Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Karina Holmer in Boston

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

This episode was originally released in January 2018 and is one of seventeen episodes from the archives we’ll be bringing you every Thursday, now through top of next year. And now you know why... we’re going on tour! Get your tickets now at  crimejunkiepodcast.com! 

Hi, Crime Junkies. Britt here. And today we're hitting our last stop on the East Coast, Boston, Massachusetts. Boston is a city known for many things. But as Crime Junkies know that back in 1996, it was the newly found home to an au pair from Sweden that was looking to explore her dreams in the United States. She was supposed to have her whole life ahead of her, but instead never got the chance. We all still had so many questions back in 2018 when we first told you the story, and I wish we had more answers today. But we're re-sharing this case as a reminder to all you Crime Junkies. If you have a secret, for the love

of God, tell someone, anyone, because you never know what might happen next. because you never know what might happen next. Hi everyone, and welcome back to Crime Junkie. I am your host Ashley, as always joined by Britt. Hi everyone. And this week I'm super excited. I have a story that I had never even heard about before I started researching. I'm super excited to tell you junkies about it.

But first, me and Britt wanna tell you a little bit about one of our favorite nonprofits. This episode of Crime Junkie is brought to you by Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana. So you're saying that Crime Stoppers just takes the tips and helps make arrests? No, they don't actually do any of the arresting. All Crime Stoppers does is they're responsible for taking the tip, keeping the tipster anonymous, and then giving that information to police and police do all the arresting. So you're saying crime stoppers wants just the tip?

I don't even know how to follow that up. But yes, crime stoppers is only responsible for taking the tips and their number one goal is making sure that the tipsters remain anonymous. As of early 2018, Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana is responsible for clearing over 7,000 cases because of their tips. I encourage you to get involved with your local Crime Stoppers.

And if you want more information on Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana, go to crimetips.org. I'm going to be back. So, Britt, I am super excited because I think I might have found a case that you have never heard about. That does not happen very often. It never happens. Tell me, have you heard about the murder of Karina Homer? Karina Homer? Oh, it doesn't sound familiar. I'm super excited.

Brett, you sound a little bit rough today. I am sick. So, excuse me if I sound kind of congested and scratchy-throated because that is exactly what I am. So, sorry guys. Well let me give you a little bit of junkie medicine because I'm going to tell you this brand new story. All right. So Carina Homer was 19 in the year 1995. And this girl is actually from Sweden. She won the lottery there, which gave her about $1,500. This girl is young. She's beautiful. She's energetic. And she decides that she wants to take this money

and start a new life, try living life in America. She gets a job in the US as an au pair for a couple in Dover, Massachusetts. This is like the first part where this story gets a little bit questionable. So part of the reason I had never heard about it and you had never heard about it is there's not a lot on this case. Even though I read that it's one of the reason I had never heard about it and you had never heard about it is there's not a lot on this case.

Even though I read that it's one of the most famous Boston cases, there is little to no information on this. So when I'm looking up how she got this job, I found some really fishy articles, basically from the US government saying, we run these agencies that bring au pairs over, they're registered through us, they come in the United States through us, they're working on a visa for au pairs. But she wasn't registered with any of these organizations, none of the normal ones that

all of her other au pair friends were. So I have no idea how she would have even found out about this job or got connected with this job. The only thing I can maybe assume is that she had friends over here that knew of a family, but she really went about this in odd way. And I don't know if that was just happenstance or if there was some reason she wasn't going through like the proper channels. Well, she works for a family of Frank Rapp and Susan Nichter. Now they're married and

they have kids, but they both have really prominent careers, which is why they have different names. Frank is a commercial photographer, and Susan is a prominent painter. So like very upper middle class jobs. Definitely, very ritzy. She would work the week taking care of the kids and doing housework, helping around. And on the weekends, she would have those off. And her employer, Frank, actually had a loft downtown where he did all of his commercial photography.

