PALMYRA, Pa. - I normally don’t like posting missing adult stories, but since there really isn’t anything else going on today I feel like writing about, here’s one making the rounds today.
Kortne Stouffer, 21, vanished from her apartment in the early morning hours of July 29 after hanging out with a group of friends. Stouffer had returned to her apartment with an old friend she had reconnected with recently when, at around 3 a.m., she got into an altercation with her downstairs neighbor over her dog. Police were called and they ended up telling both Stouffer and her neighbors to return to their apartments.
An hour later, the downstairs neighbors made a second call to 911 because they heard “stomping and banging” coming from Stouffer’s apartment. When police arrived they found the lights were off in Stouffer’s apartment and no one answered the door when they knocked. So they left.
At 7:30, the man who stayed the night with Stouffer says he woke up to find her gone and left. He was captured on surveillance camera inside a nearby convenience store where he texted Stouffer: “”I left.…
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SACRAMENTO, CA - I wasn’t going to post about the murder of 13-year-old Jessica Funk-Haslam, especially since Nancy Grace and a couple of silly “psychics” are on the case and will have this solved in no time, but when I saw Google considers an opinionated Gather article a news source, I died a little inside and figured I would put up my own article.
I know a lot of you have already heard about the murder of 13-year-old Jessica Funk-Haslam, but for those of you who haven’t, her body was found in a dugout of a baseball field last Tuesday morning. She had been strangled, stabbed and beaten.
The last person known to have seen her alive was her mother, Tara Funk-Haslam, who says her daughter ran out of the house to meet someone after an argument. She says she chased after her but was unable to catch her.
Armchair detectives are already fingering her as the prime suspect, speculating as to why her mother waited until the next morning to call police, or why she didn’t try to contact her friends or her father, Allen Porter.…
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HONOLULU, HI – If you know of a child missing some fingers recently, police in Hawaii would really like to talk to you after a child’s fingers were found in a dumpster behind a low-income housing complex.
A woman was looking for bottles and cans in a dumpster behind the Kukui Gardens Housing Complex when she found a ziploc bag containing what she thought was ginger root.
“I saw a plastic ziploc bag, which I thought were ginger root starting to dry out. I’m a gardener, and I recycle, and I thought I’d be able restore them. So I threw them in my purse,” said Gina Rose Vendegna.
She later realized what she had found was not ginger root when she noticed the fingernails. She showed the fingers to some other people who weren’t convinced they were actually fingers, or if they were, once belonged to a monkey.
“I thought just by chance I’m going to call the Police Department, turn ‘em in and let them decide,” Vendegna said.
Tests determined the fingers, two complete and four partial, belonged to a female child between two-and-a-half and four years old.…
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Dyer County, TN – The body found near a cemetery on Saturday has been identified as 44-year-old Karen Swift, the mother of four who vanished after a Halloween party on October 30.
Less than a month after filing for divorce from her husband, Swift was last seen at the home she shared with her soon-to-be ex-husband, on October 30 at 1.30am. She had picked up one of her daughters from a sleepover after having attended a Halloween party at a country club.
Her husband, David, says he saw his wife on the stairs when she returned, but could not find her the next morning. David tried calling her cell, but got no answer. Not long after, a neighbor told David that Karen’s car was sitting off the side of a small nearby highway with a flat tire.
By Sunday afternoon, a friend of Karen’s called police to report her missing. They informed her to tell David, who had been calling their older sons and friends, to contact them with the details.…
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LEWISTON, Maine - The whereabouts of a woman who went missing 28 years ago may have been discovered after a body was found in a freezer owned by a man who died recently.
Frank Julian was 52-years-old when his on-again-off-again girlfriend, 29-year-old Kitty Wardwell, went missing back in 1983. Julian was the last person to see her alive and told authorities that the last time he saw her was when he dropped her off at a motel after a fight.
Wardwell has never been seen or heard from since and police said she probably was the victim of foul play. Julian was interviewed by police on several occasions, but never got enough evidence to warrant searching his property. Now the mystery of what happened to Wardell may have been solved after Julian died unexpectedly on October 1.
Some of Julian’s family members were cleaning out a storage unit he rented when they found an unplugged freezer that contained a gruesome surprise; human body parts.
