Cold Cases Solved: True Stories of Murders That Took Years or Decades to Solve (Murder, Scandals and Mayhem Book 8) (5 page)

Victim:
Sara Lynn Wineski

Location:
St. Petersburg, Florida

Suspect:
Raymond Samuels

Date of Crime:
May 22
nd
, 2005

Date Identified:
2013

Backstory:

Sara Lynn Wineski was born in San Diego, California on June 25
th
, 1955 to parents Walter Wineski and Katherine McManus. Records indicate she married Edward J. Murphy on July 12
th
, 1975 when she was 20 years old.

The couple had two children, daughter Candace M. born May 9
th
, 1976 and son Edward James born March 21
st
, 1978. The marriage was not to last and they divorced on April 12
th
, 1984.

It’s not known what occurred in the intervening years but in 2005 Sara Lynn Wineski had born two more children and then become a homeless woman living in St. Petersburg, Florida. She had moved there from Sarasota less than two weeks before her death. She was forty-nine years old.

On The Day In Question:

On Sunday May 22
nd
, 2005, Wineski’s body was found in a secluded area, under a wooden deck belonging to a Ronald McDonald House. She had been dead for less than a day when she was found.

Investigation:

Investigations revealed that Wineski had been raped and then strangled. She had been killed brutally, her body suffering significant trauma, particularly her upper body.

A guest of the Ronald McDonald House recalled hearing screams around 11:00pm the night before. The deck where her body was found overlooked Roser Park, a common sleeping place for homeless people.

At the time of the attack, police suspected the case was linked to an earlier violent sexual assault that had occurred near Campbell Park on May 7
th
. Campbell Park was close to the scene of Wineski’s murder, and police said both crimes had “disturbing similarities” that they were not releasing.

The victim of that attack (a resident, rather than homeless as Wineski had been) had survived the attack, and described the perpetrator as a black man with a dark complexion, twenty-six to thirty years old, around 5’ 7” tall, and with a thin build. Investigators were worried that a serial rapist was on the loose.

Police handed out flyers at parks and shelters around the crime area, looking for people who might have seen Wineski shortly before she was killed.

DNA evidence was collected at the scene of Wineski’s murder, but there was no progress on identifying a suspect.

Then, in 2013, there was a sudden break in the case. The DNA from the case found a match, a man named Raymond Samuels. In 2005, he had been visiting St. Petersburg. He had then been in prison in Ohio since 2006, charged with attempted murder and kidnapping, where his DNA was recorded in the system.

Samuels, who would have been twenty-three at the time of the attack, was also a transient person with no fixed address, and had been in the area for less than two months before Wineski’s murder.

Current Status:

Wineski was survived by four children, and now also has four grandchildren. Her family is glad that her killer has been found, saying that her life was not a waste, and not something anyone had the right to take from her, despite how she was living when she ran into Samuels on that fateful night.

Samuels is currently awaiting trial at Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater, Florida.

Victims:
Skyla Whitaker, Taylor Paschal-Placker

Location:
Weleetka, Oklahoma

Suspect:
Kevin Sweat

Date of Crime:
June 8, 2008

Date of Conviction:
  October 17, 2014

Backstory:

Skyla Jade Whitaker was born in Joplin Missouri on April 5, 1997. Her parents, William and Rose Whitaker also had daughters Rosita, Christina and Jayme and son Edward. Skyla was in the 5
th
grade at Graham School.

Taylor Dawn Paschal-Placker was born March 6, 1995 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her parents were Vicky and Peter Placker. She also attended Graham School and was in the 6
th
grade.

Both girls were active in 4H, cheerleading and SWAT (Students Working Against Tobacco) and were best friends. Skyla wanted to be a veterinarian some day.

On The Day In Question:

On Sunday, June 8, 2008, the girls were walking together down a rural dirt track. Despite its condition, the road was well used by locals, and the girls had taken the route together many times before. They had had a sleep over together at Paschal-Placker’s house the night before, and were on their way to a riverbank where they wanted to collect pebbles and shells.

Then, that afternoon a disturbing call came into 911 at the Okfuskee County Sheriff’s Department. A woman on the other end of the call was screaming, “Somebody’s killed two girls!” That woman was Paschal-Placker’s grandmother, who had found the bodies of the two girls lying in a ditch along a rural road. Their bodies were riddled with bullets, the girls together had been shot a total of thirteen times.

Investigation:

Police determined that more than one gun was used to kill the girls, one of which was a .40 caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun. They did not release any information regarding the second gun, but did state that both victims had been shot with both guns. Were they looking at two perpetrators or a single attacker with multiple weapons?

Police and the community both struggled to understand why someone would kill the two young girls. Neither of them was a member of any gangs or lived “high risk” lifestyles. They were both popular and well liked by both their peers and their teachers. Whitaker wanted to be a vet when she grew up. Paschal-Placker, described by her friends as “the smartest girl in school”, wanted to be a forensic scientist.

Evidence found at the scene included tire tracks, shoe prints, as well as shell casings and bullets. A witness also reported a Native American person seen in the area at the time of the shooting, and a police released a composite sketch. Due to the remoteness of the location, investigators believed that the perpetrator had to be a local. They interviewed every known violent felon in the area, but came up empty.

With no leads or suspects, the case went cold.

Years passed, and then a break came from a very unexpected place. In 2011, Kevin Sweat, who lived in the nearby town of Okmulgee, was unhappy in his relationship. He was engaged to Ashley Taylor, but things hadn’t always been smooth sailing. In fact, Sweat had written on his blog a year earlier that the engagement was “the biggest mistake of his life”. People described Sweat as secretive and unpredictable, and he would often write cryptic messages.

