True Crime On This Day March 14th

March 14th

On March 14th in true crime, child murder, serial killer, missing person mystery, London bombing, and the Green River Killer.

1978

In California, a mother left her two-year-old daughter, Amy Sue Seitz, at the home of a babysitter before going to work.

Four hours later, the babysitter heard the front door close and couldn’t find Amy anywhere. Two days later, the police were informed of a missing child and an investigation found the brutalised body of Amy in the back yard of the babysitter’s house. Amy could only be identified through fingerprints.

Shortly after, police arrested Theodore Francis Frank who had been released from the sex offender Atascadero State Hospital just six weeks earlier.

Frank had a 20-year history of child molestation and abuse. He was sentenced to death for the rape, torture and murder of Amy Sue Seitz.

1979

In Comanche County, Oklahoma, Dorsie ‘Wayne’ Leslie Jones Jr. shot dead 48-year-old Stanley Eugene Buck and injured two others.

The shooting took place at the Wichita Lounge in Lawton when a bartender noticed his gun protruding from his boot and asked him to cover it up.

Offended by the question and because of being drunk, Jones threatened to shoot the bartender in the head.

Just a few minutes later, Jones took his gun out and shot his date; 40-year-old Betty Jean Strain. He then shot Buck twice in the head and then shot his 19-year-old son twice.

Buck died instantly, his son was left paralyzed and Strain had to have her spleen removed. Jones was arrested the same day and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on February 1^st 2001.

1980

In Van Nuys, California, 19-year-old Ronald Gatlin was hitchhiking when he was picked up serial killer William George Bonin.

Gatlin’s body was found the next day in Duarte, he had been raped, beaten, and strangled to death. William Bonin became known as The Freeway Killer.

He was known to dump his victim’s bodies on the side of freeways. Bonin killed at least 21 people from 1979 to 1980 and was later sentenced to death. He was executed in February 1996.

1981

In Calvert County, Maryland, 26-year-old Mary Cook Spencer vanished without a trace. She had last been seen leaving her home on a grocery run but failed to return.

Spencer was a newlywed and was well-liked in the area. According to family, she had no reason to leave. Her 1979 Mercedes was discovered the same day in the car park of the Frying Pan Restaurant. The doors to the vehicle were locked and the keys were still in the ignition.

An investigation into her disappearance began but went cold almost immediately. No trace of Spencer has ever been found but investigators suspect she may have been abducted and murdered.

1982

In London, at 9am, a large bomb exploded outside the offices of the African National Congress (ANC). The explosion was so powerful that windows shattered almost half a kilometre away.

Amazingly, only one person was injured, ANC voluntary worker Vernet Mbatha who was sleeping in a flat above the offices. The building was severely damaged by the bomb, which had been placed against a rear wall.

In September 1998, General Johann Coetzee, former head of the South African Security Police, along with eight other South African policemen, admitted to the attack.

The admission came at the amnesty hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Pretoria.

1983

In King County, Washington State, 17-year-old Delores Laverne Williams disappeared from outside a hotel along Pacific Highway South.

Her partial skeletal remains were found in a cluster of bodies near Star Lake Road one year later on March 31^st 1984. She had been murdered by Gary Ridgway, AKA: The Green River Killer, one of the United States’ most prolific killers.

Ridgway buried some of his victims in what he called ‘clusters’, mostly in wooded areas. He would return to the bodies to engage in acts of necrophilia with the corpses.

He later claimed that having sex with a corpse stopped him from killing someone else at that very moment. Ridgway was arrested in 2001, convicted of 48 murders, and sentenced to life in 2003. His true victim count is believed to be much higher.

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