Friday, January 29, 2010

The Unsolved Murder of April Marie Tinsley

April Marie Tinsley was a beautiful child.
Now, all that's left is a beautiful headstone marking her grave.
For too many of the years since 8-year-old April Tinsley was abducted, raped and murdered, her case has been cold. Police have had plenty of leads but no real breaks, and the atrocity has continued to haunt the community of Fort Wayne, Indiana and the surrounding areas.
April was abducted about 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon as she walked to a friend's house through her south-central Fort Wayne neighborhood. Her disappearance prompted an immediate, massive search by 25 police and 50 neighborhood residents. A witness reported seeing a white man in his mid-30s pull April into a light-blue pickup, but neither was found.
Her body was found three days later at the bottom of a ditch along a rural DeKalb County road. The case stalled, but in May 1990, a teenage boy saw a man draw the message “I kill April Marie Tinsley. I will kill again” on a barn near the intersection of St. Joe Center and Schwartz roads. In 2003, a series of hand-written notes were left on mailboxes and bicycles threatening further killings such as Tinsley's. The notes contained misspellings and grammatical errors similar to the message left on the barn.

The following information is from the FBI website at http://www.fbi.gov/page2/april09/tinsley040309.html
COLD CASE HEATS UP
Help Solve 1988 Murder, Part 1
 
04/03/09  



Eight-year-old April Tinsley was abducted, raped, and murdered on Good Friday, 1988.
Eight-year-old April Tinsley was abducted, raped, and murdered on Good Friday in 1988.
The innocent face of 8-year-old April Tinsley is projected from a large screen in front of the conference room as about 50 law enforcement officials—including a special team from the FBI—begin their meeting.
April’s picture was a powerful reminder of why the group had gathered: on Good Friday 21 years ago, the young girl was abducted from her neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana and then raped and murdered. Her killer is still at large.
The meeting at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Virginia took place because state and local Indiana law enforcement officers—who remain dedicated to solving the case—have asked for help from our Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, known as CARD.
CARD Teams were created three years ago to bring together a variety of experts in child abduction cases who could quickly respond on the ground to help local authorities with time-sensitive investigations. Team members include:
  • Personnel from our Behavioral Analysis Unit, who profile offenders’ personality traits and possible motives;
  • Agents and analysts from our Crimes Against Children Unit;
  • Coordinators from the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime; and
  • Representatives from the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP).
CARD consists of 48 members organized into 10 teams in five regions around the country. Since the program’s creation, teams have deployed 38 times and aided in the recovery of 18 children.
As the name suggests, CARD Teams respond rapidly in cases of non-family abductions, ransom abductions, and the mysterious disappearances of children. But CARD also works cold cases, such as the April Tinsley murder. And as team members discovered, there is enough evidence—including notes, pictures, and DNA left by the killer years after the murder—to make investigators hopeful they can break the case.

April Tinsley case
               
It was a chilly Friday afternoon in 1988 when April was abducted walking home from a friend’s house. Her body was found three days later about 20 miles away in a rural area dotted with Amish farms. Despite an intensive search, police were unable to find her killer. Two years later, a message written in pencil or crayon appeared on a barn door not far from where April’s body had been discovered. The writer claimed responsibility for the murder.
Then, in the spring of 2004, four notes appeared at various residences in the Fort Wayne area—several placed on bicycles that young girls had left in their yards—believed to be written by the killer. The notes, all on lined yellow paper, were placed inside baggies along with used condoms or Polaroid pictures of the killer’s body. Several of the notes referred to April Tinsley.

During the spring of 2004, the killer left four similar notes at residences in the Fort Wayne area.
During the spring of 2004, the killer left four similar notes at residences in the Fort Wayne area.

In 1990, two years after April Tinsley's murder, this note appeared on a barn door near where her body was recovered.
In 1990, two years after April Tinsley's murder, this message appeared on a barn door near where her body was recovered.
Since those 2004 notes, the killer has not been heard from. But he has left a trail of evidence that the CARD Team hopes to exploit during its deployment to Fort Wayne, tentatively scheduled for later this spring. Investigators believe the case is “highly solvable,” and after 21 years, their desire to bring April Tinsley’s killer to justice is stronger than ever.
This paisley-patterened bedspread appeared in a photograph the killer included in a 2004 note left at a Fort Wayne residence.
This paisley-patterened bedspread appeared in a photograph the killer included in a 2004 note left at a Fort Wayne residence.      
We need your help.
Contact your local FBI office or the Fort Wayne Police Department if you have information about the notes pictured here or the style of paisley bedspread that appeared in one of the Polaroid photos.