The freezer was removed with the remains inside to be taken to the chief medical examiner for an autopsy and DNA test. The autopsy report and DNA test results may be released as early as today.…
Continue ReadingThe Cracked Spine: Tom Franklin’s “Crooked Letter Crooked Letter”
October 21, 2011 at 3:29 pm by Morbid
Here’s another book recommendation for you. I already missed one day and if I go two days without telling you all about a good book or movie, then it’s all over with. This would just hurt you ’cause if I recommend it, then it’s worth checking out. That’s a fact.
Today’s suggestion is Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin. I’ve never read anything from the guy, but his book was high on the Amazon must-read list, and the synopsis sounded promising:
“In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32″ Jones were boyhood pals in a small town in rural Mississippi. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry was the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, black single mother. But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed . . . and was never charged.
More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary, shunned existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion.…
Continue ReadingFriends Of Woman Killed By Black Mamba Say Death May Have Been Intentional
June 18, 2011 at 12:22 pm by Morbid
PUTNAM LAKE, N.Y. — We have a lot of suicide stories on D’D, but none that I recall were a suicide by snake. But some unanswered questions surrounding the death of a woman found dead in her home after succumbing to the poison from one of the most deadliest snakes in the world, has some close to the victim feeling she may have allowed herself to be bitten.
Aleta Stacey, 56, was a snake lover who kept 75 snakes in the home she shared with her boyfriend. One of these snakes was the extremely deadly Black Mamba, reportedly the fastest venomous snakes in the world that also delivers a bite with a mortality rate of 100% if not treated immediately with antivenom. Typically, a bite from one of these bastards means you have about 20 agonizing minutes to make sure your corpse is found wearing clean underwear.
On Tuesday, Stacey’s boyfriend found her dead in their bedroom. She had snake bites on her arm and the Black Mamba was loose from its enclosure that was usually secured with a padlock.…
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HARDIN, TX – – Few details right now, but the news is reporting that a mass grave has been uncovered at a rural house in southeast Texas.
Spokesman Rex Evans of the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department said the office received an anonymous report Tuesday that there were dismembered bodies of children at the home.
When County Sheriff’s Department Deputies arrived at the private property, they saw blood and sought a warrant to search the property.
The F.B.I. is on the scene along with at least one cadaver dog assisting in the search effort for as many as 30 bodies, all of them reportedly to be the bodies of children.
Ok, I had to add an important update. The tip reportedly came from a psychic. *rolleyes*
A neighbor told reporters that police seemed to be congregating around the home of Joe Bankson, a long-haul trucker who is currently in Dallas with his wife. When contacted he said he was on his way to Georgia and had left on Sunday. ”I haven’t killed anybody,” he said.…
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SOUTH BERWICK, ME — It’s been almost two days and police have yet to identify the body of a boy found dead along a gravel road in South Berwick on Saturday.
What makes this even more disturbing is the fact that as of today, no one has reported anyone missing that matched the boy’s description.
Police released one of those helpful, yet creepy computer-generated photos of the boy shown to be around 4 or 5 with short, wavy dark blonde hair and blue eyes. He was 3 feet, 8 inches tall and weighed 45 pounds wearing a gray colored camouflage hooded sweatshirt, tan colored khaki pants, and “Lightning McQueen” black sneakers.
Police are also looking for a navy blue Toyota Tacoma pickup truck. It has an extended cab and a full cap over the bed with a white license plate. Anyone with information on the boy’s identity or the pickup truck is asked to call Maine State Police in Gray, Maine, at (207) 657-3030.
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LOUISVILLE, KY – A group of students on a field trip found a dead body in a ditch near Liberty High School Wednesday afternoon. The body was later identified as 14-year-old Terrence “Trey” Zwicker and now police are trying to find out who killed him.
A cause of death has not been revealed, but his death has been classified as a homicide. How long he had been laying there is not known at this point, but police said they do not believe he’d been there long. The teen lived nearby with his mother and stepfather, but also spent time with his dad who last talked to his son Sunday evening. They discussed his job at McDonald’s and his plans for the summer.
Other than that, there isn’t much info on this kid’s death. Some reports state he was not in school on Tuesday and a missing person’s report was never filed by the family. I read about ten different articles on this, and almost all of them involved a guy named Christopher 2X, a “community leader” who seems to be speaking for the family for some reason.…
Continue ReadingTeen Found Dead Days After Telling Facebook Friends She Had A Stalker
May 9, 2011 at 8:50 am by Morbid
Bournemouth, Dorset UK – Three days after announcing on her Facebook that she had a stalker, 17-year-old Emily Longley was found dead inside a home on Saturday morning.
