True Crime On This Day November 16th

November 16th

On November 16th in true crime, a cold case murder, missing person, football violence and a macabre discovery.

1978

In Hampshire County, Massachusetts, the body of a 20-year-old woman was discovered just a short distance away from a busy street that was popular with hitchhikers.

She had been shot in the head approximately six months earlier and buried in a shallow grave. A leather belt was found wrapped around her neck where the killer had dragged her body to the burial site.

The identity of the victim and killer remain a mystery and it is an active cold case to this day.

1979

In Johnson County, Iowa, 34-year-old disabled man Charles R. Elmquist vanished without a trace. He was last seen in Iowa City going about his business but was reported missing the day after.

His blue van was discovered on November 17^th in the storage park of the UI Hydraulics Laboratory. No trace of Elmquist has ever been found.

1980

In France, Professor Louis Pierre Althusser killed his wife, sociologist Hélène Rytmann. Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher who suffered from mental health issues towards the end of the 1970s and was recommended by his psychiatrist that he be hospitalised for help.

Althusser strangled Rytmann in their office and then reported the murder to a doctor next door who immediately sent him to a psychiatric hospital before even calling the police.

Despite the murder, he was later deemed mentally unfit to stand trial and was released without charge but forced to live in private clinics until 1983.

Afterwards, Althusser isolated himself in his apartment and cut off contact with the outside world. He died of a heart attack in 1990.

1981

In Auburndale, Florida, on November 16th, 16-year-old Gregory Mitchell and 19-year-old David Ceinon Rees disappeared without a trace.

It was the day after Mitchell’s Sixteenth birthday when he and Rees left Mitchell’s home to help unload a truck, but they never returned. They weren’t reported missing for a whole month when Gregory’s mother reported the disappearance on December 15^th.

Rees’s stepfather father followed suit on December 26^th. Despite an assumption they may have eloped to Florida, their disappearance remains unsolved.

1982

In Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida, an employee at the Gateway Shopping Center discovered the body of a newborn baby boy. He had been wrapped in an old yellow blanket, with no effort made to hide the body.

The placenta was present, and the umbilical cord was still attached. Despite a large investigation to trace the mother, she has never been found.

The case has always been treated as a homicide investigation and remains unsolved.

1983

In Luxembourg, an estimated 2,000 English football fans rampaged through the city after finding out the England football squad had been knocked out of the European Championship, despite beating Luxembourg 4-0.

Denmark’s victory over Greece earlier in the evening meant that England finished second in their group and did not qualify for the finals.

Violence began at the stadium before erupting onto the streets where an angry mob overturned cars, smashed shop windows, and vandalised buildings.

Almost 500 police officers and 150 soldiers were drafted in to deal with the violence. 50 rioters were arrested and 13 were sentenced to varying prison sentences.

Luxembourg’s minister of sport said the country would never again host a match involving England. In England, courts imposed tougher sentences and football clubs also started to clamp down on violent supporters, sometimes banning them from their grounds.

English football violence to this scale petered out and has rarely been witnessed since the mid-1990s.

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