City of Syracuse, documents related to their investigation into the murder of Karen M. Levy.
New York.
Karen Merle Levy.
Background: Karen Merle Levy was born on October 28, 1954 to Bertram and Sylvia (nee Neifield) Levy in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Bertram Elliott Levy was born on June 17, 1927 in Camden NJ and Sylvia was born on May 29, 1929 in Pennsylvania. After graduating from Camdem High School in 1944, Mr. Levy went on to serve in WWII, and upon returning home married Sylvia in the summer of 1950; the couple went on to have three children together: Karen, Eric, and Richard. Bertram was the chairman of the board for Parts Distributors Incorporated in Cherry Hill, and according to the 1950 census, Mrs. Levy’s profession was listed as ‘a secretary at a sweater manufacturer.’ According to her father, before she was killed Karen had recently made a ‘prayer shall’ for her brother, Rick, and she ‘was very creative, good at cooking and sewing. Not a great student.’ He went on to say that ‘she enrolled in home economics at Syracuse University, so you can imagine what kind of girl she was. And there were some who felt she was very pretty, and that’s how I felt too.’
Syracuse University: After graduating from Cherry Hill East High School in 1972, Karen went on to attend Syracuse University, majoring in Home Economics. According to Karen’s family, her hobbies included bowling, reading, and riding her bike, and those that knew her well said that she possessed a lot of ‘old-fashioned qualities’ and really excelled at cooking and sewing. At the time of her death she was working on making an afghan and had it with her when she left for New Jersey. Ms. Levy stood at 5 feet tall even, weighed between 100 to 105 pounds, and wore her dark brown hair at her shoulders; she also had brown eyes and wore gold-rimmed, ‘granny-type’ glasses.
At the time of her murder Karen was in a long-distance relationship with a young man named Gary Lieberman, who transferred to Cherry Hill East High School in the beginning of their junior year in 1970. Lieberman’s name came immediately after hers in their school’s yearbook, and because of that a part of me wonders if they were brought together for semi-logistical reasons. After graduating high school he went on to attend Monmouth College, located in West Long Branch, New Jersey.
In her daughters first few months away from home, Mrs. Levy said that she ‘couldn’t keep her in writing paper, she wrote to us and her grandmother and her friends all the time. She called home more than once a week.‘ The Levy’s saw Karen for the last time roughly three weeks before she disappeared, during parents weekend on October 28, 1972, which also happened to be her 18th birthday. At that time Karen shared with them her plans of borrowing one of her brothers cars to go and visit Gary the weekend of November 10, 1972, but he wound up needing it. So, she did what many other young students at SU did at the time: she posted a three-by-five index card on a bulletin board on campus that said ‘ride wanted’ that contained her name, contact information, and final destination. Mrs. Levy said that ‘she told her friends he sounded strange over the phone and asked them to come along with her to meet him. The man looked alright and she took the ride.’
Monmouth College: On November 9, 1972 a ‘non-student’ and self-proclaimed ‘businessman*’ from Livingston, NJ calling himself ‘Bill Lacey’ reached out to Levy by phone and agreed to take her to Monmouth College, and the two made plans to meet at the Upstate Medical Center near campus at 6 PM the following day (*one report said he claimed to be a ‘traveling salesman’). Levy was accompanied by her friend Paula Lippin and her boyfriend Mitchell Sakofs, and they were able to confirm that she did meet up with an individual that introduced himself as Bill Lacey and was last seen walking away from them in his company. She was last seen wearing a navy blue peacoat, blue bell bottom ‘dungarees,’ a multi-colored V-neck vest, and brown shoes; she was carrying with her a blue knapsack and told Gary she was due to arrive at around 11 PM.
Disappearance: When Karen never arrived at Monmouth police were immediately notified and she was officially listed as a ‘missing person’ due to the fact they had no solid evidence that she had been abducted or was forced into ‘Bill Lacey’s’ car. After they felt that her case wasn’t being taken seriously enough, the Levy’s hired two New Jersey private investigators to assist, including one named John Begley, who brought her disappearance to the attention of the Albany Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on November 13, 1972. Also on the same date, Sylvia Levy reached out to the Newark Division of the FBI, and on November 14th the Identification Division was asked to release a missing persons notice. About her daughter, Mrs. Levy said ‘she loved college and she had no family problems. She was going to visit her boyfriend and she had a birthday present for him. Why would anyone assume she was a runaway?’ She also said that in the initial stages of her daughter’s disappearance things were mishandled by the Syracuse police department, who she said didn’t have the resources to make a thorough investigation. She also charged the department with ‘cynicism and callousness in not conducting a prompt probe of Karen’s disappearance, and that no one lifted a finger for days, and those days were crucial, because they would not believe in the honesty and the sincerity and goodness of our child.’ About the delay in the initial stages of the case, Sylvia said ‘you see the attitude of the authorities is: if you’re young and you disappear, you ran off. They besmith the kids as a group. And the moral of the story is: don’t be young.’
Three policing jurisdictions were investigating Levy’s case: University Police, local Syracuse law enforcement, and the NYS Troopers, and in the early parts of the investigation at least twelve detectives were assigned to work full time on the case. In the first few days after she disappeared investigators focused their search efforts on Sennett, NY after they received multiple reports on November 11th that a man was seen carrying what seemed to be an unconscious woman to his car. One of the women that reported the incident said she was driving on an isolated road when she saw a car parked next to a field and a man walking towards it while carrying a woman that appeared to be unconscious that was dressed in a blue coat and jeans. Unfortunately, nothing came of this.
Investigators combed the general Central New York area and expanded their search into New Jersey, but came up with nothing. Syracuse police conducted over 500 interviews over the course of the investigation and tracked down anyone and everyone that was confirmed to be in the area when Levy was last seen. They also investigated all locals that were named Bill Lacey (or had variations of the name) and spoke with other young women that requested rides in the same method as Levy and whether or not they had any strange encounters with a man that matched his description. Additionally, detectives checked out local newspapers looking for advertisements that were posted by men offering rides in the same time frame that Levy vanished.
Every single tip that investigators received regarding the disappearance of Karen Levy was looked into, and many of the leads were related to the bulletin boards on Syracuse University’s campus. Additionally, NYS Police used helicopters, airplanes, and dogs in their search efforts, and conducted foot searches all over the two most likely routes of travel from SU to Monmouth College, combing through long stretches of highways and secluded ‘lovers’ lanes’… but to no avail. Because Levy’s friend and her boyfriend were able to get a good look at ‘Bill Lacey,’ a sketch artist was able to come up with a composite drawing of him, which was shared all over New York state. According to them, the man looked like ‘half the guys in the country’ aside from his left eye, which was either crossed or unable to completely focus.
At the request of the Syracuse PD, the Albany Branch of the FBI (most likely as a cooperative measure, as they weren’t officially involved) conducted investigations regarding Levy’s disappearance in Oklahoma City, New York City, Chicago, Memphis, Charlotte, Newark, Dallas, Honolulu, and Detroit, which helped eliminate suspects. Because Ms. Levy left with Lacey voluntarily and of her own free will there was no violation of the Federal Kidnaping Statute., therefore the FBI didn’t ‘officially’ join in on the investigation. Despite this, Mr. and Mrs. Levy felt their daughter would never leave on her own with a stranger, and her father commented that: ‘it’s just not consistent with her or her nature to disappear purposefully,’ and about the possibility that someone may have taken his Karen he said that he had ‘no feeling toward that man who has abducted her, I can’t feel vindictive. We just want her home safe and sound. We don’t have any Thanksgiving plan, hopefully we will celebrate Karen’s safe return.’
The Levy’s knew that their daughter would never voluntarily go anywhere with a strange man that she didn’t know. and immediately knew that something sinister had happened to her. In December 1972 they posted a $2,500 reward for any information that lead to the return of their daughter (it was never redeemed), and paid for thousands of missing persons fliers that contained a picture of Karen on it along with the police composite sketch of ‘Bill Lacey’ as well as both of their complete physical descriptions.
Police tracked down a few young men that matched Bill Lacey’s description, and all of them were brought in for questioning and were released. One of the suspects was identified by both of Levy’s friends from a photograph, however when it came to a line-up they said they were only ‘uncertain’ it was him. After a long, in-depth interrogation the man passed a lie‐detector test, and was able to come up with an alibi for his whereabouts on November 10, 1972.
‘Bill Lacey:’ According to Karen’s friends, she had shared that she was slightly suspicious of the man that would be driving her to New Jersey after a weird conversations they had over the telephone the day before she vanished, as they were dotted with ‘hippie-type’ phrases such as ‘bummer’ and he seemed vague in his knowledge about the distance to Gary’s college. They were all surprised when ’Bill Lacey’ showed up dressed as a clean-cut businessman, wearing a grey suit with a vest, his brown hair cut short and parted neatly on the right; they also said that he was between 20 to 25 years old, roughly six feet tall, and told them that he was from Cleveland.
Detectives went to Upstate Medical Center where Lacey said he delivered medical supplies to, and spoke with members of their staff, and they said they had never heard of him. They also learned that two other coeds that were looking for rides were also contacted by a man named ‘Bill Lacey:’ one girl needed to get to Philadelphia and the other one to Boston, and in each case Lacey told them that he made weekly deliveries to their city. The girl in Philadelphia got spooked after she asked for a phone number and he simply hung up on her, and the one from Boston said when she told him that she wanted a friend to come with her he suddenly said that he needed to leave earlier than he originally anticipated and hung up on her.
One of the last people to talk to Karen during the final hours of her life was Gary, who had driven to Syracuse University the weekend prior to attend a rock concert on campus, and when he left Monday morning they had agreed to talk on the phone the following Thursday about her possibly coming to visit him the following weekend. He said that: ‘she said there was something fishy about the guy who offered her a ride. She said a lot of girls on her floor didn’t think she should take the ride.’ When she asked him what she should do, Lieberman thought about it briefly then said he ‘couldn’t make that decision. I told her I wanted to see her, but didn’t want her to take any unnecessary risk.’ He said that in response to this, she said they would ‘leave it that I’m coming down unless I give you a call.’ But he never heard from her again after that.
According to her high school friends Sherry Frepow and Michele Goldstein, who both went to attend Monmouth College with Gary, Karen had always bummed rides with friends on previous visits, and according to Frepow, ‘she never took rides with strangers, but she really wanted to come down that weekend. She was coming for Gary’s and my birthday. She mentioned over the phone the night before that the guy was kind of weird because he wasn’t charging her any money, and he seemed wrong about the time it took to get here. I didn’t want to think anything about it. You just never think that something like this could happen.’
