Dark Shadows Over Thanksgiving
Unsolved Mysteries and Cold Cases That Haunt the Holiday Season
As families across the United States meet up to celebrate Thanksgiving, there’s another side to the beloved holiday, one filled with senseless killings, spooky disappearances, unsolved murders, and cold cases that have plagued communities for decades. From the infamous skyjacking of D.B. Cooper on Thanksgiving Eve in 1971 to the heartbreaking disappearance of the Skelton brothers in 2010, the holiday season has been marked by cases that still baffle investigators and haunt families.
These stories stretch across decades, even into the last century, and take place across the country. A federal public defender found strangled in Portland, a rapper shot dead outside his mother’s house in New Orleans, a game warden killed while patrolling in 1919 — and countless others who disappeared without a trace or have been the victims of crime taking place on what should be a joyous day of family and feasting. For many families still awaiting closure, the Thanksgiving holiday is an agonizing reminder of those lost to unsolved mystery.
1919: Game Protector Woodruff: A Century-Old Murder Mystery
*Scotia, New York*
On Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1919, thirty-two-year-old Game Protector John H. Woodruff departed his Scotia, New York home to patrol Schenectady County. He was looking into reports of a foreign visitor believed to have violated game laws. When he didn’t return, search parties with state troopers and deputy sheriffs combed the area for weeks, but found nothing. His fate would not be known until his remains were found, on April 4, 1921, in a shallow grave near a creek bed in Glenville. The coroner ruled his skull had been crushed by a heavy weapon wielded by a powerful individual. Woodruff’s service revolver and badge had never turned up, and his murder has never been solved.
Woodruff had begun his career as a Game Protector on November 1, 1919 (only 26 days before his disappearance), having achieved first place on his competitive civil service exam. It’s known that he was steadfast on enforcing game laws and that created some resentment with those he prosecuted. His wife would later report that her husband had been sent a threatening letter during the summer of 1919, the contents of which he never revealed.
The investigation into his death encountered a multitude of hurdles because of how long it took for his body to be discovered. In 1947, it was reopened by the State Police because of new leads, but no arrests were ever made. Rumors lingered and involved a dead Glenville man who supposedly confessed to killing Woodruff, but that was never confirmed.
The dangers of life as a Game Protector in the early 1900s were underscored with Woodruff’s death, since many officers worked solo in large territories and faced hostility from violators. His slaying is among New York State’s oldest unsolved cases.
1971: The D.B. Cooper Skyjacking: A Thanksgiving Eve Legend
*Portland, Oregon*
The afternoon before Thanksgiving 1971, a mysterious man in a dark suit and black tie boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 305 in Portland. He looked like a typical business executive and gave his name as Dan Cooper, though the media would later mistakenly dub him “D.B. Cooper” – a name that would stick in public memory.
During the flight to Seattle, Cooper revealed a bomb in his briefcase to a flight attendant, initiating what would become the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history. After landing in Seattle, he calmly negotiated his demands: $200,000 in cash, four parachutes, and food for the crew. Once his requests were met, he released all passengers, keeping only three pilots and one flight attendant aboard.
The plane took off again in light rain and darkness, heading south with the marked bills. About 45 minutes after takeoff, Cooper sent the flight attendant to join the pilots in the cockpit. He then donned a parachute, tied the bag of twenty-dollar bills to himself, and lowered the rear stairs. Somewhere north of Portland, he jumped into the night, leaving behind only his black tie.
The military response was substantial. Jets, helicopters, and even a C-130 aircraft had followed Cooper’s plane. In the days that followed, approximately 1,000 troops searched the suspected jump zone. The FBI even had the Boeing 727 conduct tests over the ocean, dropping weights from the lowered stairs to determine Cooper’s likely jump point. They went so far as to deploy an SR-71 spy plane to photograph the entire flight path, but Cooper had vanished without a trace.
The case took an unexpected turn in 1980 when a young boy named Brian Ingram made a startling discovery while digging a fire pit in the sand at Tena Bar along the Columbia River, just north of Portland. He unearthed three bundles of cash, still bound with rubber bands, totaling $5,800. The serial numbers matched Cooper’s ransom money – the first piece of evidence to surface since the hijacking.
