Team – further.crimezzz.net

Clyde Chestnut Barrow

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:20:28 +0000

Bonnie Parker liked to write poetry about the exploits of her lover, Clyde Barrow, and she found his violence erotic. Deputy Ted Hinton was one of the six officers who ambushed and shot the couple to death. As the last surviving member of that gang, he tells the story in Ambush: The Real Story of Bonnie and Clyde. While he viewed Bonnie as a nice girl who was fairly normal, it’s clear that Clyde brought out something in her that was anything but. She had plenty of chances to walk away, to turn him in, to say no to the crimes they were committing, yet she stuck with him to the bitter end. During the 1930s, when people were suffering from a serious nationwide Depression, outlaw gangs made headlines with their sensational bank robberies, shoot-outs and escapes. The like had not been seen since the James Gang the century before. Ted Hinton One of the troublemakers in Dallas, Texas, at that time was Clyde Barrow. Hinton knew Barrow’s family, so he was aware of how Barrow had gotten his start early. His girlfriend since 1930 was Bonnie Parker, a spitfire. Hinton also knew her from her days as a waitress. She hoped to become a singer or a poet. She was 20 when she met and fell in love with 21-year-old Barrow. Already married to a man who had ended up in prison, she cleaved to the outlaw, whose anger at the intense poverty that restricted him, found expression in a reckless aggression that she admired. His older brother was the same, and the townspeople knew them as „that Barrow Bunch.“ The year he met Bonnie, Clyde was sentenced to prison for 14 years for car theft and burglary. He had a fellow inmate cut off two of his toes so he could get out. It didn’t work, but he did get paroled from the overcrowded system in 1932. Bonnie had waited for him. Clyde’s first murder was an accident, when a bullet ricocheted off a safe. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but his presence there convinced him he’d end up executed. That added an edge to his adventures: he had nothing to lose, and Bonnie apparently found this exhilarating. Together they went on a spree of robberies, and then began to kill, taking on and losing partners, and always staying together. Police chased them from state to state, but they always eluded capture, and Bonnie wrote poems about it. Finally, they were trapped, and they went out just as Bonnie envisioned—dying together. On May 23, 1934, six officers awaited the couple on a lonely stretch of road near Gibsland, Louisiana. They had gotten a tip that the couple would be coming down that road. The officers settled in for a long vigil, which finally paid off. The lovers came driving through and the officers just started shooting. „For a fleeting instant, the car seems to melt and hang in a kind of eerie and animated suspension…Clyde’s head has popped backward, his face twisted at the shock of pain as the bullets strike home.“

The execution lasted about 12 seconds and then the incident was over. Bonnie and Clyde were dead. The car took 167 bullets, and a coroner later counted the number of wounds that the killers had received. Each was shot more than 50 times. None of the officers was hit. In fact, neither of the fugitives had managed to fire a single shot. The bullet-riddled car The outlaws were towed to town in their car, and people came from miles around to have a look at them and to touch the „death car.“ They wanted to see for themselves the place where Bonnie and Clyde had met their match. School children ripped pieces from Bonnie’s dress and hair. Despite her desire to be buried next to Clyde, their respective families separated them in death. Yet there was no doubt that they had been in love and had enjoyed their escapades together. Both had probably known that eventually they would be apprehended, but that awareness had failed to stop them. Bonnie had chosen to be with Clyde, and he was a lawbreaker and a killer. She, too, had likely shot at least one of the victims, so wasn’t just along for the ride. Other women have followed their lovers into crime, but some have later claimed that they had no choice. A look at one such case makes this claim hard to believe. Like Bonnie, Karla Homolka appeared to know what she was doing and to enjoy it, as long as she was doing it with her man, „the king.“ Karla is a classic psychopath who appears to have met the man through whom she could act out those things she might not have done on her own. Not that she flinched from them; indeed, she appeared to thrive on them, but she needed a man to put her own inner depravity into motion.

