Criminology - The Septic Tank Murders

Episode Date: August 30, 2020

In this episode, we're discussing three cases where victims were found in septic tanks. In 1977, an unidentified male was found in a septic tank in Tofield, Alberta. He was given the moniker of "Septic Tank Sam". Cam Lyman disappeared in 1987 from Hopkinton, Rhode Island leaving behind a lot of money and a suspicious trusted associate. Cam's body was found 10 years later. In 1978, five Louisiana teens disappeared in what appeared to be a series of kidnappings.  Join Mike and Morf as they discuss these bizarre cases of victims found in septic tanks. A significant amount of police effort went into solving these crimes. Some of that effort proved to be successful and some did not. The Louisiana case involves a dangerous criminal who was on the run using a fake alias. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 124 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you? I'm doing good. How about you? I'm doing really well. I hope you and I do better than we did last week and we don't have the type of technical

difficulties that would prevent us from putting out an episode. you know that that's something new you know for all the podcasts that we do what happened to us last week and I don't want to go into it uh it's never happened before 2020 has just been one of the years that if something is going to go wrong it's going to go wrong it will go wrong yeah good vibes though this is going to be a smooth easy episode i feel i like the positivity so we had some great patreon support let's give our shoutouts we had Colette Hamilton, Beko 911, Amy Sills, J.R. Childers,

Julie Kehan, Christy Lee, Jenna Kagawa, and Jenna Weikman. So that's a lot of great support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, that support really goes a long way, and we say it every week, but we can't say it enough. We really appreciate it.

And for anyone that would like to help support the podcast, they can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. And don't forget about Stitcher Premium. We still get a lot of people emailing or messaging about the earlier episodes of Criminology. They're out there. They're on Stitcher Premium. And there's a free 30-day trial. So you have nothing to lose. Check that out. All right, Morf. Let's jump into this case. Now listen, you and I have covered a lot of different types of cases. We've discussed victims of every type, some found in unbelievable environments. In this week's episode, we're discussing three murder cases where the victim's bodies were found in septic tanks. Any murder is horrible.

A murder victim has no control, obviously, as to what happens to their remains after the murder occurs. But imagine if your final resting place is being thrown down into the sludge, of a septic tank. But sadly, in the cases that we're talking about in this episode, that's exactly where the victims wound up. The first case we're discussing is a Canadian case from the late 1970s. Established in 1909, Tofield, Alberta is a small town about 42 miles southeast of Edmonton. About 2,000 residents called Tofield their home, surrounded by lakes and farmland. It hardly seems the place to house one of the most bizarre and brutal unsolved crimes in Canadian history. And the victim in that crime would be given the ominous moniker of septic tank Sam.

On April 13, 1977, a farmer in Tofield named Charlie McLeod was building a new house a few miles from his farm. He decided against buying a new pump for his septic tank. Instead, he decided to get the one from the tank at the farm. That tank served a farmhouse that was abandoned in 1975. It was a dilapidated shell of a home surrounded by old vacant farm buildings. But Charlie was apparently thrifty and he wanted to save a few bucks. So the extra work for him to get this old pump out was going to be worth it. When Charlie opened up the tank, he pulled out a sock, followed by a shoot.

Now, understandably, he was freaked out. So Charlie drove to the police station and informed the Mounties that he had found a body in his septic tank. It took the police six hours to pull the body in pieces from the tank. Not to be graphic, but you can imagine what conservable time in a septic tank can do to a body. It had been placed head first down the six foot deep tank and wrapped in a yellow blanket, secured with a rope around the head and body. Hundreds of pounds of lime have been poured on the body to speed up decomposition. It took authorities over an hour to scoop out the viscous liquid from the tank with an ice cream pail before they could retrieve the entire body.

It was clear to investigators immediately that whoever had placed this body in the septic tank wanted to ensure that it would never be found. And that if it was, the victim would never be identified. The victim was wearing a T-shirt, denim shirt, blue jeans, a thick gray white. work sock and imitation wallaby shoes that were possibly brown. Once the entire body was out of the tank, it was taken to the medical examiner who was tasked with finding clues to the identity of the victim and how this male victim died. Morvike can only imagine how unpleasant of an assignment this would have been, even for a seasoned medical examiner.