After Karen talked to her boyfriend she spoke with her parents, and Mr. Levy said that: ‘she called all excited about getting a ride. She gave no details.’ Mr. Levy described Karen as ‘steady and reliable,’ and if anything, she was ‘too trustworthy,’ and that attending school at Syracuse University was the first time that she was ever away from home. According to them, she always called us and the call on Thursday was ‘nothing out of the ordinary and barely mentioned who she was getting a ride with, and she certainly didn’t tell us about her doubts of taking a ride with that man.’ About the individual, Bertram Levy said that ‘they described him later as a neat looking man, well dressed. Not a beatnik. Not a hippie in dungarees. Karen would never have accepted a ride with one of those.’ To this, Mrs. Levy shook her head and said ‘Oh, maybe she would have. We don’t know, we just don’t know.’
In a document I found that included a great deal of information related to the Levy case titled, ‘Hearings before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, Record Session, HR 4191 and HR 8722, Amendments to the Federal Kidnapping Statute, dated February 27, 1974 and April 10, 1974’ (which was obviously compiled before the apprehension of John E. Harris): ‘The Syracuse University Police Department’s initial report listed the only person who accompanied Karen to meet ‘Bill Lacey’ on November 10, as Amy Krackovitz, Karen’s roommate. However, two people, not one, accompanied Karen, and Amy Krackovitz was not one of them. Similarly, the report listed the suspected abductor as one ‘Charles Lacey,’ and the University Police has devoted some time and effort in preparing a preliminary background report on a ‘Charles Lacey’ for their initial report. However, Karen Levy’s abductor had identified himself as ‘Bill Lacey’ not ‘Charles,’ and again precious time was lost. In fact, it was not until two days after Karen’s disappearance that the Syracuse University Police Department mapped a coordinated plan of investigation. Yet, even after mapping the plan, it was not until the afternoon of November 13, when at the suggestion of the Levys’ private detective that the Syracuse University Police Department went to the ride boards to check for fingerprints on Karen’s ride notices, which were the tab type requiring anyone removing a tab with Karen’s phone number on it to touch the notice.’
Ted of the West Coast?’: Months ticked by, then eventually years, and Levy’s homicide remained unsolved. By the summer of 1974 the murders in Seattle had started, and the infamous ‘Ted of the West Coast’ had begun his reign of terror throughout the Pacific Northwest. Briefly, in the summer of 1974 it was speculated that the crazed killer had made his way to New York state and had something to do with the disappearance of Karen Levy, however that theory quickly was tossed out when her real killer was apprehended that fall. At the time of Levy’s disappearance in November 1972 Bundy was employed at Seattle’s Department of Law & Justice Planning (he was there from September 1972 to January 1973) and was in his first semester of law school at The University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. He was in a committed relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer and was living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Avenue in Seattle’s University District.
Murder: According to an anonymous member of the Syracuse Police Department’s criminal investigation division, in late October 1974 ‘it was a confession to a friend by the suspect that finally helped to break the case.** Syracuse Deputy Police Chief John Dillon said that he got a tip from a friend of twenty-four-year-old John E. Harris of Cicero, NY who shared with him that he tried to stab thirty-four-year old Richard Bellinger with an ice pick on March 26, 1974, and that he killed Karen Levy. Bellinger was the business agent for John’s wife of a year-and-a-half Donna Lee Harris, who according to detectives was ‘a 21‐year‐old go‐go dancer.’ Unfortunately he told police that he didn’t get a good look at his attacker and wouldn’t be able to recognize him. Harris, who by that time had grown a big bushy beard, told investigators that Levy had gotten ‘hysterical’ when he attacked her and he killed her to ‘shut her up.’ During the interrogation his wife sat beside him, softly coaxing her husband to ‘tell them everything. If you did anything wrong, tell them.’ At that time he also volunteered that at the age of sixteen he had been arrested for rape and spent five years inside a reformatory. ** I have seen varying reports as to how police learned about the identity of John Harris: a different source says that while in jail in 1973 John’s brother Paul shared with another inmate what his brother had done to Levy, and that was eventually passed on to NYS investigators who arrested Harris as a result. Another article said that Paul told his girlfriend who told a friend who told another friend who eventually came forward and told law enforcement.
On Saturday, October 26, 1974 John E. Harris led investigators to the body of Karen Merle Levy in a shallow grave at his POE of five years: Ley Creek Sewage Treatment Plant in Salina, NY: she had been found underneath four feet of landfill and had been stabbed and strangled with a nylon stocking, which was still cinched around her neck. Detectives working the case theorized that Harris had hit Levy over the head with a shovel then dragged her to the landfill, where he strangled and buried her. Also at the scene investigators found a ring with Karen’s initials engraved on it, a medallion that had ‘keep holy the Commandments’ inscribed on it, and a set of keys, one of which fit the lock to her one-time dorm room. A 100% positive identification was made after a forensic dentist was brought in to examine Levy’s skeletal remains and according to Deputy Chief Dillon, the preliminary investigation had shown that Levy was killed less than an hour after she was last seen. After Karen’s body was discovered, Mr. Levy said that they could now ‘pick up our lives now and try to live a halfway normal life. We were hoping, wishing for a miracle, but did not truly expect it.’ According to Ken Levy, ‘for two years they didn’t give up hope, there was no closure for two years, when Karen’s body was finally recovered the family felt enormous relief, followed with sadness.’
According to an article published in The Syracuse Herald-Journal on September 17, 1975, John Harris implicated his brother Paul for the murder of Karen Levy in a series of letters, and claimed that he was with him that night in November 1972 when he picked her up and said that he was the killer, not him. Paul denied having anything to do with killing the young coed and after multiple interrogations and lie detector tests he was eventually cleared of any wrong-doing. In an article published in The Post-Standard on September 13, 1975, Paul said that he didn’t think his brother acted alone and that he thought ‘there was someone with him or someone forcing him to do it.’ When asked why he thought this, he said that John was ‘into some pretty heavy stuff’ and was ‘involved with gambling and the sale of drugs, as well as taking pictures of nude models: ‘John would pick the models up, sometimes from Syracuse University, and take them to a photo shoot where he would wait until the photographer was finished. Sometimes he would actually pose with her.’
Paul went on to say that John was involved with a group he dubbed ‘The Utica Bunch,’ and was ‘in this for the money, and maybe a little for the girls.’ When asked why he would want to blame him for the murder, Paul said he was asking himself the same thing and that ‘something happened in his mind. His memory is gone. Either he is trying to grasp onto the only escape left or it has just become a game for him. He probably doesn’t know I didn’t do that. I didn’t tell police. I just told my girlfriend who told somebody who told somebody. The police finally got wind of it.’ Paul Harris was a bartender by trade but after charges were dismissed he volunteered in an interview that he was thinking about leaving the area, saying the murder had ‘ruined his reputation’ and that he was at ‘the point where I might have to leave Syracuse. At least twice, enemies of John’s have actually tried to kill me.’ He also said that in November 1974 he was shot at while walking down Clinton Street, and in the beginning of September 1975 someone had tried to run him off the road on Route 81 by approaching him at an angle that ‘could only have been an attempt to get me.’ He also said that on one occasion a woman threw a drink in his face.
After Harris was held without bail, police records showed that in 1966 he was arrested on a rape charge and served five years in Coxsackie Reformatory. Pretrial proceedings began on November 1, 1974, and he was indicted on two counts of murder, along with additional charges of first‐degree rape and first‐degree sexual abuse. Additionally, John Harris was charged with attempted murder and possession of a dangerous weapon in relation to his crimes against Richard Bellinger.
Judge Gale ruled that Harris was unable to stand trial on December 23, 1974 and ordered him be sent to the Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center on January 9, 1975, where he spent three months being evaluated. Although center professionals determined that he was capable of standing trial for Karen’s murder, two psychiatrists (one of them being the Head of the County’s Mental Health Department) said that he has ‘deteriorated steadily’ since his arrest. According to Chief Assistant District Attorney John Shannon, Harris was ‘capable of understanding the nature of the charges against him and assisting his attorneys in the defense of this case.’
At the sanity hearing, a psychiatrist from Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center testified that the defendant told him that he was able to trick two separate doctors into believing that he was insane: ‘he (Harris) told me that when he was in his cell, he was told by the other inmates to keep looking at the floor. They told him to blink and mumble.’ At the hearing Harris took the stand and said that he didn’t know what his rights were when he gave the NYS Troopers a written confession, which was reportedly ‘peculiar and false.’ In it, he said that he drove her to the treatment plant and ‘asked her for a kiss,’ and when she refused he strangled her, and then ‘hit her and she hit me with her purse. So I knocked her out. She tried to claw my face so I hit her several times in the head. I thought she was unconscious. I took her out of the car and carried her on the lawn. I removed her jacket. The grass was wet so I rubbed her arm on the grass and splashed a mud puddle. She wouldn’t wake up. I started to cry. I walked around her, hoping she was all right.’ He said when he realized she was dead he stuffed her remains in an incinerator, and turned her all except her skull and bones. With a crowbar he crushed the bones to dust, and put them in a truck and buried ‘some place in Skaneateles.’
During his trial, Harris testified that he was ‘tired and sick’ when he spoke with police after his initial arrest, and that ‘when police asked him to sign the statement, he said, ‘shouldn’t I have a lawyer?” In response, they said, ‘if you don’t sign it, you’re going to be here all night until you do.’ He went on to say that during the interrogation he ‘had an upset stomach, and I was nervous and tired’ and that at one point a screaming match broke out between him and an investigator. He also claimed that the signature on the confession was forged and not his, which went nowhere. After Levy’s murder between November 1972 and October 1974 police had two separate (unrelated) interactions with Harris: one time he was pulled over for ‘failure to use his direction signal,’ and after he told the NYS Trooper he was ‘tired of being harassed by the fuzz’ they brought him into a nearby police station, questioned him for an hour, and was eventually issued a citation.
To the surprise of everyone, on July 25, 1975 Harris plead guilty to the rape and murder of Karen Levy because he was ‘tired of waiting for all the court actions to end.’ Under the terms of a plea bargain that was approved by the Levy family, he accepted a twenty year to life prison term for the murder, and began the sentence September 12, 1975. In an emotional interview with reporters, Harris said that he just wanted ‘to do my time and go home and lead a decent life.’ Mr. Levy said that he agreed with the plea bargain because ‘it gave them the best justice they were capable of getting at that point without having to go through a trial’ and that he ‘would prefer never to come face to face with Harris. That’s not going to bring Karen back. But it’s not like we’ve washed our hands of the thing.’ Harris was initially housed at Auburn Correctional Facility and after bouncing over a few prisons he was briefly moved to Clinton Correctional before going to Orleans Correctional Facility in 1992.
In September 1979 Harris attempted to appeal his conviction based on ‘arguments that he didn’t knowingly waive his right to remain silent or have his attorney present when he was questioned by police,’ and that he didn’t knowingly waive his right to a jury trial when he pleaded guilty. It was ultimately denied. In August of 2000 Harris was up for parole for the fourth time, but was denied due to the fact that he still ‘posed an imminent threat to community safety’ and was ‘incompatible with the welfare and safety of the community.’ According to an article published in The Post-Standard on August 6, 2000, he was cited (meaning he received a formal warning for violating rules/regulations) six times for breaking prison rules, including harassment, assaulting a prison guard, and property damage.
By 1999 Harris had completely changed his story again: in an article published in The Post-Standard on August 7, 2000, in an April 1999 interview with LE he said that he accepted responsibility for Karen’s death, however claimed he wasn’t the one that killed her. He went on to elaborate that he (along with some companions that he refused to name) planned on using Levy to transport drugs from Syracuse to New Jersey and their plan was to slip them into her luggage then blame her if they were stopped by law enforcement: ‘that way if we got stopped and frisked by the cops, it’s in their stuff, and we could write it off.’ He claimed it was ‘by chance’ that he met Karen and it was only the two of them in the car when they stopped for food at a Motel 7 on Seventh North Street just over the city line in Salina.
While Karen was inside the motel a second vehicle pulled up and they said they put the drugs in her bags, which were still in the car, but she noticed that ‘something was wrong’ and got upset. The men pulled Harris aside and as they were talking one of them ‘stabbed her in the stomach’ and he ‘just saw her fall to the floor. And I just… the feeling I got I almost vomited.’ The friends told him that he had to ‘get rid of her,’ and he had to ‘dump her body somewhere.’ He said that he ‘pulled her out of the car. She just reached up to me and said don’t let them hurt me anymore.’ When asked by investigators why he didn’t drop her off at a hospital, he said he was afraid because he was an ex-con that had ‘served time for grand larceny in 1967,’ and he ‘didn’t want to get in anymore trouble,’ and he ‘just ended up burying the girl. It was bothering me very much, in fact, it made me very emotional. I’d come home and I’d be very emotional with my wife. We’d start arguing over the littlest things. ‘Cuz it always drew back to me about Miss Levy. Most times I would have nightmares and I’d wake up.’ During that 1999 interview Harris also claimed that the incident ‘still haunted him,’ and that sometimes he would read newspaper clippings about the case over and over again: ‘and when I’m done reading the stories I just think I’m responsible for her death.’
About his release being denied Harris said that ‘it’s not that cut and dry.’ … ‘It leads people into thinking I’m actually guilty of this murder.’ If released Harris said that he wasn’t trying to fit into society and wasn’t interested in making friends with his neighbors: ‘I don’t wanna blend in with society, I wanna stay away from society. I just wanna be a recluse someplace. I just wanna go off by myself. I’m tired of people, and I’m tired of crap. I’ve put up with it for twenty-five-years, I just wanna be able to think and breathe.’
According to an article published in The Post Standard on August 7, 2000, while in prison Harris served as a ‘facilitator’ in ‘Network,’ a self-help, behavioral modification program at the prison and served as the program’s ‘institutional clerk’ and went to ‘victim awareness programs.’ About being up for parole so many times, he said that ‘it’s like it doesn’t matter what I do, what I accomplish, how much I give (the parole board) what I’m suppose to give them. they still rubber stamp me. They give me the same answer on every parole denial.’ From prison, Harris had some words for the Levy family: ‘no matter how much time passes, I’ll never get over it. But at the same time, of course her family will never get over it… So what can you tell them? Of course I’m sorry. I’m immensely, immensely sorry. But what good is that gonna do anybody? I can’t bring her back, I can’t undo what has already been done.’ Sadly I learned in a Facebook post made by Rick Levy in July 2022 that Harris’s parole had been approved and he was released from prison shortly after.
After Levy’s disappearance students at Syracuse University continued to use ‘the bulletin board method’ as a way of old-fashioned ‘ride-sharing,’ and there was no noticeable decline in the amount of students that stood around, bumming rides. One 17-year-old Syracuse University student said that she was ‘just a little more choosy,’ and that her ‘new attitude’ was based not so much on the disappearance of Karen Levy but more because the last time she had accepted a ride from a stranger, the person had raped her.
Strangely enough, Karen Levy is not the only young woman from New York state that Bundy was (briefly) suspected of killing: on November 2, 1974 Katherine Kolodziej disappeared after a night out at The Vault Tavern in Cobleskill, NY. The 17-year-old from Ronkonkoma was a freshman majoring in Equestrienne Studies at SUNY Cobleskill, and less than four weeks later on November 28, 1974 her remains were found on a rock wall on nearby McDonald Road in Richmondville, NY. It was reported that a yellow VW Beetle was seen driving away from the tavern on the evening Kathy was last seen alive, however at the time she was killed Bundy was placed on the phone in Salt Lake City (per the ‘1992 TB Multiagency Investigative Report’).
Mr. and Mrs. Levy were married for forty-six years when Bertram passed away at the age of 69 on October 12, 1996 in Union Township, NJ. According to his obituary, Mr. Levy worked at his job for fifty-four years, was a member and former president of the board of Temple Beth Shalom in Cherry Hill, a past VP and treasurer of the Jewish Geriatric Home, and a member of the Mizpah-Haddon Heights Lodge 191 Free and Accepted Masons. Sylvia Levy passed away on July 16, 2020 at the age of 91. I reached out to Rich Levy after I saw a post he made on Facebook asking that people reach out to the parole board on his family’s behalf regarding Harris being up for release, but I completely misread his tone and he seemed incredibly reluctant to speak to me due to the fact that it was too painful to talk about, so I dropped it. Because of that I didn’t include any details or pictures about his, Eric’s, or Gary Leiberman’s lives, past or present.
Works Cited:
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ny-supreme-court/1163667.html
McQuiston, John T. ‘Suspect’s Friend Led to Arrest in ’72 Slaying of Jersey Student.’ October 28, 1974. Taken May 28, 2025 from https://www.nytimes.com/1974/10/28/archives/suspects-friend-led-to-arrest-in-72-slaying-of-jersey-student.html#
The New York Times. July 29, 1975. ‘Man Admits Guilt in Death Of Jersey Coed at Syracuse.’ Taken May 28, 2025 from https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/29/archives/man-admits-guilt-in-death-of-jersey-coed-at-syracuse.html
on December 3, 1972.
on December 3, 1972.
Document Related to the Murder of Karen Merle Levy.
Karen M. Levy (no relation to Lisa Levy out of Florida) was a student at Syracuse University that was majoring in Home Economics when she disappeared after accepting a ride from a stranger on November 10, 1972 (her remains weren’t discovered until October 1974). When researching for my article I came across the following document that gives a good amount of details about her background and murder.
Altemio Sanchez, Some PDF’s.
Growing up near Amherst, NY the ‘bike path rapist’ was my families version of ‘the boogeyman.’ I remember when he reemerged in 2006 my mom came into my bedroom and told me ‘not to go running by myself’ after class (I was at Daemen University at the time, and if you knew me then you’d know how laughable the thought of that was), but I understand her fear. Coincidentally when Joan Diver was killed I was dating her husbands (who was a Chemistry PhD at the University of Buffalo) lab assistant, and it gave me a fairly unique perspective into it all.
Arthur John Shawcross: Part One, Early Life and First Murder Spree.
Arthur John Shawcross was born at the US Naval Hospital at 4:14 AM on June 6, 1945 in Kittery, Maine to Arthur Roy and Elizabeth (nee Yerakes) Shawcross. According to his mother, he weighed five pounds at birth and was born one month premature, and as a result he spent twenty days in the hospital. Arthur Roy was born on October 7, 1923 in Jefferson, NY and after dropping out of school in the eighth grade he got a position with the Jefferson County Highway Department (which is a position that his father also worked before him), officially becoming their youngest employee on record. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941 he enlisted in the Marine Corps, and served honorably in World War II, earning four battle stars.
Elizabeth (who went by ‘Bessie/Betty’) was born on August 4, 1926 in Somersworth, New Hampshire and dropped out of high school in the tenth grade to work at a shoe factory to bring in money for her family. During WWII she got a position as a pipefitter’s helper at a Navy Yard in Portsmouth, which is where she met her future husband: after the war was over Arthur Roy was transferred to the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth near Kittery, Maine which is where he met Betty. The couple were married on November 23, 1944 and had four children together: Art, Donna (b. 1946), Jean (b. 1948), and James (b. 1954). Shortly after her first son was born on June 19th, 1945 Mrs. Shawcross took him to Watertown, NY to stay with her SIL until her husband finished his stint in the military. According to those that knew her, Betty was loud, abrasive, and apparently had a vocabulary that could make a sailor blush, where her husband was a calm man, and seemed to be very subdued. Upon returning home Mr. Shawcross returned to his job as a heavy equipment operator and road worker for Jefferson County.
According to one of Art’s cousin’s, he was a gorgeous baby, and had big, beautiful dark eyes and a sweet little face… but there seemed to be something off about him as well: he almost never cried, and frequently had a blank, vacant expression on his face. Shawcross was born with a genetic condition known as ‘Jacob’s Syndrome,’ where an individual’s genetic make-up contains an extra copy of their Y-chromosome; those that possess it have an increased risk of having learning disabilities and delayed motor and speech/language skills, as well as an increased risk of behavioral, social, and emotional difficulties. Where it was once thought to cause violent behavior, according to recent studies men with ‘XYY-syndrome’ are not more likely to be more aggressive than others, and this theory has been disproven.
The Shawcross family tree (mostly) goes back to the United Kingdom: one of Art’s ancestors was an attorney general in Great Britain, and a distant cousin was the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials. But alas, scandal wasn’t new to the immediate family: when he was 21, Art’s (paternal) grandpa Fred married a 15 year old named Muriel Blake, completely against her family’s wishes. Her parents called the law and Shawcross was thrown in jail, and when he was released two days later the couple immediately got hitched. They had four children together and stayed married for forty-nine years until Muriel’s death; Fred followed three years later.
