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The Pillow Pyro: John Leonard Orr
John Leonard Orr (born April 26, 1949) is an American convicted serial arsonist, mass murderer, and former firefighter. A fire captain and arson investigator in Glendale, California, Orr was convicted of serial arson and four counts of murder; he is believed to have set nearly 2,000 fires in a 30-year arson spree, most of them between 1984 and 1991, making him the most prolific serial arsonist in American history.
During his arson spree, Orr had several nicknames "The Pillow Pyro" due to the location of the fires inside shops, the "Frito Bandito", and the "coin-tosser." Orr's modus operandi was to set fires using an incendiary timing device, usually comprising a lit cigarette with three matches wrapped in ruled yellow writing paper and secured by a rubber band, in stores while they were open and populated. He would also set small fires in the grassy hills to draw firefighters, leaving fires set in more congested areas unattended. He would sometimes be part of the firefighting crew that investigated the fires.
Early life
John Leonard Orr was born on April 26, 1949, in Los Angeles, California. He was one of three boys. His parents divorced when he was young. Following high school, Orr joined the US Air Force; in 1967, he was shipped out for basic training, later transferring to Air Force firefighting school. He was stationed in Spain, where he went on to marry his high school girlfriend. In 1970, he was transferred to Montana. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force in April 1971. In reflecting on his time in the military, Orr later said he did not like his commanding officers.
Orr returned to Los Angeles, where he applied to two police departments and two fire departments. During this time, his wife gave birth to his daughter. Orr and his first wife divorced not long after.
He was invited to test for the Los Angeles Police Department, and passed all the tests except for the psychological evaluation, prompting the LAPD to send him a letter saying he was unsuitable. Orr was then accepted to test for the Los Angeles Fire Department; he went through the fire academy but struggled with both the written and physical tests and was rejected. Desperate to be a firefighter, he applied to the Glendale Fire Department, which at the time was at the bottom in Los Angeles County for pay; he was accepted in 1974. Orr studied fire science at a local college and worked at a 7-Eleven and as store security at Sears part-time.
Orr earned a carry permit and applied to be a fire investigator. He was accepted, eventually attaining the rank of captain.
On October 10, 1984, in South Pasadena, California, a major fire broke out at an Ole's Home Center hardware store located in a shopping plaza. The store was destroyed by the fire, and four people were killed: a two-year-old child, the child's 50-year-old grandmother, a 26-year-old mother of two, and a 17-year-old employee. On the following day, fire investigators from around Southern California converged on the destroyed store and declared the cause to be an electrical fire. However, Orr, as a fire investigator, insisted that the cause was arson.
Orr was correct, of course, because he set the blaze. Speculation has been that he wanted his work to be recognized. Investigations showed that the fire was deliberately started in highly flammable polyurethane products, which caught fire very quickly, causing the fire to flash over very rapidly.
Investigation
In January 1987, a convention for fire investigators from California was held in the city of Fresno. During and after the convention, several suspicious fires were set in Bakersfield. This, combined with the recovery of a single unmatched fingerprint left on a piece of notebook paper as part of a time-delay incendiary device, led Captain Marvin G. Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department (BFD) to suspect that a fire investigator from the Los Angeles area was responsible for these arsons.
In March 1989, another series of arsons were committed along the California coast in close conjunction with a conference of fire investigators in Pacific Grove, California. By comparing the list of attendees from the Fresno conference with the list of attendees at the Pacific Grove conference, Casey was able to create a short list of ten suspects. Orr was on Casey's shortlist, but everyone on this shortlist was cleared of suspicion when their fingerprints were compared with the fingerprint that Casey had recovered from the piece of notebook paper found at one of the arson crime scenes. Orr's fingerprint did not match.
In late 1990 and early 1991, another series of arson fires broke out in southern California, this time in and around the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As a result, a large task force nicknamed the Pillow Pyro Task Force (a reference to the arson fires set in pillows) was formed to apprehend the arsonist. On March 29, 1991, Tom Campuzanno of the Los Angeles Arson Task Force circulated a flier at a meeting of the Fire Investigators Regional Strike Team (FIRST), an organization formed by a group of smaller cities in and around Los Angeles County that did not have their staff of arson investigators. The flier described the modus operandi of the suspected serial arsonist in the Los Angeles area. Scott Baker of the California State Fire Marshal's Office was at that meeting and told Campuzanno about the series of arsons investigated by Casey and about Casey's suspicions that the perpetrator was a fire investigator from the Los Angeles area. Consequently, Campuzanno and two of his colleagues met with Casey, obtained a copy of the fingerprint that Casey had recovered, and this time matched it to Orr on April 17, 1991, with the help of improved fingerprint technology. By cross-referencing the print with a database of all past applicants for law enforcement posts in Los Angeles County, they discovered that the print was an exact match to Orr's left ring finger.
Arrest
Orr was then investigated and watched for several months. Authorities hid a tracking device in his vehicle. While leaving a May 1991 fire conference in San Luis Obispo, California, he discovered the tracking device. Orr rushed to a nearby police explosives range, thinking it was a bomb. The police were alerted by FIRST, and Orr was told that the device was a hoax. Orr was never aware of a second tracking device installed in his city vehicle that November. His actions continued to be watched. After Orr was found to be present at another suspicious fire, a federal grand jury handed down an indictment. Orr was arrested on December 4, 1991, and was charged with arson for a series of fires not related to the 1984 South Pasadena Ole's fire.
After his arrest, fire investigators began a forensic re-evaluation of Ole's fire. They found a highly detailed description of a similar fire in his novel Points of Origin which tells the story of a fireman who is also a serial arsonist. The book chronicles acts of arson and bears several striking similarities with the real-life 1984 fire. When questioned, Orr stated the novel is a work of fiction and has no relation to any actual events. Defending his manuscript, Orr expressly stated: "The character of Aaron Stiles was a composite of arsonists I arrested."
Trial and conviction
Among those who covered the trial was award-winning journalist Frank Girardot, who would later collaborate with Orr's daughter Lori on a book about the case. After much deliberation, a federal jury in Fresno convicted Orr on July 31, 1992, of three counts of arson, while acquitting him on two other counts. Federal Judge Oliver Wanger sentenced Orr to 30 years in prison. Orr maintains his innocence, notwithstanding his subsequent guilty plea on March 24, 1993, to three more counts of arson in Los Angeles after reaching a plea agreement that saw him paroled from federal prison in 2002. He took the plea deal when it became apparent that he could not afford to mount a defense and stood little chance at trial.
By November 21, 1994, state prosecutors in Los Angeles indicted Orr on four counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances and 21 counts of arson for a string of fires stretching from 1984 to 1990. The lead prosecutor on the case, Mike Cabral, opted to seek the death penalty to ensure that Orr would spend the rest of his life in prison. He made an off-the-record offer to Orr: if Orr accepted a sentence of life without parole and confessed all of his acts of arson in open court dating to his youth, Cabral would take the death penalty off the table. Orr turned the offer down out of hand.
A jury in a California state court convicted Orr on all four murder charges and all but one of the arson counts on June 25, 1998. That arson count, for setting a fire in the Warner Bros. backlot, was subsequently dismissed at the request of the prosecution. When asked to sentence Orr to the death penalty, the same jury split eight to four in favor. The presiding judge sentenced Orr to four concurrent terms of life without parole for murder, plus an additional 21 years in prison for arson. The state sentence ran consecutively with his federal sentence for arson.
A California appeals court vacated nine years of his state sentence on March 15, 2000, finding that the burning of homes in the College Hills blaze had only been incidental to his objective of starting a brush fire. It left the remainder of the sentence untouched, all but assuring that Orr would die in prison. Orr began his state sentence upon his release from federal custody in 2002. Orr is currently serving his life sentence at California State Prison, Centinela. His name does not appear in the California Department of Corrections inmate database, suggesting that he is being held under an alias.
Aftermath
Some fire investigators and an FBI criminal profiler have deemed Orr to be possibly one of the worst American serial arsonists of the 20th century. Federal ATF agent Mike Matassa believes that Orr set nearly 2,000 fires between 1984 and 1991. Furthermore, arson investigators determined that after Orr was arrested, the number of brush fires in the nearby foothill areas decreased by more than 90 percent.
Orr's daughter Lori, who later became a motivational speaker, testified on behalf of the defense at the trial and her testimony prevented him from receiving the death penalty. After maintaining her father's innocence for years, she eventually came to believe he was guilty and broke off all contact with him.
The story has been chronicled by bestselling true crime author Frank Girardot, who co-wrote a biography of Orr in collaboration with Orr's daughter, Lori Kovach, entitled Burned. Orr's story was earlier chronicled by bestselling true crime author Joseph Wambaugh in his book Fire Lover. Burned features several court documents, fresh interviews with Orr, and never-before-revealed evidence.
On several occasions, film and television have also presented the story of Orr's arson activities and eventual arrest and criminal conviction. An episode of the PBS science series Nova titled "Hunt for the Serial Arsonist" (airing November 14, 1995) chronicled his story. The investigation that led to Orr's arrest and conviction was recounted in the episode "Diary of a Serial Arsonist" of the A&E Network's true crime series Cold Case Files and also on an episode of Casefile True Crime Podcast. Most notably, a film titled Point of Origin, starring Ray Liotta as John Orr, was released by HBO in 2002; the film's title is a reference to Orr's novel. He was profiled in the 2004 Forensic Files episode "Point of Origin", the same title used in the HBO film. His story was recounted in 2019 on Investigation Discovery's Deadly Secrets in the episode "The Fire Inside", and Oxygen's A Lie to Die For in the episode "The Heat Of Deceit." A 2021 episode of HLNs Very Scary People featured him, titled "Firestarter: A Wall of Flames". He also was mentioned in the 12th episode of the second season of 9-1-1: Lone Star. In July 2021, truth.media released the true-crime podcast Firebug, hosted by filmmaker Kary Antholis and chronicling the investigation into the fires through interviews and excerpts from Orr's manuscript.
Prison writing
As part of Hamilton College's prison writing initiative, The American Prison Writing Archive, Orr was able to publish several autobiographical accounts of his experiences as a prisoner in the American prison complex.
In popular culture
Forensic Files season S9.E21 centers around Orr.
Criminalia podcast episode: "Firefighter Firebugs" centers on Orr.
John Leonard Orr. (2024, February 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Leonard_Orr
Murder of Chalino Sanchez
Rosalino "Chalino" Sánchez Félix (30 August 1960 – c. 15 May 1992) was a Mexican singer-songwriter. Posthumously called "El Rey del Corrido", he is considered one of the most influential narcocorrido singers of the late 20th century. A pioneer in Mexican music, he began composing songs for inmates who had stories they wanted to preserve in ballads. Chalino also composed and sang romantic and radio-friendly songs.
Sánchez was born in Sinaloa, the youngest of the family. Chalino had aspirations of musical notoriety from a young age. In 1984, Chalino's brother Armando was murdered in a hotel in Tijuana, inspiring him to compose his first corrido Recordando A Armando Sánchez. Eventually, Chalino began to profit via his compositions and would be gifted with guns and 'presents' by his customers. Before his brothers' murder, Chalino was introduced to Ángel Parra, who became interested in his musical talents after hearing a performance. Parra arranged for Chalino to have a meeting at his studio, Angel Studios, and began recording his first demo cassette with a norteño group named Los Cuatro de la Frontera. By 1989, Sánchez was recognized throughout California and received many requests to sing in music venues.
Chalino performed in venues in California, such as the El Parral Nightclub in South Gate, El Puma De Sinaloa, and El Farallón. He performed at the Keystone Ford Show and Noches de Taconazo. He formed Los Amables Del Norte, arguably producing his most acclaimed music while with them. He signed with record labels, such as Discos Linda, Cintas Acuario, RR, Balboa Records Edimusa, and Musart. It was during the early 1990s that Sánchez received the nickname "Rey de Los Corridos" (King of the Corridos) and was regarded as one of Mexico's greatest singers.
On January 24, 1992, Sánchez was attacked by Eduardo Gallegos while performing at the Plaza Los Arcos restaurant and nightclub in Coachella, California. Sánchez was shot twice near his armpit, striking his lung, and a gunfight ensued. Gallegos initially missed Chalino and accidentally struck 20-year-old Claudio Rene Carranza in the right leg striking the main artery, later killing him. The shooting made headlines in regional English-language newspapers and ABC World News Tonight. Afterward, Chalino saw success with his sales and began getting increased airplay. He was shot and killed by unidentified assailants hours after a performance at the Salon Bugambilias in Culiacán on May 16, 1992.