The autopsy concluded the man was killed. killed by two gunshots, one to the head and one to the chest. Based on the clothing condition, officials determined the man had been severely burned numerous times with a small butane torch. There were burn marks on the sleeves of his denim shirt. There was also evidence of sexual mutilation. The entire crotch area of the jeans had been cut out with a tool that had cut through the zipper, most likely a large knife or farm shears. The brutality of what was done to this victim was evident at every turn. The medical examiner also determined that the victim had suffered from some severe illness at around five years of age. His upper body strength suggested he was employed as a labor

and possibly worked on a farm. Investigators carefully logged into evidence the victim's clothing, the yellow sheet, and the rope that was recovered. They were stored in the hair and fiber section of the RCMO crime lab. The medical exam revealed that the man, may have been in the tank anywhere from six months to a year or maybe even longer. Because the body was heavily decomposed, investigators could not determine whether the man was dead before he was tortured and thrown in the tank. If the victim was alive, he must have suffered in agony before he died. Investigators were also unable to conclude if he was killed at the farm or elsewhere.

Furthermore, there was hardly any physical evidence leading police to the killer or killers. The police had an unidentified body and not much to send them in any one investigative direction. Two things were clear to police. The killer or killers wanted the man to suffer before death, assuming that the torture took place prior to him dying. And second, the killer or killers did not want the body to ever be found. detectives called it sheer luck that Charlie McLeod stumbled upon it. Additional pathologist and anthropologist examined the remains shortly after they were found

and estimated the man to be Caucasian between 22 and 28 years old, well-built, standing 5 feet 10 and weighing about 180 pounds with medium-length dark hair. More recent reports state that it took months for officials to confirm the victim was male, due to the sexual mutilation and decomposition. But news articles from May of 1977 and statements made by the local police referred to the victim as a male. But again, you get a sense of just how poor the condition of this body was. Authorities had a bit more to work with based on the physical details of the body. And according to the RCMP, authorities did not.

believe the man was local, or at least not local that anyone knew. They likely came to this conclusion since there were no missing people in the area fitting that description. Detectives came up with and floated around several possible theories. One theory suggested that maybe Sam was murdered in a gangland feud. Another pointed towards a scorn lover or the lover's boyfriend or husband. And yet another theory pointed at the possibility, the horrific crime was drug-related. Police also suggested that Sam was tortured by the killer to get pertinent information from him. But they didn't believe they would find an actual motive until they identified Sam, and that was going to be an uphill battle. Police came to believe that the killer or killers

were likely familiar with the area and the farmhouse. But that didn't necessarily mean that it was someone from Tofiel. There were a lot of hunters that came through the area each year. from other areas as news of the gruesome murder and discovery made its way around Tofield. Someone dubbed the victim Septic Tank Sam and the name stuck. Sam's horrific torture and murder scared Tofield residents. Farmers began checking their septic tanks and many people were convinced that the merciless killer walked among them. Residents looked at each other with suspicion and the rumor mill really cranked up. But it was all just idle gossip. None of it was really based in fact.

The gruesome murder puzzled investigators. One called it the most bizarre, disgusting, and baffling murder he had ever investigated. In June 1977, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, began the lengthy task of contacting roughly 800 dentists in an attempt to identify the body. A local dentist speculated the victim's teeth were in poor, shape and that what dental work he had done was probably Canadian. Detectives hoped that at least one of the 800 dentists in Alberta would have dental records of the victim, but they were disappointed in the end. Not one dentist came forward, claiming Sam as a patient. Despite public appeals for information and an extensive investigation,

no one came forward with information, and the police were no closer to finding the killer. In 1979, over two years after Sam was found in the tank, the case was handled over to investigator RCMP Corporal Jamie Graham, and he immediately dove into Sam's case, file number 77-001-38. After he was assigned to the case, Graham was determined to solve it and find the killer or killers, but he knew the chances were slim. A Calgary cop told him about an article he had read in a police publication about a couple who could build a reasonable reproduction of the face by studying the skull. Dr. Clyde Snow, a 54-year-old anthropologist, and Betty Galev, a medical illustrator.

