True Crime On This Day October 8th

Last Updated on September 16, 2022 by Ben Oakley

October 8th

On October 8th, in true crime, a triple murder, serial killers, the Unabomber, and a massacre in Grayson County.

1978

In California, three people were shot dead during a robbery at their home. The bodies of Miguel Vargas and Salvadore Vargas were found lying face down on the floor of their home, they had been shot in the back of the head.

It would be another five days until the body of Lourdes Meza would be discovered in a nearby field, she had been raped and shot four times.

The perpetrators were Robert Leslie Tyson and Keith Daniel Williams, who had overheard the victims speak at a sale a few days before.

Tyson was sentenced to 75 years and Williams was sentenced to death. Williams was executed by lethal injection on May 3^rd 1996.

1979

In Dallas, Texas, serial killer Danny Lee Barber brutally murdered 50-year-old Janice Ingram. Barber killed four people from 1978 to 1980. He was arrested in 1980 and convicted of all four murders and sentenced to life in prison for three including the Mendez murder on January 17^th 1979.

He was additionally sentenced to death for the murder of Ingram and executed by lethal injection in February of 1999.

1980

In Detroit, the body of 26-year-old former cheerleader Betty Jean Rembert was discovered under some hedges on a vacant lot. She had died from a stab wound to the neck and head injuries that had caused a fractured skull.

Her death was similar to that of Cynthia Angela Warren on October 23^rd. Warren had been murdered 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. He was never convicted of the Rembert murder and her death remains listed as unsolved.

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 Utah, a bomb was planted at the University of Utah’s Bennion Hall. It was the fifth bomb planted by Ted Kaczynski, AKA: The Unabomber. Fortunately, in this instance, the device was detected and defused before it could explode.

Between 1978 and 1995, his bombs killed three people and injured another 23. He was arrested on April 3^rd 1996 and subsequently sentenced to eight life sentences without the possibility of parole.

1982

In Washington State, 23-year-old Denise D. Bush disappeared after last being seen at the Moonrise Hotel. No trace of her was found until her skull was unearthed in Tigard, Oregon, on June 12^th 1985.

She had been abducted, raped, and murdered by Gary Ridgway, AKA: The Green River Killer, one of the United States’ most prolific killers, who was convicted of 48 murders.

1983

In Grayson County, Texas, on October 8th, Bobbie Tate became concerned when her husband, Bob, did not return home from an airplane hangar. He had told her that he was going meet up with friends at the hangar to sell an ultralight aircraft to a man from Dallas.

Bobbie and her son drove to the hangar and stumbled into the scene of a massacre. 51-year-old Bob Tate, 39-year-old former police officer Ronald Mayes, 29-year-old deputy sheriff Philip Good, and 52-year-old Jerry Mac Brown, had been shot dead execution style.

On January 19^th 1984, 35-year-old Lester Leroy Bower was arrested after phone call records connected him with Tate. Bower claimed that he was going to buy the plane but had decided not to turn up as he changed his mind. However, parts of the aircraft were found in Bower’s garage.

He was ultimately convicted of four murders and sentenced to death. Despite forever claiming his innocence, he was executed by lethal injection in Texas on June 3^rd 2015.