True Crime On This Day May 25th

May 25th

On May 25th in true crime, bomb attack, missing person, robbery, serial killer duo the Viña del Mar psychopaths, and sewer plant killings.

1978

The Unabomber, Theodore John Kaczynski, set off a bomb in the security section of Northwestern University injuring a security guard. The university in Illinois is a private research facility.

The Unabomber’s investigation was the longest and most costly in the FBI’s history. He went on to kill three people and injure another 23. He was arrested in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison.

1979

In Manhattan, New York, six-year-old Etan Kalil Patz disappeared without a trace. He was last seen on his way to a school bus stop in Soho.

Patz was one of the first children to be profiled with a photo on a milk carton which was a campaign in the early 1980s.

His disappearance also helped launch the missing children movement which included new laws and methods for tracking missing children.

In 2012, the FBI dug up the basement of a crime scene near the Patz residence but found no evidence of the missing boy. A suspect was arrested later that year but his trial ended in a mistrial.

A retrial began, and in 2017, Pedro Hernandez was convicted of the crime but no body has ever been found. Hernandez was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

1980

In Somers, New York, 67-year-old Eleanor Prouty was beaten to death in her own home while her husband slept. 16-year-olds Terry Losicco and David Hollis broke into the Prouty’s home with the intention of robbing it. Losicco beat wheelchair bound Norman Prouty as he slept in his bed.

Norman would go on to survive the attack. The pair ordered Eleanor downstairs and demanded money from her. When she refused, Losicco beat her with a piece of firewood, before kicking and strangling her.

Both teenagers were caught shortly after and convicted of second-degree murder and burglary charges. Hollis was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison and was released on parole in 2010.

Losicco was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. He served 36 years inside before being released on parole in 2016.

1981

In Viña del Mar, Chile, Luis Morales Álvarez was shot dead by serial killer duo Jorge José Sagredo Pizarro and Carlos Alberto Topp Collins. Collectively they were known as the Viña del Mar psychopaths (Psicópatas de Viña del Mar).

Between August 1980 and November 1981, they killed ten people and committed four rapes. They were both arrested on March 8^th 1982 and convicted of all the crimes they had committed.

On January 8^th 1983, they were sentenced to death. On January 29^th 1985, both men were executed by gunshot. Theirs was the last execution before the death penalty was repealed in Chile in 2001.

1982

In Frankfurt, Germany, the decomposed body of a teenage boy known only as Erik, was discovered in an oblique position at the inflow of a sewer.

He had been beaten to death, with many of his bones broken. He had died approximately six months earlier. Some databases show the date of discovery as May 23^rd while others show the 25^th.

Erik had been a victim of the Sewage Plant Killings, which were an unexplained series of murders in Frankfurt during the late 1970s and early 1980s. To this day, no one has been caught for the murders.

All victims were male, aged between 11 and 18-years-old. They were handcuffed or tied with roped and then killed. Most drowned in the sewage of the sewer tunnels.

Only one victim could be autopsied due to the putrefaction of the discovered bodies. Some had been naturally mummified in the sewage over time.

1983

In El Salvador, Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, Albert Arthur Schaufelberger, was shot dead on the grounds of the Central American University.

Schaufelberger was shot four times in the head by a group of assassins who pulled up alongside him in their vehicle.

A group under the umbrella of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) was believed to have carried out the assassination but no one has ever been charged.

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