The location of the money, about 20 miles from the FBI’s suspected drop zone near Ariel, Washington, sparked intense debate. Various theories emerged: did the money wash down through smaller rivers to the Columbia? Was the FBI’s flight path wrong? Did Cooper or someone else deliberately bury the money there to mislead investigators?
The mystery deepened when Dr. Leonard Palmer, a Portland State University geologist, analyzed the sand bar. His report suggested the money was buried in a layer of sand deposited by dredging in 1974, implying the money had been somewhere else for years. However, the intact rubber bands on the bundles seemed to contradict this timeline.
In 2007, FBI Special Agent Larry Carr reopened the case with a novel approach – treating it like a bank robbery and releasing previously unknown details to the public. This sparked renewed interest and led to the formation of the Cooper Research Team in 2008.
To this day, fierce debates continue about whether Cooper survived the jump, his level of skydiving expertise, and his true identity. The case has inspired books, movies, and songs, transforming Cooper into a folk legend. Despite countless theories and suspects over the decades, the true identity of D.B. Cooper and the full story of what happened that Thanksgiving Eve remain a mystery.
1976-2024: Owens and Hawley: A 48-Year Mystery Finally Solved
*Pecatonica, Illinois*
A mysterious disappearance befuddled Illinois authorities for nearly half a century starting in February 1976. Sixty-five-year-old Clarence Owens and 72-year-old Everett Hawley had attended a farm auction and simply disappeared. The men had had a busy day the day they went missing — they were in attendance at a political rally for gubernatorial candidate James Thompson at the American Legion in Pecatonica before stopping by a place called Rocky’s Cafe and visiting Owen’s son, who lived in the area. They were last seen at the farm sale around 2:40 to 3:00 PM, in a 1966 Chevrolet Impala with new gold paint.
The two men were reported missing after they didn’t arrive for a scheduled appointment in German Valley the following day. Attempts to find them proved unsuccessful and for decades their fate remained a mystery, leaving their friends and family without closure.
Solving this decades-old mystery would not come until March 2024, when fishermen with sonar equipment spotted a submerged car in the Pecatonica River. Salvage crews were summoned and eventually dragged a gold 1966 Chevrolet Impala from the water, the same car Owens and Hawley were in when they vanished. Investigators discovered more than 100 bones inside the vehicle.
The remains were sent to a forensic anthropologist in St. Louis, Mo., who determined that they belonged to two adult men and that they showed no signs of trauma. Advanced DNA analysis by the Illinois State Police Division of Forensic Services verified what many had feared, the remains belonged to Owens and Hawley. The scientists identified living relatives of both men to whom they were able to match the DNA from the bones.
The cause of death is still under investigation, but investigators said they found no signs of foul play. “It finally gave closure to the families that were here waiting almost 50 years for answers,” Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana said about that discovery. The case is a reminder that even decades-old mysteries can eventually be solved, thanks to advances in technology and painstaking detective work.
1977: Beth Lynn Barr: A Young Life Cut Short
*Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania*
On Nov 23, 1977, a series of nerve-wrangling events went down in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. At about 8:30 AM that morning, a 24-year-old woman was waiting for the bus when a man in a blue car with Ohio plates told her she had nice breasts. Terrified, she managed to remember to write down his license plate number before he drove away.
That same day, 6-year-old Beth Lynn Barr left Johnston Elementary School at 2:15 p.m., early for Thanksgiving break. Witnesses reported seeing someone put a schoolgirl matching Beth’s description into a blue car with red-and-white license plates as she trudged the short distance back home. Beth never made it home.
Search efforts began right away, especially because Beth’s father was a Wilkinsburg police officer. When police canvassed the neighborhood that night, the woman from the bus stop explained her conversation with the suspicious man. Her story fit the witness report: a white man in his 40s, 5-foot-10, brown curly hair, wearing a gray suit and blue-tinted glasses.
Police believed they located the car at a nearby motel – it was a rental and had Ohio plates. But the agency said the car had never left its lot. A potential break came when police arrested a salesman, but he was able to confirm he’d been in another city that day.
The case went cold until March 1979, when a man walking his dog stumbled upon a grisly find. Near Restland Memorial Cemetery in Monroeville, he located what remained of Beth. She was still in the red pantsuit, blue tennis shoes and plaid coat that she had disappeared in. An autopsy determined that she had been stabbed multiple times.
