- [Narrator] Today we're covering five cold cases
solved years later.
Let's get right into it.
Number five: Osmond Bell.
Osmond Bell, the odd case of a man being brought to justice
for murder by his own chewing gum.
On the 27th of July, 1981, Nova Welsh was dead.
She was murdered by pressure to the neck,
but she was not found until three weeks later
when her body was discovered
mercilessly shoved in a cupboard.
She was murdered in her flat at Lighthorne Avenue, Ladywood
after a past of domestic-
Who was committing this-
Osmond Bell, a man that Nova had broken away from
and tried to start a new life without.
She had a new boyfriend ,and she kept her two children,
both of whom were Osmond's.
For years and years, no one knew who killed Nova Welsh.
There was an investigation done on Osmond Bell,
but he was found not guilty.
Confused and astonished, the case went on for 35 years,
the killer never found by police.
Evidence was hard to come by,
especially because Nova's body was found
three weeks after she died in her cupboard;
that was, until evidence was finally found,
pointing the finger straight at Osmond Bell,
a former television engineer.
He was objected to four days of torturous
and dark interrogation, according to the suspect himself.
As he was interrogated, more evidence continued to surface
that pointed to Osmond, including an anonymous letter
written to the police station with his DNA on it.
He denied that he wrote the letter,
claiming that he had been able to see it
during a break between police interrogation.
Growing more suspicious, authorities kept looking.
Then they found the damning evidence of it all: chewing gum.
Chewing gum with Osmond's DNA on it
was found stuck to the cupboard
that was used to secure the lock
that kept Nova's body secure and hidden.
Osmond Bell, now 60, was the prime suspect of the murder,
all evidence directing to him,
no matter how much he claimed that he did not do it.
In defense, Osmond hurriedly made excuses,
but none of them were believed,
especially after authorities ruled
that he most likely had murdered his ex in a panic
since Osmond Bell's record was spotless before this
and he demonstrated good character otherwise.
Osmond was ruled guilty with manslaughter
by majority juror vote and was told
that he would spend half of his lengthy sentence in jail
and half of it out of jail.
Now that Osman has been brought to justice,
Lorna Welsh, Nova's mother,
says that the family can now have closure,
knowing the person who took Nova's life
has been brought to justice.
According to the BBC article on the matter,
Nova can finally rest in peace.
The case demonstrates the fact
that the smallest bits of evidence
can contribute towards something much bigger.
For example, chewing gum was all it took
to sentence Osmond Bell, a man that got away with murder
for 35 years with a clean record.
Number four, Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall.
Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall's temporarily cold cased murder,
the story of how a woman and her unborn child
were finally given justice after around 28 years.
On March 10th of 1991, Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall
was found strangled in Spring Hill.
She was pregnant at the time.
The free-spirited woman often hitchhiked
through Virginia and Tennessee.
According to her mother in a 1991 newspaper,
"I gave her birth in air, and he takes the air out of her.
"That's what makes me mad. He's still breathing."
But even while the authorities and McCall's mother
desperately searched for clues that could lead them
to a potential killer, they found nothing, no one,
so the case was closed not too long after,
serving Pamela and her unborn baby no justice, until it did.
At this point, you're probably asking who killed her.
Was it another family member?
Or maybe she died accidentally.
It was nothing of the sort.
Actually, it was a random truck driver
that McCall had the misfortune of coming across
while hitchhiking in 1991.
Clark Perry Baldwin was connected to two murders,
both of which were young women.
One woman was founded March of 1992 in southern Wyoming
on interstate 80 by a female truck driver.
She was nude, and her cause of death was ruled
to most likely be consistent head trauma and strangulation,
but it was hard to tell after the body
had sat in the snow for weeks on end.
The other woman was pregnant,
just like Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall.
The woman was found dead near Sheridan in northern Wyoming.
Her case is even fuzzier,
and it is unknown what the true cause of her death is,
but it is believed to be a blow to the head
based on an injury that led authorities to that conclusion.
Even so, neither of the women were ever identified,
earning the nicknames I-90 Jane Doe and Bitter Creek Betty.
Both were most likely older teens or young adults.
Baldwin was charged with both deaths
from DNA evidence and the location of the murders.
Their bodies were found around 400 miles
apart from one another.
Baldwin's DNA was found on all three murder scenes,
including the one of Pamela Rose Albridge McCall's.
