u/clickinglifestyle

Jon Burge was a Chicago Police commander. He ran a unit on the South Side known as the Midnight Crew. Between 1972 and 1991 he and the detectives under his command tortured at least 118 people in custody, almost all of them Black men, into signing false confessions.

The methods were not subtle. Electric shock applied to genitals and ears. Cattle prods. A hand cranked generator with wires attached to the body. Plastic bags pulled over heads until men passed out. Mock executions with loaded guns. Men handcuffed to radiators for hours. One victim, Anthony Holmes, described feeling electricity go through his entire body and falling out of his chair onto the floor. That was 1973.

It did not stop for nearly twenty years.

Andrew Wilson was brought in for questioning in 1982 after two police officers were killed. He was shocked, suffocated, and burned by Burge and detectives under his supervision. A doctor at Cook County Jail examined Wilson days later and sent a letter to the Police Superintendent detailing his injuries and requesting an investigation.

The then Cook County State's Attorney was informed that Burge and his men had tortured Wilson.

His name was Richard M. Daley.

No criminal investigation was opened.

Ronald Kitchen was tortured into confessing to five murders. He spent more than 21 years in prison. Thirteen of those years were on death row. He was exonerated in 2009 at age 43. Aaron Patterson scratched a message into the underside of a table in the interrogation room while he was being held. It read: I lie about murders. Police threaten me with violence. Slapped and suffocated me with plastic. No lawyer or dad. No phone. Signed false statement to murders.

That message was later used as evidence.

By the early 1990s the torture operation was an open secret. The Chicago Police Department's own Office of Professional Standards concluded in 1994 that Burge and his detectives engaged in systematic and methodical torture that went well beyond beatings and into planned psychological techniques. Five retired Black police officers who worked at Area Two gave testimony to lawyers representing torture survivors describing what they had witnessed. One detective described walking into an interrogation room and seeing a Black man handcuffed to a radiator with his pants pulled down, Burge and two other detectives standing next to him, one of them quickly moving something off the desk and onto the floor when he entered.

Burge was suspended in 1991 and fired in 1993. He was not charged with torture. The statute of limitations had expired.

He retired to Florida and collected his city pension every month.

In 2003 Governor George Ryan pardoned four men on death row whose convictions rested on confessions extracted under torture. He also commuted the sentences of every other death row inmate in Illinois and placed a moratorium on executions. Illinois abolished the death penalty entirely in 2011. The Burge torture cases were a significant part of what drove that decision.

In 2008 federal prosecutors charged Burge not with torture but with perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the torture under oath in a civil case. He was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to four and a half years in federal prison. He served most of it and was released in 2014.

He continued collecting his pension.

The city of Chicago has paid over 120 million dollars in settlements related to Burge and the officers under his command. In 2015 the city passed a reparations ordinance specifically for Burge torture survivors. Fifty seven victims received a share of 5.5 million dollars.

As of the time of his conviction twenty Black men remained in prison on convictions based in whole or in part on confessions obtained under torture.

Jon Burge died in Florida on September 19 2018 at age 70. The cause of death was not publicly released.

He never answered for the torture itself. Not once.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. was the kind of neighbor people liked.

He fixed cars in his driveway. He waved at people on the street. He worked as a garage attendant at the LAPD's 77th Street Division station nearby. For over two decades in South Los Angeles he was just a familiar face in a familiar place.

He was also killing women in the same neighborhood and dumping their bodies in alleys a few blocks from his house.

His first known victim was Debra Jackson, 29 years old, found shot three times and left in a garbage filled alley in August 1985. Over the next three years nine more women were found the same way. Same area. Same method. Police held a press conference. A composite sketch was distributed across the neighborhood. Franklin lived eight blocks away.

Nobody made the connection.

Then the murders appeared to stop. For 13 years nothing. Investigators assumed he was dead or in prison. They called him the Grim Sleeper. LAPD detectives who worked the case later said they never believed he stopped. They were right.

In 2002 bodies started appearing again. Same neighborhood. Same method. By 2007 the total was at least ten confirmed victims.

Here's what makes it worse.