At the age of five it was reported by a family member that ‘little Artie’ had missed 33 days of kindergarten and still used ‘baby talk.’ Described as ‘odd’ by those around him (including his own relatives), he frequently had nightmares and wet the bed well into his adolescence. After Shawcross’ little sisters and brother were born his mother didn’t pay nearly as much attention to him, and Bessie’s oldest seemed to especially crave her attention. He began running away from home by the age of six, and in first grade earned A’s and B’s in school, despite his teachers saying he had ‘lazy work habits.’ The following year he began conversing with imaginary friends (most likely a result of having none in real life), and he was relentlessly mocked by his peers, who called him ‘weird’ and gave him the nickname ‘Oddie.’ By the age of eight he was a bully, and often went after younger, smaller children that weren’t as likely to put up much of a fight. It’s no surprise that he had trouble making friends, and in a later interview said that he felt as if his own parents didn’t like him as much as they did his brother and sisters. Arthur was a hypochondriac beginning at a very young age, and always seemed to be suffering from some form of imaginary illness in a desperate ploy for attention.
Artie (John) would later claim that his mother used to punish him with a belt and a broom handle, and that his father would beat him using his belt buckle, and would often hurt him so severely that he would often bleed. A relative of Art’s (that refused to give their identity) said of his early childhood: ‘Arty was a weird little bastard from the time he learned to walk.’
Beginning around the age of eight Arthur became a compulsive masturbater, a habit that his mother tried her hardest to discourage. On the repeated occasions that she caught him she would punish him severely, and claimed that she stuck a broom handle into his behind and even threatened him with a butcher knife on one occasion. Betty Shawcross denied these accusations, and psychologists aren’t 100% certain who is telling the truth.
Things really seemed to go south for Artie at around nine years old: his grades started slipping and his mother found out about his fathers other family in Australia from his time in the Marine Corps: while cleaning up the Guadalcanal island in the South Pacific in February 1943, Arthur Roy went to a dance thrown by the US Marine Corps, and there he met Miss Thelma June Chakros of Yea. According to a 1944 article published by the Watertown Daily Times, on June 14, 1943 the two were wed in Melny; they had one child, a son named Harley Roy. The dominating force in the Shawcross household, Bessie never let her husband forget about his other wife and child, and things never really returned to normal after his second family came to light. Also around this time Art was hit in the head with a rock and was hospitalized; he got stitches and suffered from numbness for years afterwards. He repeated the fourth grade and was always getting into fights with the other kids at school, and would often cry and use baby talk while being bullied by other children. Also at the age of nine Shawcross claimed that he had his first sexual encounter with his Aunt Tina, saying the two had intercourse.
Around the age of ten Arthur began stealing from local stores and homes around Watertown, but was never arrested. In 1958, the family built a small house near Brownsville, NY and because of this Artie no longer had to share a bedroom with his sisters anymore (just his little brother), and eventually three sets of relatives moved onto adjoining pieces of property, thus establishing an area dubbed ‘Shawcross Corners.’ In his later years Arthur would often speak about the difficult relationship he had with his parents and siblings, especially his mom, who he called domineering. Bessie, on the other hand, said that her oldest child was the source of most of her problems.
Despite only having an IQ of 86 (according to the first of many IQ tests, which is signifying less than the average of 100), Shawcross received A’s and B’s during his first two years of grade school. He claimed in later interviews that beginning at the age of thirteen he had sex with one of his male cousins (who denied the allegations) and began having relations with his sister Jeanne, (including ‘constant’ oral sex), which he said went on throughout his middle and junior high school years, prompting his mother to threaten to castrate him when she found out. He also claimed that around this time he had sex with a female neighbor, and when they were caught by her brother he forced Shawcross to have oral sex with him. Art also said that around this time he was raped by a male stranger and began having sex with a variety of animals (such as sheep, chickens, dogs… maybe a goat occasionally slipped in). At the age of fifteen he was only in the eighth grade, and was still wetting the bed and having nightmares. He was also becoming increasingly violent (especially when provoked), and began torturing small animals and setting brush fires. I just want to point out, Shawcross ticks off all three points of the MacDonald triad, which is a (controversial) hypothesis suggesting a link between violent offenders and three shared childhood behaviors: fire setting, animal cruelty, and bedwetting.
A very literal child, little Artie didn’t seem to understand sarcasm, or phrases like, ‘the cow jumped over the moon’ or ‘the dish ran away with the spoon.’ He would think that a literal dinner plate tried to run away with a tablespoon. His grade school teachers also noticed that he had a strangely complex relationship with his mother, and that he was constantly trying to get her to show love to him. One noticed that he always seemed to be showering her with gifts, even though she didn’t really seem to care. It seemed that the Shawcrosses blamed the school for his poor behavior, and the school seemed to blame Betty.
One of Art’s cousins shared that on one occasion they saw him walking home with a stick on his shoulders, and at the end of it was a snapping turtle: he had speared it with a stick, which went from its backside and out its mouth, and it was most likely alive when he did that. The same relative told another story about Art getting into an argument with his dad, and later that afternoon they saw him in a tree pointing a .22 rifle at Arthur Roy as he was mowing his lawn. Art never went through with it, but afterwards when he was confronted about it he said that he could have easily killed him, and it would have been like ‘shooting fish in a barrel.’
At sixteen Art was described by those acquainted with him as ‘moody,’ and a loner. He joined General Brown High School’s wrestling team, but got hit in the head with a discus and had to spend four days in the hospital. By seventeen he had only made it to the ninth grade and his grades fell to the lowest they had ever been; he eventually dropped out of school completely at the age of nineteen in 1960. It was also around this time that he began breaking into homes and peeping through windows, and in 1963 he was arrested for breaking into a Sears store; he received eighteen months of probation and was charged as a ‘youthful offender.’ Just two years later he was arrested again for second degree burglary, and was sentenced to six additional months of probation.
Around the time he was on probation he met his first wife, a woman named Sarah Louise Chatterton that he worked with at the local Family Bargain Center (a job he was let go from due to ‘poor customer service’ skills). The couple got married on September 13, 1964, and they did not consummate their marriage for several weeks after their wedding. Art and Sarah had a son together named Michael, who was born roughly a year after their wedding on October 2, 1956. During their marriage Shawcross had a hard time holding a job, and was fired from several employers (he said that his favorite job was at a butcher shop).
After less than two years of marriage Sarah and Art divorced; he relinquished all rights to his son (who he never saw again), and her new husband eventually adopted him. Around this time Shawcross was arrested after he chased a thirteen year old kid into his home after he threw a snowball at his car; he received another six months of probation. Around this time he also fell off of a 40-foot ladder and hit his head, earning him another concussion.
On April 7, 1966 Arthur Shawcross was drafted into the US Army. Surprisingly he scored above average on intelligence tests, but only scored an 88 on a military administered IQ test, which (when combined with his overall low motivation) made him unsuitable for many higher level jobs. Where he initially had some minor disciplinary problems, Art eventually settled into his role and served one tour of duty with the 4th Supply and Transport Company of the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam.
In September 1967 while on a 30 day furlough before being deployed to Vietnam Shawcross met a woman named Linda Neary at a bar, and since they both figured he would die overseas the two decided to get married. Born Phyllis Lee Brown, Linda was given up at birth and was adopted by the Neary family and was later renamed. After graduating from high school in Clayton, NY she got engaged to a kind, soft-spoken young man that she only dated for a few months, but only three days before the wedding he came out to her as gay and called off the wedding. Linda begged him to go through with the wedding, but he said no, and told her that he couldn’t involve her in his ‘sexual confusion.’ Shortly after he relocated to Rochester, and eventually passed away due to complications from the AIDS virus.
According to Jack Owen’s book, ‘The Misbegotten Son,’ after Sarah saw their marriage announcement published in ‘The Watertown Daily Times’ she reached out to Linda, and told her: ‘I can tell you an awful lot about your husband if you want to know.’ The former Mrs. Shawcross told the new one that her new husband was violent, and that after their son was born she had always been afraid of what he might do to him. Neary said she didn’t believe a word she said, and figured it must simply be ‘sour grapes.’ She had seen Art with his young son on multiple occassions, and he seemed like a good father and was very gentle with him. Sarah also hinted that he beat her, however didn’t elaborate any further than that.
Just as she did with her previous fiance, Linda and Art abstained from sex until they were married and tied the knot in September 1967; only a month later, twenty-two year old Shawcross was sent to Vietna b vcm, where he worked as a supply parts specialist. In October of 1968 after the war was over he was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma where he worked as an armorer, repairing weapons. He was honorably discharged from the Army in Spring of 1969, and moved to Clayton, NY (which is where his new bride was from).
In the middle of 1968 Shawcross had an affair with a woman while on leave from the Army in Hawaii that led to the birth of his daughter, Margaret ‘Maggie’ Deming, who was born on Valentine’s Day in 1969. In 2001 Maggie learned the true identity of her father and decided to get in contact with him, and the two began a relationship of sorts, and he even met her seven children. Deming has called Arthur ‘very gentle,’ ‘soft-spoken,’ and ‘grandfatherly,’ and the two remained in contact until his death in November 2008.
Upon returning home from overseas, Art told anyone willing to listen that he was a member of an elite detachment and was personally sent to ‘take out’ entire villages (he said that his ‘kill count’ was 39 people). He also claimed to have PTSD, and bragged about some truly abhorrent (and made-up) combat exploits, including ‘beheading mama-sans and nailing their heads to trees as a warning to the Vietcong’ and acts of cannibalism. One of Shawcross’ favorite lies to tell about his time in Vietnam was that he once murdered and cannibalized two young girls after he found them hiding guns in a tree. He tied one to a tree, then shot the other and cut her head off, which he said he speared on a post ‘for the Vietcong to see’ (but not before he cut off a piece of her thigh and ate it). His second victim lost control of her bowels (most likely out he fear), but despite this Shawcross said that he sexually assaulted her then shot on the head.
After his arrest he said that the war was his introduction to murder, and that while in Vietnam he invented gruesome ways to torture and kill his victims (which included men, women, and children). But in reality, Shawcross never served in a combat position, and his military career was completely unremarkable. After his second arrest in Rochester, FBI Profiler Robert Ressler looked into his PTSD claim on behalf of the prosecution, and after an exhaustive look into Shawcross’ background he came to the conclusion that most of his claims from his time in Vietnam were ’untrue,’ and that he concocted his tales thanks to some descriptive books and movies (as well as an overactive imagination). A psychiatrist also stated that he had antisocial personality disorder.