This is a profile of the killer, according to the FBI:
Members of our Behavioral Analysis Unit created the profile below of April Tinsley’s killer based on case evidence and their experience with other sexual predator investigations.
The one significant advantage that we as criminal behaviorists have in looking at this case is the sheer volume of offender behavior we have to consider. This behavior has been demonstrated over the course of 16 years from 1988, when April Tinsley was abducted, raped, and murdered through 2004, when the same individual left messages claiming responsibility for April’s death as well as forensic evidence tying him to that crime.
Two tremendous clues he has provided are his age range and his race. He is Caucasian and would currently be in his 40s or 50s. Age and race are important because they give the police and the public a way to narrow the pool of possible suspects. However, the greatest benefit of being able to see the variety of behavior exhibited over a 16-year period is the way it begins to inform our opinion of the kind of offender he is (not all child sex offenders are the same). It also gives us insight into the underlying personality which drives the decisions he makes, including the way he interacts as a member of a family, a neighborhood, a community, and a workforce.
What do we know about April Tinsley’s killer? We call this individual a Preferential Child Sex Offender. By that we mean he has a long-term and persistent sexual desire for children. In this case, the offender has demonstrated a specific sexual interest in little girls who have not yet reached puberty. In other words, he is attracted to hairless, undeveloped girls. This interest will not go away. Girls between the ages of 5 and 10 would greatly appeal to him. This does not mean he cannot interact sexually with adults or even older children, but his overwhelming sexual fantasies and desires focus on young girls. He may be married; however the vast majority of Preferential Child Sex Offenders are not. If he has a long-term intimate adult partner, that partner will have an idea that this individual has a sexual interest in little girls, but may be in denial regarding the extent of that interest or his ability to act on it. This offender may establish relationships that give him access to little girls; for instance, he may date or befriend someone in the little girl’s family. Perhaps he’ll seek employment or volunteer activities that give him proximity to little girls. He will be drawn to places where children congregate—playgrounds, swimming pools, parks, etc. Wherever he goes, if a little girl is nearby, his eyes will follow her. He may go out of his way to interact with her. In an unguarded moment, he may even make a casual sexual reference about a little girl which, if overheard, would strike someone as very inappropriate such as “She’s a sexy little thing, isn’t she?” Most of us do not associate adult attention toward a child with sexual attraction. People noticing his interest in little girls, may simply interpret it as someone who just “loves kids.” This offender prefers the company of children to the company of adults and he may be socially awkward or inappropriate when interacting with adults.
A Preferential Child Sex Offender tends to collect things that serve to support his fantasies and are consistent with his sexual preferences. In this case, since our offender’s preference is for little girls, he may collect images of little girls, perhaps clothed, candid pictures or even child pornography and probably both. He may take these pictures himself or he may find them through other sources. He may also collect other items that are arousing to him and remind him of the little girls he wants. These other items could range from articles of clothing to advertisements depicting little girls to Hello Kitty items or any toys that little girls find appealing.
The public tends to think that once a person kidnaps, rapes, and kills, he will always kidnap, rape, and kill. In reality, a Preferential Child Sex Offender can engage in a lot of different behaviors that satisfy his sexual needs, but do not rise to the level of the prior offense. The offender may substitute nuisance sex offenses like peeping, indecent exposure, and leaving obscene notes or sexual items for a child to find. If the item is left in a mailbox or on the front door, the resident may think it was intended for the adult female in the home rather than the little girl who lives there. Oftentimes, these incidents are not reported because the significance of the offense is not recognized by citizens at the time. If the Preferential Child Sex offender has a criminal history, it is more likely to involve sex offenses against children.
After 2004, there has been no known activity by this offender, but we’ve seen gaps of years in his activity before (1990s) and this could be explained in a number of ways: 1) He could be institutionalized (hospital or prison); 2) He could have ongoing access to a victim that satisfies his desire for a child partner through a relationship with the adult caretaker; 3) He could have relocated or, 4) He could be deceased since June 2004.
The primary value of describing this offender is to appeal for the public’s help in identifying him. This offender has demonstrated that he has strong ties to northeast Fort Wayne and Allen County. This is where he likely lives, works, and/or shops. You may be standing next to him in line at the grocery store, sitting beside him in the pew at church, or working beside him on the production line.
We’ve said that the offender is currently in his 40s or 50s; however, if you know someone who seems to fit the characteristics described above, but is a few years older or younger, please do not hesitate to report this information. If you have any information to provide please contact the tipline 1-866-60April (1-866-602-7745).
  • White/male/circumcised;
  • Current age—40s through 50s;
  • Lives and/or works in the northeast section of Fort Wayne/Allen County;
  • Frequents places where children are likely to be—focus on little girls;
  • Low- to medium-low income;
  • Owned/borrowed a Polaroid camera in 2004;
  • Hair on lower legs;
  • In 2004, possibly owned/borrowed a forest green pickup truck having a matching camper shell with dark tinted windows.


 These are the links to the FBI's story on April:
This is the CNN page on April's case:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/04/indiana.fbi.cold.case/index.html



I ask you, please, if you know ANYTHING that might help the police or any law enforcement officials solve this case, PLEASE  - Do the RIGHT thing- contact officials and bring some closure to April's family. 



Saturday, January 23, 2010

Amber Alert Cancelled for 2 year old Virginia Boy- Aveion Malik Lewis


Amber Alert Canceled for 2 Year Old Virginia Boy    
Posted: Friday, January 15, 2010 8:44 AM CT
Updated: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:09 AM CT


The State of Virginia canceled the Amber Alert late Tuesday (01-19) after the boy's stepfather told police that the boy was not abducted as he previously claimed. Police say they believe the boy is dead and that he apparently died before the stepfather made the initial 911 call. The stepfather is being held for questioning and no charges have been filed. The boys mother has also been questioned.

The State of Virginia issued the Amber Alert Friday morning (1-15) after the boy was reportedly abducted by the suspects from his home in Roanoke late Thursday. The boy's stepfather was knocked unconscious by the suspects and a note demanding money was left at the scene.

Aveion Malik Lewis, a black male, 2 years old, 2' 6", 26 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a yellow Sponge Bob Squarepants Footie Pajamas.

There are three suspects. The first is know as Tony, a black male in his late 20's, 6' 2", stocky build with a full beard. He was last seen wearing a black hoodie shirt, black Puffy fur collar jacket and a black du rag. The two additional suspects are described as black males, both about 5'11" and in their early to mid 20's, One was wearing a brown hat with white writing. He has a light complexion and no facial hair. The second has Dreadlocks hair a light complexion and was wearing Red baseball cap.

The suspect vehicle is a white 1990's Chevy Blazer.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Virginia State Police at 1-800-822-4453 or dial 911.

Monday, January 11, 2010

The Story of Bud Foglesong: Accidental Death, Murder- What??

 I first found reference to Bud Foglesong on the Citizen's Against Homicide website. The following information is from one of the newsletters the organization puts out:

On July 21, 2007, the Foglesong family was in the living room when Bud walked into the house badly burned, with skin falling off his arms and his hair red. His son, Kurt, drove him the 10 miles to the Willows Hospital. Bud told Kurt that he had gone into the nearby cabin on the family compound to use the bathroom. When he opened the front door of the cabin, it blew up, knocking him back off of his feet. Bud was air lifted from Willows to the Davis Medical Center in Sacramento (90 miles south.) He died early the next day.
Bud was born on August 4, 1947 and died at age 59. He was a MD-11, Senior Captain with World Airways and Lieutenant Colonel, USAF (ret). During his 24-year career, he obtained a Master’s Degree in National Security Affairs from the Naval Post graduate School in Monterey, CA, while becoming fluent in Arabic and French at the Defense Language Institute. He served as an Air Attaché for Defense Intelligence Agency in Rabat, Morocco. He became Detachment Commander at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, Australia.

Bud lived with Jan, his wife of 34 years, their kids and two other families (Holzapfel), related through Jan, on the rural Holzapfel family compound. They are and have been taking part in acrimonious financial negotiations, involving the ranch and many millions of dollars. It is not an understatement to say that the Holzapfels hate the Foglesongs. There is bad blood. The compound is an isolated ranch, located one mile down a single lane dirt road, surrounded by pastures and rice fields.

The last ten days of Bud’s life were very happy. He was looking forward to retirement in two weeks. He was enjoying a visit with his youngest son, 1st Lieutenant Jed Foglesong, USMC, his first grandchild, and Jed’s wife, who were visiting from the East.

It was Bud’s habit to drive to the southern part of the Holzapfel compound when he was home from his international assignments. In this area is a large shop, a train caboose, a small storage building, a wood shop, gasoline and diesel tanks, hay barn and a duck hunter’s cabin. Bud often went into the cabin to use the bathroom.
The timing of this incident was suspicious. Eight months previously, he had been assaulted by Roy Holzapfel. Days before his death, Bud had learned that the State of California Deputy Attorney General Clifford Zall was going to file charges on Roy Holzapfel for misdemeanor battery the next week. Bud was quite pleased.

The family still wants to know what happened on July 21, 2007. Can anyone help them?
Deputy Attorney General Clifford Zall Telephone 916-324-5281.

Following is Bud Foglesong's obit:

Lieutenant Colonel Ivan E. "Bud" Foglesong










Published: Saturday, July 28, 2007 12:00 AM CDT
WILLOWS, Calif. - Graveside services for Lieutenant Colonel Ivan E. "Bud" Foglesong, 59, formerly of Desoto County, will be at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 29, in Love Cemetery in Hernando. Brantley-Phillips Funeral Home in Hernando has charge. Foglesong died July 21 in Sacramento, Calif., following injuries sustained from an explosion at a family-owned cabin. He was two weeks from retirement and had accumulated over 12,000 hours of flight time during his aviation career. He had the honor of flying President George W. Bush and President Jimmy Carter during his military career. He was an MD-11 Senior Captain with World Airways. After graduating from Mississippi State University he joined the Air Force and distinguished himself as an outstanding aviator during a 24-year career. He obtained a masters degree in National Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School, while becoming fluent in Arabic and French at the Defense Language Institute. He then served as an Air Attach/ for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Rabat Morocco. He later became Squadron Operations Officer at Seymour-Johnson AFB in North Carolina. He also became Detachment Commander at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, Australia. He was a Vietnam and Gulf War veteran. He received the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Air Force Achievement Medal and the National Defense Service Medal with one service star. He leaves his wife, Jan Foglesong; his mother, Betty Foglesong; his father, Ivan Foglesong; his daughter, Anne Foglesong; his sons, Kurt Foglesong and First Lieutenant Jed Foglesong, US Marine Corps; his granddaughter, Katheryn Foglesong; his daughters-in-law, Jennifer Foglesong and Meagan Foglesong; his siblings, Steve Foglesong and Gary Foglesong and his sister-in-law, Betty Foglesong; nephew, Steven Foglesong; nieces, Laura Dolquest, Julie McGee and Cher Foglesong.