Investigators theorized that Beth’s case could be linked to unsolved murders in the region. Just weeks before Beth disappeared, another victim’s remains had been discovered at Brady’s Run Park. And a year before that, a woman named Barbara Lewis had been murdered after being accosted at a bus stop in Penn Hills — the same fate as the woman who spotted the suspicious man the morning Beth vanished.
The woman from the bus stop later complained that Wilkinsburg police might have “botched the case” by refusing assistance from more seasoned detectives. Other possible leads went unpursued, including a report by a police officer who witnessed someone buying a shovel under suspicious circumstances around the time of the kidnapping.
And today, decades later, Beth’s murder remains unsolved. But investigators with the Allegheny County police say they have been working with three boxes of reports from the case, and as is the case with all cold cases, it remains open. As the woman at the bus stop said, “Someone’s going to come forward.”
1985: The Blount Family Bombing: An Unsolved Holiday Horror
*Lake Worth, Texas*
On Thanksgiving weekend in 1985, a mystery turned tragic in Lake Worth, Texas. Members of the Blount family arrived home to find a briefcase left on their front porch. When Angela Blount, 15, opened it in their trailer home, a bomb exploded, killing her, her father, Joe Blount, and her cousin, Michael Columbus.
No one could understand at first why anyone would want to hurt the family. One neighbor who sold illegal arms wondered if the bomb was meant for him instead.
The case went cold for more than a decade. Then, following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, federal agents made a decision to review all outstanding bomb cases, including this one.
Then in 1997, they had what sounded like a breakthrough. A jail inmate testified that another prisoner, Michael Toney, had confessed to planting the bomb. But as Toney’s trial started, the story unraveled — the inmate acknowledged he and Toney had fabricated the confession with the hope of the inmate getting released. They never believed Toney would be alleged to have committed murder.
While prosecutors could not present any physical evidence putting Toney at the scene of the bombing, two other people were found: Toney’s former wife Kim and his onetime best friend Chris Meeks. Neither remembered anything about the bombing at first. But then, after reading about the case, they told police they had been with Toney when he dropped off a briefcase at the trailer park that night. “The briefcase had bombs,” she cried.
Toney was convicted in 1999 and sentenced to death largely based on their testimony.
Years later, Toney’s lawyers made a critical discovery: Prosecutors had hidden 14 documents that included evidence indicating the witnesses were lying and that police may have told them what to say. In 2008 the highest criminal court in Texas overturned Toney’s conviction. Prosecutors opted not to try him a second time and, in September 2009, he was released after a decade on death row.
Sadly, one month after his release, Toney was killed in a truck accident in which his vehicle ran off the road and overturned. To this day, the identity of the Blount family’s killer remains a mystery.
1989: Double Murder at a Miramar Thanksgiving Party
*Miramar, Florida*
It was meant to be a festive party on Thanksgiving Day in 1989 in Miramar, Fla. But it ended in a double murder. Home video footage of the party showed a man known only by his street name “Bull” — a detail that would later prove vital in the investigation of an unsolved crime.
Seconds after that video was recorded, Bull tracked Angelita Gauntlett and her boyfriend Courtney Lindsay’s car home from the party. A witness, Cecilia Best, was in the backseat of their car. Once they reached their destination, Bull walked over to the vehicle and opened fire.
“The man just kept shooting, and shooting,” Cecilia remembered, still terrified all these years later that she wouldn’t put her face on camera. “I guess Courtney tried to shoot back maybe. He was saying, ‘I’m shot, I’m shot, I’m dead.’ I heard him say that.”
Angelita’s teenage daughter Terri was inside the house, heard the shots and ducked for cover. “I heard gunfire, I just laid on the floor,” she recalled. When police arrived, they worked to shield her from the scene, but she knew something horrible had happened when she saw her mom’s car door ajar.
Detective Joe Tomlin of the Miramar Police said it was believed that Bull — whom he said came from Jamaica and was a drug trafficker — While the precise motive for the murders was never clear, investigators found out that Courtney was a former police officer in Jamaica, which indicated there might have been bad blood between the two men.
For over two decades, police have obtained a clear image of the killer’s face from the party video, without a name to match. “What happened and who did it is pretty clear in this case,” Detective Tomlin said. “All we’re asking for is who this person is.”