When Artie was reunited with his new wife things quickly got violent (at one point he killed the family dog in a fit of rage), and after surviving a suicide attempt he decided to see an Army psychiatrist. The Doctor told Linda that her husband got intense sexual pleasure from setting fires and asked that she sign paperwork to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital, as he felt that Arthur was very possibly dangerous to herself and others. Neary, who hardly knew her husband, asked his mother what her thoughts on the matter were, and Mrs. Shawcross refused to answer, saying that it was her choice. According to Linda, the Mr. and Mrs. Shawcross were emotionally distant with all of their children, and almost never hugged them or showed them any sort of affection. In the end, she chose not to have Art committed (one of the reasons being she was a strict Christian Scientist), and the Army determined that they did not have enough of a reason to commit him themselves. Shortly after the evaluation in June 1969 he got drunk and beat her up so badly that she miscarried (she was four months along); she divorced him later that fall.
In addition to treating his wife poorly, after Art’s return from Vietnam his general behavior became increasingly problematic. In 1969 he was convicted of helping rob $407 from a local gas station, and was brought up on three separate arson charges: a barn in Delafarge Corners, The Knowlton Brothers Paper Mill in April (there was over $250,000 in repairs needed), and extensive damage to Crowley’s Food Mart in September. In December of 1969 he was sentenced to five years in Attica prison. During his stint he claimed to be raped by three black inmates (although he said that he eventually got his revenge), and in June 1970 he was transferred to Auburn Prison, where he served out the rest of his sentence. Ultimately he only served twenty-two months and was paroled early to his parents after he saved the life of a prison official during a riot on October 18, 1971.
Upon his release from prison Shawcross returned to Watertown and got a job with the local public works department. He reconnected with a single mother of two that he knew from high school named Penny Nichol Sherbino in January 1972 after they ran into one another in front of the Watertown JC Penney’s. The couple got pregnant after only five dates and got married on April 22, 1972; they moved into the Cloverdale Apartments (which was income based, subsidized housing) but she later miscarried. Strangely enough, despite working at the city dump, Art required his wife to have a freshly ironed, white button up shirt for him to wear everyday, and he refused to get his driver’s license. Interestingly enough, she said that he had the unique hobby of painting on panes of window glass, and he ‘would lay a pane of glass atop a picture and trace a copy in a bright-colored paint.’ To Penny, some of his paintings seemed sellable, but he didn’t have any interest in turning a profit. When she asked where he learned the technique, he immediately changed the subject (my guess: jail) (Olsen, 44).’ Neither one of them drank or did drugs, however Art did like to drink coffee and hang out with the local cops, something Penny never understood (as she didn’t trust the police). On one occasion Shawcross left a bouquet of wildflowers on a female neighbor’s door step, along with a note that said ‘these are for your grave.’ When questioned about it he refused to elaborate why he did it.
But, despite multiple ‘second chances’ Arthur couldn’t seem to keep his nose clean, and at one point during his marriage to Penny had been required to pay a $10 fine after he got caught spanking a small boy then stuffing grass into his pants. It wasn’t until this event that Sherbino became aware that her husband was even on parole, and only learned about it after seeing a notation on his court paperwork that said ‘paroled to Lyle Sylver’. He also got caught putting a small child in a burning barrel of garbage and grabbing another ‘by the neck,’ incidents that eventually blew over.
According to Art’s third wife, it never seemed as if Betty had any interest in seeing her son, and according to her he never seemed to do anything right (and she had no problem telling him so). Penny also said that her MIL once shared that Art was the ‘bane of her life’ and that ‘it just seems that no matter what he does he can’t seem to get along with people.’ She also shared that she thought there was something wrong with her son’s brain, most likely a result of suffering multiple head injuries during his developmental years. The two also exchanged stories about Art’s letters: Betty reported that he told her he had been ‘wounded by shrapnel’ (something that he never shared with his wife) and about a ‘big battle’ that he played a large part of (which was most likely a lie in an attempt to get some sort of positive reaction from her). She also said that her husband seemed almost afraid of the tiny matriarch, and wondered if his need for ‘comforting’ had anything to do with her lack of affection towards him (she said he frequently would choose sitting with his head in her lap while she ‘tickled his back’ over love making). Art swore to Penny that he loved his mother deeply and ‘sang her praises,’ but at the same time appeared nervous and almost uncomfortable while in her presence.
A hobby that Art seemed to deeply enjoy was fishing: according to Penny, he went every day, however she said he ‘couldn’t catch a cold,’ as he never came home with any fish she could make for dinner. Art seemed to lack general direction in his life, and it was around the summer of 1972 that he began walking long distances around Jefferson County. He would frequently stop to fish along the Black River, and it was during one of these excursions that he met a local 10 year old boy, Jack Owen Blake. Jack’s mother Mary (nee Lawton) was born on November 29, 1934 in Watertown NY (which also happened to be Thanksgiving Day) and was one of fourteen children. She had a dysfunctional upbringing: her father was an alcoholic and wife beater, and her mother cheated on her dad and had multiple children by another man (she said that no one really seemed sure of which kid was fathered by what man).
A Korean War veteran, Alan Blake (who went by the nickname ‘Big Pete’), was born on December 7, 1931 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The couple met at a bar when Big Pete was stationed at Pine Camp (now Fort Drum) with the Army in 1953, and he got Mary pregnant with their oldest son Richie and her parents made them get married. A petty thief, Big Pete lost an arm in a motor vehicle accident that took place while he was fleeing a robbery while drunk. In name only, the couple went on to have nine children together, as Mary would later admit to having an extramarital affair with a man named Bob, and she is largely sure that he is Jack’s real father (although no DNA test was ever performed). About her husband, Mrs. Blake said ‘when he wanted sex, he took down his pants. He gave me kids but he din’t want no part of ’em. Dr. Rossen told him, ‘I oughta take a shotgun and blow that thing right offa ya and tie it up on the wall with a ribbon. Your family’d be better off’ (Olsen, 11).
With no high school diploma or skills, Big Pete had a hard time finding employment, and eventually got a position picking potatoes for a local farmer named Bob Gardner. After forging a check from his parents in Michigan, they agreed to drop all charges against him as long as he promised to never return to the state again.
Jack Owen Bake was born at Mercy Hospital in Watertown NY on October 18, 1961 to Mary and Allen Blake. The seventh of nine brothers and sisters, he had straw blond hair, freckles, big ears and a pug nose, and according to the Blakes, at the time of his murder was a typical, fun-loving 5th grader that once saved his older sister from drowning in the Black River.
On May 7, 1972 during one of their afternoons fishing together Shawcross’ violent fantasies came to a head, and Blake disappeared after telling his mom he was going outside to play near the Cloverdale apartments. I do want to add (just for the sake of being complete) that I’ve also seen it reported in multiple places as April 7, 1972, however May seems to be most frequently used and is on his tombstone as well. The two had gone fishing together a few days prior to when he was last seen, and when Mary found out she told her son not to go near him again.
Shawcross was questioned about the disappearance and denied having any involvement, and in the initial stages of the investigation he was not high on the Watertown PD’s suspect list (despite receiving concerns by Mary Blake). Law enforcement did not make Jack’s disappearance easy on the Blakes, and as a result the family had a deep hatred for LE (Mary called them ‘piggie-wiggies’). After Mrs. Blake first reached out to police to tell them that her son was missing they didn’t take her seriously, and refused to investigate. At one point they even searched the family home after they claimed to ‘received a tip that Jack’s body was somewhere in the basement.’ The family had frequent run-ins with LE, and one of them always seemed to be in some sort of legal trouble (whether it was shoplifting, truancy, or fighting).
It was also in the summer of 1972 that Shawcross confessed to his parole officer that he was beginning to have troubles in his (third) marriage, but was willing to accept blame and was ‘beginning to have doubts about the true meaning of love.’ He also used the interview as an excuse to get in a few good jabs in about his mother, and told his PO that she ‘was a domineering person’ that ‘downgraded her husband and son (Olsen, 79).’ Sylver immediately sent him for a mental health evaluation, where he was found to be functioning at a ‘borderline level of intelligence’ and was ‘exhibiting defective moral and social development.’ The psychotherapist/social worker (he was referred to as both) also said that ‘when he becomes upset he acts impulsively… he describes himself as always having felt that rules are to be broken and did everything in his power to break rules at home as a child and in school… his mother had a very bad temper’ (Olsen, 80).
Later that same year on September 2, 1972 Arthur Shawcross killed Karen Ann Hill, who was born on Fathers Day in 1964 to Joseph and Helene (nee Korneliusen) Hill in Rochester, NY. Mr. Hill was born on March 2, 1933 and worked for Eastman Kodak as a machinist and (according to his ex-wife) had a bit of a drinking problem; Helene was born on May 20, 1937. The couple were wed on August 25, 1955 and had four children together (two boys and two girls), but divorced in 1971. After Karen was born her mother said to the nurse, ’that’s not my baby, look at that pitch-black hair,’ but within four weeks it turned light blond. A native of Rochester, Helene was in Watertown with Karen and her two year old sister Christmas to visit with her new bf’s family for the Labor Day holiday (12 y/o Bob and 10 y/o Tom were left at home with her sister). Hesitant to get into a new relationship so soon after her divorce (especially with four young children to take care of), she liked Stan Fisher’s warm and likable personality, and it helped that her kids seemed to adore him (she said that where it definitely ‘wasn’t love but it beat loneliness’). When Fisher suggested a weekend trip away to Watertown to see his half sister and her family, at first Helene was just going to bring Chrissy, but then her older daughter begged to go too at the very last minute as well, and she relented. Mrs. Hill said Karen had an independent streak and her dream was to grow up and become a movie star.
Little Karen Ann had large, chocolate brown eyes and honey-blonde hair that her mother styled long and girlish. At a bit before 2 in the afternoon on September 2, 1972, Karen told her mother that she wanted to go and play outside, which Helene said was ok but told her to ‘stay close,’ as she wanted to wash her hair to help make a good impression on Stan’s family. She told police that the last time she checked on her daughter she was playing with a little white bunny that belonged to one of her bf’s sisters kids, and the last thing she said to her was, ‘honey, mommy’s gonna wash her hair. You stay in the yard, okay?’ To this request, Karen replied, ‘I will, Mom.’ When she failed to turn up after a few hours, Helene went for a walk around the neighborhood and asked if anyone had seen her daughter. After being met with multiple ‘no’s’ she began to worry, and called Watertown Police at 5:45 PM; the responding officer only took five minutes to show up (if only Jack Blake was given the same level of care).
Shortly after Karen disappeared Mary Blake’s SIL went to her house and asked if she had seen her. She hadn’t, and where she wanted to go and help in the search for the little girl she had her children of her own to take care of; she immediately knew that Shawcross was responsible.