This picture of Bud Foglesong and his granddaughter Katheryn was taken just days before his death. Had the baby not gotten hungry and needed feeding, she and her mother also could have been killed at the duck cabin, family members say.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOGLESONG FAMILY

After having browsed through the Topix forum 80+ posted comments on this, including some from the wife of Holzapfel, http://www.topix.com/forum/county/glenn-ca/T6EFISGUM9IC3BB6B
I felt that this story needs more coverage, and I hope that by me reposting the data I've found, it will get that.
(This is a comment that I also felt needed to be reposted and shared- please take note of this especially:
Posted 09/08/2009 4:45PM by Advocate
I am a member of a victim advocacy organization in California, and find the entire scenario of the death of Bud Foglesong astonishing, to say the least. Beginning with the initial irresponsible “guess” as to the cause of death and followed by the findings and statements by the so-called “experts”. Clearly, Bud’s death was not suicide, it was not accidental, it was not natural causes. This leaves manner “undetermined” or “homicide”. A first or second-year medical student would easily conclude that the injuries sustained by Bud were not due to the igniting of an accelerant, which was supposedly accidentally poured over his body; and then accidentally lit. The “chunks” of flesh illustrated in photos clearly indicate they were caused by an explosion. How ironic that Bud’s death brought to an abrupt end planned prosecution of his nephew, Roy Holzapfel (misdemeanor battery) and possible civil action, as well. An autopsy is the “voice of the dead”. Obviously investigators (at all levels) as well as the medical examiner, turned a deaf ear to this “voice”. Any observer with an eighth grade education would conclude Bud’s death was, in no uncertain terms, a homicide. Clearly there is a cover-up unimaginable in today’s times. We live in a society of laws and no one is above the law. The person(s) responsible for Bud’s death must be brought to justice and MUST pay for this heinous murder. Also, I enjoyed and am encouraging others to hear Jan Foglesong tell her story on the Hallmark Channel website - http://www.hallmarkchannel.com/ConsumerWeb/Shows/419-26608_454.html - then click “Real Stories"; this is in conjunction with the Hallmark movie premiere of “Citizen Jane”. )

 
 ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE:

"Caution! Graphic photos inside … This issue is not suitable for children or sensitive adults.” So reads a warning prominently displayed on the front page of the Aug. 22 edition of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, the hard-hitting little twice-weekly out of Willows. The warning accompanies the 26th and most recent story in a series called, variously, “Who killed Bud?” or “How did Bud die?” that editor and publisher Tim Crews has been running since August 2008.
That number doesn’t include his original July 25, 2007, report on Ivan “Bud” Foglesong’s death by fire three days earlier, on July 22, 2007. And it’s going to grow. In fact, as of this writing, he has another in the works for his Wednesday, Sept. 2, issue.

Crews believes he has more than good reason for this tenacity. The law-enforcement agents who investigated the case—primarily from the Glenn County Sheriff’s Office, but others as well—so thoroughly botched the job, he says, and jumped to such “completely irrational” and “ridiculous” conclusions about the cause of Foglesong’s death, and failed so utterly to explain how the fire occurred, that he had no choice but to stay on the story.
Remarkably, he’s managed to come up with a new twist or angle to justify every one of those 26 stories in the series.
The Aug. 22 edition is a good example. It devotes the entirety of an inside broadsheet page to showing, for the first time, actual autopsy photos of Foglesong revealing the nature of the damage done to his body.
The pictures—five large color photos spread out across the page—are indeed graphic. They show sections of the corpse of a 59-year-old man who was burned over nearly 90 percent of his body. But what they also show is that Foglesong suffered several deep lacerations to his hands and forearm.
The official investigation determined that Foglesong died from burns suffered in an accident, though it wasn’t able to say just how that accident occurred. Although the lacerations are noted in the coroner’s autopsy report, they aren’t mentioned anywhere in the investigators’ case report.
Crews says he published the autopsy photos to show that Foglesong was the victim of more than a fire—that the lacerations were caused by shrapnel and that he was the victim of some kind of explosive device. In other words, that he didn’t commit suicide or die accidentally while trying to burn down the cabin, as law-enforcement officials surmised.
No, Crews charges, “Bud Foglesong was attacked.” In other words, he was murdered.
A mysterious death compounded by a flawed investigation always makes good newspaper copy. Toss in wealth and property, social prominence, a feuding family and connections to power, and you have a humdinger.
Ivan “Bud” Foglesong was married for 34 years to Jan Holzapfel, whose brother is Glenn County District Attorney Bob Holpzapfel. Her other brother is Herb Holzapfel, a widely known and influential North State farmer—he’s chairman of the board of the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative, the largest rice exporter in the state—who since the death of their father, Jerald, in 2004, has run the family’s extensive rice-growing operations.
Those operations are headquartered on a spread located off County Road 60 about three miles southeast of Willows. Several residences are clustered on one side of the property. At the time of his death, Bud and Jan Foglesong lived there, as did their daughter Anne, their son Kurt and his family, Herb and Ginger Holzapfel, and Roy Holzapfel and his family. Roy is the son of DA Bob Holzapfel, who is married to Judy Holzapfel, the president of the Glenn County Board of Education.
It was widely known in the larger community that there was bad blood between Roy Holzapfel and Bud Foglesong. Back on Nov. 5, 2006, they’d gotten in a fight, during which one of Foglesong’s fingers had been permanently maimed, potentially threatening his career as a commercial pilot.
Just days before Foglesong’s death, he and others in the family were informed that the state Attorney General’s Office, which was handling the case because of Roy Holzapfel’s family tie to the district attorney, planned soon to file charges against Roy Holzapfel for misdemeanor battery.