Early life and career
Rosalino Sánchez Félix was born on "Las Flechas", a small ranch in Sinaloa. He was the youngest of seven children. His parents were Santos Sanchez (died 1964) and Senorina Felix (died 1991). Chalino grew up poor and lived a difficult life. His birth name was Rosalino, but he preferred his nickname Chalino since he considered Rosalino sounded too feminine.
In 1975 his sister was raped, and two years later in 1977 Chalino saw the man at a party and allegedly shot him in revenge, killing him. After committing this act, Sanchez left for Tijuana with his gun and a Jesús Malverde chain. During his time in Tijuana, he worked as a "coyote" (an immigrant smuggler), taking immigrants into the United States.
The same year, Chalino himself crossed into the United States as an undocumented immigrant worker. He began in Oregon and later moved to Los Angeles to live with his aunt in Inglewood, California. He washed dishes, sold cars, and, according to his friends, dealt small quantities of marijuana and cocaine. He also helped his older brother, Armando, run an immigrant smuggling operation.
Chalino met Marisela Vallejos in 1984. They married while she was pregnant with their son, Adán Sánchez, and later had a second child. They were married until Chalino Sanchez died in 1992.
In 1984, Armando was shot and killed in a hotel in Tijuana, which inspired Chalino to compose his first corrido or ballad. Around this time, Chalino was arrested. He began composing songs for his fellow inmates and anyone with a story worth telling. Chalino began to earn money through his compositions and would be gifted with guns and 'presents' by his customers. Among his many customers were Lucio Villareal, El Pelavacas, and Jorge "El Coquio" Castro. A small group known as “Los Cuatro de la Frontera” recommended Chalino go to a recording studio on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles. The studio was called San Angel Records and was owned by Angel Mariscal. Originally another artist was meant to sing Chalino's songs, but he canceled, so Chalino sang his songs.
In 1989, Chalino recorded his first cassette of 15 songs. He sold cassettes from his car and at local swapmeets, bakeries, and other businesses across South Central Los Angeles. Chalino connected with another Mexican immigrant, Pedro Rivera, who had set up a small recording studio in Long Beach, California. Called Cintas Acuario, this studio allowed aspiring musicians to record cheaply.
Chalino and Rivera pioneered the "prohibited corridos" (corrido prohibido), songs that mythologized drug smugglers, murderers, and "valientes". The Cintas Acuario roster (which later included Pedro's children, Lupillo, Juan, and the late Jenni Rivera) was not initially aired on radio, but it became the foundation of the Latino genre in Los Angeles.
Promoters across the Southland quickly sought to book Chalino at their clubs. Chalino sang his songs in his cadence and Sinaoloan slang, something no big singer had previously done.
1992 Coachella incident
Motive Inconclusive
On 25 January 1992, Chalino was performing at the Plaza Los Arcos restaurant and nightclub in the desert city of Coachella, 120 miles east of Los Angeles. Reportedly Chalino was set to perform at 10 pm on the main stage. At around 7 pm, the center was at maximum capacity with around 400 people in attendance.
During his performance, Chalino began taking song requests from the audience. Shortly before midnight, Eduardo Gallegos, 32, a local unemployed mechanic from Thermal, California, under the influence of heroin and alcohol, requested "El Gallo de Sinaloa". Immediately afterward, Gallegos jumped up on stage and pointed a .25 caliber pistol at Chalino. In retaliation, Chalino pulled his 10 mm pistol from his waistband and then began a gun battle.
Gallegos' first four shots hit Chalino twice in the chest near his armpit striking his lung, and one bullet hit accordionist Ignacio "Nacho" Hernandez in the thigh. Chalino's shots missed Gallegos and accidentally hit 20-year-old Claudio Rene Carranza in the right leg hitting the main artery. He was later pronounced dead at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital. Chalino and Gallegos opened fire at each other while ensuing in a brief chase into the crowd below. Nine to fifteen shots were fired and around seven more people were reportedly hit in the exchange as well. Gallegos was wrestled to the floor by a bystander until Gallegos was eventually shot in the face with his own pistol. Gallegos and Chalino were both listed as critical and both were transported to Desert Regional Hospital, in Palm Springs.
Chalino Sánchez was in the hospital for 11 days and was released home without any charges (ruled self-defense).
Eduardo Gallegos, who survived his wounds, was convicted of attempted murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
The shooting was reported by ABC World News Tonight and in both English- and Spanish-language newspapers. Chalino saw success with his sales and began getting airplay, although it was a single, old-fashioned, non-narco song called "Nieves de Enero". For his next Los Angeles appearance at El Parral, doors had to close at 6 pm, 5–6 hours before he was due on stage.
Murder
On 15 May 1992, four months after the Coachella incident and during a performance at the Salón Bugambilias in Culiacán, Chalino was handed a note from someone in the crowd. The note is commonly believed to have been a death threat whereby he would be killed after the song, but this has never been confirmed. A video recording of the song "Alma Enamorada" shows Chalino crumpling up the note—in a clear state of shock—before singing the song as if nothing happened. After midnight, Chalino drove away from the club with two of his brothers, a cousin, and several young women. They were pulled over by a group of armed men in black Chevrolet Suburbans. They showed state police ID cards and told Chalino their commander wanted to see him. Chalino agreed and got into one of their cars while the others stayed behind.
The following day, at six in the morning, two farmers found Chalino's body by an irrigation canal near Highway 15, near the neighborhood of Los Laureles, Culiacán. He was blindfolded and his wrists were red and had rope marks. He had been shot in the back of the head twice.
Legacy and family
Since his death, Chalino's fame and recordings have grown in popularity. Chalino still amasses millions of music streams three decades after his death (for a total of 1.7 billion Spotify streams)[citation needed], plus over 200 million views for his music video for "Alma Enamorada" on YouTube alone—and continues to be a fixture on many Spanish-language radio stations. He remains a popular artist with young Hispanic listeners as well as earning the praise of artists outside his target audience, including rapper Snoop Dogg. An 8-part podcast, Ídolo: The Ballad of Chalino Sánchez was made about Chalino's life; it also investigates the circumstances of his murder.
