True Crime On This Day October 23rd

October 23rd

On October 23rd, in true crime, there are murders, cold cases, serial killers, and the bombing of the barracks.

1978

Jessie Martinez became the alleged first victim of self-stylised serial killer, Bobby Joe Maxwell. He has since been classified as a spree killer accused of killing 10 people in late 1978 and one more in 1979. He was convicted on two counts of murder in 1984.

Maxwell had his two murder convictions overturned in 2010 due to there being only circumstantial evidence at the scene. However, the LAPD have been in no doubt that he was responsible for the murders and he currently remains in prison awaiting a retrial for the killings.

1979

In Kent, England, a horse rider went into Bedgebury Forest and discovered the mutilated body of a woman in the undergrowth near Goudhurst.

A blood-stained wooden stake was found nearby and was confirmed to be the weapon that killed her. She remains unidentified and the case remains unsolved. It is one of Kent’s biggest mysteries.

1980

In Detroit, the body of 23-year-old sex worker Cynthia Angela Warren was discovered a few blocks away from the red-light district of Eight Mile Road, where she worked. A man flagged down a police car to inform them he had found a body.

Warren had been stabbed and beaten to death by American serial killer and sex offender Donald Murphy who was arrested on December 15^th and charged with six murders of prostitutes in Detroit.

On the evidence available to the jury in his trial, he was convicted of two murders, including Warren’s, and sentenced to 30 years for each murder. In the late 1970s and 1980, 18 prostitutes were killed in Detroit.

It led investigators to believe that two serial killers had been active in the area at the same time as Murphy

1981

In Denver, Colorado, 12-year-old paperboy Eric Hope was found stabbed to death in his own home. He was found tied up with a scarf. An investigation concluded they were looking for a sexually motivated attacker, although there is little evidence to suggest a sexual motive.

There were no signs of forced entry and no signs of a struggle so it is claimed the perpetrator was known to Hope, and also knew that he was alone most nights when his mother was at work.

Some investigators believe he may have caught the attention of someone on his paper round but no suspect has ever been caught. Despite not releasing much information to the public, the circumstances surrounding his death remain a mystery.

1982

In Kankakee County, Illinois, 19-year-old Steven Crockett was abducted and brutally murdered by American serial killer Larry William Eyler, AKA: The Highway Killer. Crockett’s body was discovered a few hours later in a cornfield.

An autopsy revealed he had been beaten then stabbed 32 times, with four stab wounds to the head. Eyler murdered between 21 and 24 teenage boys and young men between 1982 and 1984.

He was captured on August 21st 1984 and sentenced to death. He died of AIDS-related complications on death row in 1994.

1983

In Beirut, Lebanon, two truck bombs exploded outside of military barracks housing American and French service members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF). A total of 307 people, mostly military personnel, were killed in the attacks.

This included 241 US military personnel and 58 French military personnel. It became the deadliest single-day death toll for the US Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War Two. It was also the deadliest single-day death toll for the US Armed Forces since the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War.

The MNF were a military peacekeeping operation who intervened in the Lebanese Civil War. The war lasted fifteen years from 1975 to 1990, at which point, Syria had established complete control of the country.

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