Memphis only 2 or 3 weeks before.

Her body was dumped only 3 miles from where Jo Ann Parnell had been found two months before.

Her body was returned to her family in Memphis for interment in a local cemetery.

The day following the discovery of Joan Foster’s body, Molly Kay Newell, 20, was found with a gunshot wound to the head in Pinellas County. The perpetrator had thrown her body off the Gandy Bridge. Twelve days earlier, Newell pled guilty to offering to commit prostitution and was sentenced to one day in jail.

In October, 1977, three counties organized a taskforce to capture the killer. Fifteen investigators interviewed prostitutes, strippers and barmaids to determine if there were any common denominators among the victims.

Emily Ellen Grieve (nee Vulgamore), 38, was found within days of the last two murders. On October 21, 1977 off a horseshoe-shaped road about a mile north of SR-54 two hunters came across her corpse. She had a gunshot wound to the back of her head in a field 500 yards from the location of where Wilma Woods' body was found in 1973.

Eighteen months before her murder, Grieve was in a near-fatal car accident, which left her with a limp and the inability to use her hand.

Grieve had relatives in Tampa and had been working as a clerk at the Interchange Motor Lodge near Fowler Avenue and I-75. She told relatives she would take the bus to work on October 10, but friends at work described her riding with a "nice young man", and having coffee with him across the street from where she was employed.

She told her fellow workers she was to meet him after work at the Owl Lounge just up the street from Interchange Motor Lodge. After waiting a while, she looked out the window for her date and told friends, "keep an eye on me so nothing happens, I'm going to walk down there."

It was unknown if she ever made it to the Owl Lounge.

Grieve worked in the same hotel as Gail Foster, who was killed a month before.

Police even tried hypnosis with a witness. There was a woman who had driven along the lonely street of SR-577 about the same time Emily Grieve's body was dumped. She recalled seeing a car near the site.  Later as she drove farther down the road, the car passed her at a high rate of speed. She was able to give them the type of car and a partial license number. 

Grieve left behind a 13-year-old son.

Judy Fay Bibee, 18, was found on November, 25, 1977, Thanksgiving Day. She died of stab wound so savage and so numerous that the medical examiner termed her death a "sadistic killing." She was found near the Dade City dump. She was from North Carolina and lived with migrant workers near Dade City.

Her daughter Sonya was raised by her maternal grandmother after she was murdered. She died in 1997 at the age of 23. 

On December 22, the two hunters who had found Grieve's body two months before discovered the skeletonized remains of a 26-year-old man named Terry Crew from Zephyrhills. A detective said, "They don't hunt there anymore."
​
On November 1, 1977 Terry Crew went to the Tampa Dog Track to collect his winning from a bet placed previously. But he had left his identification at his apartment in the Village Square Apartment near USF. He frequently placed bets with a man named "Pooch" or "Poochie", whom police were unable to locate.

Crew's gray Ford van was found abandoned in an orange grove near Lakeland on November 12, eleven days after he collected his winnings. At that point his body was yet to be found.

Crew was described as "wheeler dealer". Two weeks later he was found by the hunters, and M.E. found he was shot in the back of the head while he was seated in the driver’s seat of his van.

One of the grove managers connected the van with Crew, when he heard the name of the dead man in a radio broadcast. The license on the van had been removed, but there were papers in it with Crew's name on them.

It's believed he was executed this way since he was a karate expert, leading one to believe his killer knew him.

On January 15, 1979, another Jane Doe was discovered. This was 10th unsolved murder in Pasco County during the decade of the 1970s.

Nicknamed the "Tattooed Lady", she was found about 200 yards south of Jerry Road near Crystal Springs by a squirrel hunter. She was killed by multiple gunshot wounds, and had been dead from one to two weeks. Police believed she was killed at the secluded lover's lane near Hillsborough River in southeast Pasco.

She was fully clothed in a red windbreaker with stripes on the shoulders and on the cuffs, black slacks, a black belt with a brass colored buckle and blue jogging shoes with pink socks. Her body had been partially hidden under a fallen tree, and due to the decomposition of the body they could not take fingerprints.

She was heavily tattooed, especially on her upper body. "C.E., Joe and Cindy" were tattooed on her left arm, and on her left shoulder was a star or a cross and the initials "E.L.". Her right arm had the initial "R" followed by "Leo".  She had other tattoos which were unrecognizable letters.

Unnamed she was buried in Tucker Cemetery.

Five months passed and she was still unidentified. It was believed she was from out of state, and there was no one to notice she was missing. Investigators believed she was a "hippy type" or a motorcycle gang member.

Investigators suspected her killer was from the local area because of the secluded nature of the lover's lane, which only a local person, familiar with the area would know how to find.

Investigators made the breakthrough in 1980, after they were contacted by the Opelicka police dept in Alabama with information about the case. This was when they verified she was Cindy Lou Stewart, 19, from Columbus, Georgia. 

Harvard was arrested and told Alabama authorities about the murder. 

Two men were arrested in connection with the crime: Robert M. Hardagree, 23, from Columbus, Georgia who was charged with first degree murder, and Eddie Ray Harvard, 25 also from Columbus who was charged with being an accessory after the fact to murder.

He received a lesser charge in return for agreeing to testify against Hardagree. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Hardagree was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment on October 15, 1980.

Stewart was with Hardagree and Harvard at a New Year's Eve party at a mobile home in northern Hillsborough County and after a heavy drinking bout, was driven to where her body was found. Hardagree shot her to death and then covered her body with leaves. Harvard testified that Hardagree had grown tired of Stewart, and was irritated because she wanted to return to Columbus. She had left two children in Columbus.

