True Crime On This Day March 12th

Last Updated on September 22, 2022 by Ben Oakley

March 12th

On March 12th in true crime, serial killers, cold cases, double murder in Texas, robbery, Mafia boss death, mystery in Denver.

1978

16-year-old Pauline Robbin Burgett was sexually abused and brutally killed, stunning a community in Phoenix, Arizona. Her body was found in her family’s duplex.

Detectives on the cold case consider it was a murder of anger and rage but have confirmed the case is difficult due to the number of boyfriends Pauline supposedly had. It is an active cold case investigation as of 2022.

1979

In Harris County, Texas, former mental patient Jeffery Lee Griffin killed two people. He drove 19-year-old convenience store manager David Sobotik and seven-year-old errand boy Horacio DeLeon to a quiet area of his neighbourhood.

He then stabbed them both to death with a hunting knife claiming that something in his head told him to do it. Griffin was arrested two days later and convicted of murder.

He was sentenced to death and subsequently executed by lethal injection in Texas on November 19^th 1992.

1980

In Illinois, John Wayne Gacy was found guilty of all 33 murders for which he had been charged. The Killer Clown raped and murdered 33 young men over a small period of just a few years from 1972 to 1979.

29 of his victim’s remains were discovered in the crawlspace and other areas beneath his home. He would kill his victims mostly in the middle of sexual acts of bondage or raping them with various sex toys.

He would find an orgasmic-like feeling in taking their lives in such a manner. A day later, Gacy was sentenced to death. He was executed in 1994 but the execution was marred by a botched IV tube.

There was a problem with the tube when the drugs solidified and had to be replaced, the execution subsequently took 18 minutes. Following his death, Gacy’s brain was removed for medical study.

1981

In Scottsdale, Arizona, escaped fugitive Ronald Turney Williams broke into a residence and began to rob it. While Williams was inside, a neighbour named John Bunchek, heard a commotion and went to investigate.

When he entered the property, Williams shot him in the chest, killing him instantly. Williams was already serving a life sentence for murder and armed robbery when he and other inmates broke out from the West Virginia State Penitentiary in 1979.

Three months after the Bunchek murder, Williams was tracked down by the FBI to a New York City hotel and wounded in a shoot-out.

He was subsequently sentenced to death, but despite numerous appeals, he remains on death row almost forty years later.

1982

In Denver, Colorado, 40-year-old owner of the Silver Fox Bar, James Kazewych, was shot dead in the parking lot of the bar.

Kazewych had spoken with a friend shortly before and said he was preparing to leave the bar after the night shift. When he didn’t make contact again, his friend called police, who found Kazewych inside his vehicle in the parking lot. He had been shot dead at point blank range.

Despite a large investigation, no suspect has ever been identified, and Kazewych’s murder remains unsolved.

1983

While serving time for bribing a prison official, leader of the Kansas City crime family, Nicholas Civella, died of lung cancer. He was a Kansas City mobster who was under surveillance for most of his adult life.

He had previously been convicted of illegal gambling charges. Upon his death, his brother Carl Civella became head of the Kansas City family.

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