Clyde Chestnut Barrow

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:20:28 +0000

Bekannt als: Bonnie & Clyde
Gestorben: 1934 Sterbeort: Shreveport, Louisiana (US) Todesursache: Erschossen
Aktiv: 1930 – 1934

Das „Ahnpärchen“ aller Teamkiller war ein Produkt der Depression, 17 und 21 Jahre alt. Ihre Blutspur beginnt in Dallas, Texas, wo sie eine Gang gründeten, die quer durch Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa & Arkansas Autos stahl, Läden beraubte und Banken überfiel.

Bonnie & Clyde erschossen 16 Menschen, 13 davon Polizisten. Bonnie soll besonderen Spaß daran gehabt haben, „Cops“ noch ein paar Extra-Kugeln zu verpassen. Beide starben im Kugelhagel der Polizei außerhalb von Shreveport, Louisiana.

Bonnie & Clyde / Warren Beatty & Faye Dunaway (1967)

William Bender

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:20:32 +0000

On the high prairie the Bender family — John, his wife , son, and daughter Kate — in 1871 built a small house. Partitioned in two rooms by a canvas cloth it had a table, stove and grocery shelves in front. In back were beds, a sledge hammer and a trap door above a pit-like cellar. Kate a self- proclaimed healer and spiritualist and reported to be a beautiful, voluptuous girl with tigerish grace, was the leading spirit of her murderous family.
The house was located on the main road. Travelers stopping for a meal were seated on a bench backed tight against the canvas. In the next two years several disappeared. When suspicious were finally aroused, in 1873 , the Benders fled. A search of their property disclosed eleven bodies buried in the garden, skulls crushed by hammer blows through the canvass.
The end of the Benders is not known. The earth seemed to have swallowed them up, just like their victims.

Kenneth Alessio Bianchi

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:20:35 +0000

A more dangerous team of blood relatives was composed of the two cousins who came to be known as the Hillside Stranglers. October 17, 1977, Yolanda Washington, 19, was picked up, strangled, and dumped near the entrance to Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery. Ted Schwartz, author of The Hillside Strangler, said that the killers‘ MO was to pretend to be police officers making an „arrest.“ Their first three victims were prostitutes, and they would pick them up, have sex with them—often while bound–kill them, and dump them by the roadside. The second victim, Judy Miller who was 15, was found on Halloween. According to Corey Mitchell in Hollywood Death Scenes, she had been laid in a garden on an anthill and her legs had been posed in the shape of a diamond. It was clear that she had been trussed up with ligatures while alive and then strangled. A white fiber was found on her eyelid. At that moment, it meant nothing, but it would prove to be a significant piece of evidence. A week later, another woman was found in Glendale, California, on a golf course. She was 21 and she joined Miller, who had not yet been identified, in the morgue. On November 20, two victims were discovered who had been abducted from a mall. They were 12 and 14, and they were not prostitutes. Their bodies had been rolled down a 50-foot embankment into a trash heap. The same night produced a sixth victim and all of her bruises matched those of the others. She had been an art student and was on her way home from class. „That put a little panic in the city,“ said retired LA sheriff’s detective Frank Salerno for Court TV’s Mugshots. He had been involved with the Los Angeles investigations. Now that it was clear that women were being killed at random and in rapid succession, people all over the city were afraid. In three days, an actress, 28, was found alongside a freeway exit ramp. A business student became the eighth victim on November 28, but she had burns in the palms of her hands as if from electrocution. That was a new twist, yet she was linked to the others by a common MO. Thousands of tips were called in and the media dubbed the killer The Hillside Strangler. Yet police believed there had to be two. Another murdered prostitute was soon found naked on the side of a hill. She appeared to have been posed in a spread-eagle fashion as some kind of insulting statement. This time there were witnesses who had seen two males with her. That was clear evidence that more than one killer was at work, but then the leads dried up. They were at a dead end. All of a sudden, the murders stopped as quickly as they had begun. Police waited through the holidays with no new bodies clearly linked to the spree. Then on February 17, 1978, the highway helicopter patrol spotted an orange compact car crashed off a highway, and locked inside the trunk was victim number 10: Cindy Hudspeth, 20. She had been strangled and also had ligature marks. A witness came forward to describe the person who had been driving the car, but once again, they made no arrests. Then nothing else happened. Months went by and there were no new deaths. Yet the killers had not stopped; one of them had simply left town with his girlfriend. Kenneth Bianchi Almost a year after the last Los Angeles victim was discovered, in Bellingham, Washington, college roommates Diane Wilder and Karen Mandic were reported missing. On January 12, 1979, a security officer said that one of them had indicated they were going to do a security job for Ken Bianchi, a good-looking man with a girlfriend and infant son who was a captain at the security company. They thought this was not a first murder, since it was carefully done. They picked up Bianchi for questioning and collected trace evidence, which turned up three important items: * carpet fibers on the bodies that matched those from inside the house * a lint brush in Bianchi’s home with fibers from the house and hairs from one of the girls * pubic hair on one girl, which matched Bianchi They then linked him through his California drivers‘ license with the string of the Los Angeles murders from the year before, and it turned out he had jewelry in his home from two of those girls. It didn’t take long to connect him with his cousin, Angelo Buono, who ran a car upholstery shop near many of the body dumpsites. Angelo Buono, police files An eyewitness took the stand who had seen one abduction. He described the car and Angelo Buono as the driver. Fibers on another victim had come from a chair in Buono’s house. They also matched material from Buono’s upholstery shop to the fiber on the eyelid of the first victim. The trial lasted two years with a parade of 250 witnesses and a thousand exhibits. On Halloween 1983, the jury convicted Buono of nine of the ten murders and gave him nine life sentences. Bianchi, who had pleaded to five, was given five life sentences on top of the two he had in Washington.

Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:20:36 +0000

Lawrence Bittaker was serving time for assault with a deadly weapon, in 1978, when he met Roy Norris at the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo. A convicted rapist, Norris recognized a soul-mate in Bittaker, and they soon became inseparable. While still confined, they hatched a grisly plot to kidnap, rape and murder teenage girls „for fun,“ as soon as they were freed. If all went well, they planned to kill at least one girl of each „teen“ age — from 13 through 19 — recording the events on tape and film. Paroled on November 15, 1978, Bittaker began making preparations for the crime spree, obtaining a van that he dubbed „Murder Mack.“ Norris was released on June 15, 1979, after a period of observation at Atascadero State Hospital, and he hurried to Bittaker’s side, anxious to implement their plans. On June 24, 1979, 16-year-old Linda Schaeffer vanished following a church function, never to be seen again. Joy Hall, 18, disappeared without a trace in Redondo Beach on July 8. Two months later, on September 2, Jacqueline Lamp, 13, and Jackie Gilliam, 15, were lost while thumbing rides in Redondo Beach. Shirley Ledford, 16, of Sunland, was the only victim recovered by authorities; abducted on October 31, she was found the next morning in a Tijunga residential district. Strangled with a coat hanger, she had first been subjected to „sadistic and barbaric abuse,“ her breasts and face mutilated , arms slashed, her body covered with bruises. Detectives got their break on November 20, when Bittaker and Norris were arrested on charges stemming from a September 30 assault in Hermosa Beach. According to reports, their female victim had been sprayed with Mace, abducted in a silver van, and raped before she managed to escape. The woman ultimately failed to make a positive I.D. on Bittaker and Norris, but arresting officers discovered drugs in their possession, holding both in jail for violation of parole. Roy Norris started showing signs of strain in custody. At a preliminary hearing, in Hermosa Beach, he offered an apology „for my insanity ,“ and he was soon regaling officers with tales of murder. According to his statements, girls had been approached at random, photographed by Bittaker, and offered rides, free marijuana, jobs in modeling. Most turned the offers down, but others were abducted forcibly, the van’s radio drowning their screams as they were driven to a remote mountain fire road for sessions of rape and torture. Tape recordings of Jacqueline Lamp’s final moments were recovered from the „Murder Mack,“ and detectives counted 500 photographs of smiling young women among the suspects‘ effects. On February 9, 1980, Norris led deputies to shallow graves in San Dimas Canyon and the San Gabriel Mountains, where skeletal remains of Lamp and Jackie Gilliam were recovered. An ice pick still protruded from Gilliam’s skull, and the remains bore other marks of cruel mistreatment. Charging the prisoners with five counts of murder, Los Angeles County Sheriff Peter Pitchess announced that Bittaker and Norris might be linked to the disappearance of 30 or 40 other victims. By February 20, the stack of candid photographs had yielded nineteen missing girls, but none were ever traced, and Norris had apparently exhausted his desire to talk. On March 18, Norris pled guilty on five counts of murder, turning state’s evidence against his confederate. In return for his cooperation, he received a sentence of 45 years to life, with parole possible after thirty years. Bittaker, meanwhile, denied everything. At his trial, on February 5, 1981, he testified that Norris first informed him of the murders after their arrest in 1979. A jury chose to disbelieve him, returning a guilty verdict on February 17. On March 24, in accordance with the jury’s recommendation, Bittaker was sentenced to die. The judge imposed an alternate sentence of 199 years and four months, to take effect in the event that Bittaker’s death sentence is ever commuted to life imprisonment.