In 2003 Franklin was convicted of a felony and placed on probation. California law at the time required a DNA sample to be collected. It wasn't. Probation officers didn't have the resources to collect samples between November 2004 and August 2005. Franklin's DNA was never entered into the database. He stayed invisible.

The break came from his son.

In 2009 Franklin's son Christopher was arrested on a felony weapons charge. A DNA sample was taken. When investigators ran a familial DNA search against cold case evidence they found a near match. Christopher was too young to have committed the murders. But his father wasn't.

Investigators began following Franklin. On July 5 2010 they trailed him to a birthday party at a pizzeria. An undercover detective working as a busboy collected a half eaten slice of pizza and two plastic cups from his table.

The DNA matched.

Franklin was arrested on July 7 2010. When police searched his home they found nearly 1000 photographs of women and girls. Many have never been identified.

In 2016 he was convicted of ten counts of first degree murder and sentenced to death. He died in his cell on March 28 2020 at age 67.

The DNA system that should have caught him in 2003 failed because a probation department didn't have enough staff. One missed sample. That is what kept him free for seven more years.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim\_Sleeper

Lonnie Franklin Jr. killed at least ten women in South Los Angeles over 22 years. He dumped their bodies in alleys and dumpsters a few miles from his house. He went home after. Made breakfast. Fixed his neighbors' cars. Waved at people on the street.

He had worked inside an LAPD station. Servicing their vehicles. In the same division that would eventually be looking for him.

Nobody connected it.

The first body showed up in 1985. Debra Jackson, 29, shot three times in the chest and left in an alley. Over the next three years, nine more women were killed the same way. Same neighborhood. Same gun. Same method of dumping the body like it was trash.

The LAPD knew there was a serial killer. They held a press conference about it in 1985. They were criticized at the time for waiting too long to warn the community.

They kept waiting.

Then in 1988 the killings stopped. For 14 years, nothing. Long enough that the department shifted focus. Long enough that the case went cold.

He was not sleeping. Detectives who worked the case said they do not believe he stopped killing. They believe the victims during those years were simply never connected to him.

The women he targeted were Black. Many were sex workers or struggling with addiction. The LAPD's own investigators later acknowledged the department did not treat these cases with the same urgency it gave other homicides.

That is not an opinion. That is what the record shows.

He came back in 2002. Princess Berthomieux, 15 years old, found strangled in an alleyway in Inglewood. Then Valerie McCorvey. Then Janecia Peters on New Year's Day 2007, stuffed inside a plastic trash bag inside a dumpster.

Through all of it, police had DNA from the crime scenes. They just had no one to match it to.

Here is where it gets hard to read.

In 2003, Franklin was convicted of a felony. California voters passed Proposition 69 in 2004. That law required DNA collection from every convicted felon in the state. Franklin was on probation. His DNA was legally required to be collected and entered into the database.

It never happened.

Between November 2004 and August 2005, probation officers stopped collecting DNA samples from people on unsupervised probation. The department said it did not have the resources. Franklin's sample was never taken. His profile was never entered. The database that should have caught him had a gap in it, and he fell right through.

During that window, he was still in the neighborhood. Still fixing cars. Still killing.

The case did not break because the system worked. It broke because Franklin's son got arrested on a weapons charge in 2009 and had his DNA collected. When analysts ran a familial search, they found that the crime scene profile was too close to Christopher Franklin's to be a coincidence. They mapped the father's address against the locations of the bodies. Everything lined up.

An undercover detective followed Franklin to a birthday party at a pizzeria in July 2010. Posed as a busboy. Collected a half eaten slice of pizza from his table. The DNA matched.

He was arrested two days later at his house in South Los Angeles. The same house where police found over 1,000 photographs of women. Hundreds of hours of video. Most of those women have never been identified.

Franklin was convicted of ten counts of first degree murder in 2016 and sentenced to death. He died in his cell at San Quentin in March 2020.

The probation department's failure to enter his DNA as required by law is fully documented. It was not a secret. It was not disputed.

No one was fired. No one was charged. No one answered for it.

The ten women whose names are in the title of this post were killed after that law passed. After his sample should have been collected. After the database should have had his name in it.

That is not a cold case mystery. That is a documented institutional failure with a body count.

