In Corroborating Evidence V, William Rasmussen, author of four previous true-crime books, continues his investigation into famous, unsolved criminal cases by focusing on three separate, unrelated stories.
The first zeroes in on the Cleveland Torso Murders committed between 1934 and 1938, where someone killed and expertly dismembered at least twelve victims in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1938, a letter by someone claiming to be the Torso Killer was mailed from Los Angeles to Cleveland's Chief of Police Matowitz. Approximately eight years later on January 7, 1946, six-year-old Suzanne Degnan was killed and expertly dismembered in Chicago. A seventeen-year-old by the name of William Heirens eventually pled guilty to the Degnan murder and two other murders. In July, 1946, Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia) was in Chicago "terribly preoccupied with the details of the Degnan murder." Less than six months later the Black Dahlia was killed and expertly severed in Los Angeles. Was the Cleveland Torso Killer also responsible for the murders of Suzanne Degnan and the Black Dahlia? If so, then William Heirens was wrongly incarcerated for crimes he did not commit.
The second investigation turns the spotlight on the Zodiac Killer, who was responsible for at least six murders in California between 1966 and 1969. On October 30, 1966, eighteen-year-old Cheri Jo Bates was brutally murdered in Riverside, California. On December 20, 1968, sixteen-year-old Betty Lou Jensen and seventeen-year-old David Arthur Faraday were killed near Vallejo, north of San Francisco. Someone who identified himself as the "Zodiac" claimed to be the killer. He sent taunting letters, notes, greeting cards, codes, secret messages and hidden clues to newspapers and the police, and the killings continued. To this day the identity and location of the Zodiac remain unknown. The author says, "I think there is a high probability that the Zodiac is still alive and currently incarcerated for some other crime." Rasmussen identifies possible links between the murders of Valerie Percy on September 18, 1966, in Kenilworth, Illinois and the Richard Robison Family in Good Hart, Michigan, June, 1968. Rasmussen presents compelling evidence that may connect the Zodiac Killer to these murders. In this book Rasmussen continues the investigation by comparing the Zodiac Killer and Charles F. Albright, a convicted serial killer currently incarcerated in Amarillo, Texas, known as the "Eyeball Killer." Albright was a neighbor of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, when Oswald rented a room from Gladys Johnson at 1026 North Beckley Avenue, in Oak Cliff, Texas. The author questions whether Albright knew Oswald in 1963, before Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby.
The third investigation focuses on the brutal, unsolved murder of little JonBenet Ramsey. Rasmussen suggests that two theories should be further explored by cold case detectives. It might lead to the missing piece of corroborating evidence that helps solve this case.
The fascinating and highly documented information contained in this new illustrated book could well be a significant development in the Zodiac case as well as the Torso Murders of the 1930s and the JonBenet Ramsey case.