The pair worked together in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Corporal Graham was hesitant to contact the couple, but he felt as though he had nothing else to work with. So really, almost as a last resort, he contacted Dr. Snow. Graham had the victim's remains exhumed and cleaned, and then he hopped on a plane to Oklahoma. When he met with Snow, Corporal Graham learned that anthropologists were not formally trained in facial reconstruction. It was something they learned as they went along. Dr. Snow began by establishing age, sex,

race, stature, and physique. Before long, he was so good at what he did, law enforcement officials began bringing him their unsolved, unidentified, human remains cases from all over the United States. He then teamed up with Betty Gatliff. Their work together was so good that at the time Corporal Graham contacted them, more than two-thirds of the 60 skulls the duo had reconstructed were identified. 10 to 20% of those cases were solved as a direct result of facial.

Reconstruction. Facial reconstruction was first used in Europe in the late 1800s. Journalist Tom Alderman of the Calgary Herald wrote in September of 1980 that one of its first uses was to track down the body of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who had been buried in 1750, somewhere in a section of a Leipzig cemetery, although no one was sure exactly where in that sense. And that section. Several bodies were exhumed before scholars found a skull that resembled Bach when reconstructed with a fakes. For his work in the septic tank, Sam case, Dr. Snow preferred to have the skull in a hip bone known as a pubic synthesis because that bone changes in surface texture with advancing age. Luckily, he had both in the case. Snow estimated the skeleton to be 35 years old,

several years older than the Edmonton pathologist and anthropologists had estimated. But to be on the safe side, he put the man's age between 26 and 40. He also believes Sam to be Native American because of the man's shovel-shaped teeth. But he also acknowledged that 90% of Mongolians and 5% of white people in North America had the same teeth. Dr. Snow took 50 measurements on the skull, another 75 or more on the rest of the skeleton. and then ran the findings through his Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, which would produce a list of probabilities on age, height and weight, race, sex, and whether the person was right or left-handed. The bones of the dominant hand are usually a few millimeters longer than those in the non-dominate hand.

Septic Tank Sam was determined to be right-handed. The next part of the problem, is where Betty Gatliff came in. Using clay, she created a three-dimensional model based on Snow's findings. As a medical illustrator, Betty knew the average thickness of skin tissue in certain places at certain ages on male and female faces. According to Betty, the mouth is approximately the width of the six top front teeth. The nose extends out about three times the length of the nasal spine. The ears are about the same length as the nose and longer and older people. The shape of the eyes follows specific predefined formulas, as did most of Betty's estimates. Anything that could not be defined by the shape of the skull, such as the eyelids, hair,

eyebrows, and wrinkles, Betty worked with averages. When Snow and Gatliff were done, Corporal Graham was looking into the possible face of septic tank Sam. Corporal Graham took pictures of the reconstruction back to Alberta. He was determined to give as much publicity as possible across Canada and released the photos to the news media, asking for the public's help in identifying Sam. Tips did come in, but unfortunately, none of them led to Sam being identified. Eventually, Sam's case went cold. On September 12, 1988, over a decade after his remains were deceased,

discovered, the Edmonton Journal published a piece on the case of Septic Tank Sam. The next day, police received a dozen calls. Most of the phone tips were about his possible identity. People told the police of someone they knew who had gone missing around the time Sam was killed. However, the dates that were given didn't correspond, and the case once again faded. Twelve years later, in 2000, Cyril Chan, a forensic artist with the Chief Medical Examiner's office in Edmond's and decided to try his luck with facial reconstruction. He spent three weeks in August of 2000,

examining Sam's skull to determine the face's tissue thickness, marked by pins in the skull. Then he added clay for flesh and wooden balls for eyes. Sam's actual skin and teeth were used for the reconstruction. Authorities had another possible likeness of Sam. But again, it still was not. not enough to get a break. In the early 2000s, Sam's DNA was extracted. An official stored it in a lab waiting for the day it could be tested against possible family members. In 2014, the Canadian