Her brother Tim Carlton adopted Stewart's 4-year-old daughter Tanja, and the paternal grandparents adopted her son Alton, age 2.

Stewart quit school in the 9th grade and started running around with her twin sisters, that were two years older than her. She was the 8th of 10 children.

Her sisters went on to marry and settle down, but Stewart didn’t.

What the police taskforce found was that many of the victims shared certain traits. They were single, and worked or frequented the Dale Mabry Strip which was lined with bars, adult book stores, strip shows and x-rated movie houses. They were found within 8 miles of each other along SR 54, which was the first exit off I-75 north of Tampa. They were last seen alive hitchhiking or walking. Five of them were shot in the head with a .22 caliber weapon; two were strangled. Three were found nude and the others partially nude. The prostitutes had their purses stolen. The victims were killed elsewhere and their bodies were dumped with little regard for hiding them.

Detectives believe these murders were related to other "strip murders” in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Other victims were found under similar circumstances during the same period of time when other bodies were found in Pasco.

Police believe they are similar because they were committed by the same person.

Two of the murders, the only 2 male victims, were related because police believed they stemmed from the drug and gambling sub-culture of the Tampa Bay area, but their deaths were widely separated. What links them is their origin only. 

Two of the older women's murders were similar because of the lifestyle of the victims, but there the similarities end.

Theories as to the identity of the murder are: that it was a nut; organized crime was behind it, or the girls were knocked off by pimps since some of them were linked to prostitution.

Virtually every victim was involved in the marijuana traffic.

Suddenly the strip murders topped in late 1977, and no one is sure why.

​In 1980, Gerald Stano was arrested after one of his victims escaped. Once in custody he confessed to killing at least 42 women, even though later he recanted on some of the confessions, saying he was forced to confess by one of the investigators. Among those he counted as his victims were: Diana Valleck, Enid Branch, Joan Foster, and Emily Grieve.

His birth name was Paul Zeininger, and his biological mother neglected him so much that when she gave him up for adoption at the age of 6 months, the county doctors declared him unadoptable. Eventually he was adopted by the Stanos, who were loving parents, but even in early age he displayed serious behavior problems. He had problems at school and graduated when he was 21 years old.

At some point his family moved from New Jersey to Daytona Beach, Florida.

Officially Stano admitted that he began killing in the early 1970s, when he was in his 20s, but also claimed to have begun killing in the late 1960s, at the age of 18. Several girls had gone missing in Stano's area of residence at that time, but since insufficient physical evidence was found when these claims were investigated, he was never charged. He was most active in Florida and New Jersey. By his 29th birthday, he was in prison for murdering 41 women.

He was executed in 1998 in Florida’s electric chair “Old Sparky”. He was electrocuted for the murder of Cathy Lee Scharf, who disappeared 11 days before Christmas 1973. Hunters found her decomposed body in a drainage ditch at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge near Titusville on January 19, 1974.

Some doctors theorized that Stano probably confessed to murders he didn’t commit.

Investigators believe Pasco County, especially the south-central and southeastern portion of the county served as a dumping ground for bodies, due to the proximity to Hillsborough County. Several of the bodies were found close to arterials leading into the county are cited as factors.

There was a cold case that predated all of these. On August 5, 1965 Morris Clifton Hendrick was found dead in the bathroom of his home at 41 Azalea Court, Oakdale Trailer Park in Zephyrhills. He was a WWII veteran and a native of Fancy Gap, Virginia. Hendrick had arrived only a few weeks before to work at an area phosphate plant. He left behind a wife Lucy Ayers Hendrick (1932-2024) and four daughters Juanita, Charlotte, Pamela and Marsha.

It was originally thought the cause of death was a heart attack. The day he died he was stopped by police while driving "under the influence of intoxicants" and forfeited a $100 bond.

Later the death was listed as an unsolved murder, as per Sheriff Short (served from 1981 to 1984) due to certain classified information, which was never disclosed. His murder remains unsolved.

​Host - M.P. Pellicer
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​Host - M.P. Pellicer
www.MPPellicer.com

SUPPORT VIA DONATION
Buy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marlene11

Miami Ghost Chronicles: www.MiamiGhostChronicles.com
Nightshade Diary: www.NightshadeDiary.com
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Eerie News - www.Eerie.News
Stranger Than Fiction Stories: www.storiesofthesupernatural.info/strangerthanfiction

LISTEN TO ALL MY PODCASTS www.EeriePodcast.com

MY BOOKS:
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Music - Pixabay.com, Purple-Planet.com
Narration always by a human, no A.I.

Guest - Allan Pacheco
Website - ​santafeghostandhistorytours.com

Rich Valdes has been formally trained as a religious demonologist by three churches from the age of 18 (two of them non-denominational and then by The United States Old Catholic Church where he finally completed his Recognition and Certification). He worked for the Church as their Resident Religious Demonologist until 2024. He's been involved in the paranormal field for 44 years. Rich Valdes is also a former member of John Zaffis’s team PRSNE for the State of Florida He has appeared on Eli Roth Presents The Legion of Exorcists, Coast to Coast AM among other paranormal shows and podcasts. He has has been featured in the popular Cable TV show “A Haunting” for season nine “Buried Secrets”.

​Host - M.P. Pellicer
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Eerie News - www.Eerie.News
Stranger Than Fiction Stories: www.storiesofthesupernatural.info/strangerthanfiction

LISTEN TO ALL MY PODCASTS www.EeriePodcast.com

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Guest - Rich Valdes
Website - facebook.com/EverythingRichValdesDemonologist/