I'm just a morbidly-inclined writer with an interest in crime and unsolved mysteries.
I'm not here to romanticize violent criminals or the atrocities for which they are responsible.
Please, leave your killer-worship at the door.
It's Been Nearly 6 Years Since Stevie Bates Disappeared from Manhattan: Why has Her Case Gone Cold?
It’s Been Nearly 6 Years Since Stevie Bates Disappeared from Manhattan: Why has Her Case Gone Cold?
On Saturday, April 28, 2012, a security camera in Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal captured Stevie Danielle Bates at around 9 AM. The 19-year-old with bleach-blonde dreadlocks looked somewhat confused after stepping off an escalator, seemingly unsure of in which direction to go next. At 1:10 into the clip released by the Yonkers Police Department, Bates is seen wandering a bit before…
You don’t know how many times I’ve Googled “list of true crime podcasts” and been frustrated with the search results. Maybe this genre is still to niche to warrant a comprehensive list of most—if not all—true crime podcasts. But, how useful would that be for obsessive-types like myself? I have so many opinions about true crime podcasts, but no one with whom to share them in real life! I mean, I…
Thoughtful Advice on Dealing with Trauma in Mass Tragedy's Wake
Thoughtful Advice on Dealing with Trauma in Mass Tragedy’s Wake
Image shamelessly taken from NBC News If you’ve haven’t already heard—and you probably have—a teenage gunman opened fire at a Parkland, Florida high school today. 17 fatalities have been confirmed by the Broward County Sheriff at the time of this post. The suspect was identified as a 19-year-old former student named Nikolas Cruz. Unlike many mass shooters, he did not commit suicide prior to…
Aaaand I’m back—and only a week late—with just some of the high-profile cases that dominated the latter half of 2017. Old school killers made headlines with the death of Charles Manson and the positive identification of a body found in John Wayne Gacy‘s crawl space four decades ago. Zachary Adams‘s long-awaited trial for the murder of Holly Bobo finally commenced after years of delays, and the…
On This Day in Crime History: Testimony Begins in Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping/Murder Trial
(L-R) Chief Counsel Edward J. Riley; assistants C. Lloyd Fisher and Frederick A. Pope; Bruno Hauptmann, and Assistant Counsel Egbert Rosencrans on January 3, 1935 in the Hunterdon County Courthouse, Flemington, N.J. (AP Images) Bruno Richard Hauptmann was accused in the kidnap-killing of baby Charles A. Lindbergh. The photo above shows Hauptmann with his attorneys on January 3, 1935, at the end…
2017 has been quite the eventful year, to put it mildly. The true crime community had a lot to discuss in 2017: a handful of seemingly unsolvable cold cases were cracked, two of the sixties’ most notorious serial killers died, and a series of high-profile cases occupied the criminal justice sphere. And because I couldn’t find a list of 2017’s notable crime and justice events, I made one myself.…
Entire Human Skeleton Surfaces From Ground in Sacramento Backyard During Renovations
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Officers are investigating a suspicious death after workers renovating a vacant home in North Highlands discovered an entire human skeleton buried in the backyard. The skeleton was discovered in the backyard of a home on the 6200 block of Dundee Drive around 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 26, according to KCRA 3 and CBS Sacramento. [Image via Fox 40]The…
South Carolina Serial Killer Todd Kohlhepp Claims to Have More than Seven Victims
On November 3, 2016, a 45-year-old realtor named Todd Kohlhepp was arrested when law enforcement discovered Kala Brown chained to a metal storage container’s interior wall on his Spartanburg County property. The arrest marked the end of an unidentified serial killer’s seemingly quiet, decades-long reign of terror. The storage container on Kohlhepp’s property from which Kala Brown was rescued on…
List the Missing: Three U.S. Veterans Who Disappeared and Haven't Been Found
List the Missing: Three U.S. Veterans Who Disappeared and Haven’t Been Found
Debbie Allen, William Schmidbauer, and Hattie Brown each served in the U.S. Military before they each vanished without a trace. While the circumstances of their disappearances vary, all three have this in common: their cases remain unsolved. Debra Ann Allen: Missing since February 8, 1992 from Kill Devil Hills, NC 32-year-old Debra Ann Allen was last seen on February 8, 1992 in Kill Devil Hills,…
UPDATE: New Details Emerge in the 1981 Disappearance of Dale Eugene Kelley
UPDATE: New Details Emerge in the 1981 Disappearance of Dale Eugene Kelley
Last month, I wrote about the disappearance of Dale Eugene Kelley. To refresh your memory, 20-year-old Kelley vanished in May 1981 en route from Carmichael—a Sacramento suburb—to Los Angeles, where he planned to visit his girlfriend. A month later, his car was found abandoned in New Orleans. As I wrote in October, information about Dale Kelley’s disappearance is so incredibly scarce that it’s…
Elmer Wayne Henley, 17, left, squats on the beach as police search for bodies in High Island, Texas, Aug. 10, 1973. Henley is implicated with David Brooks and Dean Corll, in the murders of at least 24 young men in a mass sex slaying case. The 24 bodies were discovered in three different locations in Texas. The law enforcement officials are unidentified.