Chalino's son Adán Sánchez followed his father's footsteps and was also a successful regional Mexican American singer; however, in 2004, while riding in his father's 1990 Lincoln Town Car, he died in a roll-over car crash after the tire blew; he was 19 years old.
Chalino Sánchez. (2024, March 21). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalino_S%C3%A1nchez
Murder of Sherri Jarvis
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Sherri Ann Jarvis (March 9, 1966 – November 1, 1980) was an American murder victim from Forest Lake, Minnesota whose body was discovered in Huntsville, Texas on November 1, 1980. Her body was discovered within hours of her sexual assault and murder and remained unidentified for 41 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy in November 2021.
Despite initial efforts to discover both her identity and that of her murderer(s), the investigation into Jarvis's murder gradually became a cold case. Numerous efforts were made to determine her identity, including several forensic facial reconstructions of how she may have appeared in life. The investigation into her murder is ongoing.
Before her identification, Jarvis was known as the Walker County Jane Doe of the county in which her body was discovered and where she was later buried in a donated casket.
Discovery
On November 1, 1980, the nude body of a girl estimated to be between the ages of 14 and 18 was discovered by a truck driver who had been driving past the Sam Houston National Forest. She was lying face-down in an area of grass approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) from the shoulder of Interstate Highway 45, and two miles north of Huntsville. This motorist called the police at 9:20 a.m. to report his discovery.
The victim had been deceased for approximately six hours, thus placing her time of death around 3:20 a.m. A rectangular brown pendant containing a smoky blue or brown glass-colored stone on a thin gold chain necklace was found around her neck. Her ears were pierced, but no earrings were found in her ears or at the crime scene. High-heeled red leather sandals with light brown straps, which investigators would discover the girl had been seen carrying while alive, were also recovered from the scene. The remainder of her clothing was missing.
Autopsy
The decedent was approximately five feet six inches (1.68 m) in height, weighed between 105 and 120 pounds (48 and 54 kg), and was described by the Harris County Medical Examiner as being a "well-nourished" individual. Her eyes were hazel, and her hair was approximately 10 inches in length and light brown in color, with what has been described as a possible reddish tint, although her hair bore no evidence of having received color treatment. The decedent's fingernails were bare, and her toenails had been painted pink. Distinctive features upon her body were a vertical scar measuring one-and-a-half inches at the edge of her right eyebrow and the fact that her right nipple was inverted. Due to the general condition of the decedent's body, including her overall health, nutrition, and the excellent dental care she had received in life, she was believed to have come from a middle-class household.
The cause of death was certified by the coroner to be asphyxia due to ligature strangulation, possibly inflicted via pantyhose, fragments of which—along with the decedent's underwear—were found inside the victim's vaginal cavity. The pantyhose and underwear had likely been placed inside the girl's vaginal cavity in an attempt to prevent her body from bleeding as she was transported to the site of her discovery. She had been sexually assaulted before her death with a large blunt instrument both vaginally and anally. It is unknown if the girl had been conventionally raped, as no biological evidence attesting to this form of sexual assault was discovered either at the crime scene or in the coroner's subsequent examination of her body. The girl had also been severely beaten before her death as many bruises were evident across her body, with her lips and right eyelid, in particular, being extensively swollen. In addition, her right shoulder bore a deep and visible bite mark.
Investigation
The likely movements of Jarvis before her murder and the location of her body. The black dotted line indicates a likely route taken based on eyewitness accounts; the red dotted line indicates the direction to Ellis Prison farm.
Sightings
Following exhaustive witness appeals and extensive media accounts regarding this murder, numerous individuals (all of whom are now deceased) informed investigators they had seen a teenage girl matching the decedent's description within the 24 hours before her murder. These individuals include the manager of a South End Gulf station and two employees at the Hitch 'n' Post truck stop, all of whom described this girl as wearing blue jeans, a dirty yellow pullover, and a white knit sweater with noticeably large pockets that extended past her waist. This girl had been carrying red leather-strapped high-heeled sandals.
According to the first witness, the girl—appearing somewhat disheveled—had arrived at the South End Gulf station at approximately 6:30 p.m. on October 31. At this location, she had exited a blue 1973 or 1974 model Chevrolet Caprice with a light-colored top, which had been driven by a white male. This witness stated the girl had asked for directions to the Texas Department of Corrections Ellis Prison Farm. After receiving directions, the girl had left the Gulf station on foot and was later seen walking north on Sam Houston Avenue.
This same girl was later seen at the Hitch 'n' Post truck stop alongside Interstate 45, where she again requested directions to the Texas Department of Corrections Ellis Prison Farm, claiming "a friend" was waiting for her at this location. In response, a waitress drew a map providing directions to the prison farm which she then handed to the girl. This waitress informed investigators that she had suspected the girl was a runaway and that in their brief conversation, the girl had informed her she was from either Rockport or Aransas Pass, Texas. The girl had also claimed to this waitress that she was 19 years old; when the waitress had expressed doubts as to her claimed age and further asked if her parents knew her whereabouts; this girl had reportedly replied, "Who cares?"
Ellis Prison Farm
Both inmates and employees of the Ellis Prison Farm were canvassed and shown mortuary photographs of the victim, although none was able to identify her. According to a detective working the cold case in the 21st century, only one inmate was of a similar age to the victim. Investigators were never able to establish a connection between the two. Investigators traveled to both the Rockport and Aransas Pass districts to consult with law enforcement personnel regarding any missing females whose physical descriptions matched that of the victim. Staff at schools in both districts were also contacted by investigators for the same purpose. Numerous Texas high school yearbooks were searched for any female known to be missing whose physical features matched her description. None yielded results, and no missing person reports relating to young Caucasian females were matched to the victim at the time.
Even though police and media appeals in the towns of Rockport or Aransas Pass to discover the identity of the victim failed to produce any fruitful leads as to her identity, it was thought that she may have indeed hailed from the general region she had stated to the waitress at the Hitch 'n' Post truck stop the evening before her murder.
Funeral
On January 16, 1981, the unidentified girl was buried in the Adickes Addition at Oakwood Cemetery. Her burial followed an open-casket funeral, and the cemetery in which she was interred is located within the city where her body was found. She is buried beneath a tombstone donated by Morris Memorials; the inscription upon her tombstone reads, "Unknown white female. Died Nov. 1, 1980." A new tombstone bearing her name, nickname, photograph, and the inscription "Never alone and loved by many" has since been erected.