It said that she spent a lot of time in that loft on the weekends. She would stay the night there. I don't know if that was just to get out of the house. So she wasn't always like with the kids that you're babysitting. I feel like you would just need a break. Right.

But I don't know if she had more of a friendship with her employer or if things crossed a line ever. It also seems kind of weird to me. Like I understand you want to get away, but to be spending nearly every weekend, I don't know if he was with her or if the agreement was basically he works there on the weekdays and then she goes there on the weekends just to get away from the family. Again, very little information, but we do know that she would go there frequently. The story of hers really starts the summer of 1996. So she had been in America for a few months and she sends a letter home, a couple of letters home actually, telling her family that she's going to be cutting

her trip short. She wants to come back to her small town in Sweden. She tells her family the reason is she is really tired of house chores, that she's doing a lot more house work than she originally thought she was going to be doing. She's just kind of over it. It's not what she dreamed it would be and she's just going to be coming home. Well there's one letter sent to her friend that tells a little bit different story. She tells her friend that she's cutting her trip short, but because something terrible happened.

And she tells her friend she can't tell her what it is, but she'll tell her when she sees her when she gets home. No. Right, so there's crime junkie lesson number two in life. If you ever have a big secret and something terrible happened, don't wait to tell somebody. You will 100% die before you get to tell somebody. Just tell anyone.

Write it in a letter and delay mail it. Mail it to yourself. I don't know. But don't wait. I thought you said I was going to enjoy this story and it was going to make me feel better. I feel worse. I know, I know. Like as soon as I read that, I was like, oh no, baby girl. She sends that letter home and her friend doesn't think anything initially. She's like,

oh, you know, she's coming home. I'm just excited to see her. Obviously, it's nothing that bad. She's going to tell me when she gets home. She's not hurt. Her family hasn't hurt anything bad. So her friend doesn't alert any kind of, you know, she doesn't set off any kind of alarms or alert her family. Carina seems to be living a pretty normal life in Boston. You know, aside from this letter, everyone thought she was pretty happy. She has friends there, actually lots of other au pair friends who are even from Sweden. So she doesn't feel like too much of an outsider. She has friends there, actually lots of other au pair friends who are even from Sweden. So she doesn't feel like too much of an outsider. She has a group that she hangs out with on the weekends. She's even dating.

She, for a short time, dated a Boston police officer. And then she also dated another man from South Boston in that short time she was there. And from what I can tell, neither relationship was extremely serious, just kind of fleeting, but just to show you that she was comfortable, she was outgoing. And the story really starts for her on Friday, June 21st, 1996. Her and her friends meet up at a downtown loft. And again, this is another question I have that can't really be answered. But all they keep mentioning is this downtown loft that they meet up at. I don't know if this is her employer's loft. Yeah, I was going to ask that.

Right. If it's one of her friends lofts. I just know that they all meet up and the plan is for them to get together and then they go down to the bar together. They all go to Zanzibar, which is in downtown Boston. And it was like the hip bar for young people. A lot of foreign people would go there is what I was reading. She was obviously only 20 at the time, but she had a fake ID. She went out that night wearing a, I've heard black or gray shirt with very tight, shiny silver pants. So that plays into account later when we're talking about eyewitnesses seeing her. She wasn't

just wearing all black. I feel like people would remember this girl in super shiny silver pants. But it was 1996, so I mean, anyone could be running around in silver pants. The 90s though. Yeah, it's true, true. So here's what we know for sure happened that night. She goes in with her friends, she's having a great time, they're staying there shutting the bar down, and she gets really intoxicated. And we know for sure that sometime between the hours of two and three in the morning, she exits the bar. What we don't know is exactly how she exited the bar or who she exited with because there starts

to be some different accounts. One person says that she had actually fallen asleep and then the bouncer kicked her out alone. Another account says that she went outside with an older man and then a third account says that she just exited the bar by herself doing okay. She wasn't like passed out. But all accounts say she was very intoxicated. At some point, we go back to we do know that she tried to get back in the bar to find her friends, but the bouncer won't let her back in because the bar is officially closed,

they've stopped serving, so people who are in there are slowly making their way out, but they're not gonna let any new people into the bar. There are a couple more eyewitnesses that see her after she's denied entry. And a lot of these are confirmed by multiple people. So one thing they know for sure that she did is she was seen talking and dancing with a homeless man for a little while.