Four years after her father's unsolved murder, a six-year-old's body was found wrapped in plastic in a Sacramento dumpster in 1975. Initially ruled a tragic accident of "child's play," her case was reopened as an unsolved homicide in 2015: What really happened to Harriet Elizabeth Riley?
Four years after her father’s unsolved murder, a six-year-old’s body was found wrapped in plastic in a Sacramento dumpster in 1975. Initially ruled a tragic accident of “child’s play,” her case was reopened as an unsolved homicide in 2015: What really happened to Harriet Elizabeth Riley?
Harriet Elizabeth Riley Harriet Elizabeth Riley (sometimes spelled Harriett, but for the sake of consistency, we’ll stick with one “t”) was born to Mamie and Harold Riley somewhere in Florida on February 26, 1968. She was the third of the Georgia-born couple’s children, with two older brothers, and—according to some reports—possibly an unnamed younger brother. The Rileys were listed in the…
In 1981, a Sacramento Man Disappears on Trip to Los Angeles, Car Found Abandoned in New Orleans a Week Later: What happened to Dale Kelley?
In 1981, a Sacramento Man Disappears on Trip to Los Angeles, Car Found Abandoned in New Orleans a Week Later: What happened to Dale Kelley?
Dale Kelley circa April 1981 [Image via]On the morning of May 20, 1981, 21-year-old Dale Eugene Kelley departed his home in Carmichael—a Sacramento County suburb roughly 10 miles northeast of Sacramento proper—in his orange 1976 Toyota Celica. He planned make the six-and-a-half hour drive to Los Angeles to visit his girlfriend. Dale was 5’10” and roughly 165 lbs at the time of his disappearance. …
What have we learned in the month since a connection was first suggested between Daniel Nations and the unsolved double murder of Liberty German and Abigail Williams? While Indiana State Police h…
Hey you guys, I wrote another thing about the Delphi Murders.
Please do my numbers (and self esteem, tbh) a M A J O R solid and check it out xxx
Man Arrested in CO Hatchet Incident Considered Person of Interest in Delphi, IN Murders
Published: Friday, September 29, 2017, 12:44 PM EDT
The traffic stop arrest of Daniel James Nations in Woodland Park, Colorado relating to an intimidation incident involving a hatchet may lead to a break in the unsolved killings of Liberty German and Abby Williams off of Delphi’s Historic Trails east of Delphi, Indiana on February 13.
On the afternoon of September 25, Woodland Park police stopped a red Chevy Prizm with expired Indiana plates and a broken tail light. According to a probable cause affidavit, the car was driven by Katelyn Nations, with her husband Daniel and the couple’s two children as passengers.
The Prizm matched the description of the vehicle involved in an open intimidation case, in which a man and woman driving a red sedan threatened another motorist with a hatchet. According to an El Paso County Sheriff’s Department press release, the car was also identified in several tips by the public regarding menacing complaints in the Mount Herman area and the Town of Monument.
When asked about the hatchet incident, Daniel Nations told police, "We're not that kind of people.” He stated someone had tried to run them off the road in the mountains, but that he shook his fist--not a hatchet--at the other motorists.
However, police found a hatchet inside Nations's car. They also found a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle, which may be connected to an unsolved murder of a cyclist earlier this month.
The Murder of Timothy Watkins
On September 17, 2017, the body of well-known local cyclist Timothy Watkins was found in the Monument area of nearby El Paso County, Colorado. According to the El Paso County Sheriff, the beloved 61-year-old--who was last seen on September 14 at 10 AM--was gunned down on his mountain bike by an unidentified offender wielding a .22-caliber weapon.
Katelyn Nations told police she purchased the rifle for protection after their car was broken into. However, felons in Indiana are not allowed to have firearms. Turns out, they aren't allowed to have firearms in Colorado, either.
On late Thursday evening, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department charged Nations with felony menacing and reckless endangerment in relation to the hatchet incident. Law enforcement indicated they expect more charges to be filed in the coming days.
