True Crime On This Day August 2nd

Last Updated on September 27, 2022 by Ben Oakley

August 2nd

On August 2nd in true crime, vanished without a trace, the Lady Killer, Skid Row Killer, fake kidnapping, massacre, and cold cases.

1978

In Los Angeles, Bobby Joe Maxwell, AKA: TheSkid Row Killer, was arrested for an assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to just two months in jail.

Had investigators seen Maxwell’s true motives then they would not have released him, but they did. Shortly after his release, from October 1978 to December 1978, Maxwell brutally killed 10 people.

On December 14^th 1978, police arrested him again for concealing a weapon on his person and he was only sentenced to one month in prison. In January 1979, when he was released, he killed another person, bringing his total to 11.

Upon his next arrest he was charged with 10 of the murders. In prison, he confessed to another inmate that he killed ‘to obtain the souls for Satan.’

1979

In New York, Italian banker and freemason, Michele Sindona, staged his own kidnapping in order to engineer the rescue of his banks with blackmail notes to his past political allies.

Sindona, who was indicted at the time, was aided in the illusion by mob boss John Gambino. Sindona spent his time in Sicily with the Italian Mafia where he was laundering the proceeds of heroin trafficking for the Gambino network.

Realising the fake kidnapping plot had failed, Sindona released himself and surrendered to the FBI on October 16^th. He was killed in prison in 1986 by a cup of coffee that an unknown assailant had spiked with cyanide.

1980

In Bologna, Italy, the Bologna Massacre took place. The explosions killed 85 people and injured over 200 on a busy Saturday morning.

The bomb was in a suitcase that had been left unattended in the waiting room of a train station. The force of the explosion collapsed the roof of the main building and ripped through a train waiting at the station.

Members of the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR) were later sentenced for the atrocity. At the time, the attack was the worst in Italy since World War Two.

1981

In Stockton, California, 16-year-old Franklin High School student Jose Esauro Dominguez disappeared after leaving his family’s home.

He walked away from the residence in the mid-afternoon to meet two friends, claiming he would be back approximately two hours later, but never returned and no trace of him has been found since.

In 1989, the two friends he went to meet, Luis Pete Gagliasso and Manuel Sanchez Jr., were charged with his murder.

Due to a lack of evidence, including no body, the charges were dropped. Despite the lack of remains, investigators strongly suspect foul play is involved. His disappearance remains unsolved.

1982

In San Francisco, 38-year-old Joseph Richard Burns vanished without a trace. He was last seen leaving his residence. He was wearing blue jeans, prescription glasses, and had a scar on his right and left upper arms.

Despite a large police search and investigation, no trace of Burns has ever been found, dead or alive. His disappearance remains unsolved.

1983

In New York, 62-year-old writer Jacqueline Bernard was found strangled at her apartment at 552 Riverside Drive.

Her suspected killer was serial killer Ricardo Caputo, AKA: The Lady Killer, who had murdered at least four other women before Bernard. After her murder, he fled to South America and went on the run for more 20 years.

Caputo finally turned himself into police in 1994. He was charged and convicted of the four murders prior to Bernard’s, which took place from 1971 to 1977.

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison but died of natural causes in 1997. Though he was never charged with Bernard’s death, investigators are certain he was the killer.

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