During the summer of 2011, Sweat told his friends that he and Taylor were eloping to New Orleans. They left town together, but Sweat returned alone. He told friends that along the way they had started arguing, and Taylor had left the car and walked away. Suspicious of his claims, Taylor’s family reported her missing.

When police visited Sweat to investigate their claims, they found a man who was obsessed with guns and knives. During questioning, Sweat admitted that he had killed Taylor by slitting her throat, and had then pushed her into a lake. However, when they searched his father’s property, police found a burnt-out bonfire that contained human remains. Also found in the fire were the remains of a pair of glasses. The prescription matched Taylor’s.

It was while making sure they’d thoroughly investigated the scene of Taylor’s murder that the police uncovered perhaps the most surprising part of the whole investigation. In the backyard where Taylor’s remains had been found, police uncovered shell casings. When the casings were analyzed, the police couldn’t believe it – they matched the ones recovered from the murders of Whitaker and Paschal-Placker three years earlier.

Could the man who killed his fiancé also be involved in the murder of two young girls?

Once Sweat was informed of the match, he began talking to police as easily as he had about Taylor’s murder. However, his tale was a strange one. He said that he had been driving down the road that afternoon when he had seen two monsters. When the monsters started moving towards him, he panicked and grabbed a gun and fired at them. He then grabbed another gun from his glove box and fired that as well.

Was a mental illness or hallucination the reason two innocent girls had been killed so brutally, and why so many bullets had been fired? For both girls, multiple shots could have been the cause of death. Sweat was adamant that he had never seen two girls on the dirt road that afternoon, only monsters.

Current Status:

In
2014
, Sweat pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. In return for waiving his right to a jury trial, the prosecution did not seek the death penalty. Instead, a judge would decide the verdict and sentencing.

Court documents suggest that Sweat may have held a grudge for unknown reasons against Paschal-Placker’s family. However, because of his guilty plea, this information was not made public. The only known motive for murdering Taylor was that he didn’t want to marry her.

Was that all it was, or had she discovered that he’d killed the two girls years before? Did he want her out of the way, or perhaps Sweat simply had an unpredictable violent streak that erupted twice with deadly consequences?

In October of 2014, Sweat attacked one of his lawyers while meeting in the judge’s chambers. He cut the man across the neck with a razor blade. The man survived, but after the incident no longer represented Sweat.

Sweat then tried to withdraw his guilty plea, but it was rejected. The judge sentenced Sweat, who was then twenty-eight, to three life sentences without the possibility of parole.

A memorial to Whitaker and Paschal-Placker remains on the side of the road where they were tragically killed. An angel statue stands surrounded by flowers, toys, and a music box.

Thankfully, the Whitaker and Paschal-Placker families did not have to wait decades for justice for their daughters.

Victim:
Jessica Lyn Keen

Location:
Columbus, Ohio

Suspect:
Marvin Lee Smith, Jr.

Date of Crime:
March 17, 1991

Date of Conviction:
February 7
th
, 2009

Backstory:

Jessica Lyn Keen was a fifteen-year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio. She was a model student, on the honor roll and also a cheerleader.

When she met Shawn Thompson, an eighteen-year-old young man from central Ohio, her life seemed to change. After she starting seeing Thompson, she quit cheerleading and her grades dropped. She reportedly skipped school frequently to see him.

Her parents objected to her relationship with Thompson, and in March 1991 they placed her in a home for troubled teens. Called Huckleberry House, it was a safe house and crisis center for runaways and troubled teens in Columbus, Ohio.

On The Day In Question:

On March 15, 1991 Keen left Huckleberry House after having a fight with her boyfriend. She had said she was going to the mall. She never returned, and the last time anyone had seen her alive was at a bus stop.

On March 17, Keen’s body was found at the back of Foster Chapel Cemetery. The cemetery was located twenty miles away from Huckleberry House.

Her body had been badly beaten, and she had been raped. She was dressed only in a single sock and a torn, dirty bra. Although she still had on her ring and watch, a pendant had been taken.

Investigation:

Police were immediately suspicious of her boyfriend, Thompson. However, DNA evidence cleared him of any involvement.

Evidence at the crime scene suggested that she had run from her attacker and tried to hide in the cemetery. Her other sock was found elsewhere on the grounds, and the imprint of knees in the mud behind a gravestone were also found nearby. Her body lay near a fence, where presumably her attacker had caught up with her.

With no further suspects to test the DNA evidence against, and not much other evidence to go on, the case grew cold. It would stay that way for over a decade.

Meanwhile, Marvin Lee Smith, Jr. was serving a nine-year sentence for two unrelated attempted assaults, both against women and in the Columbus area. During his prison term, a law was passed and went into effect that required inmates to submit their DNA to a statewide database.

As technology improved, in 2008 the DNA from Keen’s case was run, and it matched the sample from Smith. By that time, Smith had been released from prison, and was living in Burlington, North Carolina. North Carolina police arrested him and charged him with unlawful sexual conduct with Keen, taking another fresh DNA sample to verify the match.

With the DNA match verified, an extradition hearing was set for April 30, 2008. Smith appeared in court in Madison County and admitted that he had raped and murdered Keen.

He told the court that he had abducted her from the bus stop in his car. Keen escaped from his car and ran into the cemetery, where she collided with a fence poll and fell over. He beat Keen to death with a gravestone, later discarding it over a fence.

Current Status:

By confessing, Smith avoided the death penalty. He pled guilty to one count of aggravated murder, with specifications of rape. He was sentenced to thirty years to life in prison.

When he was arrested, Keen’s sister was quoted as saying “Everything in my life is measured against her loss. Time is marked before and after her death.”