"That person made a statement when they did that. Honestly, no one should ever be treated like that ... If we could positively identify the victim there is a perfect chance we could identify the suspect. At this point, I'm willing to look anywhere. If there is a missing person from New York that looks like her, I'm willing to look at it."
Walker County Sheriff's Office Detective Thomas Bean refers to the murder of Walker County Jane Doe and the mindset of her murderer. March 4, 2018
Ongoing investigation
Further forensic analysis
The remains of Walker County Jane Doe were exhumed in 1999 to conduct a further forensic examination of her remains, including the obtaining of a DNA sample from her body. This second forensic examination of her body revised the likely age of Walker County Jane Doe to be between 14 and 18 years old, with investigators stating they believed the most likely age of Walker County Jane Doe to be between 14-and-a-half and 16-and-a-half years old.
In November 2015, the case was officially reopened by the Walker County Sheriff's Office.
DNA testing was also conducted on the high-heeled red leather sandals found at the crime scene; the results of this testing remain undisclosed. Local police departments also actively monitored other missing person reports for any potential matches to the victim. Investigators have also reached out to the public via various online websites, news media, and television networks in hopes of generating further leads of inquiry—all of which, to date, have been unsuccessful in identifying her murderer(s).
Facial reconstructions
Several forensic facial reconstructions have been created to illustrate estimations of how Walker County Jane Doe may have looked in life. In 1990, forensic and portrait artist Karen T. Taylor created a postmortem drawing of Walker County Jane Doe in which she incorporated an estimation as to the appearance of the necklace she had been wearing. An investigator at the Walker County Sheriff's Office has also created a facial rendering of the victim.
Taylor has included this case in her book Forensic Art and Illustration, in which she confessed to having experienced difficulties in creating her sketch of the decedent as the only frontal photograph made available to her at the time was of one taken after the victim had received extensive reconstructive cosmetic treatment at the Huntsville Funeral Home for her facial features to be sufficient to be viewed in an open-casket funeral. Taylor further explained that a scaled photograph of the girl's necklace was not made available to her, and she was forced to guess the size of this item of jewelry for the facial reconstruction she produced.
Within the decade before Walker County Jane Doe's identification, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children constructed and released two facial reconstructions of how the victim may have appeared in life. The first facial reconstruction was released in 2012 and the second shortly after the 35th anniversary of her murder. All facial reconstructions were created by studying mortuary photographs taken of the victim.
Identification
In 2020, the Walker County Sheriff's Office partnered with Othram Incorporated to attempt to identify Walker County Jane Doe via genetic genealogy. Initial attempts to extract usable genetic materials from her remains were unsuccessful, but testing on her preserved tissue samples yielded usable DNA, which was used to generate a genetic profile of the victim and construct a family tree. Through this family tree, the living relatives of the victim were identified and located. DNA swabs from these individuals were used to confirm the identity of Walker County Jane Doe in 2021.
On November 9, 2021, the Walker County Sheriff's Office publicly announced the identity of Walker County Jane Doe as 14-year-old Sherri Ann Jarvis, who had run away from Stillwater, Minnesota in 1980. Her identification had previously been announced in late September 2021 by forensic artist Carl Koppelman, who had produced several forensic reconstructions of the victim, and who announced that her identity was temporarily being withheld to give her family sufficient time to grieve privately.
Jarvis was known as "Tati" to her friends; she had been removed from her home and placed under the state's custody at age 13 due to her habitual truancy and had run away shortly after her 14th birthday. Her final contact with her family had been a letter penned to her mother from Denver in August 1980. In this letter, Jarvis indicated frustrations at being placed in state custody but of her intentions to eventually return home. At this formal announcement, a statement from her family was read, thanking "the dedication" of all who had worked to identify Jarvis and to "provide [the] long-awaited, albeit painful answers" to their questions as to her whereabouts, adding that they take comfort from the fact she has been identified. This statement also thanked those who had visited her grave while she had remained unidentified and emphasized the family's wish for her murderer(s) to be brought to justice.
The investigation into Jarvis's murder is ongoing, and investigators have stated discovering Jarvis's identity has given them "some positive leads" of inquiry they are actively pursuing.
Other hypotheses
Gender of perpetrator
Some individuals have speculated Jarvis may have been assaulted and murdered by a female assailant as opposed to a male. This hypothesis was initially suggested by a journalist named Michael Hargraves, who based this assumption upon the fact that no semen was found upon or within Jarvis's body, or at the actual crime scene, and that the only sexual assaults conclusively proven to have been committed upon the girl were performed by aggressively forcing an object or objects into her bodily orifices. Hargraves elaborated his hypothesis by stating that men who commit crimes of a sexual nature are typically known to bite their victims upon sensitive areas of the body as opposed to the shoulder, as had occurred in this case.
The act of male perpetrators of murders committed with a sexual motivation occasionally collecting souvenirs from their victims was also noted to be inconsistent with this case, as the necklace Jarvis had worn was still present upon her body. However, the fact that it is unknown if Jarvis had worn other items of jewelry at the time of her murder, and that her ears were pierced yet her earlobes held no earrings may negate this portion of Hargraves' hypothesis. Furthermore, most of the girl's clothing was missing from the crime scene.
Links to other murders
A possibility exists that Jarvis may have been murdered by the same perpetrator as another formerly unidentified murder victim, known as "Orange Socks", who was murdered almost exactly a year before Jarvis and whose body was found in Georgetown, Texas. Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas has also been named as a possible suspect in this case, although the bite mark found on Jarvis's shoulder was inconsistent with Lucas's dentistry. No prime suspects have been named in this murder, although police have considered the possibility that the victim was murdered by a serial killer.
In 2017, a theory arose that Jarvis may have been killed by the same perpetrator known to have murdered three other females in 1980 whose bodies were dumped alongside Interstate 45. All were strangled; some were sexually assaulted similarly. All four victims were described by investigators as being "high risk".
One of the women, aged between 20 and 30, was found on October 15, 1980, in Houston. She was a black female with a possible Asian heritage and had died months before the discovery of her body. A second female was also black; her body was discovered beneath a bridge in Houston in December 1980. Her age at the time of murder was estimated at between 16 and 26 years old at the time of her murder.