Naturally. Naturally. Then the next sighting that they think is pretty confident in is they see her talking to a man with a really large white dog and they're both, the dog and the man are wearing matching Superman shirts. I would also stop and talk to this man for the record. And someone overhears him saying that he's from the North area, So they give this account of this man from the North

with his large white dogs in matching Superman shirts. And they get that from a couple of people because obviously someone like that's going to stick out. There's another possible sighting of her talking to four men in a silver car. And the witness says that they were trying to convince her to go to some kind of after party, but it's unknown if she actually got in the car. There's a fourth witness who has a possible sighting

of her in a car, but I don't know how seriously to take this one. I only saw it in one place. And additionally, I think what's really distinct about her is the clothing she was wearing and being out in front of that bar. I don't know if you would recognize her in a car at three o'clock in the morning. Right. Another person says she's seen walking alone on a street that's adjacent from the street the bar is on. And between 3.30 and four o'clock in the morning, someone spots her in front of this 24-hour store that's about one mile from the club. Now, we wouldn't normally put a ton of stock in that. Again, it was just one person. But what we find out later is this 24-hour store is actually really close

to where her body was found. So it's possible that she actually did get there whether she walked or whether she maybe was in the car and someone drove her. But we have this one-off sighting. At this point, all of the sightings stop. And for 30 hours, no one sees her. And to be clear, she at this point is not reported missing. This is all stuff we've pieced together after the fact. She is on her weekend break, so her employers haven't reported her missing. They don't expect to see her on the weekend. And it was Friday night that she went missing.

Sunday afternoon, there's a news broadcast that a body of an unidentified blonde woman had been found with a fake ID or they assume a fake ID. That's when her employers get notified and actually call the police and say, hey, this might be our au pair. Now, the way they found this body is insane. So Sunday morning, the very early hours, there is a homeless man who's digging through garbage cans, trying to find cans to turn in, loose food, whatever. And he finds this black garbage bag and he opens the bag and inside is the full torso of a woman.

Whoa! Just the torso. He obviously immediately calls the cops. The cops find that she had been totally cleaned, even all of her makeup removed. There's no account that I can find. It says that specifically they were keeping it under wraps, whether or not she was clothed or nude. There was one blog entry where it talks about her naked torso, but I have a feeling that's just somebody doing their own interpretation,

because from everything I could say, the police were intentionally keeping that quiet. The body had been strangled and severed at the waist right below the ribs. So really, the only thing that the person had to cut through was her spine. And I don't know if this is a show of somebody who has medical knowledge, or if the person is just mildly smart. You know what I mean? It doesn't take a lot to figure out what- I would say, or like, path of least resistance, for lack of better terms. Exactly. One police report that I read said that she may have been alive for up to 24 hours after she was last seen, and they're assuming she was last seen about 3 a.m. on Friday. So,

I don't know, again, I only saw one side of that. I don't know if that means the body hadn't set into rigor mortis. I don't know if that means it was still warm. I don't know if they could just tell by blood flow. That being said, there wasn't a ton of blood. This was a secondary scene. And to this day, they have no idea where she was actually murdered. So her torso was just found in this bag. They searched the rest of the dumpster and they never found her waist or legs. So once the host family called in, police obviously start investigating. I don't really know what to think of the host family calling in. If they, again it was Sunday that this was broadcast so she wasn't missing. I don't believe from