federal government passed legislation, allowing the RCMP to create a DNA-based missing person index. The missing children and persons and unidentified remains database was officially launched in 2018. According to the Edmonton Journal, it allows investigators to compare DNA from unidentified human remains to DNA from living relatives, who offer a sample to find answers about a missing loved one. Cold case investigators hope that new DNA technology will finally lead to Sam's killer. We know that genetic genealogy has led to not only killers and rapists being identified, but also to human remains being identified. identified and hopefully that might one day give Sam back his real name and perhaps lead to his

killer. The man known only as septic tank Sam lies in an unmarked grave in an Edmonton cemetery. And to me more, if I, you know, that hope is important, right? I think the genetic genealogy, you and I have talked about a lot. It provides a lot of hope to family members of missing persons, unidentified victims or victims that are identified and their killer has not yet been found. I just think it provides a lot of hope in these types of cases. Yeah, I think as technology advances and tools that are available to investigators advances, the chances are more likely that someone like Sam can be identified. But I think it was fascinating the kinds of things they tried in the pre-DNA.

age and it'll be interesting to see if Sam is identified how closely he did resemble the models and the photos they made of him. Well, one of the things that I was going to point out was, you know, as we were going through that case, the sense that I got was, man, they really put quite a bit of effort into trying to identify Sam. I mean, for this RCMP agent to get on a plane and fly to Oklahoma City, you know, just in the hopes of trying to get this reconstruction, I mean, you really like to see that type of police work. And hopefully the case can be solved one way or another because what was done to this man was brutal just from the descriptions. And for people that are listening, if they want to just jump right on Google or whatever.

there's plenty of photos and documents related to the case, and you can see the reconstructions that they did. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved, until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020.

Blood and Water Listen now Wherever you get your podcasts Our next case is from the East Coast of the United States In the 1980s And it's the case of Camilla Loll Cameliman Camilla was born in Westwood, Massachusetts

On September 4th, 1932 To Arthur and Margaret Lyman She had three older siblings Who are now all deceased Since she was a young girl Camilla loved dogs And became obsessed with animal shows and competitions.

In 1968, Camilla's father, Arthur, passed away from lung cancer. He was an affluent Bostonian with more than 30 years of public service in Massachusetts that included a period as commissioner of corrections and commissioner of conservation. Camilla inherited a fortune. After her father's death, she was very close to him. and she took his death extremely hard. Shortly after, she began wearing men's clothing, first in private, and then later in public, and she grew a mustache using steroids.

In 1985, she had her name legally changed to the less feminine-sounding camp. In 1987, Cam, who stood nearly six feet tall, maintained a 40-acre, 2.1,000, million state in Hopkinton, Rhode Island. Cam had purchased it three years earlier in 1984. It was on this estate where Cam owned and housed 58 showdogs, all clumber spangles and field spangles. Neighbors said Cam was cranky, and there was a fence at the front of Cam's property that kept out unwelcome people. Cam also distanced himself from the rest of his family. It was as if he wanted to be left completely alone. But Cam did have a small group of trusted associates who lived in or around Hopkinton

that helped take care of his property and business affairs. One of those associates was George O'Neill, a fellow dog enthusiast and breeder from nearby North Kingstown, Rhode Island. George oftened cash checks for Cam and picked up his mail at the post office. He also had power of very much. attorney over Cam's business matters and was the sole beneficiary in Cam's will. On July 18, 1987, Cam and George got into a heated argument on the telephone about clumber spaniels. George showed up at Cam's house the following day and found Cam gone. He also found the

phone yanked out of the wall. Cam's attache case of jewels was missing along with $200,000 in cash and some clothing. Cam was known to carry about $20,000 in cash to the store and kept bundles of money hidden throughout his house. George initially thought Cam had just left the house for a bit and would return shortly, and because of that, he didn't report Cam missing to the police. Later, George said he believed that Cam ran off to Europe to have a sex change operation, to become a man.