William Bonin

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:20:43 +0000

Crimes & Victims:

Between December 1972 and June 1980 at least 44 young men and boys become victims of at least one unidentified “Freeway Killer” in seven Southern California counties.
Eleven of those victims killed prior to 1976 are known or suspected homosexuals, so the killer might be gay himself. In most of the cases the modus operandi included strangulation, stabbing with knives or ice picks and sadistic torture.
While authorities suspect several killers, 21 of the victims seem to be the work of the same murderer.
The arrest of “Scorecard Killer” Randy Kraft in 1983 solves 16 of the crimes.

May 28, 1979: Thomas LUNDGREN (14) is abducted from Reseda and found the same day near Malibu.
August 4, 1979: Mark SHELTON (17) is reported missing from Westminster, his corpse recovered one week later at Cajon Pass.
August 5, 1979: Marcus GRABS (17) is kidnapped in Newport Beach, his corpse found at Agoura August 6.
August 27, 1979: Donald HYDEN (15) vanishes from Hollywood, his corpse found the same day in Agoura.
September 7, 1979: David MURILLO (17) disappears from La Mirada, his body found in Ventura on September 12.
September 27, 1979: Robert WIROSTEK is found dead near Interstate 10 between Banning and Palm Springs waiting for identification 11 months later only.
November 30, 1979: A “John Doe” victim discovered in Kern County.
December 1, 1979: Frank FOX (18) murdered at Long Beach.
December 13, 1979: Body of another unidentified victim, aged 15-20 found.
January 1, 1980: Michael McDONALD (16) abducted from Ontario, found dead January 3 in San Bernardino County.
February 3, 1980: Charles MIRANDA (14) disappears from Los Angeles, his body found in Hollywood the same day.
February 5, 1980: James McCABE (12) is kidnapped in Huntington Beach, his corpse discovered February 8 in Garden Grove.
March 14, 1980: Ronald GATLIN (18) disappears from Van Nuys, found dead March 15 in Duarte.
March 21, 1980: Russell Duane RUGH is missing from Huntington Beach, his corpse found March 22 at the Lower San Juan Campground.
March 22. 1980: Glen Norman BARKER (14) found dead alongside with the body of Russell PUGH.
March 25, 1980: Harry Todd TURNER (15) found slain in Los Angeles.
April 10, 1980: Steven WOOD (16) abducted from Bellflower, Lawrence Eugene SHARP (18) missed hours later from Long Beach. WOOD’s body found April 11 at Long Beach, SHARP’s remains discovered May 18 in Westminster.
April 29, 1980: Daren KENDRICK (19) missing from Stanton, his corpse found on May 10 with traces of knockout drops.
May 19, 1980: Sean KING (14) vanishing from South Gate. No trace will be found ever.
June 2, 1980: Stephen WELLS (18) is kidnapped in Los Angeles, his body discovered June 3 at Huntington Beach.

