True Crime On This Day May 6th

May 6th

On May 6th in true crime, serial killer capture, murder, cold cases, double murder in Kentucky, unsolved crimes, and mysteries.

1978

In British Columbia, 12-year-old Monica Jack went missing while riding her bike through a wooded area near a highway. Her skeletal remains would not be found until 1996. Dental records and DNA confirmed it was her.

In October 2007, Monica’s name was added to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s E-Pana investigation. It was a task force set up to investigate the disappearances and murders of 18 girls and women along Vancouver Highways over the past 40 years.

13 of the 18 victims on the so-called Highway of Tears list were under 20-years-old. Monica Jack was the youngest.

In January 2019, serial sex-offender and killer Garry Handlen was found guilty of her murder and was sentenced to life. He has also been linked to some of the other victims on the Highway of Tears list.

1979

In Waukesha County, Wisconsin, 38-year-old Dona Mae Bourgeois Bayerl vanished without a trace. She had last been seen leaving her home in Muskego following an argument with her husband.

She drove off in the car but in the middle of the night, the car was returned. Her husband reported her missing the next morning.

Investigators found Dona’s blood in the garage and concluded that she had been met with foul play. In 1986, Dona was declared legally dead. Yet, as of 2022, no suspect or no trace of her has ever been found.

1980

Serial killer, Danny Lee Barber, was arrested for the murders of four women from 1978 to 1980. In Dallas, Texas, on January 17^th 1979,

Barber brutally raped and murdered 48-year-old Mercedes Mendez. He was later convicted of all four murders and sentenced to life in prison for three of them including the Mendez murder.

He was additionally sentenced to death for the murder of Janice Louise Ingram on October 8^th 1979. Barber was executed by lethal injection in February of 1999.

1981

In Barren County, Kentucky, career criminal David Skaggs broke into the home of elderly couple Mae and Herman Matthews.

He had gone to the residence with the intention of robbing it but ended up killing both of them. He beat them to death with a hammer and a pistol before making off with minimal belongings.

He was arrested eight days later and subsequently sentenced to death.

An appeal in 2000, saw his sentenced reversed but he was resentenced to death in April 2002. Skaggs died in prison of natural causes in November 2009.

1982

In Woodland Park, Colorado, the body of 26-year-old William D. Bennington was discovered on the side of a rural road.

Bennington had last been seen on December 23^rd 1981 and was reported missing by family shortly after. An autopsy showed he had been beaten to death and a blow to the head had killed him.

Despite a large investigation, his murder remains unsolved, and is an active cold case in Colorado.

1983

In Cleveland, Ohio, 74-year-old delicatessen owner Vinnie M. Price was shot dead at her place of work. Jay Scott and two accomplices entered the V&E Delicatessen on Cleveland’s East Side and placed an order for food from Price.

When Price had prepared their food, Scott shot her in the chest at point blank range. He later claimed that she was reaching for a gun.

Scott and the accomplices were arrested in November of 1983, and his accomplices struck a plea bargain for prison sentences in exchange for testifying against him.

Despite Scott’s defence claiming he was suffering from schizoaffective disorder, he was sentenced to death, and executed by lethal injection in Ohio on June 14^th 2001 .

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