At roughly 2 PM a local college student named David McGrath was driving over the Pearl Street Bridge and saw a small blonde girl climbing the yellow fence near the Black River. He noticed that she appeared to be looking for something on the ground and that there was a newer brown and white 10-speed bicycle propped up against the ‘latticed laced iron fence.’ McGrath’s first thought was that a child that young shouldn’t be alone in such a dangerous spot, but at the same time he firmly believed in minding his own business and kept driving. On his return trip about ten minutes later he noticed the bike was still there but the child was gone. After hearing about the missing child he reached out to LE, and it was his call that led to the discovery of Karen Hill.
A few minutes later four teenage girls on their way to visit a relative just happened to be walking by the same bridge as McGrath and witnessed a man climbing up the river bank then climbing up and over the fence. As they passed by him they noticed that his clothes were stained and his legs were wet, and he was carrying with him two fishing poles.
At 2:45 PM Terrey Roy Tenney was walking past Gateway Electronics near the railroad tracks on Factory Street when he noticed Art riding his bike nearby. The sixteen year old was on his way home to the Cloverdale Apartments and had his arms full of clothes, something Shawcross noticed because a few minutes later he circled around and came up behind him. His neighbor asked if he wanted an ice cream cone, which he accepted (although hesitantly) and later observed that Shawcross was ‘out of uniform’ and wasn’t dressed in his ‘normal’ neat clothes (he was wearing ‘soiled dark blue shorts and a dirty t-shirt’). Art volunteered that he had ’been fishing’ and offered to carry his bags of clothes home for him; he accepted, but stressed not to lose anything. When Tenney arrived at Cloverdale ten minutes later Shawcross was already there, along with his clothes. The boy said that it was his first real interaction with him, and they’ve never really spoken before; it was later suspected that he was Art’s way of establishing an alibi.
The body of Karen Ann Hill was found under an old iron bridge that went over the Black River by Watertown Police Officer Augustine Capone, who saw her feet sticking out above the water and ‘her whole upper torso buried in rocks;’ she had grass and leaves stuffed down her throat and was naked from the waist down. The Pathologist that performed her autopsy said that she had been dead anywhere from eight to twelve hours and there was a chance that she’d been killed before she’d been sexually assaulted. Immediately Shawcross was a suspect, most likely because of the debris that was found in her mouth and throat; locals told LE they remembered seeing him with a young girl matching her description earlier in the day that she disappeared, with one even reporting they saw him sitting with her on the same bridge where her body was later discovered; the two were eating ice cream.
I’m just curious: what did Shawcross say that made the girl go with him? Her mother said she walked eight blocks to school everyday alone in the city of Rochester, and that it was uncharacteristic that she would just wander off with a stranger. What I personally think happened is the little white rabbit Karen was playing with ran away and she simply ran after it without thinking. Shawcross was probably fishing when the child approached him and he somehow convinced her to come over to him (maybe he told her he knew where the creature had gone?). Sadly we’ll never know.
After police connected the dots between Karen’s murder, Jack Blake, and Art’s new bike that was seen near the scene of the crime, police quickly brought him in for questioning. Shawcross arrived at the police station shortly after midnight, and he told LE that he left his apartment at 7 AM earlier that day and after a few hours of fishing he went home for a break. He then volunteered that he rode his bike to the local bargain center and visited with a friend before he eventually ran into Tenney from Cloverdale. He bought his teenage neighbor an ice cream cone then carried a bag home for him, arriving there at 3:15 in the afternoon. Shawcross also mentioned that he returned to the shopping plaza two additional times that day, where he purchased a few things for himself as well as some sneakers for his stepson; he then claimed he spent the rest of the day at home with his wife.
During their interview, Watertown Detective Charles Kubinsky observed that Shawcross went out of his way to give an explanation as to why he was near the bridge when he was, and that he also seemed desperate to make it clear that he was nowhere near it at the time that Hill disappeared. Shawcross remained at the police station talking to detectives until around 2 AM, and he was released. Early the next day Kubinsky read the report from the teenage girls, who said they saw him on the bridge at roughly the time Hill was murdered, which destroyed Art’s alibi. The detectives immediately brought Shawcross in for a second interview.
During this interview Shawcross was inconsistent when it came to the time that he was near the bridge, and he eventually stopped answering their questions and he was released again. At around 8 AM on September 3rd a sniffer dog was brought in to track the scent of Karen Hill, and it led investigators from the bridge where she was found right to the Cloverdale Apartments. Shawcross was arrested on the third time he was brought into the Watertown Police station for questioning.
As Detective Kabinsky wrote his report on Karen Hill he recalled a report from a man named William Corky Murkock, who reported a suspicious looking man that came out of the woods behind his motel and gas station around the time that Jack Blake disappeared. After some additional questions later that same day at roughly 10 PM Shawcross hinted that he knew where the Blake kid was buried, saying ‘okay Charlie, I’ll help you. And maybe you can help me. But let me sleep on it.’ The detective thought to himself that Art seemed to enjoy having the upper hand, and that he probably wanted to make a deal.
He confessed to burying the child somewhere in some swampland off of Route 81, just north of Watertown. Police quickly formed yet another search party on September 6, 1972, and when they stumbled upon human remains they immediately knew they found Jack: the name ‘Blake’ was written on the back of the child’s t-shirt, one that had written on the front, ‘I act different because I am different.’ Big Pete and Mary weren’t even contacted by the authorities after their son’s remains were discovered, and they had to find out just like everyone else: on the news. It was determined that the initial search for Jack took place within yards of where his body was eventually found.
The pathologist determined that Blake had been suffocated to death, and that his remains showed signs of sexual abuse. Shawcross would later admit to luring the boy into the woods, then forced him to strip naked then run from him before taking his life. He also said that he returned to his remains on several occasions and had sex with the corpse, and that he cut out the child’s genitals and heart then ate them. Because the level of decomp was so advanced nobody really could say that it did or did not happen.
The day after Art confessed he sent a friend to his ex-wife Linda with a message for her: that he didn’t mean to do it and was having a ‘Vietnam War flashback’ when he killed Karen Hill. Exactly two weeks later on September 17, 1972 a plea bargain was struck, and in return for a guilty plea for a first-degree manslaughter charge for the murder of Karen Hill no charges would be filed against him related to the homicide of Jack Blake (thanks to a statute that acknowledges the killer’s ‘extreme emotional disturbance’). The former Jefferson County DA William McClusky rationalized the plea bargain by stating that aside from his confession to detectives, there was no direct evidence linking him to the murder of Jack Blake. McClusky also suggested that had the case gone to trial Shawcross may have argued that he was under ‘extreme emotional disturbance,’ and a jury would have most likely agreed upon a verdict of manslaughter anyway. He confessed that he encountered Karen while she was playing by the Black River, then proceded to lure her away before he raped then strangle her to death.
Arthur John Shawcross was sentenced to an indeterminate term, with a maximum of 25 years at Attica Correctional Facility. In November of 1972 he was transferred to Green Haven Correctional Facility, and two years later he became violent after receiving constant threats from other inmates. In 1975 he filed for divorce from Penny after she wouldn’t visit him, and the same year he also claimed to have sex with a nurse’s aide (something that has never been confirmed). After Shawcross was in prison for fourteen years, inexperienced prison staff and social workers concluded that he was ‘no longer dangerous’ (completely disregarding the warnings of psychiatrists who had assessed him as a dangerous ‘schizoid psychopath’), and he was released on parole in April 1987. This is where I’ll end this portion of my article, and the second part will be about his crimes in Rochester.
Initially after the discovery of Jack Blake’s body in September 1972 he was laid to rest in North Watertown cemetery in an unmarked grave in Section W between the stones of William Howard and Leland Parker. However in November 2013 an unnamed childhood friend of Jack’s reached out to the Blake family and donated a marker for Jack, which was installed at a dedication ceremony later that same month.
Mrs. Blake struggled with Jack’s death until the end of her life, and even thought that police lied about finding his remains and that Shawcross was innocent of both murders in 1972 (she even thought they buried an empty coffin). Years after the murders she met with Helene Hill, who she told her crackpot theories to, and after a few phone calls and a sit-down with some Rochester detectives Mrs. Hill was told to ‘get rid of that woman,’ because her whole family was bad news and was always in trouble. I mean, it’s rude but fair: all of the Blakes (Mary included) were constantly in and out of the Watertown Police Department on a various (small) misdemeanor charges (mostly fighting and shoplifting). Strangely enough, Richie Blake was sentenced to Green Haven for burglary, and happened to be assigned the same counselor as Shawcross.
Sadly Big Pete and Mary’s marriage couldn’t withstand the murder of their precious son and they eventually separated. After she took the kids and left he turned to hard drugs and booze, and got so sick that (according to her) his ‘liver exploded.’ Despite being divorced, she had to sign him into rehab towards the end of his life for alcoholism, and he died at Mercy Hospital in Watertown on February 10, 1984 at the age of 52. Mrs. Blake died of congestive heart failure at the age of 69 on January 1, 2004. According to her obituary, she was a homemaker and enjoyed playing bingo. Jack’s sister Dawn passed away at the age of fifty on February 18, 2007. A waitress at various restaurants around Watertown, Ms. Blake enjoyed playing cards and going for walks. Rose Marie Blake died at the age of 43 on April 9, 2003 of acute respiratory failure due to pneumonia. She loved cats and like her sister also worked as a waitress; she briefly lived in New Jersey, where she cared for race horses.
Karen Hill’s father Robert died at the age of sixty on April 17, 1993. Helene Hill remarried a man named Larry E. Southwick on September 13, 1992 in Collin, TX and passed away on April 21, 2024 in Walworth, NY. Karen’s sister Christmas Madama died on May 17, 2021; Chrissy worked at Eastman Kodak and as a bus driver for Brockport Central Schools, and loved riding her motorcycle, gardening, and going to concerts. She was happily married and enjoyed spending time with her husband and daughter. Karen’s brother Bob Hill is currently residing in Florida, and Thomas lives in Albion, NY.
In the years he spent in prison after his second round of murders Doctors ran Shawcross’ blood work, and discovered that he suffered from ‘pyroluria,’ which is a fairly unusual physiological abnormality. Also referred to as Malvaria, Kryptopyrroluria, and Hemepyrrole, pyroluria is a condition that causes ones body to make too many ‘pyrroles,’ which is a byproduct of the formation of hemoglobin that is believed to be caused by an abnormality during its synthesis. A normal level of pyrroles in the blood is between 0 – 10 μg/dL, where samples between 10 – 20 μg/dL are considered borderline, and those above 20 μg/dL are deemed elevated; Shawcross had a level of around 200. People that have the disorder typically have behavioral problems and are poor at controlling their anger, especially when provoked.