Discovery & Verdict:
June 10, 1980: William Ray PUGH (18) started confessing “inside” knowledge of the serial killings. He accuses William George BONIN (32), a Vietnam veteran and truck driver being the killer. BONIN already has adequate court records, as in 1969 convictions in Torrance on kiddnapping, sodomy, child molestation and forcible oral sex in four separate attacks between November 1968 and January 1969. BONIN was then diagnosed a mentally disordered sex offender, locked away to Atascadero State Hospital until May 1974. Psychiatrists found BONIN being “no longer dangerous”. In 1976 he was back in jail for kidnapping and raping a 14 year old boy, being paroled October 1978.
June 11, 1980: BONIN is caught while sodomizing a young man in his van and held on 250,000 US$ bail.

July 25, 1980: Vernon BUTTS (22) is arrested as accomplice in six of the “freeway murders”.

July 25 – 29, 1980: BONIN is charged with 14 counts of murder, three counts of robbery and starts naming more accomplices.

July 31, 1980: James Michael MUNRO (19) is arrested in Michigan for the murder of Stephen WELLS.

August 22, 1980: Gregory M. MILEY is arrested in Texas for murdering Charles MIRANDA and James McCABE, plus two counts of robbery and one count of sodomy.

October 29, 1980: Vernon BUTTS is charged with the murders of Mark SHELTON, Robert WIROSTEK and Darin Lee KENDRICK plus 17 felony counts including conspiracy, kidnapping, robbery, sodomy, oral sex and sex perversion. Gregory M. MILEY is charged with another Orange County murder and seven related felony counts.

December 8, 1980: Dutch immigrant Eric Marten WIJNAENDTS (20) is charged with complicity in the murder of Harry TURNER.
BONIN’s accomplices start pleading guilty on various felony charges, receiving life sentences in exchange for their testimony against BONIN.

January 11, 1981: Vernon BUTTS succeeds in his 5th suicide attempt, hanging himself in his cell.

November 4, 1981: BONIN stands trial on 16 counts of murder, 25 related counts of robbery and sexual assault. Gregory M. MILEY and James MUNRO testify how BONIN after his arrest had urged them to “start going around grabbing anyone off the streets and killing them” to convince authorities that the “Freeway Killer” is still at large.
In a television interview BONIN admits participation in 21 murders – “I could not stop killing”.

January 5, 1982: Jurors convict BONIN on 14 counts of murder and ten counts of robbery. The deaths of Thomas LUNDGREN and Sean KING have been ruled out.
Two weeks later BONIN is sentenced to death.
Gregory M. MILEY is sentenced to a 25-to-life term for 1st Degree murder.
MUNRO receives a 15-to-life sentence for his second-degree murder plea. He was eligible for parole in 2000, but the parents of Steven WELLS have made it a point to make sure he serves the maximum.

February 23, 1996: After years of appeals William BONIN is executed by lethal injection for the killings of Glenn Norman BARKER, Frank FOX, Ronald GATLIN, Marcus GRABS, Donald HYDEN, Darin Lee KENDRICK, James McCABE, Charles MIRANDA, David MURILLO, Russell Duane RUGH, Lawrence Eugene SHARP, Harry Todd TURNER, Stephen WELLS, Steven WOOD.