Exclusions
The information compiled by the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System states the following individuals were each positively excluded as being Walker County Jane Doe before her 2021 identification.
Joyce Brewer: January 24, 1955-September 6, 1970 -- Grand Prairie, Texas, 25, Brewer is believed to have run away from home with a boyfriend following an argument with her parents.
Mary Trlica: November 15, 1957-December 23, 1974 -- Fort Worth, Texas, 22, Apparently abducted with two friends while Christmas shopping. Within days of Trlica's disappearance, a letter was mailed to her husband claiming she and her companions were traveling to Houston. This letter was written by a right-handed person, whereas Trlica was left-handed.
Wendy Eaton: May 26, 1959-May 17, 1975 -- Media, Pennsylvania, 21, Eaton disappeared in Media, Pennsylvania while walking to purchase a gift for her brother. Her case remains unsolved.
Maria Anjiras: August 10, 1961-February 12, 1976 -- Norwalk, Connecticut, 19, A girl who ran away from her home in 1976. Anjiras had taken money and personal possessions with her. Anjiras is known to have threatened to run away from home a few weeks before her disappearance, although, on this occasion, her father had dissuaded her from doing so.
Cindy King: July 27, 1961-July 19, 1977 -- Grants Pass, Oregon, 19, King disappeared in July 1977. She had worn a retainer when she disappeared and had a notable scar near one of her temples, like the Walker County Jane Doe.
Tina Kemp: October 20, 1964-February 3, 1979 -- Felton, Delaware, 16, Last seen leaving her home after helping to hang the family laundry. Kemp has never been heard from since and is believed to have been murdered.
Kimberly Rae Doss: September 11, 1962-May 29, 1979 -- Jacksonville, Florida, 18, Vanished while visiting a relative. Speculation remains she may have been abducted by a motorcycle gang, although no direct evidence exists to support this hypothesis. Doss had markedly similar physical characteristics to Walker County Jane Doe.
Marcia Estelle Remick: May 7, 1962-June 9, 1979 -- Virginia Beach, Virginia, 18, Remick disappeared on her way to visit a friend on the oceanfront. Rumors later circulated she was alive in Florida, although this has never been substantiated. Foul play is suspected.
Angela Meeker: July 9, 1965-July 7, 1979 -- Tacoma, Washington, 15, Meeker vanished two days before her 14th birthday. She was last seen at a party. Her physical appearance is markedly similar to the Walker County Jane Doe.
Karen Zendrosky: September 2, 1963-October 23, 1979 -- Bordentown Township, New Jersey, 17, Zendrosky disappeared from a now-defunct bowling alley. Her disappearance remains unsolved, although investigators strongly suspect foul play in her case, believing the most likely location of Zendrosky's body to be a sludge pit located in Hamilton.
Deborah McCall: March 30, 1963-November 5, 1979 -- Downers Grove, Illinois, 17. Last seen departing from her school in Downers Grove, Illinois. McCall had markedly similar physical characteristics as the victim.
Marie Blee: April 16, 1964-November 21, 1979 -- Craig, Colorado, 16, Blee was last seen at a party in the company of a male friend. Foul play is suspected to be the reason behind her disappearance.
Kristy Lynn Booth: December 26, 1960-February 2, 1980 Midland, Texas, 19. A 19-year-old waitress last seen at a nightclub. Investigators do not believe Booth left this nightclub willingly. Her vehicle was later found abandoned on South Highway 349.
Rachael Garden: December 30, 1964-March 22, 1980 -- Newton, New Hampshire, 15, Likely abducted while walking from a store toward the home of a friend with whom she intended to spend the night. She was last seen talking to three male acquaintances of hers (one of whom later served a sentence for assault and rape) who had been seated in a dark-colored vehicle.
Laureen Rahn: April 3, 1966-April 26, 1980 -- Manchester, New Hampshire, 14, Rahn is believed to have been abducted either from or within the close proximities of her home on the evening of her disappearance. She did not take her purse, shoes, or any additional clothing; likely indicating she had been abducted from her home via force or guile.
Roxane Easland: c. 1956-June 28, 1980 -- Anchorage, Alaska, 24, A prostitute and erotic dancer who disappeared after leaving her apartment to meet with an unidentified male client on Northern Lights Boulevard. She is believed to have been murdered by serial killer Robert Hansen.
Carla Corley: December 31, 1965-August 12, 1980 -- Birmingham, Alabama, 14, Corley is believed to have been abducted from her home. Her mother discovered the family's front door ajar and evident signs of a struggle within their kitchen. She was declared legally dead several years after her disappearance.
Murder of Sherri Jarvis. (2024, March 2). In Wikipedia.
Yuba County Five
The Yuba County Five were a group of young men from Yuba County, California, United States, each with mild intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions, who were reported missing after attending a college basketball game at California State University, Chico (also known as Chico State), on the night of February 24, 1978. Four of them—Bill Sterling, 29; Jack Huett, 24; Ted Weiher, 32; and Jack Madruga, 30—were later found dead; the fifth, Gary Mathias, 25, has never been found.
Several days after their disappearance, the group's car, a 1969 Mercury Montego, owned by Madruga, was found abandoned in a remote area of Plumas National Forest, on a high mountain dirt road that was far out of their way back to Yuba County. Investigators could not determine why the car was abandoned, as it was in good working order and could easily have been pushed out of the snowpack it was in. At that time, no trace of the men was found.
After the snow melted in June 1978, four of the men's bodies were discovered. Ted Weiher was found in a US Forest Service trailer some 12 miles (19 km) north from the car. Only bones were left of Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, and Jackie Huett as result of scavenging animals; but Weiher had apparently lived for as long as three months after the men were last seen, starving to death despite an ample supply of food and heating materials nearby. Weiher was missing his shoes; investigators found Mathias' own shoes in the US Forest Service Trailer, suggesting Mathias also survived for some time beyond the group's last sighting.
A local man later came forward, claiming that he had spent the same night in his own car a short distance away from where the Mercury was found. The witness told police that he had seen and heard people around his car that night, and twice called for help, only for them to grow silent and turn off their flashlights. This, and the considerable distance from the car to where the bodies were found, has led to suspicions of foul play.
