True Crime On This Day October 12th

Last Updated on September 16, 2022 by Ben Oakley

October 12th

On October 12th, in true crime, Sid Vicious arrested, necro killer, death row murder, mystery disappearance, and beauty queen murder.

1978

Punk rocker Sid Vicious was arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen was found in their New York hotel room.

Sid Vicious was widely regarded as becoming a Sex Pistols member more for his behaviour than his musical ability. His controversial stage acts and self-mutilation shocked the middle class but made him the punk world’s hero.

He pleaded not guilty to murder and was bailed for £50,000 (GBP). He then overdosed on heroin and died before any trial in February 1979 aged 21-years-old.

Nancy was a heroin addict by the age of 15-years-old and diagnosed schizophrenic, she died aged 20-years-old. Her death signalled the end of the infamous Sid & Nancy relationship.

1979

In Brazos County, Texas, 19-year-old LaShan Muhlinghaus was murdered and mutilated by 20-year-old Jeff Emery when she interrupted a robbery at her home. Muhlinghaus was stabbed 25 times in a brutal attack that resulted in Emery sexually abusing her corpse.

Detectives tracked down Emery in 1983 and discovered that he was in prison in Minnesota on robbery charges. Emery was later sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in Texas on December 8^th 1998.

1980

While awaiting execution on death row, Askari Abdullah Muhammad (formerly Thomas Knight), fatally stabbed 42-year-old prison guard James Burke. Muhammad had received a death sentence for killing a couple in the woods in 1974.

While on death row, he had become frustrated after being denied permission to see a visitor because he refused to shave his beard.

When Burke opened the door to his cell to take him to the shower, Muhammad stabbed him with a sharpened spoon, in an extended attack that saw Burke stabbed more than 12 times. Muhammad was executed by lethal injection in January of 2014.

1981

In Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on October 12th, 18-year-old James William Hires disappeared when driving to pick up his brother from Philadelphia Airport in Pennsylvania. Hires left at 2.30pm but at 4pm, his brother called his parents to say that James hadn’t arrived.

He was reported missing a few hours later. His vehicle was found abandoned six days later on October 18^th, at the Philadelphia Airport car Lot D. Despite security cameras at the airport showing Hires arriving, no trace of him has ever been found.

It was later claimed he was carrying over $1,000 (USD) in cash and this may have contributed to the reason he disappeared. His disappearance remains unsolved.

More missing persons.

1982

In Crown Point, Indiana, 21-year-old Craig Townsend was lured into a van where he was drugged, raped, and beaten. He was later found naked and unconscious in a remote field. He survived the attack after many days in a coma.

He had been attacked by American serial killer Larry William Eyler, AKA: The Highway Killer. Eyler murdered between 21 and 24 teenage boys and young men between 1982 and 1984.

He was captured on August 21^st 1984 and sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1984 murder of Daniel Bridges. He confessed to a further 20 killings before dying of AIDS-related complications on death row in 1994.

1983

In Kentucky, mother of three and former Miss Henry County Barbara Heilman was kidnapped from her home and brutally murdered by Parramore Lee Sanborn.

He dragged her from her home and took her to a nearby field where he raped her, sodomized her, tore out her hair, and stabbed her nine times. He dumped her body alongside a country road. He was arrested a few days later and ultimately sentenced to death.

Sanborn remained on death row until December, 2020, when he died of natural causes, aged 75. He never gave a motive for the murder.