Thomas Eugene Braun

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:20:46 +0000

A native of rural Washington state, born in 1949, Thomas Braun lost his mother in early childhood as the result of a clumsy, illegal abortion. Left in the care of their alcoholic father , Braun and his younger sister were frequently locked in a truck for safekeeping while the old man made his rounds of local taverns. Both were beaten on occasion, and when Braun’s dog was accused of stealing chickens, Thomas was forced by his father to shoot the animal. On August 17, 1967, Braun left his job as a gas station attendant in Ritzville, Washington, and picked up his best friend, slow-witted Leonard Maine, on his way out of town. The 18-year-olds had two pistols, a car, and no clear destination in mind. In Seattle, on August 18, the boys stopped at a rooming house, asked about lodgings, and then pulled their guns on the landlady, fleeing in panic when she began to scream. Things went better the next afternoon, outside Redmond, when they pulled over 22-year-old Deanna Buse, pretending that something was wrong – with a tire on her car. Forcing the young woman into his vehicle at gunpoint, Braun drove on to Echo Lake, Maine bringing up the rear in Buse’s sedan. Arriving at their destination, Braun marched his captive into the woods, forced her to strip, and then shot her five times without taking time to molest her. Dumping their old car in Seattle and keeping the new one, the killers pushed south, into Oregon. On August 21, Samuel Ledgerwood saw them changing a flat tire and stopped to offer help, earning two shots in the head for his trouble. Leaving his corpse where it lay, the boys torched Buse’s car and drove off in Ledgerwood’s vehicle, bound for California. On August 23, they picked up hitchhikers Timothy Luce and Susan Bartolomei, raping the girl several times before shooting both victims and leaving them for dead on the side of the road. Though crippled for life, Bartolomei would survive to describe her attackers, and police launched a massive search for the gunmen. Four days later, in Jamestown, California, Ledgerwood’s car was spotted outside a motel where suspects „Mike and John Ford“ were registered in rooms 19 and 26. Surrendering without resistance, the killers were packed off to Washington for trial. Upon conviction, Braun was sentenced to death, while Maine escaped with a term of life imprisonment.

William Burke

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:20:58 +0000

Possibly two of Scotland’s most gruesome imports were the serial killers William Burke and William Hare. Burke and Hare hailed from Ulster and moved to Scotland to work as labourers on the Union Canal. Ever aware of needs of the market, Burke and Hare set themselves up as procurers of human bodies to satisfy the demand of Edinburgh’s medical schools.
Originally the two would dig up the graves of the recently departed in the dead of night, steal the body and then sell it for cash to a doctor for use during anatomy demonstrations. Tired of digging, the two entrepreneurs started murdering people in Edinburgh’s old town and selling their cadavers on an „ask no questions basis.“ They killed their victims by strangling them using a method they had perfected which left no obvious trace of foul play and little evidence of the murder.
The murder of their 16th victim led to their arrest. Burke’s mistress and Hare’s wife were also arrested. Because the courts had little evidence to prosecute them successfully, the Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, offered Hare immunity from prosecution if he would turn King’s evidence. The evidence Hare and his wife provided sent Burke to his death on the gallows on 28 January, 1829 while his mistress Helen MacDougall escaped when the charges against her were found not proven.
William Hare is said to have died a penniless pauper in London in 1859. Robert Knox – the doctor who willingly bought most of Burke and Hare’s bodies was never prosecuted.

Ben Chaney Jr.

