True Crime On This Day November 3rd

Last Updated on September 16, 2022 by Ben Oakley

November 3rd

On November 3rd in true crime, murder in Ohio, arrest of a fugitive, cold cases, the Greensboro Massacre, and a mystery disappearance.

1978

In Quebec, 19-year-old college student Theresa Allore disappeared without a trace. Five months later, on April 13^th 1979, her body was discovered in a small body of water not far from her dormitory residence.

She is believed to have been murdered by a serial killer who operated in the Quebec region from 1977.

Allore’s murder was then linked to serial killer Robert Pickton, AKA: The Pig Farmer Killer, who may have killed up to 49 people. Officially, Allore’s murder and two others in the same area remain unsolved.

1979

In Carolina, the Greensboro Massacre took place and left five people dead. Members of the Communist Worker’s Party (CWP) demonstrated against the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.

The ‘Death to the Klan’ march, saw both sides exchange gunfire, using handguns and rifles. Four members of the CWP were killed, along with a bystander. 12 others were injured.

1980

In Texas, in July of 1979, Allen Wayne Janecka killed an entire family to collect an inheritance. Their bodies were discovered a day later by their neighbour.

The victims were 35-year-old John Wanstrath, his 36-year-old wife Diana Wanstrath, their 14-month-old son and a family friend Gertrude Zabolio. They had been strangled and shot to death.

Janecka was finally arrested on November 3^rd 1980 and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in Texas on July 24^th 2003.

1981

In Navarre, Ohio, on November 3rd, the body of 12-year-old Tina Marie Harmon was discovered in a field next to an oil well site, by a deer hunter. She had been raped and strangled to death.

Harmon had been abducted five days earlier on October 29^th but an investigation concluded she had been kept elsewhere for four days before she was dumped in the field.

In 1982, 19-year-old Ernest Holbrook, Jr. and 26-year-old Herman Ray Rucker were convicted of both the rape and murder of Harmon.

They had been arrested after a witness was put into hypnosis and claimed to have identified the car as belonging to Rucker, along with other circumstantial evidence that was little more than vague recollections.

Another witness testimony was withdrawn and Rucker’s sentence was overturned. He was released a free man in 1983.

Holbrook remained in prison as the Ohio Supreme Court refused him a retrial. That was until another murder took place.

On July 17^th 1982, in Marshallville, Ohio, 11-year-old Krista Lee Harrison was abducted and murdered by Robert Anthony Buell. He was sentenced to death in 1984.

When Buell was sentenced, all charges against Holbrook were finally dropped and he was released a free man despite spending two years in prison as an innocent man. He later received only $83,000 for his wrongful conviction.

Buell was executed by lethal injection in 2002. But eight years later, in 2010, after Buell was executed, the state of Ohio conducted DNA testing on the semen found on Tina Harmon’s dress and compared it to Buell’s DNA, to find they matched.

Buell had killed Harmon, allowed two innocent men to suffer needlessly, and was executed before justice could ever be made.

1982

In North Queensland, Australia, 20-year-old Perth native Anthony John Jones disappeared while backpacking in the area. Shortly before he disappeared, he was in the final stages of a six-month working holiday around Australia and kept in touch with his family on regular occasions.

Investigators suspected he had been murdered, as no trace of Jones has ever been found, and he vanished on an easy-going trail.

In May 1983, the Australian Government issued a reward of $20,000 (AUD) for any information would lead to the apprehension and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the disappearance and suspected murder of Jones.

In 2011, a former prisoner came forward to claim that a former cellmate had killed a man in the same area, around the same time, but was never caught for it. That cellmate was Michael James Laundess, who died in 2015. Despite the claim, Jones’ case remains unsolved.

1983

In Texarkana, Arkansas, William Stumpp was shot dead during a robbery of his pawnshop. The case baffled authorities for almost eight months, but on June 30^th, 1984, Richard Wayne Snell was apprehended in Broken Bow, Oklahoma.

After he shot and killed Arkansas State Trooper Louis Bryant on a western Arkansas highway. Though Snell was originally charged only with the Bryant murder, investigators soon uncovered evidence linking him to the Stumpp murder.

For the murder of Bryant, he was sentenced to life in prison. On the same day he was sentenced, the trial began in the murder of Stumpp. For that crime, he was sentenced to death. Snell was executed by lethal injection in Arkansas on April 19^th, 1995.

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