True Crime On This Day January 5th

Last Updated on September 20, 2022 by Ben Oakley

January 5th

On January 5th in true crime, a Hollywood murder, cold cases, murder in South Carolina, the mountain man murders, and an amateur hitman.

1978

On February 12^th 1976, Hollywood actor Sal Mineo was stabbed to death in an alley behind his home.

On January 5^th 1978, a Michigan convict named Lionel R. Williams bragged to cellmates that he killed Mineo.

Using this and a taped confession, police transported the 21‐year‐old Williams to California where he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 57 years.

1979

In Salt Lake City, Utah, in the early afternoon, 54-year-old paraplegic Jack E. Richardson was shot dead in his own home.

Investigators believed that he had answered the door of his home to be confronted by robbers because there was no sign of forced entry.

Police officers later found Richardson in the doorway of his home. In 2019, cold case investigators named two suspects but their whereabouts remain unknown.

1980

In Beaufort County, South Carolina, 18-year-old David Krulewicz and his 15-year-old girlfriend were sitting in a van, when Isaiah Gadson shot David through the window and then proceeded to rape his girlfriend.

Gadson was identified as the killer 36 years later and was charged with the murder. He had shot and killed David purely to remove him as an obstacle for getting to his girlfriend.

In May 2018, Gadson was sentenced to 50 years in prison for murder and three 30-year sentences for rape, kidnapping and robbery.

1981

In Owyhee County, Idaho, self-styled mountain man Claude Lafayette Dallas Jr., killed two game wardens. Conley Elms and Bill Pogue of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, visited Dallas at his camp, wanting to talk to him about poaching and hunting violations.

During an infraction, both Elms and Pogue were shot dead. Dallas discarded of Elms’ body in a local river, while with the help of a friend, hid Pogue’s body in a coyote’s den.

Dallas fled the area but was captured and charged in April of 1982. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder. In 1986, he escaped from prison and went on the run for almost a year before he was recaptured.

He was released in 2005 and his current whereabouts are unknown. The handgun used in the murders was found by a local Idaho man in 2008.

1982

In Manhattan, New York, amateur hitman Donald Nash was paid $8,000 (USD) to kill CBS employee Jenny Soo Chin. He was also paid the same amount to kill another CBS employee, Margaret Barbera, on April 12^th 1982. Chin’s bloodstained car was discovered nine days later but her body has never been found.

Nash had been hired by Candor Diamond Corporation’s former owner Irwin Margolies, as he feared both women had informed federal prosecutors about his $5.7million (USD) Ponzi scheme.

Nash was arrested on April 19^th 1982 and subsequently sentenced to 100 years in prison. Margolies was later arrested and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

1983

In Ruston, Louisiana, 12-year-old Raylene Susan Helsley disappeared under suspicious circumstances. She was living with her eight-year-old sister, Candace, and their father, Raymond Helsley, in their trailer in Ruston.

When interviewed about her sister’s disappearance, Candace said that her father had beaten and abused Raylene in the morning before school. He had beat her with a section of pipe and a pipe wrench.

When Candace left for school, Raylene was unconscious on the couch, when she returned, Raylene was nowhere to be seen. Raymond claimed that he left the trailer for an hour and returned to find Raylene missing.

He suggested that she runaway but investigators suspected he had been involved in her disappearance. They found the pipe and wrench with traces of human blood but it could not be positively connected to Raylene’s.

In August 1983, Raymond was convicted on charges of cruelty to a minor and sentenced to ten years in prison. Candace testified against her father at the trial.

Results of a polygraph indicated that he had killed Raylene and disposed of the body within two miles of the trailer. Despite a search and investigation, no trace of Raylene has ever been found.

There has never been enough evidence to link Raymond to her disappearance and the case remains unsolved to this day.

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