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:21:03 +0000

A child of New York City, born in 1955, Rutrell was 15 years old when he joined accomplice L.L. Thompson, 20, in a five-week murder tour of Dixie. Driven by racism and a thirst for „adventure,“ the black gunmen shot and wounded three white college students in Durham, North Carolina, on April 15, 1970, rolling on from there to murder another Caucasian, J.J. Bowles, at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 3. On May 14, in Boca Raton, they commandeered a car with two white co-eds on the campus of Florida Atlantic University, shooting both victims to death and dumping their corpses in some nearby woods. Six days later, in Hardeeville, South Carolina, they murdered the white owner of a roadside vegetable stand, wounding his clerk before the young man returned fire, killing Thompson on the spot. A police roadblock stopped the fugitive vehicle forty miles north of the crime scene , and Martin was arrested, along with another black New Yorker, 17-year-old Ben Chaney, Jr. Both were charged with various slayings in the crime spree, and Chaney was convicted of the Nardeeville murder on November 24, despite claims he was „mentally disturbed“ by his brother’s death, six years earlier, at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. Rutrell was convicted of murder in South Carolina and sentenced to prison, with trials pending on other felony charges in North Carolina and Florida.

Phillip Clopton

justiz — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:21:08 +0000

James Ray Cable pleaded not guilty yesterday in Jefferson Circuit Court to the murders of two women. He also is charged in Daviess County with murdering a third woman. Cable was out of prison on parole at the time of all three slayings, which took place in the 1980s.

Victims‘ advocate Kathy Armstrong, left, consoled Jennifer Logsdon, the daughter of Helen Booth, during James Ray Cable’s arraignment. Cable is accused of killing Booth and two other women. Helen Booth’s body was found in Jefferson County’s Riverside Park in May 1989. While Cable became a suspect early on, it took nearly 15 years for police to find enough evidence to charge him.