On November 9 1971 John List shot his wife Helen in the kitchen while she drank her morning coffee. Then he went upstairs and shot his 84 year old mother. He made himself a sandwich and waited. When his daughter Patricia and son Frederick came home from school he shot them both. Then he drove to his son John Jr's soccer game, watched him play from the sidelines, drove him home, and shot him ten times when he walked through the door. He laid all five bodies on sleeping bags in the ballroom and vanished for 18 years. A TV show caught him.

https://youtu.be/y\_ou6SxqsMA?si=hrIJjvORovhfZmtp

For 13 months in 1976 and 1977 New York City lived in fear. David Berkowitz the Son of Sam was targeting young couples in parked cars at night. Six people killed. Eleven wounded. Letters sent to newspapers taunting investigators.

The NYPD response was massive. Operation Omega. Three hundred detectives. Over a million tips processed. The biggest manhunt in the city's history.

None of it caught him.

What caught him was a witness who noticed two patrol officers writing parking tickets near his final crime scene on July 31 1977. One of those tickets was issued to a cream colored Ford Galaxie parked in front of a fire hydrant. The car belonged to Berkowitz.

Detectives traced the plate to a postal worker living in Yonkers. Ten days later they went to his apartment building. Through his car window they could see a handgun on the back seat. They searched the vehicle and found a duffel bag containing ammunition, maps of every crime scene, and a letter threatening more murders addressed to the task force commander.

When Berkowitz walked out of his building detectives were waiting. He looked at them and said "Well, you got me."

He was sentenced to 365 years in prison. He is still alive today. Parole denied every single time he has applied.

Three hundred detectives for 13 months couldn't do what two parking enforcement officers did on a routine summer night without even knowing they were doing it.

The Son of Sam task force didn't catch him. Chance did.

Here is the part that should make everyone uncomfortable.

If that witness hadn't noticed those officers. If those officers hadn't been doing parking enforcement that night. If the ticket had been issued one block further away and not traced back to that car how many more people would have died while Operation Omega kept processing tips?

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David\_Berkowitz

When the biggest manhunt in New York City history gets solved by a parking ticket what does that say about how we investigate serial crimes? And how many active cases right now are being run the same way?

Stacy Moskowitz was 19 years old. It was July 31 1977. She was on her first date with Robert Violante parked near a city park in Bath Beach Brooklyn.

They were kissing when a man approached within three feet of the car and fired four shots. Violante lost his left eye. Stacy died in hospital the following day from her injuries.

She was the sixth and final victim of David Berkowitz — the Son of Sam.

For 13 months before that night Berkowitz had terrorized New York City. Always couples. Always parked in cars at night. Always a .44 caliber revolver. He sent taunting letters to newspapers and police signing them Son of Sam.

The city was paralyzed with fear. Women cut their hair because most of his victims were brunettes. Couples stopped going out at night.

The NYPD response was massive. Operation Omega. Three hundred detectives. Over a million tips processed. The largest manhunt in New York City history. None of it caught him.

What caught him was a witness who noticed two patrol officers writing parking tickets near the crime scene the night Stacy was shot. One ticket was issued to a cream colored Ford Galaxie illegally parked in front of a fire hydrant.

The car belonged to David Berkowitz.

Detectives traced the plate to a postal worker living in Yonkers. On August 10 1977 ten days after Stacy was shot they went to his apartment building. Through his car window they could see a handgun on the back seat. They searched the vehicle and found a duffel bag containing ammunition, maps of every single crime scene, and a threatening letter addressed to the commander of the Son of Sam task force.

When Berkowitz walked out of his building detectives were waiting. He looked at them and said "Well, you got me."

He was sentenced to 365 years in prison. He is still alive today. He has been denied parole every single time he has applied.

Stacy Moskowitz was the only blonde among his victims. She was also the last. The parking ticket written the night she was shot ended the biggest manhunt in New York City history ten days later.

Three hundred detectives for 13 months. A parking ticket in ten days.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David\_Berkowitz

How many other cases are sitting unsolved right now because nobody checked something this simple?

