The FBI admits that its listing of 500 homicide victims is a paltry start. Not all were victims of crimes, a handful were suicide victims. In 2007, there were more than 40,000 unidentified human remains known to exist nationwide. Manis' death will link her case to some other victim and then, perhaps, to a suspect. Now that case is in the FBI database with nameless victims.
Manis, "people at the restaurants recognized her and called us," Lt.
After local media showed a post-mortem photo of Ms. When police found her body, it had no identification.
She told her family that she had ridden with a trucker to get to Tennessee, Lt. Manis had been in the Chattanooga area for a few weeks, hanging out at the Palomino Club on Rossville Boulevard and applying for jobs at various restaurants. Her body was found June 12, 1993, off Mountain Creek Road, just a few hundred yards from U.S. Manis was known to hitchhike, and she was looking to establish a relationship with her estranged father in Tennessee.īut police believe her trusting nature fell victim to a highway serial killer. So when the 23-year-old didn't call her family for a few months in 1993, no one back home in Michigan paid much attention. "She never met anyone she didn't trust right away," said Rebecca Allen, Ms.
#Unsolved serial killers truck drivers free#
Lisa Manis was a free spirit who had no fear when encountering strangers. "It's the prevailing feeling that many of those victims are victims of this sort of crime," said John Bankhead, GBI spokesman. There are more than 40 unidentified remains listed on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Web site. So is a 1988 Jane Doe homicide victim found along Interstate 59 in Dade County, Ga. The 1999 homicide in Chattanooga is typical of the crimes listed in the Highway Serial Killer initiative. When a body is found, investigators turn to their missing-persons lists, but if someone was killed states away, the local list is no good, he said. Truckers who kill have skirted the nation's laws for years by committing their crimes in one state and transporting the bodies for hundreds - if not thousands - of miles. "The mobile nature of the offenders, the high-risk lifestyle of the victims, the significant distances and involvement of multiple jurisdictions, the lack of witnesses and forensic evidence combine to make these cases almost impossible to solve using conventional investigative techniques," said Special Agent Ann Todd, a Washington, D.C.-based FBI spokeswoman. The FBI's Highway Serial Killer initiative, started five years ago, is the key for local law enforcement to connect unsolved killings - often with unidentified bodies - to suspects and families yearning for answers. "We have to figure out who they are before we can figure out who did this to them." "They treat these people like they are disposable," he said. Carroll feels certain the killer brought the woman to the area and dumped her remains. The body was badly decomposed, but the woman had been strangled and bound with cord. "You can't even start to ask questions until you know that." Tim Carroll, head of the Chattanooga Police Department's major crimes division. "When you don't know who your victim is, there really isn't anywhere to start," said Lt. One unsolved Chattanooga homicide dates back to 1999, when contractors clearing brush in a dirty creek just below Interstate 75 on Cannon Avenue found the body of a 35- to 40-year-old woman. There are 10 such cases in or near the Chattanooga area, the FBI said. Many are nameless Jane and John Does whose bodies were found tossed along the nation's busiest highways. The victims are highway prostitutes, hitchhikers and people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Law officers have compiled a stack of 500 unsolved homicides and 200 potential murder suspects as part of the bureau's Highway Serial Killer initiative. Serial killers working as long-haul truckers may be responsible for a string of homicides that stretch from coast to coast and cut right through the tri-state area, according to the FBI.
0 kommentar(er)
