A kill count in the hundreds, newly discovered identities,
and law enforcement denying the facts. There are several terrifying killers still at large in 2022.
Between April 8 and May 7, 1992, six people were shot and killed along a stretch of
Interstate 70. The deaths occurred between Terre Haute, Indiana and Wichita, Kansas,
and there were some striking similarities between the victims. Five were women, and
police believe that the sixth was mistaken for a woman when the killer saw his long ponytail. Plus,
they were all brunettes, and they all worked at stores just off the highway.
They were also all killed with a .22 caliber bullet. There was no sexual assault,
no major thefts, and witnesses were able to give police a basic description of
a man seen entering the stores before the murders. He was described as white,
with reddish or light brown hair, between 140 and 160 pounds, and around 5 foot 7 inches tall.
30 years later, the police have made it clear that this case is still very much open. In late 2021,
law enforcement released a new sketch of the killer. There's still hope that someone will
come forward with more information. They've also released what they believe might be the
key to catching him: a description of the gun. According to Wichita Police Detective Tim Relph,
"It's actually a historic remake of an old German Navy pistol."
"The unusual thing about it is it's,
its barrel is long enough to where the gun actually has a wooden forearm."
On November 20, 2006, two women who were out for a walk made a grisly discovery:
the bodies of four women had been neatly discarded behind the Golden Key Motel in a suburb outside
of Atlantic City, New Jersey. The women were fully clothed, except for their shoes and socks,
and they'd been positioned face-down in a line behind the motel. Barbara Breidor,
Molly Jean Dilts, Kim Raffo, and Tracy Ann Roberts had all been strangled, earning their unidentified
killer the nickname the "Eastbound Strangler." Breidor had reportedly been missing for about
a month before the bodies were discovered, while Raffo had been seen the day before she was found.
According to law enforcement, there was no shortage of suspects at the time. But they
were all ultimately cleared of the murders. An appeal for information was re-issued in the
last days of 2021, with Chief of County Investigations Bruce DeShields saying,
"Fifteen years later we have not made an arrest for these homicides,
but we're always looking, we're always working and reexamining
information about this case. We haven't stopped. We won't stop."
A $25,000 reward has been issued for information leading to the killer's arrest,
which can be shared with any local law enforcement bodies.
According to the Albuquerque Journal, Central Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico is a
"high-crime area." Back in 2001, women started going missing there. Almost a decade later,
on February 2, 2009, a woman who was out for a walk came across a human bone. It
ended up being part of a crime scene on a scale that nobody could've imagined.
All of the victims of the so-called "West Mesa Bone Collector" ultimately wouldn't be identified
for another 11 years. In total, 11 women and one unborn child were found and eventually
identified. Their life stories were varied. While many had connections to the drug and sex trade,
others did not. Syllannia Edwards was just 15 years old when she disappeared, and 22-year-old
Michelle Valdez was pregnant when she was killed and buried in the New Mexico desert.
Although hundreds of people were interviewed and suspects were investigated, the identity of the
West Mesa Bone Collector remains a mystery. The investigation is ongoing. According to the City
of Albuquerque, there is a $100,000 reward being offered for information about the killer. Any
tips should be directed to Investigator Ida Lopez or given via Crime Stoppers.
"At this time, there are a number of people who are being investigated as persons of interest."
In 2010, four bodies were recovered from a desolate stretch of beach on the coast
of Long Island. The following spring, law enforcement recovered six more bodies and
went public with a statement announcing that the murders were all the work of a single killer.
Alas, the so-called Long Island Serial Killer case remains unsolved,
and according to a report by Rolling Stone, some have placed the blame squarely on the shoulders
of the Suffolk County Police Department. Reports and rumors of corruption have emerged amidst the
department's failure to bring the killer to justice, with some suggesting that it
went unsolved because higher-ups in the police department didn't want the truth to come to light.
This is all the basis of a Discovery+ series called Unraveled: Long Island Serial Killer.
Whatever the truth is, one day it may eventually come out. In late 2021,
ABC Eyewitness News sat down with Ray Tierney, the new district attorney for Suffolk County.
He made it clear that he was not only keeping the case open but that he would
be re-conducting interviews and reexamining evidence, including claims of corruption.
"Do you have any feeling about who may have done this?"
"No, absolutely not."
Back in 2019, the Chicago Tribune reported that police were assigning a designated task force
to investigate the theory that a serial killer was stalking the city. For many,
it was an investigation that was long overdue. It came more than a year after the newspaper
had run another story, connecting the deaths of at least 75 women who had been killed,
all via suffocation or strangulation, between 2001 and 2017. The Tribune's initial story ran in 2018,
and even as law enforcement balked at the idea of a serial killer,
four more women turned up dead in the same manner.
At the time, police were still refusing to say that there was a serial killer at work in Chicago,
but then they did eventually admit that that was a distinct possibility. While they claimed
that there was little concrete evidence to link the victims, the Tribune reported
that others had noticed a very significant link: most of the victims were Black women.