However, in a bizarre turn of events, Colorado police say they received tips that Nations might be the man sometimes called the “Snapchat Killer.”
Nations bears a striking resemblance to the composite sketch of the suspect in Liberty German and Abby Williams’s homicides over one-thousand miles away in rural Delphi, Indiana.
Who is Daniel Nations?
Daniel Nations, a former marine, is no stranger to the criminal justice system. Most likely born in North Carolina, the 31-year-old has various flavors of convictions to his name, and a history of mysteriously disappearing when it’s time to go to court.
As this piece frantically neared completion late on September 28, fresh felony charges against Nations were filed in Morgan County, Indiana relating to his sex offender status. According to the statute under which the ex-marine is charged, Nations, “knowingly and intentionally...does not reside at the sex or violent offender's registered address.” And on the 29th, a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Nations’s place on the sex offender registries of Florida, South Carolina, and Indiana, stems from a June 26, 2007 in Spartanburg County, S.C. Records show he was convicted of exposing and pleasuring himself in a WalMart parking lot in 2006. The witness in the incident told police that Nations exposed himself and then asked her, “You want to get on this? It’ll be fun.”
Court documents from elsewhere in the state show that in 2008, Nations--who was still on parole for the Spartanburg offense--pled guilty to another charge of public indecency, this time in Beauford County. According to a contemporaneous WTOC News report, Nations exposed himself from his car in a parking lot, and later exposed himself in a Port Royal neighborhood to a mother and child on bicycles. At that time, Port Royal police stated Nations had been arrested four times for the same offense while stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Official documents relating to any North Carolina charges were not immediately available.
If one were to evaluate the marriage on court documents alone, it appears Daniel and Katelyn Nations’s relationship was tumultuous at best and violent at worst.
Between 2014 and 2016, Daniel and Katelyn Nations were brought to Morgan County’s small claims court by multiple parties in property disputes. The cases--some of which are still pending--most often resulted in the couple’s eviction, and the couple regularly failed to appear in court. According to online records, Daniel Nations failed to appear before the court on June 21 in relation to a 2015 case, and the couple was set to appear in magistrate court on September 20 in relation to another. In some cases, both Daniel and Katelyn Nations still owe unpaid restitution.
In December of 2015, Daniel Nations was convicted for domestic battery in Morgan County. He allegedly violated an order of protection issued on December 14, 2015, which expired on April 30, 2016. In a letter, Katelyn Nations asked, “...the court not require me to be in the courtroom with my abuser, Daniel Nations. I still do not feel safe or comfortable at even the thought of seeing him."
On January 15, 2016, Nations plead guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge for public indecency in Bartholomew County. Court documents state Nations, “allegedly fondled the genitals of the defendant or another person in a public place.”
In March 2016, Katelyn Nations petitioned to establish child support in Morgan County Circuit Court; however, but multiple orders to appear could not be delivered to either party, and the matter was quickly dropped.
Nations was issued a traffic citation in August 2016 in Plainfield, Indiana. He was arrested on November 16 by an Indiana state trooper in Marion County, where he currently faces pending charges of possession of marijuana, possession of paraphernalia and driving while never receiving a driver's license.
In April 2017, Katelyn would again file for child support in Morgan County.
In May, Daniel was hit with criminal misdemeanor charges in Greenwood, Indiana for possession of drug paraphernalia and for driving on a suspended license for the second time in ten years. A court date of October 18 has been set in that case, but it is unclear how the recent developments may affect the pending charges.
In June 2017, Morgan County attempted to deliver orders to appear to both Katelyn and Daniel in relation to the child support case, but were unsuccessful. The P.O. box address on file for Katelyn was apparently out-of-date, and with Daniel’s documented history of being unreachable, the court attempted to covered their bases: orders to appear were sent directly to Nations at the Bartholomew County Jail, as well as to the County Sheriff to be served to Nations at the jail. While it is unclear how long Nations spent in that county jail, court records in that case indicate he was released by June 13, as neither of the court’s orders could be delivered on that date. When both parties failed to appear, the child support case was dismissed.
This somewhat muddles the timeline presented by the media: According to early news reports, in April 2017, Nations told Johnson County officials he was living in a motel in Greenwood; however, he allegedly moved out on May 12 without notifying anyone, and supposedly, police first became aware his departure during a failed attempt to check up on Nations on July 18.
Further muddling the order of events are court documents out of Bartholomew County--where Nations was convicted of fondling another person in public--which state law enforcement issued an arrest warrant on June 5, 2017 when Nations failed to appear for hearings regarding whether his probation should be revoked.
