True Crime On This Day April 7th

Last Updated on September 23, 2022 by Ben Oakley

April 7th

On April 7th in true crime, the Kibbutz siege, cold case in Iowa, murder in Texas, macabre discovery, school shooting, and murder in Scotland.

1978

In Iowa, 27-year-old Steven Eugene Gardner was shot three times in the head. Gardner was sitting behind the wheel of his pickup at the time near the intersection of 23rd Street and Cottage Grove.

As of 2022, the murder remains unsolved and is an active cold case in the State of Iowa.

1979

In Texas, Noble Mays brutally stabbed to death Jerry Lamb during a robbery at a recreation park in Wichita Falls.

Mays, along with an accomplice set up a scheme to flag down an approaching car and rob the driver. Lamb panicked, tried to escape and ended up being run over by his own car, he was then stabbed four times in the chest and neck by Mays.

Mays was arrested two days later and subsequently sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in Texas on April 6^th 1995.

1980

In Misgav Am, Israel, the Misgav Am Hostage Crisis began. A five-strong unit of Palestinian militants from the Arab Liberation Front captured a group of small children and babies from their bedrooms in a Kibbutz and held them hostage for an entire night.

A Kibbutz is a collective community based on agriculture and industry. The following morning, Israeli Special Forces stormed the Kibbutz and ended the siege.

During the raid, all five militants were killed, along with a two-year-old child, a 38-year-old civilian and an Israeli soldier.

1981

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the decomposed body of an unidentified black adult male was discovered in an abandoned residence.

A local homeowner had reported a body in the building, and when investigators arrived, they concluded the man had been living in the property. It remains unclear how he died but police have long suspected foul play.

He was aged between 50 to 60-years-old and died at least two months earlier. The identity of the man and the circumstances of his death remain unsolved.

1982

At Deer Creek Junior High School, in Denver, 14-year-old Scott Darwin Michael was shot and killed in a bicycle storage area. He was killed by another student, 14-year-old Jason Rocha, while they were shooting prairie dogs.

Rocha pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 12 years in a youth detention centre. Rocha was released from an adolescent treatment facility in 1987 when he was 20-years-old.

The school was renamed Deer Creek Middle School and witnessed another shooting on February 23^rd 2010, when eighth-graders Reagan Webber and Matt Thieu were shot and wounded by Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood.

1983

In Edinburgh, Scotland, an unidentified attacker murdered 27-year-old sex worker and drug addict Sheila Anderson. She was last seen just before midnight, outside Lindean House on Commercial Street.

She had been killed by being repeatedly run over with a car and her broken body was found less than half hour after she had died. An autopsy showed her body was so severely damaged that she looked like a plane crash victim.

Her handbag and shoes had been stolen from the scene of her death. Despite a large investigation into her murder and having a DNA profile, no suspect has ever been caught and her case remains unsolved.

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