Police described the cause of Longley’s death as “undetermined subject to toxicology tests.” But reports are that last Wednesday the teen informed everyone she had a stalker. She wrote: “I have a stalker!!!” She went on to describe getting a phone call from a private number. She asked who it was to which she wrote the replied: “You don’t know me but I know everything about you.” After hanging up, the unidentified male would not stop calling.
Of course her Facebook postings may have nothing at all to do with her death, especially since her father told a newspaper his daughter had died in her sleep, but he did not know how. Police did arrest two Bournemouth men, aged 19 and 17, but they were released on bail. Longley knew the two males and I’m going to assume that they were at the home she was found dead.…
Continue ReadingBodies Of Two Children Found Packed In Luggage, Floating In Florida Canal
March 3, 2011 at 2:05 pm by Morbid
Florida – If you packed two kids in some luggage before tossing them into a Florida canal, police sure would like to talk to you.
Police are out searching a Florida canal after a a homeowner alerted police to a duffel bag floating about midway across the canal that separates Delray Beach from Boca Raton. Inside the bag was the body of an African-American girl between 6 and 10. As investigators searched the bank for evidence, they found a suitcase containing the body of an African-American boy believed to be 10 to 12.
Police believe the deaths are related (man, I sure hope so), and are asking the public to get involved. No word on cause of death or how long they kids were in the water, but Sgt. Nicole Guerriero said the bodies were intact, showing no obvious signs of trauma aside from being affected by the immersion.
“If anyone has not seen their grandchild, their niece, their nephew, please give us a call,” Guerriero added.…
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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Here’s a strange story I was reading about unfolding in Florida. Rescue crews responded to a medical call Monday morning off of northbound I-95 where they found an unconscious man and his dazed, 10-year-old foster son inside a red pest control truck.
They couldn’t get a lot of information out of him aside from the fact that he kept repeating, “The can’s in the car. The can’s in the car.”
That’s when they noticed the smell coming from a jug in the bag of the truck that contained a chemical later determined to be an acid-based solution used to clean metal.
The boy and the man, later identified as 53-year-old George Barahona, were taken to the hospital and placed in decontamination tents. Four other firefighters who felt the effects of the chemical were also taken to the hospital and later released.
But that’s actually the normal part of the story. It got weird after the FBI and hazardous materials crews were called in to deal with the chemical.…
Continue Reading‘America’s Got Talent’ Contestant Offering Reward In Wife’s “Murder”
December 23, 2010 at 12:08 pm by Morbid
LOS ANGELES, CA – Remember that Joe Finley guy from a couple months back? He’s the “America’s Got Talent” contestant who auditioned for the show immediately after learning that his wife was dead at the bottom of a hotel stairwell. He’s now offering $250,000 for any information leading to a conviction in his wife’s “murder.” That’s in quotes because the Los Angeles police still have the case open, even stating the death could have been an accident. Personally, I think the entire thing looks suspicious, especially Finley’s account of the last time he saw his wife alive. Laura Finley, 48, was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. She and Joe partied that night and returned to their hotel room. Finley says 3 a.m., Laura came back in the room from getting ice saying something had happened at the ice machine. Joe says she went into the bathroom and he fell asleep, never asking what had happened. When he got up at 6 a.m., Laure was nowhere to be found but he went ahead and prepared for his audition.…
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LAKEWOOD, Wash. – Three men left work together on Sunday and their families have not seen them since. Jesus Bejar Avila, 25; Yazmany Ortiz, 25; and Christian Rangel, 19, carpooled together and after leaving work at Lake Union Wholesale Florist in a 2007 silver Chevy Silverado, they seemed to have disappeared. The three men were briefly seen at a Kent, Washington apartment complex where the vehicle was recovered, but that’s it. Avila called his girlfriend after clocking out with the others at 3:15 p.m. to ask about dinner. ”He just called to see if I would be at the store so I could make something to eat,” says Getsemani Ortiz-Torres. Rangel has a baby on the way and Bejar is married with a little boy. Since Sunday, there has been no activity on any of the men’s cell phones or bank accounts. Before any of you racist douchebags make a comment about it, all three of the men are said to be here legally and do not have criminal records. Kind of messed up you even have to put that information in an article like this, but it is apparent by the comments left on the individual news articles that if you are Hispanic, you must prove you are here legally before anyone will give a shit if you go missing under suspicious circumstances.…
Continue ReadingThree Years Later And Still No Arrests For The Murder Of Jodi Parrack
December 13, 2010 at 1:35 pm by Morbid