According to George, Cam had talked about it for years. Cam Lyman wasn't reported missing to the police until December 1988 when his brother, Arthur Jr., filed a missing persons report with the police. Then police chief George Whedon didn't see any reason to doubt George's argument that Cam frequently went out of town for extended periods of time without telling anyone. Because of that, the police didn't take any real action to look for Cam. Cam's siblings were alarmed from the very start because they knew Cam would never leave. his dogs for months at a time. In August 1988, they hired Charles Allen, a Boston private investigator, to find Cam. He contacted his informants in Europe's trans community to see if anyone fitting Cam's appearance had had a sex change operation. But no trace of Cam was found. Alan wanted to search

Cam's property, but George O'Neill would not let him. Alan became alarmed after discovering that George had been showing Cam's dogs as his own. He also continued to cash checks in Cam's name, keeping the money for himself. An official search for Cam Lyman didn't begin until John Scunio, until John Scuncio, a retired state police detective, took over his new police chief in 1996 and reopened the case. Two years prior, in 1994, Cam's two sisters, Edith and Mary, petitioned the court to have Cam legally declared dead. Rhode Island law states that if a resident of this state has disappeared and has been absent from his or her usual place of residence, and his or her whereabouts

has been unknown for more than four years, it shall be evidence that the person is dead to allow for the administration of his or her estate. Cam had set up a charitable trust called a Unitrust in 1976 in order to receive an annual inheritance income and a tax shelter. Cam amended the trust in 1986, naming the American Kennel Club's Museum of the Dog in St. Louis, the beneficiary. The Unitrust allowed the beneficiary to live off a percentage of the trust income until death and then gave the principal, to the nonprofit organization. Cam's will left just over a million dollars to the museum.

At the time of his disappearance, the trust was managed by co-trustees George O'Neill and Robert Regasta, a lawyer who had drafted and notarized Cam's documents and represented George in court. Cam had put aside an additional $2 million for family in trust funds, and they didn't want that money falling into the wrong hands. Cam's will also dictated that George O'Neill charter a plane and spread Cam's ashes over New York's Madison Square Garden during the annual Westminster Dog Show held there.

For years after Camm disappeared, the museum trustees continued to pay out lump sums of money to Kansas State and used the funds to pay for things such as appliances, taxes, lawyer fees, and more. In June 1995, Hopkinton probate judge Linda Urso declared Cam Lyman legally dead. Erso wrote in her ruling that some disturbing facts surround her absence and that George O'Neill's testimony during the proceedings was, quote, not wholly credible. Erso further wrote, the circumstances surrounding Lyman's disappearance as described by Mr. O'Neill are sketchy. and his actions for a long time thereafter are unsettling. He continued to run Lyman's affairs as if nothing happened.

In September 1997, 10 years after Cam vanished, a man named Greg Siner noticed a foul odor as he walked by the septic tank of his Victorian home that he had purchased the year before. The property was the former Cam Lyman property. He pushed aside the heavy cement lid to see if the tank needed to be pumped. Greg looked in and saw a human skull. He rushed into the house and called the police. Police came out and carefully extracted the remains from the septic tank.

Due to decomposition, the remains were unrecognizable. It took over a year to identify the remains and required the help of dental records and the FBI labs use in Washington, D.C. In October 1998, the remains were officially identified as belonging to Cam Lyman. While the police immediately suspected George O'Neill of killing Cam Lyman and embezzling Cam's fortune, there was never any evidence to prove it. George died at the age of 77 in July 2011 after a long illness. There have been no arrests made in Cam's murder and there have been no other publicly named suspects. I think more of pretty hard not to believe that George O'Reilly.

O'Neill had something to do with the murder of Cam Lyman. I mean, what type of big time dog person shows another person's dogs? What type of person, you know, continues to cash the checks of a person that's disappeared unless they have some type of information about what happened to that person? I mean, that's normally the case. I can't say 100% it is here. But I believe the police thought that. I think the problem is believing it and proving it, as we've seen in so many cases, are two

completely different things. And if it turns out that George is the person that murdered Cam and put him into that septic tank, then it probably comes down to the classic case of greed and maybe somehow Cam was cutting him off or had discovered that he was embezzling money from Cam. And who knows, maybe that could have led to this ultimate outcome. Yeah, it definitely seems to me as though if George O'Neill is the perpetrator, it was all about money. I mean, I don't think this was anything to do with jealousy or sex, love, any of those types of motives. It strictly would have been greed as far as I could tell.