Background
While he was stationed in West Germany as part of his United States Army service in the early 1970s, Gary Mathias, a resident of Marysville, California developed drug problems. This eventually led to him being diagnosed with schizophrenia and being given a psychiatric discharge. Mathias returned to his parents' home in Marysville and began treatment at a local mental hospital. While it had been difficult at first—he was nearly arrested for assault twice and often experienced psychotic episodes that landed him in a local Veterans Administration hospital—by 1978 he was being treated on an outpatient basis with Stelazine and Cogentin and was considered by his physicians to be "one of our sterling success cases".
Mathias supplemented his Army disability pay by working in his stepfather's gardening business. Off the job, outside of his family, he was close friends with four slightly older men who either had slight intellectual disabilities (Sterling and Huett) or were informally considered "slow learners" (Weiher and Madruga, the latter also an Army veteran). The men lived in Yuba City and nearby Marysville. Like Mathias, each man lived with his parents, all of whom referred to them collectively as "the boys".
The men's favorite leisure activity was sports. Their families said that when the five of them got together, it was usually to play a game or to watch one. They played basketball together on a team called the Gateway Gators, a team supported by a local program for people with mental disabilities.
On February 25, the Gators were due to play their first game in a weeklong tournament sponsored by the Special Olympics for which the winners would get a free week in Los Angeles. The five men had prepared the night before, some even laying out their uniforms and asking their parents to wake them up on time. They decided to drive to Chico that night to cheer on the UC Davis basketball team in an away game against Chico State. Madruga, the only member of the group besides Mathias who had a driver's license, drove the group 50 miles (80 km) north to the Chico State campus in his turquoise and white 1969 Mercury Montego. The men wore only light coats against the cool temperatures in the upper Sacramento Valley at night that time of year.
Disappearance
After the Davis team won the game, the group got back into Madruga's car and drove a short distance from Chico State to Behr's Market in downtown Chico. There they bought snacks, sodas and cartons of milk to drink. It was shortly before the store's 10 p.m. closing time; the clerk later remembered the men because she was annoyed that such a large group had come in and delayed her from beginning the process of closing the store for the night.
None of the men were seen alive again after that point. At their homes, some of their parents waited up to make sure they returned. When morning came and they had not, the police were notified.
Investigation
Police in Butte and Yuba counties began searching along the route the men took to Chico. They found no sign of them, but a few days later, a Plumas National Forest ranger told investigators that he had seen the Mercury parked in the forest along Oroville-Quincy Road on February 25. At the time, he had not considered it significant, since many residents often drove up that road into the Sierra Nevada on winter weekends to go cross-country skiing on the extensive trail system, but after reading the missing persons bulletin he recognized the car and led the deputies to it on February 28.
Discovery of the car
Evidence found inside the car suggested the men had been in it between the time when they were last seen and when it was abandoned. The empty wrappers and containers from the food and drinks they had purchased from the store in Chico were present, along with programs from the basketball game they had attended and a neatly folded road map of California. However, the discovery of the car raised more questions than it answered.
One question was its location, 70 miles (110 km) from Chico, far off any direct route to Yuba City or Marysville. None of the men's families could speculate as to why they might have driven up a long and winding dirt road on a winter night deep into a high-elevation remote forest, without any extra clothing. Madruga's parents said he did not like cold weather and had never even been up into the mountains. Sterling's father had once taken his son to the area near where the car was found for a fishing weekend, but the younger man had not enjoyed it and remained at home when his father took later trips there.
Police were puzzled why the men had abandoned the car. They had reached 4,400 feet (1,300 m) in elevation along the road, about where the snow line was at that time of year, just short of where the road was closed for the winter. The car had become stuck in some snow drifts, and there was evidence that the men had tried to spin the wheels to get out of it; police noted that the snow was not very deep and that five healthy young men should have easily been able to push it out. The keys were not present, suggesting at first that the car had been abandoned because it might not have been operating properly, with the intention of returning later with help; when police hot-wired the car, the engine started immediately and the fuel gauge indicated the tank was one quarter full.
The mystery deepened after police towed the car back to the station for a more thorough examination. The Mercury's undercarriage had no dents, gouges or even mud scrapes, not even on its low-hanging muffler, despite having been driven a long distance up a mountain road with many bumps, ruts and potholes. The driver had been extremely careful or it was someone familiar with the road, a familiarity Madruga was not known to have; his family said that Madruga would not have let someone else drive the car. The car was unlocked and had a window rolled down when it was found; his family indicated it was unlike him to leave the car so unsecured.
Efforts to search the vicinity were hampered by a severe snowstorm that day. Two days later, after searchers in snowcats nearly became lost themselves, further search efforts were called off due to continuing bad weather. No trace of the men was found other than the car.
Sightings
In response to local media coverage of the case, police received several reports of some or all of the men being sighted after they had left Chico, including some reports of them being seen elsewhere in California or the country. Most of the reports were easily dismissed, but two of the sightings stood out.
Joseph Schons of Sacramento told police he inadvertently wound up spending the night of February 24–25 near where the Montego was found. He had driven up there, where he had a cabin, to check the snowpack in advance of a weekend ski trip with his family. At 5:30 p.m., about 150 feet (46 m) up the road, Schons, too, had gotten stuck in the snow. In the process of trying to free it, he realized he was beginning to experience the early symptoms of a heart attack and went back in, keeping the engine running to provide heat.
Six hours later, lying in the car and experiencing severe pain, Schons saw headlights coming up behind him. Looking out, he saw a car parked behind him, headlights on, with a group of people around it, one of which seemed to him to be a woman holding a baby. He called to the party for help, but they stopped talking and turned their headlights out. Later, he saw more lights from behind him, this time flashlights, that also went out when he called to them.
After that, Schons said at first, he recalled a pickup truck parking 20 feet (6 m) behind him briefly, and then continuing on down the road. Later, he clarified to police that he could not be sure of that, since at the time he was almost delirious from the pain he was in. After Schons' car ran out of gas in the early morning hours, his pain subsided enough for him to walk 8 miles (13 km) down the road to a lodge, where the manager drove him back home, passing the abandoned Montego at the point where he had recalled hearing the voices originate from. Doctors later confirmed that he had indeed experienced a mild heart attack.
Weiher's mother said ignoring someone's pleas for help was not like her son, if indeed he had been present. She recalled how he and Sterling had helped someone they knew get to the hospital after overdosing on Valium.
The other notable report was from a woman who worked at a store in the small town of Brownsville, 30 miles (48 km) from where the car had been abandoned, which they would have reached had they continued down the road. On March 3, the woman, who saw fliers that had been distributed with the men's pictures and information about the $1,215 ($5,700 in 2023 dollars) reward the families had put up, told deputies that four of them had stopped at the store in a red pickup truck, the day after the disappearance. The store owner corroborated her account.
The woman said she immediately realized that the men were not from the area because of their "big eyes and facial expressions". Two of the men, whom she identified as Huett and Sterling, were in a telephone booth outside the store, while the other two went inside. The police said she was "a credible witness" and they took her account seriously.
Additional details came from the store owner, who told investigators that men whom he believed to be Weiher and Huett came in and bought burritos, chocolate milk and soft drinks. Weiher's brother told the Los Angeles Times that while driving to Brownsville in a different car in apparent ignorance of the basketball game seemed completely out of character for them, the owner's description of the two men's behavior seemed consistent with them, as Weiher would "eat anything he could get his hands on" and was often accompanied by Huett more than any of the other four. Huett's brother said Jack hated using telephones to the point that he would answer calls for Jack whenever he received any from the other men in the group.
Discovery of bodies
With the evidence not pointing to any clear conclusion about what happened the night the five men disappeared, police and the families were not ruling out the possibility that they had met with foul play. The eventual discovery of four of the five men's bodies seemed to suggest otherwise, but raised even more questions about what had happened that night, and whether at least one of them might have been rescued.
On June 4, with most of the higher-elevation snow melted, a group of motorcyclists went to a trailer maintained by the United States Forest Service (USFS) at a campsite off the road about 19.4 miles (31.2 km) from where the Montego had been found. The front window of the trailer had been broken. When they opened the door, they were overcome by the odor of what turned out to be a decaying body inside. It was later identified as Weiher's.
Searchers returned to Plumas, following the road between the trailer and the site of the Montego. The next day, they found remains that were later identified as those of Madruga and Sterling on opposite sides of the road 11.4 miles (18.3 km) from where the car had been. Madruga's body had been partially consumed by scavenging animals; only bones remained of Sterling, scattered over a small area. Autopsies showed that they both died of hypothermia. Deputies think that one of them may have given in to the need to sleep that comes with the last stages of hypothermia, while the other stayed by his side and died the same way.
Two days later, as part of one of the other search parties, Huett's father found his son's backbone under a manzanita bush 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of the trailer. His shoes and jeans nearby helped identify the body. The next day, a deputy sheriff found a skull downhill from the bush, 300 feet (91 m) away, confirmed by dental records later to have been Huett's. His death, too, was attributed to hypothermia.
In an area to the northwest of the trailer, roughly a quarter-mile (400 m) away, searchers found three Forest Service blankets and a rusted flashlight by the road. It could not be determined how long those items had been there. Since Mathias had presumably not taken his medication, pictures of him were distributed to mental institutions all over California. However, no trace of him has ever been found.
Evidence in trailer
Weiher's body was on a bed with eight sheets wrapped around it, including the head. The autopsy showed that he had died of a combination of starvation and hypothermia. Weiher had lost nearly half his 200 pounds (91 kg); the growth of his beard suggested he had lived slightly more than three months from when he had last shaved. His feet were badly frostbitten, almost gangrenous. On a table next to the bed were some of Weiher's personal effects, including his wallet (with cash), a nickel ring with "Ted" engraved on it and a gold necklace he also wore. Also on the table was a gold watch, without its crystal, which Weiher's family said was not his, and a partially melted candle. He was wearing a velour shirt and lightweight pants, but his shoes could not be found.
Most puzzling to the investigators was how Weiher had come to his fate. No fire had been set in the trailer's fireplace, despite an ample supply of matches and paperback novels to use as kindling. Heavy forestry clothing, which could have kept the men warm, also remained where it had been stored. A dozen C-ration cans from a storage shed outside had been opened and their contents consumed, but a locker in the same shed held an even greater assortment of dehydrated foods, enough to keep all five men fed for a year if that had been necessary, had not even been opened. Similarly, another shed nearby held a butane tank with a valve that, had it been opened, would have fed the trailer's heating system.
Weiher's family members said that he lacked common sense as a result of his mental disability. For example, he often asked why he should stop at a stop sign, and one night had to be dragged out of bed while the ceiling of his bedroom was burning in a house fire because he was afraid he would miss his job if he got up.
It also appeared that Weiher had not been alone in the trailer, and that Mathias and possibly Huett had also been there. Mathias's tennis sneakers were in the trailer, and the C-rations had been opened with a P-38 can opener, with which only Mathias or Madruga would have been familiar from their military service. Mathias, his feet perhaps also swollen from frostbite, could have decided to put Weiher's shoes on instead if he had ventured outside. The sheets all over Weiher's body also suggested that one of the others had been there with him, as his gangrenous feet would have been in too much pain for him to pull them over his body himself.
Theory
Even knowing that four of the five men had died in the Sierra, investigators still could not completely explain what had led to their deaths. They still had found no explanation for why the men were there, although they learned that Mathias had friends in the small town of Forbestown, and police believed it was possible that, in an attempt to visit them on the way back home, the men may have taken a wrong turn near Oroville that put them on the mountain road. For whatever reason, the men had left the Montego; they had, instead of going back down the road (where they had passed the lodge that Schons later returned to), continued along the road in the direction they were originally going.
The day before the men went missing, a USFS snowcat had gone along the road in that direction to clear snow off the trailer roof so it would not collapse. It was possible, police believed, that the group had decided to follow the tracks it left, through snowdrifts 4–6 feet (1.2–1.8 m) high, to wherever they led, in the belief that shelter was not too far away. Most likely, Madruga and Sterling died of hypothermia about halfway through the long walk to the trailer.
It is assumed that once they found the trailer, the other three broke the window to enter. Since it was locked, they may have believed it was private property and feared arrest for theft if they used anything else they found there. After Weiher died, or after the others thought he had died, they may have decided to try to get back to civilization by different ways, such as walking overland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuba_County_Five
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