Terri Gauntlett — now a mother with a daughter of her own — still holds out hope for closure. “It’s a long time ago, I know, but if you know of something like that happening, I mean, it’s not nothing that you forget,” she said. “We need closure. My mom is not resting in peace, and I don’t believe she will until this case is closed.”
The case is still open, waiting for someone to put a name to the man who calls himself Bull in the party video.
1990: The Disappearance of Paul Knockel: A 33-Year Mystery
*Dubuque, Iowa*
Fifty-three-year-old Paul Joseph Knockel of Dubuque, Iowa mysteriously disappeared in mid-November 1990. He last contacted family on Nov. 12 and a relative believes he saw his maroon 1981 Mercury Zephyr parked along U.S. Route 151 near the Dubuque-Wisconsin Bridge on Nov. 13. His family reported him missing on Nov. 25, after he did not show up for the family’s Thanksgiving dinner or go to work at the Swiss Colony mail-order gift warehouse in Monroe, Wis.
Extensive searches did not locate Knockel — or his vehicle — for more than three decades. On October 12, 2023, Newt Marine Services employees dredging the Mississippi River at the Hawthorne Boat Ramp found a submerged vehicle. That vehicle, a 1981 Mercury Zephyr, belonged to Knockel. The vehicle was processed by investigators, and no human remains were located inside.
Paul Knockel is still missing.
1997: The Neshaminy Creek Mystery: A Holiday Discovery
*Bucks County, Pennsylvania*
It was Nov. 27, 1997, and a woman was bird-watching along Neshaminy Creek during a Thanksgiving visit to her boyfriend’s home in Bucks County, Pa. Through her binoculars, she first mistook a pair of sneakers for a heron. Then she noticed that the sneakers were connected to a decomposing body of a young Black man in his late teens or early twenties that was wedged between rocks in the creek. The victim was wearing green Tommy Hilfiger clothing, and had no identification on him. Ever since, his identity and cause of death have been unclear despite attempts to identify him.
Neshaminy Creek is a 40.7-mile stream that flows entirely within Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and has long been the scene of occasional incidents. A 56-year-old man drowned in October 2022 after his vehicle was swept away and submerged in the creek. His body was recovered by a rescue team, and the Bucks County Coroner’s Office ruled that he had died accidentally.
Major flooding of the creek on record — 1833 and 1865 — was devastating to bridges and other infrastructure. The creek has been the focus of flood mitigation efforts in recent years aimed at avoiding future disasters.
DSP and the U.S. Air Force Investigative Agency (AFIA) in Delaware may not have the time to sift through all the files compiled on the case over the years, and other states lack the manpower or resources to devote to the investigation. In spite of all efforts, the 1997 find is one of the creek’s most persistent mysteries, bearing out many aspects of law enforcement’s struggle to solve cases like these.
1997: Karen Marie Mitchell: A Teen’s Thanksgiving Disappearance
*Eureka, California*
Sixteen year old Karen Marie Mitchell from Eureka, CA disappeared on Thanksgiving Day 1997. She had just finished work and had entered the shoe store owned by her aunt and legal guardian, Annie Casper. After a short stay with her aunt, Karen left to return home and prepare for Thanksgiving dinner. She never arrived.
A passer-by later reported seeing Karen enter a light blue car being driven by an older white man. Nevertheless, police were never able to identify the driver. They did look into two potential suspects:
The first, Wayne Adam Ford, was a convicted murderer whose description matched that of the driver the witness described. Ford had confessed to other murders but denied having anything to do with Karen’s disappearance. Police found nothing linking him to the case.
The other suspect was Robert Durst, who later became notorious, due to an HBO documentary, “The Jinx.” Investigators found that Durst had shopped at Casper’s shoe store multiple times and was in Eureka the day that Karen went missing. But, like Ford, he could not be pinned directly to the crime.
Now, all these years later, Karen’s disappearance remains a mystery, and no one knows what happened to her that Thanksgiving Day.
Tacoma’s Thanksgiving Night Shooting: Two Lives Lost
*Tacoma, Washington*
On Thanksgiving night in 2002 — November 28 — a shooting took place at the Tacoma, Washington, home of Joe and Evangeline Britt, where about 25 family members and friends were gathered to celebrate the holiday. At about 10:05 p.m., an unidentified gunman approached a first-floor window and fired several shots at the living area. The attack killed 19-year-old Kimberly Riley and 5-year-old Jeremy Britt-Bayinthavong. Two others, Jeff Spencer and his sister Harmony, were injured but lived.