Works Cited:
Aamodt, Mike. Retrieved August 27, 2014 from maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/Shawcross%20Presentation.pdf
Cummins, Dan. (January 31, 2022). ‘Timesuck with Dan Cummins: 281, Arthur Shawcross: The Genesee River Killer.’ Taken September 9, 2024 from podscripts.co/podcasts/timesuck-with-dan-cummins/281-arthur-shawcross-the-genesee-river-killer
Cowiki, Jeff. Taken August 28, 2024 from jeffcowiki.miraheze.org/wiki/Arthur_Shawcross
Olsen, Jack. (1993). ‘The Misbegotten Son.’
’47,XYY syndrome.’ Taken August 26, 2024 from medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/47xyy-syndrome/#synonyms
Theodore Robert Bundy, Crime Scene Photos.
Over the years I’ve only come across a few pictures from Bundy’s crime scenes, for the simple fact that there’s not many of them. This is because he usually left little to no trace of himself behind, and there were no bodies recovered until they were completely decomposed (well, until the end in 1978). I came across a website last night on TikTok (as silly as that sounds), and it contained a bunch of pictures I’ve never seen before, I was pretty amazed. So, here they are. I also went through my own collection and found some additional crime-scene related pictures and included those as well. Because, why not? If anyone has more, please feel free out reach out to me. I will give you credit.
Edit: I wanted to thank Tiffany Jean for all of the hard work she does on the Bundy case. Because of her we have information never before accessible, and she is a wonderful educator and TB resource. Thank you for all that you do.
Powerline Road on Taylor Mountain. Photo courtesy of KIRO-7.
Katherine ‘Kathy’ Kolodziej.
One of the things that has always gotten under my skin about Ted Bundy (aside from his crimes against humanity) was how little he confessed to during his time on death row. He essentially used his secrets as a bargaining chip to extend his life right up until the very end. So, he could have killed the neat and tidy 30 women he confessed to, or he may have murdered over 100 as he told his attorney John Henry Browne… as I said in a previous article, unless someone discovers his long-lost diary where he candidly spoke of his dastardly deeds no one will ever truly know the full extent of Bundy’s crimes. There’s so many murdered and missing women he could possibly be responsible for but little to no concrete evidence to prove it. In my cross-country tour of anything related to Ted, I’ve already been to Washington and Pennsylvania with hopes of going to Colorado in December (edit, November 2023: I’ve been to Florida and Utah since, I have Oregon, Idaho, and Colorado left).
Whenever you hear the run-down of states Bundy had any possible activity to, New York is usually brought up last and is followed with, ‘but he was quickly ruled out as a suspect.’ The possible murder in question is that of Katherine Kolodziej. Kathy was only seventeen-years-old at the time of her homicide in early November of 1974, and was a SUNY Cobleskill student majoring in animal husbandry. The attractive young student was last seen in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 2, 1974 walking out of a local tavern called ‘The Vault’ in the village of Cobleskill. She went out dancing with a few girlfriends but turned down a ride back to campus, saying wanted to stay out a bit longer and was going to be getting a ride home from someone else. According to her cousin Vicki Szydlowski, Kathy spoke to her mother just a few hours before her night out, and Mrs. Kolodziej asked her to stay at her dorm that night and study. Kathy was responsible and a good student, not a partier by any means, but this time she disregarded her moms request because she wanted to go out with her college friends. I probably would have done the same thing when I was 17. About her cousin, Vicki said: ‘she was a good kid, but it was a Friday night and she wanted to go out with her friends to the local bar. It was a small community; everybody knew everybody and that’s just what we all did back then.’
Katherine ‘Kathy’ Kolodziej was an only child born to Andrew and Hedwig (nee Szydlowski) Kolodziej on December 7, 1956 in Ronkonkoma, New York. Hedwig was born on April 10, 1919 in Jamaica, NY; Andrew was born on April 12, 1922 in Wysne Lapse Poland and emigrated to the United States in the early 1940’s. Despite the fact that Kathy’s case went cold nearly 50 years ago, NYS Police investigator David Ayers told Andrea Cavallier from Dateline in December 2020 he isn’t about to let the young girl’s killer get away: ‘it’s a very tough case, and a lot of time has passed. But let’s just say, anything is possible. It’s not hopeless.’ Ayers went on to tell Cavallier that Ms. Kolodziej was last seen at roughly 1:30 AM leaving the bar wearing a red coat and crossing the street, most likely beginning her walk back to campus, which was only about a mile away ( I made the drive myself earlier today and it was indeed very short). It was the last time she was seen alive. It wasn’t until the weekend was coming to an end that her loved ones knew something was very wrong: she’d never just disappear without telling anyone where she was going. After Kathy’s story made the local news, a witness came forward claiming they saw a young woman get into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle around 1:45 AM the morning she vanished; to this day it has not been confirmed by authorities whether or not it was her.
Twenty-five long days went by. Law enforcement, Cobleskill campus security, and volunteers spent thousands of combined man hours combing the area looking for any trace of the missing girl. Finally, on November 23, 1974 law enforcement received a tip that hunters found a single blue shoe at the intersection of McDonald and Cross Hill Road in Richmondville, NY; Police later found its pair up the road. That same day Kolodziej’s remains were found by a group of deer hunters in a field on McDonald Road in Richmondville. Detective Ayers informed Dateline a man (who thankfully was aware of the missing co-ed in the area) had noticed a piece of red cloth in the distance through his binoculars and immediately notified the police. Upon arriving at the scene, state police discovered the badly decomposing body of Kathy Kolodziej discarded on a low rock wall; she was naked from the waist down but the lower part of her body was covered up by her red coat that was draped over her like a blanket. According to an autopsy performed at the Albany Medical Center, she had been stabbed seven times with two different weapons.
There would be no Thanksgiving celebration that year for the Kolodziej family. Instead of gathering together for a happy meal, Kathy’s parents started to prepare to bury their only child. Vicki Szydlowski said of that day: ‘we were supposed to go to Aunt Hattie’s at their home in Ronkonkoma that day for Thanksgiving. But then they got the call about Kathy. Nothing was ever the same.’ She went on to say that she and her siblings were close to her in their younger years however as they grew older and went to different colleges they eventually drifted apart, ‘but we always came back together at family gatherings; we had that cousin bond.’ Vicki described her cousin as a kind, good person who always made them laugh, especially with her different accents: Kathy had perfected her father’s thick Polish accent, which made everyone laugh when she pretended to speak like him.
Vicki shared a story with Dateline that when Kathy begged her parents for a horse her father built a stable in the backyard of their Lake Ronkonkoma home, and that: ‘she loved all animals, was always bringing them home. But she really loved horses, loved riding them, caring for them. It was her passion. And it led to what would have been her career.’ In her senior year of high school Kolodziej attended BOCES, majoring in ‘Horse Care & Horse Training.’ After graduating in 1974, she decided to turn her love for horses into a career and enrolled at the State University of New York at Cobleskill majoring in animal husbandry in hopes of becoming a veterinarian one day.
In a 1979 news interview, Kathy’s uncle Charles Szydlowski (a retired New York State police detective) recalled the phone call he got from his sister about his niece’s disappearance: ‘She said, ‘Charlie, Kathy is laying on the side of the road somewhere dead, I know it.’’ He attempted to tell her that her only child would turn up safe: ‘I said, ‘Heddy, there are 13 million people in New York State. What are the chances this is going to affect us this way? But she was right. Her first thought was that her daughter was dead, and she was right … I told Hattie… I told her that she’ll be all right. But my sister was so upset. She kept saying that Kathy was dead. Dead on the side of the road somewhere. Turns out, she was right.’ In the years that followed Kathy’s death, Andrew and Hedwig Kolodziej tirelessly worked next to law enforcement in hopes of helping them solve their daughter’s murder. Of her aunt and uncle, Vicki said: ‘they mourned their daughter for so many years, but they died before knowing who did this to her. It’s heartbreaking.’ After the death of Mr. and Mrs. Kolodziej, Vicki and Charles have taken on the duty of reaching out to investigators about any developments or updates about Kathy’s case. Mr. Szydlowski said that he’s hopeful his niece’s case will be solved soon: ‘our family would like closure. I would like to know. And one day, I’ll be able to tell my sister what happened.’
In addition to the New York State Police, many other investigating agencies have helped interview thousands of people about Kathy’s murder over the past almost 50 years. Friends, family, classmates, casual acquaintances… if anyone so much as walked by Kathy on Cobleskill’s campus, law enforcement spoke with them. However, with each year that goes by the chances of catching the coed’s killer becomes less and less likely as witnesses (and the killer themselves) are growing old and passing away. Detective Ayers inherited the cold case in 2016 and shared with Dateline that while he is unable to disclose specifics regarding DNA findings in Kathy’s case: ‘it’s an investigative avenue we continue to explore due to the advancements made with DNA technology. I do believe that any developments made with DNA evidence will be a huge step towards getting answers and possibly solving the investigation.’ HE also said that investigating LE agencies have reached out to the public on multiple occasions, encouraging them to report any information that could potentially help lead to an arrest: ‘individuals who may have had information of what happened are older now, some have even passed away, but we’re still hoping to track someone down who we missed before. We received numerous tips over the years, but the more time that passes, the harder it becomes.’
Tom Cioffi was the NYS Detective in charge of the case before Ayers took over; in 2012 he put up billboards in the Cobleskill area regarding Kathy’s disappearance and made requests for information through the media in an attempt to keep her murder on the public radar. The most recent one was put up in the fall of 2017 by Detective Ayers on Route 7 in Cobleskill: on it was a photo of Kolodziej along with a plea to the public that anyone with information regarding her homicide to call authorities. In addition to the well-placed billboards there’s also a Twitter handle and a police-run Facebook page titled ‘@Justice4Kathy Facebook Page.’ Its purpose is to provide the public with updates on the case and invites those who knew her or lived in the area to share stories and submit information. About the Facebook page, Ayers said that ‘we hope that by sharing Kathy’s story, and photos of the local bar and the area of Cobleskill, it will jog someone’s memory and they’ll have the information we need. There’s always somebody we might have missed, or someone who was reluctant to talk. We hope now is the time they come forward.’ He hopes that the billboards combined with the social media page will help put a renewed buzz in the case, and hopefully Kolodziej’s killer can finally be brought to justice. ‘We’re coming up on 50 years since Kathy’s murder, but we haven’t given up. There’s always a chance for closure. There’s always hope.’