everything I found that they put a picture of her on the news, so I think it's a little bit strange that they're like, oh, a blonde girl in a dumpster must be our Swedish au pair. That we generally don't hear from on the weekends. Right, right. But again, I don't know all the details. It might not be that fishy, but a little bit strange. Well, police obviously investigate them first. The family immediately shuts down and lawyers up. Now, I don't think that necessarily means someone is guilty. I am all about luring up if anything happens ever, even if you have nothing to do with it. This is also Boston in the 90s, but they were very uncooperative. Other nannies had some very

unflattering things to say about Frank, that he was just kind of sleazy. They wouldn't confirm or deny whether or not Frank and Karina had any kind of relationship. As they're investigating the family, something super fishy happens. Right behind their condominium, like within 200 feet, at 920 p.m. on Monday evening, this is just a cup, this is a day after her body was found, there is a dumpster fire. Like up in flames, the whole thing is just burning right behind her employer's home. So police are immediately going and checking it out. Red flags are going up everywhere. They're thinking, okay, is this the second half of her body? Is there something of hers that people are getting rid of? They completely

empty out the dumpster, try to examine anything that they can still visually see or test. From everything they find, they weren't able to conclusively say that it actually had anything to do with Karina, but it's something that keeps getting brought up in every single article and every single blog post or Reddit or Websleuths that I read on this. Everyone refers back to that dumpster fire and just said it's really suspicious. But since they couldn't link anything to them, they continue to look at other suspects. And they start with that homeless man that she was dancing and talking to. They find that his name is Juan Polo, and they quickly rule him out. He's just a local guy. He had plenty of alibis. People saw him all the time. He wouldn't

even have anywhere to take a body and dismember it, even if he wanted to. So they decided that their next best bet is to track down that man and his dog. Superman dog, yes. Because also you are probably a serial killer if you're walking around in Boston at 3am with a matching shirt with your dog. I mean, I am all about dogs, but it's a little bit strange, no? I mean, okay, here's the thing. I'm looking at it in the light of 2017 where my dogs match each other and occasionally coordinate with me and my husband. So my filter is off.

Okay, here. My problem is not with the matching Superman shirts. My problem is that- The 3 AM and the matching shirts. Exactly. So they actually find this guy because he stands out like a sore thumb. His name is Herb Witten and he actually lives in Andover, Massachusetts, which is 32 minutes north of Boston. So- Very far away to just be hanging out, walking your dog. Right. And whoever overheard them actually overheard them correctly.

He was a man who was from like somewhere north and frequently he would say would like go walk his dog downtown. But it seems super weird to drive 30 minutes at 3 a.m. to walk your dog and like talk to a bunch of really drunk people because that's the only people who are walking the streets at 3 a.m. Definitely doesn't sound like fun. Well police end up ruling him out because they say that he got a speeding ticket the same night that she was last seen. So they say this rules him out because he was obviously headed back to Anover.

He was in his car. He couldn't have been murdering her. But what I question is if the police also say that she could have been alive for up to 24 hours after she was last seen. That doesn't mean that he like had to be killing her right at that time that he was getting a speeding ticket. Did they search his car? I mean, I've never gotten a speeding ticket. She could be in the trunk. What kind of car was it? I have questions. I have so many questions, but it's 1996 and there are no answers. So yeah, so they said

the police, I'm hoping they know more than me, but they completely ruled him out because of this speeding ticket. Another suspect that pops up is John Zwiz. I'm not really sure why he came up, but people love talking about him. He lived really close to where her body was found. He's just an odd duck that I think had had a couple of run-ins with the law, nothing super serious. He's in this very dark grunge

band. And shortly after her murder, he released a song and people often quote the lyrics when they're talking about him. Part of the song goes, I've got an old man's car. I've got a jazz guitar. I've got a tab at Zanzibar. Tonight, that's where I'll be. And a lot of people refer to this because it came out shortly after she was murdered. And they think it's just a nod to the fact that maybe he was there that night and he had something to do with it. But outside of these lyrics, there's been no other kind of confession and police couldn't link him to it in any way. There's brief talk of a man named Eugene McCollum, who in 2000 killed and decapitated a prostitute and a man from East Boston.

