True Crime On This Day September 10th

Last Updated on September 16, 2022 by Ben Oakley

September 10th

On September 10th, in true crime, we have a mystery disappearance, macabre discoveries, robbery, and unidentified bodies.

1978

In Baltimore City County, Maryland, seven-year-old Telethia ‘Lee Lee’ Good vanished without a trace. Telethia left her home in the afternoon to visit her aunt’s home just a block away.

Somewhere on the short walk it is suspected that she was kidnapped by a stranger but no-one saw or heard anything. No trace of a body or a suspect has ever been discovered.

1979

In Newcastle, England, the decomposed body of a man missing his hand was pulled out of the River Tyne that runs through the city. He has never been identified but was suggested to have been a European man in his mid-forties.

1980

In Crawford County, Arkansas, jewellery shop owner Kenneth Staton and his daughter, Suzanne Staton Ware, were shot dead during a robbery. Eugene Wallace Perry had gone into the store with the intention of robbing it but decided to not leave any witnesses and shot them both dead.

He was arrested on September 26^th and later convicted of both murders, despite claiming someone else had carried out the robbery. He was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on August 6^th 1997.

1981

In Chaffee County, Colorado, on September 10th, the skeletal remains of an unidentified man were discovered in a wooded area near Clear Creek. Five years later, in 1986, in the same area, more bones were found and were suspected to be from the same person.

A pathologist later confirmed that both sets of bones were likely to belong to the 1981 discovery. Near the second set of bones were three shell casings which led investigators to believe the man had been shot dead.

No one has ever come forward to claim a missing person of similar age in the area, and the identity of the man has never been determined. The body remains a John Doe, with Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) agency case designation #86-2020.

1982

In California, a jury handed down three death sentences for murderer and robber Clarence Ray Allen. He was already serving a life sentence for one murder when he was convicted of organizing the killing of three more people.

He was executed in California by lethal injection on January 17^th 2006 and was the second-oldest inmate at the time to be executed in the United States since 1976.

1983

In Des Moines, Iowa, in the early hours of the morning, 18-year-old Technical High School student Pennye Watson was strangled to death by an unidentified assailant.

Her nude body was found by a passing driver a couple of hours later, in front of a local residence, just a few blocks from her home. The murder was considered unusual, as Watson’s body had been dumped in a busy area, and there were no witnesses to the crime.

Police found no evidence at the scene that pointed to a suspect. Two days before her death, Watson had written an essay about her fears of violence in Des Moines. Her murder remains unsolved.