Kimberly Riley was new to Tacoma, a University of Washington student from Volcano, Hawaii, who had relocated earlier in 1986. She was there with her brother, James Riley, who’d become friends with the Britt family after they discovered a shared interest in working on cars. Jeremy Britt-Bayinthavong was a grandson of the homeowners and a regular at their home.
Witnesses described seeing a man with dark hair and a puffy jacket running southbound on L Street after the attack. Also seen speeding away with its headlights off was a dark-colored full-size Ford pickup truck from the 1970s or 1980s with a weathered white-colored canopy and loud exhaust.
Investigators also looked into whether this incident was related to another shooting at the same home on March 3, 2000, when an unidentified person took 23 rounds toward the house. No one was injured in that earlier incident, which has not been solved.
The motive behind the Thanksgiving shooting in 2002 remains unclear, despite extensive investigations. Though all of the victims had no known criminal backgrounds or ties to gangs, authorities say they will not rule out gang-related activity. The case has not been solved, and authorities are still asking for the public’s help in bringing closure to the victims’ families.
2003: Soulja Slim: A Rapper’s Last Thanksgiving
*New Orleans, Louisiana*
Rapper Soulja Slim was shot and killed outside his mother’s house in New Orleans on Nov. 26, 2003. The artist, who was born James Tapp, was found shot multiple times on the front lawn of a two-story duplex he had bought for his mother in Gentilly.
The killing appeared to echo the grim reality Slim frequently wrote about in his music. As a rapper for No Limit Records, he wrote songs about what happened in perilous neighborhoods, stories of gang violence and drug dealing. Witnesses described a dark-clothed figure fleeing the scene, but police announced no suspects in the days after the murder.
And his stepfather, asking not to be identified, said he believed jealousy over Slim’s increasing success may have caused his death. He justified the rapper’s controversial lyrics, saying Slim was not trying to incite violence — but rather to give audiences a glimpse into the harsh realities of life in impoverished neighborhoods, and ideally, to affect change.
Slim had spent several years behind bars before hitting it big with his music career. He was convicted of armed robbery in 1995, and subsequently spent four years in prison for a parole violation. But Slim had stayed out of the legal system since his release in 2001, according to his stepfather.
The case remains unsolved.
Cynthia Alonzo: 18 Years Until Closure
*Oakland, California*
Forty-eight-year-old Cynthia “Linda” Alonzo was last seen on Nov. 25, 2004 in West Oakland, California, getting inside a vehicle driven by her boyfriend, Eric Mora, on the way to her mother’s San Francisco home for Thanksgiving dinner. She never showed up, and her family filed a missing person report.
The investigation soon zeroed in on Mora, especially after authorities found bloodstains that contained Alonzo’s DNA in his home and noticed scratches on his hands. Although Alonzo’s body was never found, Mora was charged with her murder in February 2007. In 2012 March, he was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to a term of 15 years to life in prison.
But in March 2016, an appellate court found that the trial judge had wrongly prevented the defense from introducing evidence about other possible suspects and overturned Mora’s conviction. That year, Mora admitted killing Alonzo and went on to say that he buried her body in West Oakland, close to Seventh and Maritime streets. Despite intensive searches conducted by the F.B.I., the Oakland Police and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, her remains weren’t immediately discovered. In June 2017, Mora pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
On May 4, 2022, workers found human remains covered in tarps in a shallow grave near the area Mora had previously described. The remains were identified as those of Cynthia Alonzo by the Alameda County Coroner’s Office. The discovery brought long-awaited closure for her family, which had spent nearly 18 years without knowing her fate.
Nancy Bergeson: Justice Delayed for a Portland Public Defender
*Portland, Oregon*
Nancy Bergeson, 57, an assistant federal public defender in Portland, Ore., was discovered dead in her home in Southwest Portland on Nov. 26, 2009. At first, authorities thought she died of natural causes because there were no obvious signs of trauma. But an autopsy later found that she had been strangled two days earlier on Thanksgiving Day, likely with a soft object like a scarf.
From the beginning, the investigation encountered major obstacles. The initial assumption of a natural death also meant the crime scene was not immediately secured, possibly losing crucial evidence. Despite considerable resources dedicated to the case, the investigation did not lead anywhere for close to a decade.