Between 1974 and 1986, a man broke into homes across California while families slept. He bound husbands and made them listen. He raped women. He murdered 13 people. He operated across 11 counties under different names — the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker. Eventually they connected every case and gave him one name. The Golden State Killer. For decades investigators had DNA from multiple crime scenes. They had no match. No name. No face. Here's what makes this case different from every other cold case. During his first series of crimes in Visalia in 1974, the local police department formed a task force to catch the Visalia Ransacker. One of the officers assigned to that task force was Joseph James DeAngelo. He was the Ransacker. He was investigating himself. He went on to rape at least 50 women and murder 13 people over the next 12 years. Then he stopped. He retired. He became a grandfather. He lived quietly in a suburb of Sacramento for three more decades. In 2018 investigators uploaded the DNA profile from a crime scene to a public genealogy website. It matched a distant relative of DeAngelo. They built a family tree. They narrowed it by age and location. They surveilled him. They collected DNA from a tissue he left in his trash can. It matched. On April 24, 2018, police arrested Joseph James DeAngelo in his front yard. He was 72 years old, dressed in a T-shirt and cargo shorts. He did not resist. In June 2020 he pleaded guilty to 13 murders and admitted to 161 total crimes against 48 victims. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He is still alive. The DNA that caught him had existed at crime scenes since the 1970s. The technology to trace it through a family tree didn't exist until 2017. Forty years of victims' families waiting for an answer that was always in the evidence. Source: ABC News — Inside the Timeline of Crimes: The Golden State Killer (abcnews.go.com) What finally catching the Golden State Killer proved — genetic genealogy has now been used to identify over 150 suspects in cold cases across the United States. How do you feel about uploading your DNA to public databases knowing law enforcement can access it?

Between 1974 and 1986, a man broke into homes across California while families slept. He bound husbands and made them listen. He raped women. He murdered 13 people. He operated across 11 counties under different names the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker. Eventually they connected every case and gave him one name. The Golden State Killer. For decades investigators had DNA from multiple crime scenes. They had no match. No name. No face. Here's what makes this case different from every other cold case. During his first series of crimes in Visalia in 1974, the local police department formed a task force to catch the Visalia Ransacker. One of the officers assigned to that task force was Joseph James DeAngelo. He was the Ransacker. He was investigating himself. He went on to rape at least 50 women and murder 13 people over the next 12 years. Then he stopped. He retired. He became a grandfather. He lived quietly in a suburb of Sacramento for three more decades. In 2018 investigators uploaded the DNA profile from a crime scene to a public genealogy website. It matched a distant relative of DeAngelo. They built a family tree. They narrowed it by age and location. They surveilled him. They collected DNA from a tissue he left in his trash can. It matched. On April 24, 2018, police arrested Joseph James DeAngelo in his front yard. He was 72 years old, dressed in a T-shirt and cargo shorts. He did not resist. In June 2020 he pleaded guilty to 13 murders and admitted to 161 total crimes against 48 victims. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He is still alive. The DNA that caught him had existed at crime scenes since the 1970s. The technology to trace it through a family tree didn't exist until 2017. Forty years of victims' families waiting for an answer that was always in the evidence.

Source: ABC News Inside the Timeline of Crimes: The Golden State Killer (abcnews.go.com)

What finally catching the Golden State Killer proved genetic genealogy has now been used to identify over 150 suspects in cold cases across the United States. How do you feel about uploading your DNA to public databases knowing law enforcement can access it?

For 46 years, Carla Walker's killer lived free identified the whole time by a gun he claimed was stolen.

On February 17, 1974, 17-year-old Carla Walker attended a Valentine's Day dance at Western Hills High School in Fort Worth, Texas with her boyfriend Rodney McCoy. Afterward they stopped at a bowling alley parking lot. A man yanked open the car door, pistol-whipped Rodney unconscious, and dragged Carla away screaming. Her body was found three days later in a culvert near Benbrook Lake. She had been kept alive for two days. She had been beaten, raped, injected with morphine, and strangled.

DNA was collected from her clothing at the scene. For 46 years no match. The technology to process degraded samples that old didn't exist yet.

In 2020, Carla's case was featured on Oxygen's show with cold case investigator Paul Holes. Shortly after it aired, Holes connected Fort Worth detectives with Othram a private lab specializing in degraded DNA. They pulled a full genetic profile from the original sample and ran it through a genealogy database. The trail led to Glen Samuel McCurley a 77-year-old man who had been living in Fort Worth the entire time.