An aerial view of the Holzapfel spread. The family residences are clustered at top; the duck cabin where the explosion occurred that killed Bud Foglesong was located in the lower left corner, eight-tenths of a mile from the houses.
Click on the image for a larger version.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOGLESONG FAMILY

On top of that, Foglesong had made no secret of the fact that he intended to sue Roy Holzapfel once the criminal case was concluded.
There’d been another incident, in which, Foglesong alleged, Holzapfel rammed his vehicle into Foglesong’s and fled the scene, but no charges were filed in that case.
In addition, family money matters were unsettled. The matriarch of the family, Edith Holzapfel, had died in 1980, but her estate still wasn’t settled 27 years later. The estate of Jerald Holzapfel was also unsettled, Crews reported.
The family is quite wealthy, owning not only 1,600 acres of prime rice land locally, but also extensive property in Oregon and Canada.
Other than being married to Jan Holzapfel, Bud Foglesong apparently had little to do with Holzapfel family financial matters. He was a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel trained in military intelligence who had been piloting multi-engine jet planes for World Airways since 1994, most recently ferrying military goods and personnel into Iraq and Afghanistan. At the time of his death, two weeks before his 60th birthday, he was planning to retire in two years. He had plenty of money from his Air Force and World Airways pensions as well as investments.
He spent the day of his death driving to the Sacramento airport with his son Jed, a Marine Corps captain, Jed’s wife, Meagan, and their 10-month-old daughter, Katheryn. Jed Foglesong was deploying to Iraq in the coming days, and they were seeing him off.
When they got home that afternoon, Meagan and Jan Foglesong went shopping, leaving Bud at home with the baby, who’d been put down for a nap. When they returned, sometime around 5 o’clock, Bud said he was going to a small house on the property a little less than a mile away. The cabin, as it was called, was used as a base for duck hunting during the season and a rest area for employees otherwise.
Foglesong regularly went to the cabin in the late afternoon, apparently. “It was his way of getting out of the house for a little while,” explained Bernice Cook, who as Jan Foglesong’s lifelong best friend knew Bud well.
Meagan said she and the baby would come along, but the baby started fussing, evidently hungry. Meagan told Bud to go ahead, that she’d feed Katheryn and join him in a few minutes. But as things turned out, she wouldn’t get that chance.
What we know today is that a fire broke out in the duck cabin, apparently in an explosive manner, and that Bud Foglesong suffered fatal burns over most of his body. How the fire occurred remains a mystery.
In a written statement, Meagan Foglesong says she had just finished feeding the baby when Bud walked into the house, followed by Kurt, who had a “shocked look on his face.” She picked up the baby from her high chair and hid her face “because there was blood all over Bud and his skin was hanging off of him. Bud’s eyes were red. He looked over and said, ‘It exploded.’ ”
He was in shock, but somehow he had managed to drive back to the house. Kurt got him in a truck and drove immediately to Glenn General Hospital, where he was given emergency care before being air lifted to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
There was never any chance that he would survive. He died early Sunday morning, July 22.
Back at the farm, Crews later reported, CalFire arson and bomb detectives were called to the cabin, which had been evenly burned throughout, except that the front appeared to have been blown out. By Monday they had determined it was arson.
No evidence of a booby trap had been found “at this time,” Sheriff Larry Jones told Crews.
Foglesong’s body was autopsied on Wednesday, July 25. “In addition to the exact cause of death, detectives are looking for burn patterns and other indications of exactly how the arson and explosion hit Mr. Foglesong and where he was in the house,” Crews wrote.

Sacramento Valley Mirror editor and publisher Tim Crews at the entrance to the 1,600-acre Holzapfel farm and its family compound. The Glenn County district attorney is a Holzapfel, as is the chairman of the board of the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative and the president of the county Board of Education.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SACRAMENTO VALLEY MIRROR

Crews stayed interested in the story, but he didn’t initiate his series until Aug. 9, 2008, more than a year later. The first installment was headlined, “How did Bud Foglesong die?”
By this time the case had generated more than 200 pages of investigative material, including an arson report that had taken seven months to complete. But when Crews read the material, he was astonished to discover how incomplete and shoddy, in his opinion, the investigation had been.
He noted, for example, that vital evidence—Bud Foglesong’s shirt and two coffee cans that had been present in the cabin right after the fire and may have contained accelerant—was missing.
He also lamented that a full coroner’s inquest, taking sworn testimony from all involved parties, had not been conducted.
He noted that, although one “trusted lawman”—later named as Sheriff Jones—called the Valley Mirror offices and said that Foglesong was killed in an explosion at the cabin, “By the next day, following rumors being circulated on the ranch, everyone was blaming the victim, Ivan Foglesong, who was quite dead.”
One deputy had surmised that Foglesong “just snapped.” Others theorized that he’d tried to burn down the cabin and gotten caught in the fire. But there was no evidence to support these theories—no victim profile, no assessment of motive (Foglesong’s or others’), certainly no physical evidence, and only a “cursory examination” of tensions within the Holzapfel family.
“In coming issues we’ll go through the evidence bit by bit,” Crews promised.
In subsequent articles over the following months, Crews did just that. He noted, for example, that during the initial investigation nobody seriously interviewed the family members who had been with Bud Foglesong on the day he died. His daughter Anne, who was the last person to speak with him, was interviewed a full six months after the fire, and only after the family insisted she be debriefed.
He pointed out unexplained facts, such as that a CalFire investigator had found evidence of gasoline on Foglesong’s clothing, but a state Department of Justice investigator had found none on the cabin’s carpet. How was that possible?
He noted that the original fire investigator on the case, George Morris III, was a rookie doing his first investigation, and that at one point he was unable to test for the presence of gasoline because the batteries on his testing machine had run down.
Another problem: Evidence such as clothing was not packed in sealed containers for eight hours, and the chain of custody was unclear.
Nurses and others who treated Foglesong were not interviewed. They could have testified that, though he was in terrible pain, he did say several times that the cabin had exploded.
Although the Sheriff’s Office had been given a list of a dozen experienced forensic fire investigators, it didn’t call on any of them. (Jones later said it was because they were unavailable or didn’t want to work for a law-enforcement agency, preferring more lucrative private-insurance work.)
Cell phone records that would have helped indicate where members of the family were and with whom they talked when they learned of the fire were not examined.
No one person was ever consistently in charge of the investigation. “Instead, it bounced from person to person, in no apparent order.”
And so on. Crews came to his own conclusion about the case: Investigators early on decided that it was an accident and therefore did little to eliminate all other possibilities, including foul play.