In the court case documents,
a woman claimed that Baldwin had assaulted her
in a way we can't exactly say on YouTube
and then bound her hands and mouth
before trying to strangle her.
This claim was never further explored
after the victim refused to return to Texas.
Baldwin, being a truck driver for Martin Transport,
had easy access to many states.
He lived in Iowa and Missouri.
But unsolved cases from around the country
could be potentially tied to him
due to his access in every state.
Baldwin was arrested after they found
that the DNA evidence linked up to him.
Pamela's mother said she thought she would never see justice
for her daughter and grandchild.
According to an interview with Brent Cooper,
the Attorney General of the 22nd Judicial District
in Tennessee said,
"She thought that she would go to her grave
"never knowing who killed her daughter and grandchild."
The case that was once closed
was finally solved with an arrest,
bringing Lyell peace and the knowledge
that her daughter's killer
is finally behind bars, where he belongs.
It is unknown how many cold cases
could also be connected to Baldwin,
but authorities claim that there are definitely more women
that have never been discovered.
Number three: Pamela Crisler.
The case of Pamela Crisler,
the time a single drop of blood
solved a case that lasted for 15 years.
In the hot humid summer heat of Athens,
a police officer arrived at the College Place Apartments
on West Broad Street on August 21st, 2002.
He was there because he received a call
concerning apartment 408, which had been reported
to have had a foul smell at the time.
The officer, James Moss, found a body
within a few steps into the home.
And from there, he immediately began investigating
the violent murder with the help of two other officer
and the coroner in the town.
The corpse was identified to be a 49-year-old woman
named Pamela Crisler, a homeless, jobless woman
that had been staying in an apartment
with the permission of the renter, Charles Elam, Jr.
Charles was away visiting family in Florida,
so he was not there when the body was found.
There was blood all around their house,
and Pamela's body was found in the bedroom
where she had been stabbed 20 times
in the body and the neck.
She had defensive cuts on her hands,
and she was only in underwear when she was found.
The case eventually went cold
as no new evidence was turning up
concerning the whereabouts of Pamela's killer.
All that was left at the scene was blood and the body.
There was no evidence pointing to any suspect or theories.
That's what the police thought, anyway.
After 15 years with no solid proof pointing to any suspect,
the case seemed very much unsolvable.
Authorities were confused and discouraged,
the case going cold with Pamela Crisler's corpse.
Pamela had spent some time doing health services,
as well as astrological readings,
but she never held a study job nor a steady home,
leaving her rental with thousands of dollars of debt
trailing behind her.
Pamela's justice seemed doomed and impossible
due to the lack of evidence other than her own blood,
which was spewed across the entire tiny apartment
before a tragic death.
Justice seemed far away until December of 2017,
where the case took an unexpected twist
in the form of a single droplet of blood.
A single drop of blood was found on a newspaper
in the apartment in which Pamela was killed,
the DNA differing from Pamela's own.
This was not new evidence; it was found in December of 2003,
but the difference was to whom the blood sample belonged.
The blood sample suggested it came from a male,
but still no one knew where the killer was now,
nor who would it was.
Many witnesses' memories had become fuzzy,
some of them moving or dying as well.
The evidence was vital.
First, authorities needed to figure out
to whom exactly the DNA belonged
before they could make any sort of assumption
about the case itself.
The blame fell onto Charles Elan, Jr.,
the man that let Pamela stay in his home.
He claimed that he had nothing to do with the murder
and went to Florida on August 6th, 2002.
He did point to a crucial witness, though.
He reported to the police that a young girl,
a 19-year-old student of the university of Georgia
reported that she saw a black or Hispanic male
lugging an orange vacuum cleaner from the apartment.
Authorities were able to report that the vacuum cleaner
was stolen from Charles on the night of the murder,
and that the vacuum cleaner was paned away by black male
not too long after.
The pawn shop owner said that the black male
that appeared to be in his 20s was not suspicious
when he sold the owner the vacuum.
Even so, nothing new came about the evidence
that was found about Pamela's murder.
The confusing reel of evidence led to nothing, until it did.
In September 2017, Abdus Salaam Laroche
was arrested for the possession of methamphetamine
and a DVD copyright violation.
He pleaded guilty to these charges
and therefore his DNA was taken into the system.
Three months later, the DNA from Laroche
was matched with the DNA from Pamela Crisler's murder scene;
more specifically, the single droplet of blood
that rested on the newspaper.