A major breakthrough came in January 2019 when Portland police arrested 28-year-old Christopher Alexander Williamson in an unrelated crime in Portland while investigating Bergeson’s murder. Authorities did not provide details on how Williamson was connected to the crime, but they said someone had called a tip line and that cooperation among agencies was key in Williamson’s arrest.
Williamson pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter and burglary in March 2020. He was given a sentence of 15 years in prison. Medical evidence showed that Williamson had a genetic disorder that would result in a life expectancy of less than 10 years — an element that weighed on the sentencing decision. Bergeson’s family supported the plea agreement and expressed hope for justice and closure after years of uncertainty.
Nancy Bergeson’s tragic passing shook her community. With her clients, she was a passionate advocate, and she was a dedicated public servant, her colleagues recalled. The Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association created a lecture series in her honor, the Nancy Bergeson Ardent Advocate Lecture Series, to embody her spirit and serve as an inspiration for future defense attorneys and the battle for justice.
The case being resolved brought some degree of closure, but also shone a light on the complications and challenges that come with investigating a homicide, particularly where early assessments can prove fatal in the wrong way.
The Missing Skelton Brothers: A Family’s Thanksgiving Nightmare
*Morenci, Michigan*
On Thanksgiving Day in 2010, three young brothers disappeared from their father’s backyard in Morenci, Mich., kicking off one of the state’s most haunting missing persons cases. The Skelton boys, Andrew, 9, Alexander, 7, and Tanner, 5, were last seen playing outdoors while visiting their father, John Skelton, for the holiday.
When the boys failed to return to their mother, Tanya Zuvers, John Skelton provided a bizarre explanation: he said he had given his sons to an “underground organization” to keep them safe from their mother. No evidence advanced this narrative, the police found.
No trace of the brothers has — despite all the searches and investigations — ever been found. John Skelton was eventually charged with unlawful imprisonment, and sentenced to 10-15 years in prison, but never charged with murder. He sticks to his story about giving the boys away, but investigators have never found any evidence that any such organization exists.
The case took a new turn in December 2023, when Tanya Zuvers made the difficult decision to file court papers requesting that her sons be declared dead in the eyes of the law. This agonizing move followed 13 years of seeking and waiting for answers.
The case of the missing Skelton brothers still haunts their Michigan community, and their fate — which the authorities say they suspect is death — remains one of the state’s most troubling unsolved mysteries. And their mother continues to hope someone will come forward with information about what really happened to her sons that Thanksgiving Day.
Shane Montgomery: A Holiday Tragedy or Something More Sinister?
*Philadelphia, Pennsylvania*
Shane Montgomery was a 21-year-old college student from Pennsylvania who tragically went missing in the early hours of Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2014. He was last seen leaving Kildare’s Irish Pub in the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia. After an extensive search, his body was discovered in the Schuylkill River on January 3, 2015. The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death an accidental drowning. But it has also been proposed he may have been a victim of the Smiley Face Killers.
In 2008, two retired New York police detectives, Frank Gannon and Anthony Duarte, proposed a chilling theory. Dozens of drowning deaths across eleven states, they said, were not mere accidents, but the handiwork of organized killers. The murders, which dated back to 1997, had several alarmingly similar aspects that piqued the detectives’ interest.
The victims shared a common profile: They were nearly all white college men who were athletic and did well in school. None had gone missing without having been drinking at bars or parties first. Most interestingly, in at least a dozen cases, the investigators came across smiley face graffiti near where the bodies were found in the water. The deaths generally happened in deep-freeze northern states in the winter — when even very drunk students were likely to shy away from the freezing water.
Although most cases were officially determined to be accidental drownings, at least two cases were clear homicides. Patrick McNeil, 20, never returned from Dapper Dog bar in Manhattan in February 1997. His body was found two months later, but evidence indicated that he had died before entering the water. Likewise, 21-year-old Chris Jenkins also went missing — on Halloween in 2002, in Minneapolis — only to turn up months later in an atypical position — face-up, his hands crossed over his chest.
Some experts backed the theory. Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist, who said the numbers made it almost impossible for these deaths not to be linked. The Smiley Face Killers, Professor Lee Gilbertson (who initially expressed skepticism but later was convinced), declared that they are a “nationwide organization that revels in killing young men.”