Glenn County Sheriff Larry Jones
PHOTO COURTESY OF SACRAMENTO VALLEY MIRROR

“The theory was that Bud Foglesong, honored military officer, father and grandfather, splashed gasoline around a nearly valueless duck club cabin in an effort to hurt relatives with whom he was feuding.
“Why would he burn down something nearly valueless, rather than, say, an equipment shed?
“ ‘Well,’ shrugged a sheriff’s investigator, ‘maybe he just snapped.’ ”
Maybe so, Crews said, but if investigators believed that happened, or even that it might have happened, they were obliged to substantiate it—by doing a profile of the victim, by examining how he spent his last 72 hours, by talking with family members, friends and professional colleagues about his state of mind and propensity for such an action.
That wasn’t done.
The only people formally interviewed during the initial phases of the investigation—“taken downtown,” as Crews puts it, for formal taped and transcribed interviews—were two farm employees, Benny Burley and his son, Bobby, a summer employee and “ranch volunteer of sorts.” They were interviewed in October, more than 90 days after the fire.
The two men said they had stopped at the duck cabin approximately a half-hour before the fire to use the bathroom. They had seen nothing amiss and not smelled any gasoline or other flammable substance.
Their statements became a cornerstone of the subsequent determinations made by sheriff’s investigators. Their argument was that nobody had been seen in the vicinity of the cabin in the 30-minute window between the time the Burleys were there and the arrival of Bud Foglesong, so it was clear the latter was alone when the fire broke out.
Since he was the only person there at the time, ipso facto, Bud Foglesong caused the fire, either by deliberately setting himself ablaze—as at least one sheriff’s investigator told the family—or by accident, presumably while trying to burn down the cabin.
But, as family friend Bernice Cook told this reporter, it was perfectly possible to use the bathrooms at one end of the cabin without knowing what was going on at the other end, two rooms away.
It was also possible for someone to lie in wait there, knowing Bud Foglesong regularly visited the cabin in the late afternoon.
She’s not saying that happened, only that it was a possibility that was never fully examined.
It would be hard to find two men less alike than Tim Crews and Larry Jones. Crews is a bear of a man with a Santa Claus beard who, out of necessity as well as for comfort, holds his trousers up with suspenders. He often wears a T-shirt with the Valley Mirror flag printed on it, along with the phrase “Working Press.” It comes in handy for gaining access to crime and accident scenes, though by now every cop in Glenn County knows him.
Jones, in contrast, is a compact man of medium height with thinning hair whose only personal adornment is a salt-and-pepper moustache. He appears to be in his mid-50s. He grew up in Glenn County and has worked there as a cop all his adult life. He was appointed sheriff when Bob Shadley retired in 2004 and won election in his own right in 2006. He’s up for re-election next year.
The Valley Mirror endorsed his candidacy in 2006, but seems unlikely to do so again. In fact, Crews and Jones are hardly talking these days. They’ve been in the deep freeze for months, since Crews began his series on Bud Foglesong’s death.
Jones did respond to a set of written questions Crews provided him, but neither his answers nor Crews’ analysis of them does much to clarify the matter.

Willows volunteer firefighter Leroy Johnson sprays down what is left of the Holzapfel duck cabin shortly after it exploded, killing Bud Foglesong. The subsequent investigations into both the fire and the death were seriously botched, insists Sacramento Valley Mirror publisher Tim Crews, who has written nearly 30 stories about the case.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SACRAMENTO VALLEY MIRROR