After a police interview and multiple witness claims,
Laroche was eventually found guilty.
His friend admitted that a drunken Laroche
had confessed to killing Pamela
while he lived in the same apartment complex
she was staying in during the year of 2002.
Laroche was arrested and charged with 40 years.
Number two: Sheila Keen-Warren.
The odd case of Sheila Keen-Warren,
otherwise known as the Clown Murder.
On May 26th, 1990,
Marlene Warren was approached by a clown
on her doorstep in Wellington.
The clown proceeded to hand her flowers,
and it all seemed like a friendly gesture,
possibly a friend dressed in a costume
or someone in a suit paid by a friend or family member
to cheer up the 40-year-old mother.
Marlene was shot in the face
a few seconds later by the clown,
and she died in the hospital two days later.
Her son was in the home and got a vague impression
of what the clown looked like
on the day of his mother's murder.
But he and his girlfriend were the only witnesses.
The clown sped away in a car, and that was it.
Marlene was dead, by a clown no less.
One of the first suspects in the case
was Marlene's husband, Michael Warren.
Michael had not been a loyal lover during their marriage,
and Marlene reportedly told family members
that if anything happened to her,
her husband was the one that did it.
Others say that Michael asked them what would happen
to a wife's estate if her husband were to kill her.
Michael has not been arrested on any charges,
and the case is, of course, still ongoing,
so there definitely is still a possibility
that Michael Warren could have had something
to do with Marlene's murder.
Though Michael is not the prime suspect,
his now wife, Sheila Keen-Warren is.
Sheila worked for Michael at the time
of Marlene's unfortunate death,
and they were having an affair,
which would give Sheila a motive
in murdering Michael's wife.
The two got married quietly and moved away from Wellington.
A piece of hair found in the getaway car of the clown
connected Sheila to the murder,
and she was quickly arrested
from her home in Virginia with Michael.
Her trial is still ongoing,
so her sentence is not official yet.
Her trial has been postponed
due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The death penalty has been ruled out,
so there is no telling if Sheila
definitely committed the murder,
or if Michael is connected to it.
Marlene's son and his girlfriend at the time
claimed that the clown was a male with bright blue eyes,
neither of which match Sheila.
Hopefully, we will get updates
and a clear conclusion to the case soon.
Number one: Joseph Henry Loveless.
Joseph was born in 1870 in Utah,
where his parents were devoted
to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He had one child with his ex-wife
and four with his second wife, Agnes Octavia Caldwell.
Joseph made multiple escapes from jail from 1913 onward,
where he was arrested for bootlegging.
He was a master at escaping from the jail bars,
sawing through the bars holding him captive in one instance.
He was arrested multiple times after,
but still managed to always find a way
to escape rotting in prison.
Even on May 11th, 1916,
when Joseph was arrested for his wife Agnes's murder,
his children were still skeptical
about him actually staying in jail.
His daughter allegedly claimed
that she knew he would be back shortly.
Even so, authorities hoped they had finally caught the man
that continued to make his escape from the jail.
They thought they finally had him handled.
Imagine their surprise when, sure enough,
a few days later, Joseph escaped from his cell once again,
most likely sawing away at the bars.
He was on the run, which was not a surprise
to his family or most of Utah.
Because they did not find Joseph for so long,
they assumed he has successfully gotten a new identity
and was living a second life elsewhere.
The case went cold, and they eventually
stopped looking for Joseph,
the man that made so many desperate escapes
that he finally succeeded;
that is, until Joseph Henry Loveless's body
was found in a cave 68 years after his disappearance.
It is believed that Joseph did not live long
after his escape,
but it is unknown how his remains actually got to the cave
nor who moved them there,
making the case techincally unsolved.
His torso was the first part of his body found,
which was in a burlap sack thrown into the cave.
In 1991, an 11-year-old girl discovered his limbs.
Once the DNA comparison evidence from his grandchild
confirmed that the body parts did, in fact,
come from Joseph Henry Loveless,
many began searching for his skull, which was never found.
Anthony Redgrave, an employee of the DNA Doe Project,
said this about the discovery:
"In all likelihood, Henry had been murdered
"and transported to the cave not long after he escaped,"
making his post-mortem interval,
the time between his death and discovery of his body,
as long as 63 years.
This case has been historic
in more than one meaning of the word.
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