Into Oblivion: The Dark Spring Killer, Part 7

This is a slightly revised version of an earlier story...

Spring times are supposed to be about life and renewal and second chances. Once upon time in central Oklahoma City the spring was dark and filled with visions to cause nightmares.

The first body parts showed up in April 1, 1976, in an abandoned house at 325 NE 8th in Oklahoma City, utility workers exploring an abandoned house found the head and body parts of a 18 year old Cathy Lyn Shackelford. At the time, however, she was unidentified and was labeled a 'Jane Dow'.

Fast forward to April 19, 1979 when several grisly discoveries are made between mid-April and the first of May. All around the 300 block NE 10th and 200 block NE 7th in Oklahoma City. The second known victim was named Arley Bell Killian.

A strange gap of seven years followed before another find was made. On March 6, 1986, the body of 23 year old Tina Sanders was located at 507 N. Lindsay. A fourth, found during excavations in the mid 1990's, has been suggested but unverified.

 

There are interesting similarities which might provide links to similar crimes and bring closure to this cold case. All the women were Native American, they either lived on the streets and/or worked as prostitutes, and were all probably killed within the same one mile radius where their bodies were found. The killings were in the spring, they were not rushed, and due to the ease with which the body parts were created and discarded, the killer had to have been familiar with his surroundings (the Stiles Circle - Lincoln Terrace neighborhood; now generally covered by the Centennial Expressway and the OU Health Science buildings and related structures).  Each body had an incision in the lower lip, massive body mutilation and dismemberment, and certain parts of the bodies were never found.

The chronology of the murders -1976, 1979 and 1986 - indicate there may have been a pattern at work.  Another killing (5) might have occurred in 1982-1983.  Just as possible, however,  the killer could have been in jail, in the military, or out of state on some job during the seven year break.  It is likely other killings, as of yet to be found,  may be fit that pattern.(Oklahoma Cold Cases) It would be atypical for such a killer to have such a long 'cooling off' period but not impossible.

Some suggest that another body was found April 22, 1995 and pulled from missing head, hands and feet, from a shallow grave 50 miles west of the city.   Authorities were said to note 'similarities' in the manner of the dismemberment. (Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes, 2009,p. 291) The time period is shortly after the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City and that story was the major news for several days and no report was found to confirm that suggestion.

In 1993, the combined efforts of Andra Medina, Sgt. Norma Adams, Norman forensic sculpture Betty Pat Gatliff, and well known Oklahoma based anthropologist , Dr. Clyde Snow brought closure to the first Jane Doe.  DNA identified her as Shackleford ("DNA Tests Identify '76 Slaying Victim". Steve Lackmeyer, Oklahoman, Nov. 30, 1993, pg.1).

There were also some 'interesting' bodies in eastern Oklahoma, not for from the I-40 corridor in Shamrock 1975, Wellston 1985 and Broken Arrow 1989. Also possibly other locations in 1985 and the early 90's.    Body parts or dismembered bodies of young women who apparently went missing unnoticed and unidentified.  The 1960's through the 1990's were especially violent with serial killers springing out of their dank worlds to grab headlines through gory acts: Kemper, Bundy, Rader and so many others.

The killer may have been influenced by the famous "Black Dahlia" case related to the 1946 murder of Elizabeth Short, one of the thousands of young women who fled to the sunny warmth of California with dreams of modeling and maybe stardom.  When her dissected body was found displayed in an empty lot in a quiet Los Angles neighborhood, few had ever seen in such a sight beneath those sunny skies.  She had been cut in half, sections had been removed, and strange cuts marked both halves of her body.  Her lovely face had been disfigured by slitting the mouth so that it appeared to be ear-to-ear. She had been killed elsewhere, her body drained of blood and washed before she was staged in such a manner where she would be found.  Police at the time viewed her as perhaps the latest kill in a long string of murders plaguing the area from the late 1930's. They asked themselves if she was actually #8 in a line of victims.  Later, after her death there would be another murder police said had "Black Dahlia" aspects to it. All of this or some of it may have been known to the OKC killer because on the severed heads police found strange slits and cuts that served to widen the mouth, and remained explained.

 

Psychologists of the time providing profiles and suggestions to law enforcement produced the common description that inferred that the killer was probably also Native American or African American since it was believed that serial killers would only hunt among their peer racial and social group.  The presence of such serial killers as Jake Bird, an African American man, who confessed to killing numerous wife women in the 1920-1940's may indicate that theory may not be as iron clad as it was once thought. The fact that serial killers often hunted amid their own race in a time of racial segregation may have been less a matter of choice than necessity.  Once racial barriers fell, the victims of serial killers was extremely varied as to race.

 

What happened to the killer? Where did he go?  One notorious killer confessed to some of these deaths but the confessions are considered by most as suspect, the last minute greedy attempt by a sociopath to get attention.  

 

If that is true, then chilling questions remain. When the region was razed by bulldozers and new building rose over the bloody grounds, what secrets were lost?  Are there other victims  out there - somewhere? Victims of this monster who stalked the streets to prey- at leisure -  on women struggling just to survive?

---Marilyn A. Hudson, 2014 (Revised and updated from earlier post)