The sheriff does acknowledge errors were made. “Could it have been done better?” he asks. “Yes it could. No investigation is perfect. Did my staff slack off? No they did not. Do I have faith in their abilities? Yes I do. They are good honest cops doing a very difficult job. Did any errors or omissions alter the outcome of the investigation? No they did not.”
He expresses sympathy for Foglesong’s family, says he understands they want answers, but adds, “We, with the evidence and expertise at hand, have come to the end of the investigation. However, should at any time credible information come forth that would allow us to proceed in a different direction, we would do so without hesitation and with immediate dispatch.”
That was in early October of 2008. Just before Christmas that year, the sheriff announced he was reopening the case, that he would supervise it himself, and that he was bringing in retired Chico Police Department investigator Sgt. Sharon O’Quin to work on the case.
But nothing much happened. Last week Jones said O’Quin was still working the case, but so far there’s been little or no movement.
Besides, he added, “The merits of the case all point to that [Foglesong] was the only one who could have started the fire.”
“There’s no new evidence,” he said. “Our original assessment still stands. The pressure has been put back on us, but we have to rely on the expertise of experts in the field, and they all came to the same conclusion.”
The window of opportunity for somebody to get into the cabin and set a booby trap, along with the unlikelihood that anyone “would know Mr. Foglesong was going to enter the cabin—well, it was purely happenstance that he was there”—make the booby-trap theory highly improbable.
Should new and significant evidence emerge, it would be explored, Jones said.
Asked how he felt about Tim Crews’ refusal to drop the story, Jones said he would make no personal comment. “The family have my deepest sympathy,” he said. “I can only speculate about Tim Crews’ tenacity.”
Crews, for his part, stated bluntly, “If chunks of flesh gone from an obvious explosion aren’t enough to get him to reopen it, I don’t know what is.”
He added that he doesn’t pretend to know who killed Foglesong. What he knows is that Glenn County investigators utterly failed to investigate the case properly.
Jan Foglesong has moved to northern Mississippi, where her late husband’s family lives. Her daughter, Anne, is attending the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
Reached by phone, she said she moved partly out of fear. The sequence of events—Roy Holzapfel’s alleged assault on Bud Foglesong, the alleged vehicular hit-and-run, and Bud’s terrible death—were followed a few weeks later by a frightening act of vandalism. Somebody burned a 25-foot “X” on her lawn. The sheriff came out and looked at it, she said, “but nothing happened.”
It was enough for her, though. She left Willows soon afterwards.
She said she was deeply grateful for Tim Crews’ persistence: “We’d be dead in the water without Tim. This case would be long gone and forgotten.”
She doesn’t pull any punches when talking about the investigators on the case. “Glenn County is unbelievable,” she said. “They’re not into solving it.”
Instead of keeping an open mind, the detectives “listened to my brother [Herb Holzapfel] and my nephew [Roy Holzapfel], overlooking the fact that my nephew was going to be indicted the following week.
“Sheriff Jones is a gutless wonder. Really. He’s afraid to do anything. … It’s so frustrating. You just want to grab them and shake them.”
She’s hired an attorney and refuses to give up. Her goal is to get a U.S. Attorney’s Office to pick up the case. As it stands, the $100,000 reward the Foglesong family began offering in September 2008 “for information leading directly to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the death of Ivan ‘Bud’ Foglesong” has yet to be claimed.
And, by the time you read this, Tim Crews will have published article No. 27 in his series. He said it would have to do with the shorts Foglesong was wearing when the cabin exploded, and the fact that the investigators kept referring to them as “pants” and “trousers.”



FROM:
LOCAL NEWS

Who killed Bud? 31st in a series
By Tim Crews
Valley Mirror Publisher

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS CLICK HERE:
Willows — Sheriff-Coroner Larry Jones has identified an experienced person to conduct a coroner’s inquest into the death of Ivan “Bud” Foglesong, who was killed in a fiery explosion here in 2007.
Mr. Foglesong was the brother-in-law of Glenn County District Attorney Bob Holzapfel, whose son was to be arraigned on assault charges within a day or so of the killing of the 59-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran.
The move to a coroner’s inquest, which was suggested by Detective Travis Goodwin but resisted by Lt. Rich Warren, head of the Major Crimes Unit, is now in the works. It won’t be overnight, the department is racked with a budget crisis and is challenged by nine jailers or sworn officers out on disability, unfilled vacancies, a bailiff hospitalized and others out on sick leave.
Still, the sheriff confirms that he is reaching out to the Contra Costa County Sheriff-Coroner in hopes of borrowing the man there with broad experience in inquests.
When Bud Foglesong, a retired tanker pilot and instructor and airline pilot, opened the door to a duck hunters’ cabin on the warm evening of July 21, the place exploded. Unnoticed by deputy coroners at the autopsy were numerous shrapnel wounds on Mr. Foglesong’s arms and hands. Experienced observers contacted by the MIRROR said they were sure signs of an explosion.
The Glenn County Sheriff’s Office first said that the death was suicide by arson and then, in the face of no evidence to that effect, changed the cause of death to accidental.
The sheriff was never shown autopsy photos showing the wounds and was not told of them. He was led to believe that the only injuries were those caused by burning gasoline. Even that is in question because of the chemical analysis done at and after the fire.
For the sheriff’s department, the case was sticky. They had already turned over the prosecution of District Attorney Bob Holzapfel’s son, Roy, to the attorney general. Mr. Foglesong’s left index finger was permanently damaged in a fight over decoys that Roy Holzapfel had removed from a pond.
The department, and district attorney investitures, mucked up an assault by pickup probe. D.A. investigators disregarded the obvious conflict of interest.

