Showing posts with label I-45 Corridor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I-45 Corridor. Show all posts

Monday, October 24, 2011

Friday, September 24, 2010

Unsolved Serial Killings of Texas I-45

This is an older blog I posted a few years ago. With the murder of Krystal Jean Baker in the news again, it's got allot a talk about the "I-45 Killers". So I'm reposting it here:
Krystal Jean Baker - Age 13, Caucasian, blonde, dark eyes. Disappeared on March 5, 1996 from Convenience Store in Texas City where she used the phone. In hopes for a ride to a friends house in Bayou Vista, which is a short distance from there.
Her body was found a few hours later under the I-10 Bridge over the Trinity River in Chambers County. She had been strangled, beaten, sexually assaulted and killed by ligature strangulation. Her face was badly beaten.
Closest highway from where she was last seen is I-45, Hwy 3 and Hwy 146 which goes along Bay toward where body was found miles away.
Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jean Baker was Krystal's great aunt.

Unsolved Serial Killings of Texas I-45

Last week I watched something on TV about the “Green River Killer” and that is what got me thinking about the “I-45 Killer(s)”. So that is why I’ve be on this “kick” this week about these murders. It’s just so scary! I’ve talk to allot of girls this week who grew up around here about this all week and they all have similar stories about their parents telling them about girls they knew of being killed. And we all remember when Laura Smither (She was kidnapped right down the road from where I live now) and Jessica Cain when kidnapped. Everyone my age was in High School then. These girls were around our age and from our area. So it was really frightening. I still remember about ten years ago when sketches of Jane Doe’s went up on billboards all on the area asking if anyone knew who they were.

When I was younger, I lived in Texas City, Texas for a time. For several years I took dance lesson from Carol Ashworth at The Texas City Academy Of Dance. A much older girl, Shelley Sikes, also took dance lessons at the school and would sometimes help out with us younger girls. Her last year at the school was my first or second year there, (I must had been four or five at the time). I still remember her having the big dance solo at her last dance recital. She was very talented and all of us younger girls looked up to her and hope to one day get to dance the solo. But a year later she was kidnapped and murdered. Her body has never been found: Convicts up for parole 20 years after Shelly Sikes’ murder

Her kidnapping was by far one of the most frightening memories of my early childhood. In 2006 I wrote a letter to the parole board asking them to deny John King and Gerald Zwarst (The men who admitted to kidnapping and killing her) parole.

Now, here are some really scary “facts” that I’ve found out this week:

1. It’s NOT JUST I-45: There is an area from I-45 in Houston, Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana known as the “Dead Zone“. Kinda like a “Bermuda Triangle”. Girls go missing, only to be found dead (If the are found at all) along the side of highways: ‘c r i m e - t i m e’ a real DEAD-ZONE written by- tomevans

It’s also has been called “The Tri-County Murders“: Louisiana Missing Person Kristi O’Pry, Shreveport 1996, Missing Person Kimberly Norwood; Hallsville, TX 1989, Missing Kelly Dae Wilson From Gilmer Texas

Other names that these murders have been called are: I-45 Corridor, The Killing Corridor, America’s Highway to Hell, The Killing Fields: Serial Killers, Murders and Crimes of Passion, First Place Division 9 News Writing

2. The F.B.I. has NO OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION into a connection of these murders: Robert L. Davis, an author and former police officer wrote the F.B.I earlier this year asking them for information about the killings. Exercised his right as an American citizen under “The Freedom of Information Act”. Here was the response:

” To promptly respond to requests, we concentrate on identifying the main files in the central records system at FBI Headquarters. No records responsive to your FOIPA request were located by a search of the automated induces”.
They pretty much told him that they had NEVER HEAR OF THE KILLINGS! Meaning, the F.B.I. isn’t even looking into the possibility that there is a Serial Killer “working” in our area: FBI contacted me in response to I-45 serial killer in Texas! (article) by Robert L. Davis on AuthorsDen

3. The I-45 Killer(s) is even listed as an Urban Legend: I-45 Murders - Super-wiki

4. The Texas EquuSearch Mounted Search And Recovery Team founder, Tim Miller, is the father of one of the “Killing Field” victims, Laura Lynn Miller.

5. Are the killing still going on? Murder Of Terressa Vanegas Stirs Memories of the I-45 Serial Killer - The Crime library

6. 40% of the girls were last seen at or near Convenience Stores: Crime Search - Houston, TX

7. There could be up to FIVE KILLERS: Unsolved Serial Killings; Linking The I-45 Killings

FBI profiler Mark Young at one time stated that there were at least four or five killers that are working or had worked the I-45 corridor. Certainly a case could be made that there are more than that, including killers that only claimed a single victim. Few cases can be definitively linked, and the method of abduction, cause of death, and type of dumping ground often varies wildly across the board. Conversely, it is possible that only a couple of serial slayers are responsible and are changing their M.O.’s to make the pieces of this puzzle as difficult as possible to put together. It has to be considered highly unusual for so many ‘low-risk’ victims to be murdered or missing over such a relatively small geographic area without at least a couple of serial murderers being responsible for the bulk of the slayings.
(Just by looking over the murders over the last few days, I saw how this may really be true!)

8. Was it a “COP“? Almost thirty years later, witness have came forward saying they saw a “security guard”. Many have thought that was what happen to Jessica Cain: jameson’s WebbSleuths - 1-45 CORRIDOR SERIAL KILLER

And if I haven’t scared you yet, here are the best links I’ve found on the killings:


STILL haven’t had enough yet? Check out my MySpace blogs for more info that I’ve found: