True Crime On This Day September 23rd

September 23rd

On September 23rd, throughout history, there have been unsolved murders, plane bombings, an MLB murder, and unidentified bodies.

1978

Major League Baseball player Lyman Bostock Jr. was shot dead just hours after playing for the California Angels against the White Sox in Chicago.

After the game, he drove to see relatives in nearby Indiana, and a former teacher who had helped him to read as a boy. The teacher and her sister were going to visit a friend of theirs and Bostock joined them.

The sister’s ex-husband, Leonard Smith, had followed them, believing Bostock to be having an affair with his ex-wife. When they stopped at traffic lights, Smith walked up to the side window and shot Bostock, who died a few hours later of his wounds.

Smith was sentenced to a psychiatric hospital but was discharged after just seven months. In 2010, Smith died of natural causes in an old-people’s home.

1979

In Maywood, Chicago, the body of Jack Herdenberg was found in an alley by police. He had been slashed with a knife then shot twice at point blank range. A week later, Steven Thomas Lynch was arrested for the murder.

He claimed that he and Herdenberg had got into a fight but did not use a gun or murder him. However, investigators learned that Lynch had gone to Herdenberg’s apartment in the afternoon over an unpaid debt when he killed him.

Lynch then cleaned the crime scene and put the body in a sleeping bag with the intention of dumping it in a local river. When an officer approached him about a standard traffic violation, Lynch decided to dump the body in an alley. He was found guilty, convicted of murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

1980

In Chicago, Illinois, the body of an unidentified black adult female, was discovered in the Calumet-Sag Canal. She had been stabbed to death less than a week earlier. The canal was close to the Chicago suburbs but no one in the area came forward to report a missing person that matched her description.

Despite having a recognisable face, her identity remains a mystery to this day. No one was ever arrested in connection with her death and it remains an active cold case in the State of Illinois.

1981

In Lakeland, Florida, six-year-old Antonio Castillo was kidnapped from his home by 26-year-old Phillip Atkins. He took the boy to a remote woodland location then raped and beat him with his bare hands before using a steel pipe to kill him.

Atkins was arrested a couple of days later and convicted of the murder. He was sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair on December 5^th 1995.

1982

In Salt Lake City, Utah, 52-year-old James Skeel was killed in his apartment by an unknown attacker. He was last seen leaving the Staircase Lounge bar at around 1.30am when he headed home.

Neighbours reported hearing a commotion in his apartment shortly after and police were called to the scene.

They found Skeel’s body on the floor, he had been beaten to death and died of blunt force trauma to the head. No suspect has ever been caught and the case remains unsolved.

1983

On a scheduled flight from Karachi, Pakistan, to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Gulf Air Flight 771 crashed after a bomb exploded on board. The flight was on approach to Abu Dhabi International Airport when a bomb planted in the baggage compartment exploded.

The detonation led to an intense fire which rapidly spread throughout the plane. All 112 people on board were killed when the plane crashed into the desert nearby. Although no one has ever been charged with the bombing, it was alleged to have been planted by the Abu Nidal Organization.

They were a group that splintered from the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, a faction of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), now known as Fatah.