The deputy coroners seemed to pussyfoot around the powerful family. On top of that, evidence went missing and some family members were virtually ignored. The original investigation was done on a casual basis, with long breaks in work. The CalFire arson investigator was a new graduate of the academy on his first real assignment. When the batteries in his equipment went dead, he didn’t get them replaced.
It was, say insiders, a complete mess.
But there were those with a motive to kill Mr. Foglesong, the sheriff recently acknowledged, and now he has reopened the case, assigning a detective, Greg Felton, to it and the department’s part-time background investigator, Sharon O’Quin. Ms. O’Quin, unavailable for comment yesterday because she was in typhoon-plagued Southeast Asia on a vacation, has found a nurse in far Northern California who was in the emergency room when Lt. Col. Foglesong was brought in. He was IN EXTREMIS, a Latin phrase meaning "at the point of death", according to medical records obtained by this newspaper.
The nurse, whose location is withheld, kept notes when she moved away because she thought they might be important.
While not commonly conducted in the rural parts of the state, they are not uncommon elsewhere. The California Penal Code explains:
“Coroner to summon jury to inquire into cause of death. When a coroner is informed that a person has been killed, or has committed suicide, or has suddenly died under such circumstances as to afford a reasonable ground to suspect that his death has been occasioned by the act of another by criminal means, he must go to the place where the body is, cause it to be exhumed if it has been interred, and summon not less than nine nor more than fifteen persons, Qualified by law to serve as jurors, to appear before him
forthwith at the place (where the body of deceased is) to inquire into the cause of the death. No such person is exempt from jury duty except at the discretion of the coroner. No person shall be summoned as juror who is related to the decedent or is charged with or suspected of the killing, nor shall any one be summoned who is known to be prejudiced for or against him, but no person selected or summoned to appear as a juror is subject to be challenged by any party.”
Unlike the loosey goosey conduct of the investigation into the death of Mr. Foglesong, which saw only two formal witness interviews, inquests have powerful tools: “Witnesses. Coroners may issue subpoenas for witnesses, returnable forthwith, or at such time and place as they may appoint, which may be served by any competent person. They must summon and examine as witnesses every person who in their opinion, or that of any of the jury, has any knowledge of the facts, and may summon a surgeon or physician to inspect the body, or hold a post-mortem examination thereon, or a chemist to make an analysis of the stomach or the tissues of the body of the deceased, and give a professional opinion as to the cause of the death.”
There is no easy out:
“Witnesses compelled to attend. A witness served with a subpoena may be compelled to attend and testify, or be punished by the coroner for disobedience, in like manner as upon a subpoena issued by (the court).”
The inquest jury’s finding must be in writing. And, if they find a crime has likely occurred, another powerful tool obtains:
“Witness to be bound over, when. Recognizances. If the jury find that a murder or manslaughter has been committed, the coroner may bind over the witnesses against the accused to appear and testify before the grand jury, or a magistrate, or the superior court, and to obey all orders of such magistrate or court in the premises. Such recognizance must be in writing and must be subscribed by the parties to be bound thereby, and made payable to the people of the state of California in an amount to be fixed by the coroner, and approved by a judge of the superior court; and in case of their refusal to sign such recognizance, the coroner has power to commit such witness as in the case of examination of an accused person by a magistrate.”

And:
Who Killed Bud?

PLEASE CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK - "WHO KILLED BUD?" FOR MANY MORE DETAILS AND INFORMATION.
 I will try tomorrow to post individual items from the above link.




Sunday, January 10, 2010

I 45 murder victims?

I just wonder, how many of these victims have been proven to be murdered by a serial killer (or killers) working along the I-45 corridor?
New information would be appreciated on this topic.
Names:
Colette Wilson 
Brenda Jones
Gloria Gonzales 
Alison Craven 
Debbie Ackerman 
Maria Johnson  
Kimberly Pitchford 
Georgia Geer 
Brooks Bracewell
Karen Pretty
Tamara Ellen McCurry 
Heidi Villerial Fye 
Sandra Ramber
Laura Lynn Miller
Shelley Kathleen Sikes 
Laurie Lee Tremblay 
Michelle Doherty Thomas 
Erica Ann Garcia 
Suzanne Rene Richerson
Maria Del Carmen Estrada 
Trellis Sykes 
Diana Rebollar 
Dana Sanchez 
Lynette Bibbs 
Tamara Fisher 
Krystal Jean Baker
Laura Kate Smither
Sandra Sapaugh 
Jessica Lee Cain 
Tina Flood 
Wanda May Pitts 
Tracy Vickery
Amber Hagerman 
Tot Tran Harriman 
Sara Trusty 
Laura Ayala
Maria Isabel Solis
Natasha Nicole Solidum 

Along with these named victims, there appear to have been several Jane Doe's as well. 

More links for today

Porch light USA

For the lost dot org

Doe Network

About the Charley Project

Dede Henson Story

National Institute for the Study of Violence

Happy Schools.org- missing kids

Laura Recovery Center- Missing

There is more- but I am out of time right now.
Check back later, I will update a.s.a.p.

Various Links- 1-10-2010

Carrying on with something I've begun on my other blogs. Various open tabs that I'm working through and I know I don't have time to finish them all at once. Listing them here not only will help remind me to follow through on them, but might enable a potential reader to see something that might 'click' and help you remember something that might help solve a crime or bring home a missing person.
Anything's possible.

What's open right now, before I have to get off the net and get busy:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=missing+children+cold+cases&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=4b0e053116aeea03
Google search for missing children's cold cases

http://www.bellaonline.com/subjects/7641.asp
BellaDonna online

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/nancy.grace/
Nancy Grace page

http://www.childhelp.org/
Child help.org

http://www.drusvoice.com/

http://www.pomc.com/
Parents of murdered children

http://www.sheriannherboys.com/guestbook.htm
Sheri Coleman guest book

http://www.savingminutes.com/

http://www.murdervictims.com/Unsolved%20Homicides.htm

http://www.theyaremissed.org/ncma/index.php


 Will update more later today.

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