The young student only lived in the area for about two months before she was murdered, which really didn’t give her a lot of time to form a lot of intimate and meaningful relationships (especially ones off campus). This is worth mentioning because Kathy was found in such an intimate way: her assailant was very careful to cover up the lower part of her body (despite being the one responsible for taking her clothes off in the first place). The fact that the killer seemed to know the ins and outs of the close knit area makes me speculate that maybe at one point they lived locally and weren’t just a drifter passing through. If (and this is a BIG if), she was held captive for any amount of time before she was killed then I would think she was murdered by someone that most likely lived alone and away from a lot of people (possibly in the country or a more remote area).
After the grim discovery investigators interviewed not only members of the student body at SUNY Cobleskill but also patrons of the bar she was last seen at. In addition, because of the report that Kathy was last seen getting into a yellow Volkswagen, law enforcement also tracked down and interviewed Bug owners in the area as well as anybody that may have had a connection to the murders of young women in the Northeast area. Despite the countless number of police interviews conducted over the years not a single serious suspect can be identified. Quite a few serial killers were investigated for the murder, including Ted Bundy, Lewis Lent, Donald Sigsbee, and John William Hopkins but all were eventually cleared.
So, we all know that Bundy didn’t kill this girl. In fact, I (very) briefly spoke with Detective Ayers on the phone and he flat-out told me he wasn’t guilty either (I’m an insurance agent with no police training, I will never pretend I know more than a trained law enforcement officer does). We know that on August 30, 1974 Bundy moved to Utah to start law school (ahem, again), and on October 31st he abducted and murdered Laura Ann Aime after she attended a Halloween party at Brown’s Café with friends in Lehi, Utah. Now, the café is 2,191 miles away from The Vault in Cobleskill and takes well over a full day to drive to (straight through, no stops). This means if Bundy did kill Kathy, he would have had to kill Aime then immediately get in his car to make the one day, nine hour drive to NYS to kill Kathy, who disappeared early in the morning on November 2nd. I mean, I suppose it’s plausible, but I just don’t think it happened. I listened to Dr. Keppels book ‘Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder’ on Audible while driving to Cobleskill and one of my biggest takeaways related to this case was that Bundy apparently made a real attempt to attend a good amount of classes his first semester back at law school. So the idea of him driving to NYS to commit a single murder just doesn’t make sense. Especially since on November 8th, just 6 days after Katherine Kolodziej was abducted, Bundy hit twice in Utah (Carol DaRonch then Debra Kent): The Fashion Place Mall in Murray Utah is 2,170 miles away from SUNY Cobleskill (and a 32-hour drive). We also must keep in mind the fact that law enforcement said that they had evidence that Kathy was most likely kept alive until the day before her body was discovered… I’m sorry, it’s just completely improbable that Bundy made this trip and committed this murder.
The serial killer Donald Sigsbee lived in Madison, NY (roughly 61 miles away from Cobleskill) and in March, 2004 he was convicted on two counts of second-degree murder for the 1975 death of 19-year-old SUNY Morrisville student Regina Reynolds. Ms. Reynolds was last seen hitchhiking at the intersection of Route 20 and 46 in Morrisville, NY. It is also speculated that he is responsible for the death of 21-year-old Martha Louise Allen, whose body was found by a boater on Black Creek on July 25, 1973 in the area of Verona Beach State Park. An index card with Ms. Allen’s name on it was discovered with paperwork related to Sigsbee’s cabinet business two years after her death. Law enforcement briefly considered him as a suspect in Ms. Kolodziej’s murder but he was eventually ruled out. In 2004, Sigsbee was found guilty of second-degree murder for the stabbing death of Reynolds and he died of natural causes on October 26, 2009 in Mohawk Valley Correctional Facility in Rome, NY.
WOW: I never heard of Lewis Lent but boy am I glad I looked him up… he reminds me of the wish.com version of Ed Kemper. I know it’s insensitive to make light of a murderer but come on… it’s a bit obvious. Anyways, Lent was a former Massachusetts janitor that murdered two children (but possibly more). Despite living in a different state at the time of the murders his childhood home was in Newfield, NY which is only about a 2.5 hour drive from Cobleskill. He claimed to be the subject of blackouts and memory lapses, and in one AP interview he blamed it on a close encounter with UFO occupants while in Virginia. It’s worth noting that his victims were much younger than Kathy (two were only twelve years old). It’s speculated that Lent didn’t act alone and that his accomplice(s) are still at large.
John William Hopkins’ first confirmed victim was the last he was officially linked to: Joanne Pecheone was a 19-year-old St. Francis de Sales School student when she was murdered on January 12, 1972. The school is located in Utica, NY, which is roughly 60 miles away from Cobleskill. Next was 17-year-old Cecelia Genatiempo, who Hopkind killed on July 24/25, 1976 in Gloversville, NY. His third and final confirmed victim was Sherrie Anne Carville, a 17-year-old high school student he kidnapped from a bar in her hometown of Johnstown, NY on October 22, 1978. Because of some striking similarities in the Hopkins murders and Kathy’s case, Tom Cioffi and Schoharie County Sheriff Tony Desmond (also a NYS Trooper) believe Hopkins could have possibly had some sort of role in Katherine’s murder. When he was arrested in 1979, he admitted to the murder of three young women total, but would only name and discuss two of them: for unknown reasons he refused to discuss anything related to his third victim. In relation to the homicide of Kathy Kolodziej, Sheriff Desmond said that ‘three of the victims were the same age as Kathy, and if you look at some of the pictures of these victims, the hairstyle parted in the center, long and combed down, it’s similar. And they were all college students.’ However, NYS Trooper senior investigator William John said evidence linking John to Kathy’s homicide was still minimal, and that: ‘we’re not sure if it was Hopkins. We’re looking at means and opportunities.’ He went on to say that Hopkins raped his victims and there was no evidence that Katherine was sexually assaulted in any way (despite the young girl being found naked from the waist down). I feel it’s worth mentioning that Hopkins appeared to have an unhealthy obsession with knives, and would often carry several of them on him in various sheaths (Kathy was stabbed eight times with two different weapons). The mystery of his third victim was a secret the killer thought he took he took with him to the grave: on June 3, 2000 while incarcerated at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, NY Hopkins committed suicide by slashing the back of his legs and wrists with a razor. After a cold case review, in 2011 the Oneida County DA Scott McNamara announced in a press release that police in Utica finally closed the case of Joanne Pecheone, naming Hopkins as her killer. There have been some speculations that he may have had additional victims on top of the three he was convicted of (including Kathy’s), however authorities have been unable to successfully link him to anything as of November 2023.
Redditor ‘whiskeyandtea’ had a lot of interesting insights regarding Ms. Kolodziej’s tragic murder, saying: ‘I’ve been researching this case for about a year and a half now. Some of my opinions are:
- It was probably someone local.
- As others have said, this road is not exactly easy to stumble upon.
- In a recent interview the investigator assigned to the case said that a forensics report at the time suggested she was killed within a day of her body being discovered. Her body was discovered 3 weeks after she vanished. If this piece of information is true, where was she being held this whole time? Granted this piece of evidence contradicts what previous investigators have suggested (they believe she was killed almost immediately after being taken). Still, it’s a consideration.
- It was someone she trusted.
- No one reported hearing screaming, to my knowledge. In Cobleskill, at that time of night, if someone forces a person into a car, someone will likely hear the scream. So she probably got into the car willingly.
- She turned down a ride home and said she was going to be getting a ride home from someone else. She probably did, and that person is probably the person who killed her. Why would you turn down a ride home from someone you know to catch a ride with some one you don’t?
- The way the body was covered and carefully placed on the wall in the field seems like it might be a demonstration of remorse, to a degree, which you might expect from someone who knew her.
- It was probably someone from the college, although it may also have been a townie from a bar.
- She was only in town for 2 months. That’s not enough time to meet that many people, especially outside of campus, especially when you are acclimating to a new environment.
Again, because it seems likely that she took a ride from someone she knows and trusts. How many people would you know and trust after living somewhere for only 2 months. If, and this is a BIG if, she was in fact held captive for a duration of time before being killed: it was probably someone who lived alone. This would eliminate most students, which means this should be cautiously evaluated, because there is probably a decent chance it was a fellow student.’
In a comment on an ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Reddit post about Kolodziej’s disappearance, ‘TheEvilWoman‘ commented that they ‘live only a few miles from where her body was found. McDonald Rd is a really small road. You can hardly see it in the dark. I seriously doubt it was a random murderer. My guess is that it was someone local to the area. Someone she knew from hanging out in the bars. As for the Sheriff’s dept in this county, they are a joke. I ask the state troopers if I need the police. I doubt they will solve Kathy’s murder unless someone confesses. Her killer ‘most likely still lives in the county, probably in Richmondville.’ In response to that, a second Redditor by the handle Amj9412 commented, ‘you’re right it would be a weird spot to leave someone if you didn’t know your way around. Creepy to think he could still live around town!’ I will say, this past weekend I went to Cobleskill and did some exploring in the area and they are absolutely right: McDonald Road is extremely short, and is absolutely located in an odd, secluded spot ‘off the beaten track.’ Therefore, my educated assumption is someone must have known the area fairly well to leave the remains of the young lady in such a particular spot.
In the offices of the Princetown State Police Station located in Schenectady, NY the files related to the Katherine Kolodziej case are split into three cardboard boxes, her last name scribbled on the sides in dark black permanent black marker. Two of them can be found at the Trooper barracks in Rotterdam, and the third at their station in Cobleskill. Inside is information related to the case, including photos of Kathy, her autopsy report, information pertaining to leads, and crime scene photos. Currently, the only consistent phone calls law enforcement receive regarding the cold case are the twice-yearly inquiries from a former college classmate of Kolodziej’s who lives in Florida (Barbara Rose Lanieri). Despite many years going by since the murder took place, NY State Police remain hopeful that Kathy’s case can still be solved. Regarding the murder, Tom Cioffi said, ‘I still think this case can be solved. I really do.’
Andrew Kolodziej passed away on February 13, 2001 in Ronkonkoma at the age of 78; Mrs. Kolodziej died less than a year later on January 9, 2002 in Ronkonkoma at the age of 82. They’re buried in the same plot as their daughter at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram, New York.
New York State Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $2,500 for information that directly leads to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for the homicide of Katherine Kolodziej. If you have any information in this case, please contact Investigator David Ayers at (518) 337–1223 and/or 24 hours (518) 234–3131. You can also leave an anonymous tip through Crime Stoppers. Use the ‘leave a tip’ tab on the Facebook profile or call their hotline at 1–866–313-TIPS (8477).
Works Cited:
http://cbs6albany.com/news/local/police-1974-cold-case-for-katherine-kolodziej-still-active
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/223882
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Cold-case-but-not-forgotten-933328.php
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/crime/murder-woman-missing-ronkonkoma-1.14699303
Another Bundy Blog. 