Just one side note, Cam's case was featured on a memorable segment. of Unsolved Mysteries. Just one of many. There's a lot of memorable segments on Unsolved Mysteries. Oh, yeah. A lot of the cases we talk about, you can find Unsolved Mysteries connection to them. Our last Septic Tent case takes us to Bayou Country

in the deep south, Louisiana. In the spring of 1978, a series of kidnappings frighten the residents in the Morgan City, Louisiana area. It all started with the abduction of 16-year-old Mary Leah Rotterman. Mary was a sophomore at Morgan City High School and had planned to go on to college to become a psychiatrist. She was last seen at 8 p.m. on March 2nd, 1978, when she visited the K&B drugstore in Victor Boulevard in Morgan City.

Her car was found a ban in the store's parking lot. Mary's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Rottermond, received a phone call later that evening demanding $5,000 in ransom money. The caller gave no further instructions, but did allow Mary to speak to her parents. And she told them that she was unharmed. But this was the last time anyone heard from Mary. The FBI entered the case and searched for the teen with the Morgan City Police and the St. Mary Parish Sheriff's Department, but nothing was found. Composite sketches of two male suspects were made and circulated, but produced no

information as to Mary's whereabouts. At 10 p.m. on April 27, 27th, 1978, 17-year-old Gordon Mark Canella and 18-year-old Bridget Cantrell Sons were kidnapped from a penny-saver grocery store in Bayou Vista. An anonymous caller phoned the police to tell them to check on the store because it was vacant, even though the door was opened and the lights were on. When the authorities arrived at the store five minutes later. Bridget's lit cigarette was still burning in the ashtray, and her purse was behind the counter. About $150 in cash from the register was missing. Police found roughly that same amount of money in her purse. Both Gordons and Bridget's vehicles were still in the parking lot. Gordon's cigarettes were found in his car. On Thursday, May 11th, 1978, 15-year-old Judy Adams and 14-year-old Bertha Gould

attended the Central Catholic High School Fair at the municipal auditorium in Morgan City. They never returned home. They were last seen getting into a 1965 to 1973 model white sedan, most likely a valiant or a rambler, on Victor Boulevard near Redwood Avenue. Police presumed that the girls were runaways. But two weeks after their disappearance, decided they were most likely the victims of a kidnapping. At 6.42 p.m. on Thursday, May 25th, 1978, police discovered two bodies waded down at the bottom of a septic tank in Bayou Vista.

They had been searching the area for clues in the kidnappings when they discovered the bodies. The bodies were bound and gagged. One was blindfolded. Police initially believed the bodies to be that of Judy Adams and Bertha Gould, who had vanished together. But they were in for shock when one of the bodies was identified as Judy Adams and the other as Bridget Cantrell's sons. Both girls had been raped and strangled to death. Bertha and Gordon were still missing. During the last week of May 1978, the body of Gordon Mark Connella was found in a sugarcane field along the side of a gravel road just off of U.S. 90 near Calumet, Louisiana.

A piece of rope was found wrapped tied around his. neck, he had been strangled to death. Authorities immediately had a suspect in the kidnapping and murders, a 35-year-old named Robert Carl Hoenberger, who lived in Bayou Vista. He was employed at a welding company called R&M Services Inc. And this was the place where police found the bodies of Bridget Cantrell Sons and Judy Adams. Hoenberger was a former reserve sheriff's. deputy from California. He had previously been convicted three times for sex offenses. He was released from San Quentin prison sometime in 1977. In October of that year, he was wanted for the abduction and rape of another California woman. He then fled to Louisiana, where he lived under the

alias of Frank Green. But in relation to the Bayou Vista cases, Louisiana authorities couldn't find Hoenberger. He was last seen in Bayou Vista in mid-May, 1970. Police found his car in Bojure City in the northeast corner of Louisiana. So authorities placed a nationwide alert on him, but they knew he could have been anywhere. Investigators filed six charges against Hoenberger, three charges of murder, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, and one charge of armed robbery. So while they were looking for Hoenberger, investigators arrested a man named Sidney Harris as an accessory and charged him with, informing Hoenberger that police were looking for him for questioning. Harris was not involved in the kidnappings or murders.