Fast forward to 2021, when a three-part docu-series called The Hunt for the Chicago
Strangler started streaming on Discovery+. At the time of the show's debut, Chicago police
were still saying nothing to confirm or deny the existence of a serial killer. At the same time,
activists were reportedly demanding answers. Jennifer Anderson, director
of The Hunt for the Chicago Strangler, told Chicago's PBS station at the time,
"I think these women are not just a name on a spreadsheet or police file,
they had real lives and we're missing something, because they are not here. They deserve justice."
Every so often, there's a story that emerges that's so unbelievable, so terrible,
that it's impossible to think that it's true. That's definitely the case with Pedro Lopez.
But the story of the man who's been dubbed "The Monster of the Andes" is indeed true,
because surely, nobody could make up something so unimaginable.
In Spanish: "When one dies, one totally loses his emotion, his vision, his ability to see."
After being kicked out of his home as a child after assaulting his sister,
Lopez grew up on the streets of Colombia. He traveled across South America, raping and killing
as he drifted from one country to another. He was nearly executed for his crimes in 1978, but
he was given a second chance by a missionary who put in a good word for him and unknowingly kept
him alive to keep preying on more victims. It's unknown just how many people Lopez has killed,
but the numbers are nevertheless staggering. He confessed to killing as many as two or three
people per week, and in 1980, his estimated death toll in Ecuador alone was around 110.
That's where Lopez was arrested and given a 14-year-jail sentence. He served some time
there but ultimately had his sentence shortened for good behavior, and then he was sent back
to Colombia. He was then reportedly held in a psychiatric facility for four years. Then in 1998,
he was deemed sane, released on a $50 bond, and promptly vanished. He hasn't been seen since,
and his victim count is unknown. The total is estimated to be well over 300.
In 1983, a bartender named Heidi Fye went missing. Her remains turned up a few months later in a way
so gruesome that we won't even describe it here. A little less than two years later,
the remains of 16-year-old Laura Lynn Miller were found not far from where Fye had been left,
and during that investigation, the body of Audrey Lee Cook was discovered nearby Miller. In reality,
the entire small patch of land in League City, Texas was a dumping ground for bodies as far
back as the early 1970s. Located right off I-45 between Houston and Galveston, it was an ideal
spot for someone to jump off the highway, drop a body, and then disappear back onto the open road.
As reported by the Washington Post, there have been plenty of suspects and even some
false confessions. But the investigation stalled completely between murders in 1991
and 1996. Families have been waiting for some form or closure, and law enforcement has once
again issued an appeal to the public, with Special Agent Richard Rennison announcing,
"Anything anyone in the public knows, no matter how small they think it is,
we really want them to come forward, because it may be very significant to us."
"And I want the offender to know, if he's watching, that we will come get you."
Law enforcement agencies have a ton of resources at their disposal, including the
Murder Accountability Project, or MAP. Created by investigative journalist Thomas K. Hargrove,
the project is essentially a database that collects information from various
law enforcement agencies and compiles it into a massive file on murders. And as it turns out,
algorithms designed to find patterns in the data suggest that multiple
serial killers are stalking the Indigenous women of the Americas.
Western University criminologist and MAP board of directors member Michael Arntfield has shared
a pretty dire interpretation of the data he found recorded in the database. Patterns that
lit up both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts along with a series of truck stops indicate
that serial killers are hunting along the highways. Many of them are truck drivers,
according to Arntfield. As he noted to APTN News,
"The Highway Serial Killer Initiative has about 400 to 450 offender profiles
of unidentified subjects on its database alone that are
involved in the trucking industry for the entire Interstate system."
Unfortunately, complete data only exists for the United States, while the picture
of Canada's serial killer landscape remains incomplete. There is, however, some good news.
With the discovery that serial killers often doubled as long-haul truckers, the industry
created Truckers Against Trafficking training programs that teach drivers to recognize signs
of human trafficking. This has saved hundreds of lives, but there's still a lot of work to do.
"We're just scratching the surface on this problem."
According to the Greater Manchester Police,
there is not a serial killer stalking the streets of Manchester, England,
ending lives by pushing people into the city's canals. But not everybody agrees with them.
In 2015, Birmingham University Professor Craig Jackson started asking questions about
the unusually high number of bodies fished out of Manchester's canals,
and he suggested that someone was responsible for them. That led to a Channel 4 TV documentary.
For many people who had lost loved ones, the idea that they may have actually been
the victim of a serial killer, instead of suicides, was a terrifying prospect.
Between 2007 and 2015, 85 bodies were recovered from city waterways. The official line is that 44
of the 72 men were examined with "clear findings" as to the cause of death, and law enforcement has
also pointed out that no survivors of any attacks have come forward. Nevertheless, in 2022, the case
was still very much on the minds of residents, and the "Manchester Pusher" case was examined in
a new documentary addressing both the claims of a serial killer and the claims that it's a myth.