A lot of people like to link him to the case just because of his decapitation. Obviously he's okay with murdering people, he's okay with severing bodies, but police again say that he was a suspect for a long time, but after he was caught for these other murders, went to court, was tried and convicted, they said that they're not bringing any other charges and they don't consider him a suspect in the case anymore. And unfortunately, the police didn't feel the need to share with the public why, and that's literally the only information we have on him. There is really random stuff connected to this case as well, which again, I totally

believe is unrelated, but just what are the odds? So in the same building as where the dumpster where her body was found, there's kind of a famous case, this man named Rafi Kokedekin. He was accused of killing his friend in the desert years later. Him and his friend went on a camping trip and they got lost and really dehydrated. And he said that he had killed his friend as like a mercy killing. But after they tested the body, they found that he really wasn't that dehydrated. So there's all this speculation around that. He's actually in prison now for that crime. Totally, I mean, not the same crime at all. But again, just super weird that he was there at the time and

then murders his friend later. I mean, it's just one of those things that, again, people bring up. Bizarre coincidence, yeah. Bizarre coincidence, right. Well, the case kind of stalls out at this point. They've kind of run out of suspects. There's nowhere to go. They still don't even have a crime scene. And about one year after her murder, Herb Whitman, our dog-loving friend, commits suicide. And there's no record I can find online about any kind of suicide note or reason he left

or whether or not he had a history with depression. But a lot of people are saying, okay, why? Admission of guilt. Right, it's total admission of guilt. He couldn't live with what he did and he just had to do that. But police still say no-go, they wouldn't look into it. Any further, they said he was just a disturbed man.

He was never a suspect. And the case goes back to being cold. They try and bring in the FBI and the FBI do their thing and try and create a profile of someone who would do a crime like this. But the problem is it's 1996. They have nothing to work with except for eyewitness testimony, which we know is super unreliable. They have no security footage. They have no phone records. No, really, computer records. I say no social media, no mutual friends, no crossover, nothing. If this happened today, I mean, they would have footage probably outside of the bar.

They would have all the text messages between her and her friends, not only the day of, but leading up to the event. Pictures of her in the background in pictures from other people at the club. I mean, we've all seen this. Yeah, posting. Right, right. But they're really not able to track down anything. Okay, okay, wait.

I know this is a while back in the story, but didn't she date a cop or something? Right. Again, briefly, it gets mentioned like in a couple of news stories where the reporters like and the police say that they looked into the officer she was dating and he's totally cleared. Of course they did. Right. But they don't give any kind of alibi or anything like that, which again, they haven't done with a ton of people that they gave her Whitman's alibi, which makes me think he was

a very serious suspect. Right. Herb Whitman's alibi, which makes me think he was a very serious suspect. But what I try and remember, this is Boston in 1996. They were notoriously corrupt then. Hot mess. Hot mess. Right. So nothing was below them. They had no problem.

Like if they thought someone did it, just confirming their suspicions and building evidence around that, they had no problem protecting their own. So while this guy was literally immediately ruled out, there's not a whole lot of faith that I have in that. The case is really dead at this point. I mean, I've laid out all the suspects for you. There's nobody at this point who has come forward with any new information. They still to this day have no idea where the crime scene was. But the strangest thing, so her employer, remember that was Frank and Susan,