After the nationwide alert went out for Hoenberger, he was seen in various parts of the country. On May 31st, 1978, a police lieutenant named Erling Marvick answered a newspaper ad for a 1970 model Plymouth. The ad had been placed in the Tacoma Tribune a few days before on May 23rd. 25th under the name of Don Cotter. The ad stated that the car had new tires and the owner wanted $750 cash for the vehicle. Marvick found the entire situation suspicious, especially when he saw the car had Louisiana license plates. The fact that Cotter was alone and said he was broke encouraged Marvick to run a check on the vehicle's plates.

It turned up the name of Frank Green. Hohenberg's alias in Louisiana. Lieutenant Marvick and three plain-closed police officers went to Hohenberger's apartment on Jefferson Street in Tacoma, Washington. Marvick approached Hohenberger and asked to have one more look at the car. He then gave a pre-arranged signal to the police officers. Marvick grabbed Hohenberger, wrestled into the ground, and Hohenberger's gun went off, killing him.

Authorities weren't sure if Hohenberger was shot in the temple or the front of the face, but surgeons did remove bullet fragments from behind his right ear. A search of Hoenberger's apartment turned up a 22 caliber rifle, a seven-inch hunting knife, and a windbreaker covered in blood. A St. Mary Parish Grand Jury later determined that Robert Carl Hoenberger was responsible for the abduction of Mary Leah Rotterman and Bertha Gould and the murders of Judy Adams, Bridget Cantrell Sons, and Gordon Mark Canella.

Mary Leah Rotterman and Bertha Gould have never been found. The abductions and murders were the Morgan City area's top news story in 1978 and understandably so as residents there were terrified during the investigation an unusually large number of wanted criminals

lived and worked in the Morgan City area and ordinance was adopted on June 2nd, 19, by the St. Mary Parish Police jury that required anyone who sought or changed employment to have an itinerant registration card. The person had to be fingerprinted and photographed to get the card and had to pay a $10 fee. This ordinance was passed after two public hearings resulted in no opposition. It went into effect on November 1st of that year. And more of I think you and I have talked about this in more than. number of times. It often takes something horrific to show people that they need to put something in

place. It's sad but true. People just don't think about it until something bad happens. And then, okay, the thought is, if we would have had something like this in place, it may have prevented what happened. It's just really hard to think about those things proactively. And I think when this town was experiencing all the stuff in the aftermath, they really took a close look at who was living among them in that area and were frightened when they found out that there were some shady people living there. You know, I think what strikes me about these cases that we've profiled in this episode, you know, just how gruesome some of them turned out to be.

A lot of that had to do with the fact that the victims were put in septic. tanks mean the decomposition and what happens to a body left in a septic tank for a period of time. And especially if something like lime is poured in over top, it's a really kind of a horrifying thought. And I think septic tanks in general, nobody thinks about them typically until they have to open them for some reason. So who knows how many bodies might have been disposed of throughout. the years and septic tanks all over the place.

That's kind of a scary thought because what you just said is absolutely true, right? Nobody wants to open up and take a look in the septic tank unless there's a need to. It's not something you're just going to go out and do, you know, probably on a routine basis. Now, you might have a company that comes out and pumps it. But again, are they, what are they doing? Are they just sticking a hose down in there? Are they really inspecting it? I don't know.

But no doubt. All very gruesome cases. I'm glad that, you know, at least when it came to the cases in Louisiana, there was some resolution. It may not have been exactly what the families wanted because Hoenberger never made it to trial, but at least they know. They know what happened to their family members. and they know who was responsible,

even if a jury didn't actually get the chance to find Hoenberger guilty. I think there's still hope in the other cases, especially in the septic tank Sam case, hopefully genetic genealogy brings that one to solve status. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at truecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love the show and you haven't done so yet, Take a minute. Go out. Give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends. The word of mouth is huge for the podcast.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. All right, Morph, that is it for another episode of Criminology. But we'll be back with everyone. next Saturday night with an all new episode. So until then, for Mike and Morf. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.