True Crime On This Day March 4th

Last Updated on September 22, 2022 by Ben Oakley

March 4th

On March 4th in true crime, French serial killer, unidentified body, serial killer in Atlanta, vanished without a trace, and a death row murderer.

1978

In Monneteau, France, 27-year-old Francoise Lemoine and her 20-year-old sister, Bernadette vanished without a trace.

They had been staying in a hotel room in Auxerre, which had been booked by an unidentified man. Their disappearance was linked to the disappearances of five other young women from the same region.

All the victims had slight learning difficulties and had attended the same special education facility in the region.

In 1992, Pierre Charrier, who was the head of the special education facility, was sentenced to six years in prison for raping a 23-year-old handicapped woman.

But in 2000, bus driver Émile Louis confessed to the murder of the Lemoine sisters and the murders of the other girls but retracted his confession a few months later.

Even so, Louis led them to the shallow graves of two other girls. In 2004 he was sentenced to life in prison for all seven murders. He died in 2013.

1979

In Berkshire, England, the body of an unidentified 60-year-old man was discovered in an open-fronted shed within the grounds of the ‘Red Lodge’ in Donnington.

He had died just a few days earlier of unknown causes. The only clues to his identity were a tobacco tin and size 10 shoes. As of 2022, the identity of the man remains a mystery.

1980

In Atlanta, 12-year-old Angel Lanier disappeared after leaving her friend’s house. Her body was found six days later in a wooded area along Campbelltown Road.

She had been strangled to death and tied up with an electrical cord. A pair of panties that did not belong to her had been stuffed into her mouth.

Lanier was the first female victim of an unidentified serial killer in the Atlanta area from 1979 to 1981. Despite 23-year-old Wayne Williams being charged in 1981 with two of the adult murders and linked to some of the child murders, the real killer has never been caught.

Atlanta police recently reopened all the Atlanta murder cases to use new DNA technology that may lead to the culprit of the crimes.

1981

In Long Island City, New York, 20-year-old Valerie Ann Smith disappeared without a trace. She was reported missing by her father who claimed he had been watching television with her the night before.

She had then gone upstairs to bed and was never seen again. The following morning, her father contacted the printing firm where Valerie worked but she had not arrived for her shift. She left all her personal belongings behind but had taken a small amount of money with her.

An investigation interviewed over 500 people but turned up no evidence regarding Valerie’s fate.

She had recently been mugged and had fallen into depression. No trace of Valerie has ever been found and her case remains unsolved.

1982

In Arizona, while already on death row for the murder of Frank Ponciano in 1978, Robert Wayne Vickers killed a fellow inmate. While Vickers was out of his cell on cleaning chores, he went to the cell of Buster Holsinger, another death row inmate.

He set Holsinger alight with some solvent and tissue paper in retaliation for Holsinger having bad-mouthed him. Holsinger died shortly after of his wounds.

Vickers was given an additional death sentence and finally executed by lethal injection in Arizona on May 4^th 1999.

1983

In Danville, Illinois, the remains of 26-year-old Edgar Underkofler were uncovered in a remote field. He had disappeared from Rantoul, Illinois in October of 1981.

The circumstances of his death were matched to similar murders in the region. A later investigation showed that Underkofler had been killed by American serial killer Larry William Eyler, AKA: The Highway Killer, who confessed to the murders of 21 teenage boys and young men between 1982 and 1984.

He was captured on August 21^st 1984 and sentenced to death. He later died of AIDS-related complications on death row in 1994.

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