So, What Does This Mean?
Maybe nothing.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of the frequency at which homicides grow cold. You’ve probably also observed how easily we can slide into tinfoil-hat territory when speculating about a stagnating case in few details have been made public.
When there’s a potential break, a new lead, we might latch on and hesitate to let go. We’re desperate for justice for Abby and Libby. How can we live in a world where someone can murder two teenagers--and even be captured on video by one of the victims--yet go un-apprehended for seven months?
The murders of 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German have rocked the tiny rural community with a population of under 3000. In a July interview with PEOPLE, German’s grandmother Becky Patty said, “Do we miss her? More every day, and as a matter of fact it has gotten harder as time has gone on.”
Daniel Nations does resemblance to the composite sketch released by police on July 17, 2017, of a man believed to be connected to the murder. However, not all forensic artists are created equal, and the reliability of composite sketches is dubious: a 2005 UK study concluded traditional composite sketches to be less accurately recognized than those made using forensic composite software. The authors state this disparity grows larger as more time elapses between a witness viewing the suspect and providing suspect’s description. The recognition rate for traditional composite sketches was as low as 3%.
On Thursday, Indiana State Police made the following statement (emphasis added):
We are aware of the arrest of the person in Colorado and are investigating to see if he could be a suspect in the Delphi double murder investigation. Please keep in mind the Indiana State Police has received more than a thousand photos of persons alleged to be similar in appearance to the composite sketch of the Delphi person of interest. Each and every one of these tips are investigated for any potential connection to our case. We will give the same attention to the person arrested in Colorado, but right now there is nothing that definitively connects this person to our investigation. If that should change – with this tip, or any other tip – rest assured we would be sharing such news with all media sources.
When I research cases, I often hesitate to publish my findings when the suspect has yet to be proven guilty. I’m a fact-based person. I like citations and court documents and spreadsheets. I try to avoid baseless speculation and make a conscious effort to abstain from judgement until the facts are available. Coordinating a witch-hunt is not my intention here, as I steadfastly believe in the right to a fair and impartial trial.
I’m particularly cognizant of this with the Delphi case. In July, Indiana State Police urged the public to stop “armchair sleuthing,” after Facebook users began publishing pictures of various men alongside the composite sketch. This is the facet of the true crime community with which I take issue. I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that the person to whom you’re comparing a homicide suspect’s likeness is real, three-dimensional human being whose real, actual life can be ruined.
However, all of the information I’ve presented was obtained from publicly available court documents and news reports. I didn’t have to leave my apartment in a land far, far away to retrieve anything--hell, I didn’t even have to talk to anyone. Most people don’t realize just how much information is available on the internet--that is, if you’re insane like me and you know where to look.
From those documents, we do know that Nations was arrested roughly two-hours away in Morgan County ten days after the Delphi murders. We also know he has a record of seemingly escalating sexual offenses, and that he’s also the kind of guy to carry around a hatchet. And while no charges have been filed to date, if tips are to be believed, he may even be the kind of guy to fatally gun down a cyclist in a seemingly random act.
And even if Nations is the man in the composite, that does not necessarily mean he is the man who killed Abby and Libby.
What’s Next?
In a statement Friday to the Journal Courier, ISP Sgt. Kim Riley emphasized that Nations is not yet a suspect in the deaths of German and Williams, but rather a person of interest. According to Riley, the distinction is critical:
Everyone that we've talked to has always been a person of interest until we either decide they need to be looked at even more or (they're) somebody that’s gong to be taken off the radar. Any tip we get on somebody, they're automatically a person of interest.
According to Carroll County Sheriffs, FBI agents in Colorado will initially question Nations, and if further suspicions arise, authorities handling the Delphi case will travel to the area.
Despite some early reports that Nations could be confirmed or ruled out as a suspect in the Delphi homicides within two days, Riley said he is anticipating answers next week.
He said police also have obtained samples of Nations's DNA, which will be compared to evidence gathered at the crime scene. Riley noted this has become a common procedure over the course of the seven-month-long investigation, telling the Journal Courier: "We check DNA on everybody that has been investigated. Every person that we have talked to, we've gotten a DNA swab from."
Daniel Nations' bond in Colorado initially was $10,000, but the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that it was lowered to $2,000 on Wednesday.
A cult is defined as a group of people with the same religious beliefs or ideas that others would view as strange or disturbing. Active cults have been around for ages, and there are even a few with websites that you can visit right now. This is one of the major differences between moder...
Hello, I wrote this and you can vote on your favs!