Susan's a painter and I found her website. No. Yes. She painted her. Kind of. So maybe. No, I don't know. So the website is SusanNichter, S-U-S-A-N-N-I-C-H-T-E-R.com. And she has like a gallery of all of her paintings. And she has a couple that are just super disturbing. There's one in the Never Been Seen exhibit where it's called Carried Across, and it's this blue painting of what looks like a man holding the body of a naked woman kind of upside down, and she looks unconscious or dead. He looks just totally shocked and surprised. And then in the shadows, there looks to be another person, I assume a woman, but it could

be a man, who's caressing the man's head, telling him it's going to be okay. I just pulled it up and I see the picture and it's super spooky. Also, two before it, there's a picture with a white dog wearing sunglasses, which I feel like a Superman dog would also wear. But, no, it's called Messenger, which is also really strange. So yeah, it's a girl who actually looks a lot like, so the other one was all in blue. This one is in full color and it's a girl who looks a lot like Karina. She has blonde hair, she's in a blue dress

and it looks like she's pushing away a man with wings. And I have never seen a picture of Frank Rapp. I couldn't find one. I have no idea if this is what he looks like. But it's a man with like very small spectacle glasses and an orange hat who appears to be running towards her and she's pushing him away and he's got something in his hands. But can you tell what that is, Brittany? It almost looks like maybe a map or like a fairy tale book. I can't quite tell honestly. What are your thoughts on it?

Other than it just looks like a girl who looks like Karina pushing away a man because he's coming at her unwantedly. Again, all of this is crazy speculation. There's a lot of her paintings, if you guys want to go through the site, we'll post a link to her website on ours, that are really dark and disturbing. And you know, you could take this one of two ways. Either she's painting about what she knows and something happened and it's this like deep dark secret that she's finding a way to express, but also whether or not they had anything to do with it, it happened to her. You know what I mean? It was her family.

It's still someone close to her, close to her family, close to her kids. Right. It was something that was like an experience within her life that I'm sure played heavily into her own experience. And so that might just be something that she continues to replay and try and work out and reason in her own head, but still super creepy. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be hard to forget some, but still super creepy. Yeah. Yeah.

It's going to be hard to forget some of those pictures, honestly. Yeah. So Frank and Susan have just gone on, obviously they're living their life. She's still painting. He's a photographer. Mr. Whitman's dead, but everyone's just kind of gone on and forgotten about Karina and it's a totally cold case.

I don't know if anyone's gonna ever go back and reinvestigate. I think there's probably a lot that could be done knowing what we know now about how corrupt police were back then. I wonder if a fresh take or a fresh look at the case wouldn't bring about something a little bit new or if they wouldn't want to,

because maybe there's something that they were covering up. I don't know, but unfortunately, Karina's family is still in Sweden, they still have no answers. And I can't imagine being in another country and having something this horrific happen to your daughter or your sister or your friend. And I'm sure that letter that she sent home just absolutely haunts them. And no one ever figured out what was so terrible that happened to her. Well, and you also, at least to me, I also have to question the idea of maybe it's not getting a second or closer look because she wasn't a citizen or a US national.

What would our country be implicated in internationally in the event that it was potentially someone higher up in Boston, like a police officer in Boston. He's a technically a person of the state. Yeah. And I have to think that most of the time when cold cases are solved, a lot of it has to do with the family pushing and not letting go and being relentless. And that's so hard for her family to do. Not only being far away, but not really understanding our customs or understanding how it works. And I'm sure they're not wanting to make enemies, but also not wanting them to give up. So I don't even know if there's you know, they're very well could be some DNA in the case that we just don't know about.

So I wonder if they've ever gone back and look and tried to retest. But I have a feeling there wouldn't be knowing that she was completely cleaned before her torso was dumped. Yeah. Wow. That was a really good story. I feel like I'm the little kid in the Princess Bride. While you're sick and I'm telling you a story.

Yeah. I mean, it didn't make me feel better at all. And I have so many questions, but you did a really good job. So. Thank you guys for listening to another episode of Crime Junkie. If you want to interact with us on social media, you can do that Twitter at Crime Junkie Pod or Instagram at Crime Junkie Pod or Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. And be sure to check out our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. We'll see you guys next week. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.

So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve? No!