But many experts vehemently disagreed. The theory was “ludicrous,” “absolutely insane,” said the criminal profiler Pat Brown, pointing out that “It’s not an unusual symbol. …I bet you would find a smiley face if you looked in an area five miles square.”
The FBI formally rejected the theory in 2008. “We have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers,” it said. Most of these cases seem to be drowning in connection with alcohol.
And some families of the victims became suspicious of the detectives’ motives. Bill Szostak, whose son died in Albany, NY, and who expressed disappointment: “I just feel that Kevin is a sponge—he attaches to the families, he sucks the life out of them and when he has nothing left to suck, he dumps them….I believe he has re-victimized families and done more harm than good? Yes, I do, and that’s a pity.”
The theory keeps coming back no matter how many people are skeptical of it, and there have been other drownings, in similar but different circumstances. As OnMilwaukee.com columnist Eugene Kane wrote: “I’ve been warned in the past not to write about the secret killer of white men in Wisconsin who uses drunkenness and college-age guys to lure them into the river and find some way to drown them….I’m still curious why big drinking black men don’t end up in the river and why the drunkenness and race rarely comes up.”
The theory has even gone global, with cases popping up in Ireland, England, Spain, and France. While the consensus among many experts is that these drownings are merely tragic accidents, the theory of serial murders by the Smiley Face Killers keeps coming up, perhaps because it truly does provide a theory of abductions, injuries, and deaths for what otherwise is simple drowning or similar senseless deaths. And as one observer said, “Whatever the truth is, it is clear that somebody is messing with us — and laughing about it.”
Maria Elizalde: Vanished on Thanksgiving Eve
*Dallas, Texas*
The night before Thanksgiving in 2015, Maria Isabel Elizalde disappeared from her Dallas house, leaving her family with questions that still have no answers years later. Maria, a 15-year-old biracial teenage girl with both Hispanic and Native American heritage, had been playing outside with her younger sisters and some neighborhood kids around 7:30 p. Her stepfather noticed the children playing outside around 9:00 PM, but when their mother, Kathleen Rodriguez, called them inside a short time later, Maria did not follow her sisters back in.
Maria had only just moved back to live with her mother in Dallas. Most of her life, she had lived with her grandmother in Mexico, but she had moved back to Texas roughly a year before her disappearance after allegations of sexual abuse by a relative in Mexico. She had vanished before — fleeing home once in a fit of anger — but only for a day, not this drawn-out absence.
Maria was 5 feet tall and 140 pounds when she went missing. She had brown hair with distinct blue-dyed ends and was wearing a blue sweater, blue jeans and high-heeled shoes that night. According to the police, a distinguishing characteristic is a scar that runs through her right eyebrow.
Police have categorized Maria as an endangered runaway and suggested she could still be somewhere in Texas — perhaps in Dallas, Balch Springs, or Cedar Hill. But her family worries that something worse happened to her. In May 2021, in hopes of generating new leads, Dallas police collaborated with Clear Channel Outdoor Americas to project Maria’s image on digital billboards throughout North Texas. These included her last known image and altered photographic representations of what she might look like at the age of 21.
Despite these efforts, and her mother’s unending search, Maria’s fate is still unknown, which leads her family to wonder what happened on that Thanksgiving eve.
Kelsey Berreth: A Mother’s Tragic End on Thanksgiving Day
*Woodland Park, Colorado*
Kelsey Berreth, a 29-year-old flight instructor and mother from Woodland Park, Colorado, was last seen shopping at a local grocery store with her one-year-old daughter on November 22, 2018. She was seen in surveillance footage walking into the store, around noon. That day, she exchanged custody of her daughter with her fiancé, Patrick Frazee. This was the last known sighting of Berreth.
The days after her disappearance, Berreth’s phone sent a text to her employer saying she would not be going to work for a week. Her mother reported her missing on Dec. 2 after losing touch with her. Police later determined that Berreth’s cell phone pinged near Gooding, Idaho, on Nov. 25, indicating that it had made a journey from Colorado.
The investigation eventually showed that Frazee had asked his former girlfriend, Krystal Lee Kenney, to kill Berreth at least twice. Kenney testified that on Thanksgiving Day, Frazee had fatally struck Berreth with a baseball bat inside her town house, then burned her body on his property. Kenneth H. Kenney, pleaded guilty to cleaning the crime scene and disposing of Berreth’s cell phone in Idaho to mislead investigators.