CONSTANTINE, MI – While posting the Rowan Ford update below, I remembered another case we posted about at around the exact same time involving 11-year-old Jodi Parrack. She was last seen around 4:45 Thursday afternoon November 8, 2007 riding her bike and was found dead in the Constantine Township Cemetery. Her mother found her there around 10:30 PM that evening, fully clothed with her bicycle nearby. That was three years ago and an arrest still has not been made nor has a suspect been identified. There has been some developments but not much in way of new information. A cause of death has never been released and the police are staying quiet on if Jodi was sexually assaulted or not. Six months after her death, prosecutor Douglas Fisher said they have at least 75 suspects and that her immediate family were not among them. While he was not specific, he added they had forensic evidence from the crime scene that will help in both identifying and clearing suspects. I take that to mean there was DNA collected which means I assume there was a sexual assault.…
Continue ReadingNeighbor Arrested In Connection To Beating Death Of 15-Year-Old Taylor Adams
December 9, 2010 at 8:35 am by Morbid
GULFPORT, MS — They made an arrest in the beating death of 15-year-old Taylor Adams yesterday. Yesterday afternoon police named a neighbor, 27-year-old Earnest Joseph III, as a suspect and that he was on the run. A short time later, with the help of the U.S. Marshals Service, Joseph was apprehended Wednesday night in Gulfport, Mississippi after a brief chase. Adams was found beaten to death in her bedroom when her mother returned home from work early Sunday morning. Investigators had determined that she had been killed between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. but didn’t initially report how they came up with that timeline. I read somewhere else they were basing that off of her last activity on Facebook. It was also revealed at yesterday’s news conference that Adams did not die without a fight. “Taylor certainly offered resistance, there was a great struggle inside the residence,” said Sheriff Wayne L. Jones. An autopsy determined she died from sustaining several severe blows to the head which resulted in a fractured skull and jaw and bleeding on her brain. No word on motive or the relationship between Joseph and Adams aside from they did know each other.…
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OTTAWA, Ill. — A mysterious case out of Illinois where a woman has gone missing after a crash in southwest Brookfield Township that killed her husband. Dale and Tanya Shannon had just left a Christmas party sometime after midnight Sunday when the car Dale was driving spun around and struck a pole. Dale was killed in the collision, but Tanya is missing. Investigators followed footsteps from the wreckage up to the road, leading police to believe she survived the crash, but that’s where her trail ends. She was not found at any of the local hospitals and fifty volunteers turned up nothing during their search. The hope is that someone picked her up as Tanya is still wearing the red dress she had on at the party and would not be able to survive for long in the cold temperatures. But if someone did pick her up, why haven’t they contacted anyone? “We checked the area hospitals and nothing, so we don’t know if someone picked her up and took her somewhere.…
Continue ReadingStudents Walking To School Find Smoldering Body Of Man On Detroit Sidewalk
December 6, 2010 at 3:19 pm by Morbid
Detroit – Some kids walking to school found the charred body of a man on the sidewalk in Detroit. The kids ran into Wilkinson Elementary and alerted teachers of their grisly find. Neighbors also came out to check out the still smoldering body, some taking taking pictures with their cell phones, others trying to keep children away from the scene. A couple news reports are stating the man was beaten or shot before being burned alive sometime between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. that morning. If you check out some of the links in this article, you’ll notice pictures of a burned-out building. I thought maybe the man had run out of there on fire, but it seems as if that house is one of many burned-out buildings in that neighborhood that help compliment the vacant lots and graffiti-covered homes. The unidentified body was taken to the Wayne County Medical Examiner for an autopsy. Last week, police found a teen girl in a burning minivan in northeast Detroit.…
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LAPLACE, LA – Sad story being reported out of Louisiana where a 15-year-old girl was found beaten to death in her bedroom. Her mother works a third shift job as a security guard and last spoke to her daughter, Taylor Adams, at around 9 p.m. that night. When she came home at around 6:30 a.m. she found her teen daughter dead and covered in blood inside her bedroom. Police say that death was from blunt force trauma to the head and that it happened sometime after 1 a.m. but are not giving out details as to how they arrived at that timeline. No clear motive is known for the attack as there was no sign of forced entry, no sign of robbery and no evidence that she had been sexually assaulted. This death comes three-months after another Laplace girl, 19-year-old Courtney Carroll, went missing after going for a jog and was later found dead in a canal. That death has not been ruled a homicide and a cause of death could not be determined.…
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