BigJoda

Law enforcement deserves congratulations on this one.  I wish there were more resources for cold case squads everywhere.  Put yourself in the shoes of a parent who has lost a child.  It’s not clear why police waited for so long.  This guy was a prime suspect from the beginning.

Read the entire story here:

Jeffery was the prime suspect from the very beginning.

A Virginia man has been charged with killing a camp counselor who was sexually assaulted and shot once in the head while on a hike in the Poconos 18 years ago, authorities said Friday.

Jeffrey J. Plishka, 46, of Onley, Va., was arrested in the 1991 murder of Laura Ronning, a 24-year-old from St. Petersburg, Fla., said Wayne County District Attorney Michael Lehutsky.

Ronning was working at Camp Cayuga near Honesdale when she disappeared on July 27, 1991, while taking a walk to Tanner’s Falls, a nearby waterfall. Her partially clad body was discovered the next morning.

Authorities became suspicious of Plishka shortly after Ronning’s body was found, but it was not until an interview earlier this year that investigators were confident enough to make an arrest, Lehutsky said.

During the interview, Plishka denied doing anything to Ronning, but twice told police, “I hope I didn’t kill that girl,” according to court documents. He also asked the investigators what he should do if he later remembered he had done something.

Plishka was charged with first-, second- and third-degree murder and attempted involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and was being held in Accomack County Jail while awaiting extradition proceedings…

I lived on the Russian River for two years and can tell you it is a beautiful, serene body of water.  To have that bucolic paradise shattered by a heinous – and unsolved – double murder is horrible.  This crime has gone unsolved for several years and the case even made on America’s Most Wanted.  Now, it appears this guy – who did this type of crime  before – may be the perp of an unsolved double murder in Sonoma County, a case that came to be known as the Jenner Beach Murders.  He was shot to death by police after breaking into a cabin.  The investigation continues, but it looks like this guy fits for the crime.

Read the entire story here:

A double coward: a murderer and a draft-dodger.

Sonoma County investigators are looking into whether a burglary suspect who was living in the wild before he shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy in New Mexico last week was responsible for two of the Bay Area’s most mysterious unsolved killings.

The investigators want to know whether Joseph Henry Burgess, 62, who was killed in Thursday’s shootout at a mountain cabin, shot a young couple from the Midwest who were camping on a beach in Jenner in 2004.

Sgt. Tim Duke, a spokesman for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, said Tuesday that Burgess had been “up near the top” of a list of suspects in the slayings of Jason Allen, 26, of Zeeland, Mich., and Lindsay Cutshall, 22, of Fresno, Ohio.

The couple, who were engaged, were on a break from performing Christian ministry at a camp in El Dorado County when they camped on a beach at the mouth of the Russian River.

Their bodies were found Aug. 18, 2004. They had been shot to death with a .45-caliber Marlin rifle that was never found…

Technorati Tags: Double Homicide, Jenner Beach

This is disturbing on a couple of levels.  First of all, of all the barren, desolate places in New Mexico, why bury a child in a playground?  Secondly, nobody has reported a missing child, meaning this kid probably had a pretty crappy life.  His death is no more than two days old so hopefully the police will have some solid leads.

Read the entire story here:

An autopsy on the unidentified body of a small child found buried in the sand of an Albuquerque playground was under way on Saturday as investigators resumed their search for the boy’s parents or guardian.

Police renewed their call for the public’s help in finding out how the 3- to 5-year-old boy ended up buried in northeast Albuquerque’s Alvarado Park. A mother at the playground with her children spotted a shoe sticking out of the sand and made the grim discovery on Friday afternoon.

“No one has stepped forward as parent, guardian or caretaker or any other relationship with this child,” Albuquerque police spokesman John Walsh said on Saturday. “Anybody who has seen or heard of any, anything, involving a child in that area, we want them to call us.”

Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz said during a news conference late Friday that police have had no reports of missing children but believe he may be from the neighborhood…

Technorati Tags: Playground Burial

This is one of those stories that shows our police never give up.  It also illustrates a devastating downward slide into crack addiction and, ultimately, death.  The perp is steadfastly proclaiming his innocence which should make for a long and painful trial.

Read the entire story at the Village Voice:

Joi and her mother were strangled.

For 35 years, Phyllis Little has lived in a low-income apartment on East 174th Street, in the same complex where her granddaughter was raped and murdered. In February 1988, Phyllis returned from a weekend ski trip and found nine-year-old Joi Little and her mother, 26-year-old Selena Cooper, lying on the bed, strangled to death. Their hands and legs were tied behind their backs, their panties were at their knees, a look of panic still on their faces. Phyllis says she has wanted to leave that image behind her and move to New Jersey, but she vowed to her family that she would not leave her Bronx apartment complex until the murderer was found.

“My mom would always say, ‘Stay here. Don’t leave before it’s finished,’ ” Phyllis recalled recently, sitting in the living room where she helped raise young Joi.

Today, Phyllis and her fiancé are finally preparing to move. In February, the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad announced a breakthrough in the long-dormant investigation. They charged 46-year-old Robert Fleming, one of Cooper’s companions, with the two murders. At his arraignment, Phyllis saw the accused for the first time. “When I saw him, I felt sick,” she says. “If I had a gun with me, I would have shot him right there, without a trial…”

Technorati Tags: Cold Case

This sounds like it might have been an internet dating meeting gone horribly wrong.  There are elements that sound like this was planned, not just some random event.

Read the entire story at the New York Daily News:

CSI Michelle Lee was stangled, bludgeoned, stabbed and burned. Courtesy of the New York Daily News.

The NYPD announced Wednesday it is offering a $12,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the brutal slaying of a Police Department criminalist.

Michelle Lee, 24, was bound to her bed in her Sunnyside, Queens, apartment, the cord of a cell phone charger wrapped around her neck and a knife buried in her throat.

She was bashed in the head with an iron, which was later used to burn her stomach, police sources said. Her body was discovered by her roommate early Monday morning.

Lee, a Queens native and John Jay College graduate, was a civilian member of the NYPD who joined the department last September.

She was last seen leaving a gym near her 41st St. home at 5 p.m. Saturday…

Technorati Tags: CSI Tech, Ritualistic Murder