Frazee was convicted in November 2019 of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 156 years. Kenney pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and got three years in prison. Searches for Berreth’s remains have turned up nothing.
The case gained national attention, raising awareness of domestic violence and the difficulty of prosecuting murder cases when no body has been found. In honor of Berreth’s legacy, her family honors her memory and is an advocate for victims of domestic abuse.
We can only hope that the rest of these cases can find some closure soon as well.
SOURCES:
D.B. Cooper: https://citizensleuths.com/db-cooper-what-you-need-to-know.html
Kelsey Berreth: https://people.com/crime/colo-man-found-guilty-of-murdering-fiancee-kelsey-berreth
Paul Knockel sources: https://charleyproject.org/case/paul-joseph-knockel, https://who13.com/news/eastern-iowa-mans-car-found-over-30-years-after-disappearance, https://iowacoldcases.org/case-summaries/paul-knockel
Nancy Bergeson: https://www.koin.com/news/man-arrested-in-2009-killing-of-nancy-bergeson,https://www.osbar.org/publications/bulletin/10augsep/evidence.html, https://patch.com/oregon/portland/nancy-bergeson-murder-arrest-made-nine-years-after-she-was-killed, https://www.koin.com/news/crime/nancy-bergesons-family-supportive-of-killers-sentence, https://www.kgw.com/article/news/crime/arrest-made-in-2009-killing-of-prominent-portland-public-defender/283-f3cecc16-0f80-4774-b7a4-000c99d156d0
Maria Elizalde: https://charleyproject.org/case/maria-isabel-elizalde, https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-police-looking-into-cold-case-of-missing-teen-from-2015, https://people.com/crime/dallas-teenage-girl-missing-thanksgiving-mom-searches, https://www.missingkids.org/poster/NCMC/1258708/1
Shane Montgomery: https://thought.is/the-grisly-smiley-face-killer-theory-that-connects-40-college-students-deaths/,https://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/12/08/shane-montgomery-victim-smiley-face-killers/
Murders In Miramar: https://wsvn.com/news/angelita-gauntlett-courtney-lindsay/
Beth Barr Case: https://patch.com/pennsylvania/foresthills-regentsquare/kidnap-murder-case-still-not-a-lost-cause-34-years-later
Blount Family: https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3692
Cynthia Alonzo: https://abc7news.com/cynthia-linda-alonzo-murder-2014-oakland-body-of-woman-killed-in-bay-area-found-eric-mora/11865891, https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/cynthia-linda-alonzo-oakland-woman-murdered-body-found-eric-mora, https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/Man-Gets-11-Years-For-Killing-Woman-Whose-Body-11259713.php
Tacoma’s Thanksgiving Shooting: https://truecrimediva.com/kimberly-riley-jeremy-britt-bayinthavong,https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/unsolved/thanksgiving-day-shooting-tacoma-2002/281-756c467c-11c0-4b61-9cca-7e701b66c13e
Rapper Soulja Slim: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/rapper-soulja-slim-murdered-67970/
Neshaminy Creek John Doe: https://listverse.com/2016/10/21/10-unsolved-thanksgiving-mysteries,https://patch.com/pennsylvania/bensalem/man-identified-after-vehicle-submerged-neshaminy-creek-coroner,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neshaminy_Creek
Karen Marie Mitchel: https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-thanksgiving-incidents/robert-f-mason
The Game Warden Murder: https://www.odmp.org/officer/14473-game-protector-john-h-woodruff,https://schenectadyhistorical.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022-02-compressed.pdf,https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/public-safety/environmental-conservation-police/history
The Skelton Brothers: https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2024/11/26/mother-of-missing-skelton-brothers-asks-court-to-declare-them-legally-dead, https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/shot-australian-brothers-killed-in-robbery-according-to-authorities/news-story/7f2ff57d256878afe8ddf3fd236c9272
Owens and Hawley: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clarence-owens-everette-hawley-chevy-impala-1976-cold-case-recovered-river-illinois, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/remains-car-illinois-river-clarence-owens-everett-hawley-missing-1976, https://www.the-sun.com/news/12453314/major-breakthrough-case-missing-men-vanished-auction,https://people.com/remains-found-in-ill-river-belong-to-two-men-who-vanished-in-1976-8710859
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