The diary of a dead man had hinted at the person who had raped and killed Helen Booth, whose bound and gagged body was found in Riverside Park in May 1989. But the diary, written by a man who was a convicted rapist himself, wasn’t enough to bring charges against James Ray Cable. It would take DNA evidence, tested last December, to finally provide enough evidence to charge Cable in Booth’s death and in the deaths of two other women killed in the 1980s. Cable, 55, was arraigned in Jefferson Circuit Court yesterday on charges of raping and killing Booth and Oma Marie Bird, whose partially clad body was found in an alley off Dixie Highway in 1986. He pleaded not guilty. A Daviess County grand jury indicted Cable last week on a charge of murder in the death of Sandra Gail Kellems in Owensboro in 1982. Police knew where to find Cable. He was in the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, serving a 100-year sentence in the 1990 kidnapping of a 15-year-old girl in LaRue County, where she had been chained to a tree and raped for three weeks. His accomplice had been Phillip Clopton, whose diary implicated Cable in Booth’s slaying. Clopton was alone with the 15-year-old one night when he forgot to chain her. She shot him and escaped. Clopton died, leaving the diary. At the time of each slaying Cable had been out of prison, paroled twice despite convictions for crimes that included the rape of a 7-year-old, prison escape, killing a fellow inmate, parole violation and assault. Changes in parole Records show that it was during Cable’s first parole — from a life sentence imposed in 1971 for raping the 7-year-old — that Kellems was slain in Owensboro in June 1982. Kellems had celebrated her 18th birthday the day before she was found in a vacant lot, dead from a blow to the head. Owensboro police suspect she was also sexually assaulted but cannot prove it conclusively, Owensboro Detective Mark Saffran said last week. Harry Rothgerber, now deputy commonwealth’s attorney in Jefferson County, served on the Kentucky Parole Board at the time of Cable’s 1981 parole. Rothgerber said Cable’s case doesn’t stand out in his memory, among the roughly 24,000 cases he considered during his six years with the board. The board would have reviewed Cable’s case file, looked at his prison behavior and interviewed him before making a decision, he said. Records show Cable was paroled despite a prison escape and a 1978 manslaughter conviction for killing a fellow inmate by striking him with a horseshoe stake. Cable’s first request for parole was rejected, but it was granted six months later. Because parolees are monitored and have to meet certain conditions, such as having a job and a stable place to live, „I always believed that parole was the most effective, most humane and least costly way to reduce the risk that ex-offenders present to our society,“ Rothgerber said. But he acknowledged that the system is not infallible. „The easiest thing is not to parole anybody,“ Rothgerber said. „But for the most part parole works.“ At the time of Cable’s life sentence for raping the child, he had to serve only about six years before being eligible for parole, said Keith Hardison, executive director of the Parole Board. Felons now must serve more of their sentence before they are eligible for parole. In addition, sex offenders now must complete a treatment program that lasts about 20 months before they can be paroled, said John Coy, the Parole Board’s chairman. That treatment offers the board a detailed analysis of the inmate, giving board members more on which to base their decisions, he said. Kellems‘ aunt, Donna Tuttle, said she’s lived with her niece’s brutal death every day because she and her husband, Steve, adopted Kellems‘ infant son, Brandon, who is now 22. While she’s thankful charges have been brought in the case, the news revived painful memories. It’s been particularly difficult for Brandon, who marked his first birthday on the day of his mother’s funeral in 1982. „There’s always been an empty space there,“ Tuttle said of his questions about what his mother was like. Even though „we tried to tell him what a kind person she was, how sweet she was.“ In again, out again When Cable violated parole by being convicted in 1983 of a misdemeanor assault charge — reduced from an attempted rape charge — he was sent back to prison. He won parole again in February 1986. About 10 months later, Bird’s body was found in Louisville. The woman, whom police describe as a street person, had been raped and killed with a blow to the head. Bird’s sister and brother-in-law attended Cable’s arraignment yesterday; they didn’t want to talk to the media. While out on his 1986 parole, Cable was charged with traffic violations, shoplifting and harassment. Several of the charges would be dismissed; the others resulted in minor penalties and fines. None prompted his parole officer to recommend that he be sent back to prison. In a May 5, 1990, Courier-Journal story, parole officer Roosevelt Lightsy said he couldn’t remember why he did not recommend that the Parole Board revoke Cable’s release. But at the time he said, „I remember not having good feelings about the guy.“ It wasn’t until after the 1990 abduction and rape of the 15-year-old that Cable landed back in custody. By that time, Booth had been dead for a year. A break in the case Only recently did threads in the three cases from the 1980s begin to come together, said Capt. Gene Sherrard, head of the Louisville Metro Police criminal investigation unit. Cable had been a suspect in the Booth case early on, because of Clopton’s diary. The unsolved murders of Kellems and Bird resurfaced about a year ago, when the Kentucky State Crime Lab linked DNA found on Kellems‘ body to evidence found on Bird. The link was found during a routine check of crime lab data, said Saffran, the Owensboro police detective. He had reopened the Kellems case in 2001 and submitted DNA evidence from that case to the crime lab at that time. That link between Kellems and Bird got Owensboro and Louisville Metro Police talking. Then, because Booth’s slaying was seen as similar to the Bird case, Louisville police added Booth as a third potentially linked victim, Sherrard said. That led to Cable, who had been an original suspect in the Booth case, and was out of prison at the time of all three deaths. In December, Louisville and Owensboro detectives interviewed Cable in prison and got his permission to take a sample of his DNA for testing. Cable’s DNA was tested against DNA samples that had been taken from all three crime scenes and saved, as is done with evidence in all unsolved murder cases. The DNA matched all three cases, Sherrard said. That led police to work with prosecutors to put together their cases, leading to the charges filed this week. The charges shook up 17-year-old Tessa Logsdon, Booth’s daughter, who lives in Caneyville. Tessa was just 2 years old when her mother died. Both Tessa and her sister, Jennifer, were raised by their grandmother. While the charges bring up painful memories, Tessa said this might be the opportunity the family needs to heal. „I believe that from now on it will be better,“ Tessa said. „It’s been like a taboo subject my whole life.“ The charges „mean a lot,“ said Juanita Logsdon, who raised Tessa and Jennifer. „It’s going to be closure.“