Here's what makes it worse. McCurley had been interviewed by police in 1974 weeks after the murder because he owned a .22 Ruger, the same model as the gun used in the attack. He told detectives it had been stolen. He passed a polygraph. He was eliminated as a suspect.

When police found him in 2020, that same gun was hidden inside his house. He was arrested September 21, 2020. At trial in August 2021 he pleaded guilty mid-proceedings and was sentenced to life in prison. He died in custody in July 2023.

Carla's brother Jim Walker buried both his parents without ever knowing who took his sister.

Source: Texas Monthly Glen McCurley Strangled Carla Walker in 1974. Was She His Only Victim? (texasmonthly.com)

Should private labs have to fill the funding gaps that law enforcement can't?

For 46 years, Carla Walker's killer lived free — identified the whole time by a gun he claimed was stolen. On February 17, 1974, 17-year-old Carla Walker attended a Valentine's Day dance at Western Hills High School in Fort Worth, Texas with her boyfriend Rodney McCoy. Afterward they stopped at a bowling alley parking lot. A man yanked open the car door, pistol-whipped Rodney unconscious, and dragged Carla away screaming. Her body was found three days later in a culvert near Benbrook Lake. She had been kept alive for two days. She had been beaten, raped, injected with morphine, and strangled. DNA was collected from her clothing at the scene. For 46 years — no match. The technology to process degraded samples that old didn't exist yet. In 2020, Carla's case was featured on Oxygen's show with cold case investigator Paul Holes. Shortly after it aired, Holes connected Fort Worth detectives with Othram — a private lab specializing in degraded DNA. They pulled a full genetic profile from the original sample and ran it through a genealogy database. The trail led to Glen Samuel McCurley — a 77-year-old man who had been living in Fort Worth the entire time. Here's what makes it worse. McCurley had been interviewed by police in 1974 — weeks after the murder — because he owned a .22 Ruger, the same model as the gun used in the attack. He told detectives it had been stolen. He passed a polygraph. He was eliminated as a suspect. When police found him in 2020, that same gun was hidden inside his house. He was arrested September 21, 2020. At trial in August 2021 he pleaded guilty mid-proceedings and was sentenced to life in prison. He died in custody in July 2023. Carla's brother Jim Walker buried both his parents without ever knowing who took his sister. Source: Texas Monthly — Glen McCurley Strangled Carla Walker in 1974. Was She His Only Victim? (texasmonthly.com) Should private labs have to fill the funding gaps that law enforcement can't?

In 1960, Irene Garza — a 25 year old schoolteacher and beauty queen in McAllen, Texas — left for Easter confession at Sacred Heart Church and never came home. Her body was found in a canal five days later. Beaten, sexually assaulted, suffocated.

Father John Feit was the prime suspect within days. He had heard her last confession. His photo slide viewer was found near where her body was dumped. Scratch marks on his hands. A story about broken glasses that didn't hold up. Three weeks before Irene's murder he had attacked another young woman in a nearby church. That case ended with a $500 fine and no jail time.

No murder charges were ever filed.

Feit was quietly moved to a monastery in Missouri.

In 1963 — three years after the murder — Feit confessed to a monk named Dale Tacheny. He told Tacheny he had used a cellophane bag to suffocate a young woman. He named the three things that had kept him free — the Catholic Church, law enforcement, and the rules of sealed confession.

Tacheny said nothing for 39 years.

Not because he forgot. He said he told himself it wasn't his job to judge.

In 2002 Tacheny finally contacted police. By then Feit had left the priesthood, married, had three children, and was volunteering at a food charity in Arizona.

The original district attorney took the case to a grand jury. They declined to indict.

A new district attorney was elected in 2014 after a 48 Hours broadcast on the case. Feit was arrested in 2016. Convicted in 2017. Sentenced to life in prison at 85 years old.

Irene Garza's family waited 57 years for that answer.

The thing that disturbs me most about this case isn't the crime. It's that Feit told Tacheny the three systems protecting him — and he was right about every single one of them for nearly six decades.

What's the single biggest institutional failure here in your view — the church, law enforcement, or the sealed confession protection that shielded him?