True Crime On This Day July 9th

July 9th

On July 9th in true crime, car bomb in France, double murder, murder in Texas, a chat with the Queen, and a gruesome discovery.

1978

Susan Saunders and her friend, Michael Scott Reynolds, were shot in their car in Santa Ana, California. They were both managers at a Fiddlers Three Restaurant in Tustin when someone walked up and shot Reynolds in the back of the head, who would then remarkably go on to survive.

Saunders ran from the car and was chased to a nearby liquor store where she was sexually assaulted, beaten, and shot dead.

In 2006, the Santa Ana Police Department’s Cold Case Unit was formed to review more than 250 unsolved deaths, this included the Reynolds/Saunders attack.

The DNA produced a family match with the semen left on Saunders and it finally led them to James Lynn Brown. He had a criminal history of assaults, robberies, and burglaries.

Brown’s son, who never met his father, helped supply his own DNA. In a cruel twist of fate, James Lynn Brown had already committed suicide in 1996 and so no arrest could be made.

1979

A car bomb exploded in France, intending to assassinate Serge and Beate Klarsfeld but no one was killed in the attack.

Serge was a Romanian-born French activist, Israel supporter and Nazi hunter who was known for having documented the Holocaust in order to prosecute war criminals.

The Klarsfeld’s methods caused controversy and made them enemies to the Nazi ODESSA.

The ODESSA were said to be a group of SS soldiers who escaped from Germany after the war and continued with Nazi work. The ODESSA claimed responsibility for the car bomb.

1980

In Bossier City, Louisiana, 23-year-old Jo Ann Wilson was brutally stabbed to death by her former neighbour and co-worker Alvin R. Moore.

Moore had entered the property with the intention of robbing the home but ended up raping her and stabbing her to death. Moore ran out of the house ten minutes later holding a bloody knife.

He jumped into the car of two friends who were waiting for him, and they went to McDonald’s for food. His friends claimed to not have believed Moore when he told them he had killed Wilson.

Wilson managed to call emergency services who arrived at the property just as she died. The three suspects were arrested shortly after, and Moore was subsequently found guilty of first-degree murder.

He was sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair on June 18^th 1987.

1981

In Harris County, Texas, 62-year-old Marie Jones McGowen, was raped and murdered by Antonio Nathaniel Bonham. McGowen was abducted outside the Massey Business College where she worked.

Bonham drove her to a remote location and killed her with her own car by driving back and forth over her body. Her crushed corpse was found under her car on a secluded road the following morning.

Bonham was arrested on July 17^th and later convicted of McGowen’s murder. He was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on September 28^th 1993.

1982

At Buckingham Palace, London, 31-year-old Michael Fagan scaled the walls of the Palace, broke into the bedroom of the Queen, and sat on the end of her bed.

He was barefooted and wearing a t-shirt, while he calmly had a ten-minute conversation with Her Majesty. Queen Elizabeth ll calmly raised the alarm when Fagan asked for a cigarette, and he was restrained by a Royal Footman.

Fagan was not charged for trespassing in the Queen’s bedroom since it was then a civil offence and proceedings would have compromised the Queen’s position as head of state.

In September 1982, Fagan was acquitted of stealing wine from Buckingham Palace. It wasn’t until 1984, that aggravated trespass or the act of trespass with the intent to disrupt or obstruct a lawful activity became a criminal offence.

1983

In Los Angeles, California, the partial skeletal remains of a white man in his Thirties, were discovered in a sleeping bag in a park.

Forensic analysis showed he had been dead for at least a year but had no recognizable markings or belongings nearby.

The identity of the man and the circumstances of his death remain a mystery to this day.

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