Canada's youngest "triple murder" convict
Plus: Oregon newlywed found in her trunk, mystery of missing 5-year-old boy, and more.
1969: Janet Lynn Shanahan found in the trunk of her own car
Fifty-five years ago, Janet Lynn Shanahan was a beautiful young newlywed with her life stretching ahead of her in Eugene, Oregon.
She’d been married to Christopher Shanahan for ten months, and was the definition of a beaming bride with her pink corsage and poofy ‘60s hairdo. She was studying at the University of Oregon to become a teacher.
On April 21, Shanahan went to her parent’s home to celebrate her little brother’s 15th birthday, but she never came home. Her new husband sounded the alarm, and she became a missing person the following day.
On the 23rd, her husband asked Shanahan's sister to drive around and look for her, and it didn’t take them long to find her car. It was in an unusual place: parked in a ditch, in an industrial area, next to a field.
Her body was in the trunk of her own car. She’d been strangled to death.
Despite the obvious signs of foul play, police were never able to find Shanahan's murderer. But recently, interest in her case has boomed again.
Shanahan’s family has started pushing hard for closure, offering a $45,000 award for anyone who helps them find the killer. A quadrant of volunteer investigators has been helping out the Eugene Police Department with the case.
Why now? Because people are getting older. Witnesses are dying. Her husband, Christopher, is nearing 80. This may be everyone’s last shot at finding the killer—and the killer is likely someone who knew her, someone who may still be around, according to investigators.
"We have already done a pretty thorough investigation, and we have our thoughts," said one of those investigators, "but thoughts do not convict people."
Dive Deeper
Read: Efforts renewed to solve 1969 cold case murder of UO student Janet Shanahan, The Register Guard
Listen: The Unsolved Murder of Janet Lynn Shanahan, Cascadia Crime & Cryptids
1992: Young Timmy Wiltsey's body is discovered in a marsh
At first, the scenario seemed like a mother’s worst nightmare: in May 1991, Michelle Lodzinski took her 5-year-old son Timothy to a carnival near Sayreville, New Jersey, turned her back on him for a second, and he vanished.
The carnival was immediately shut down; volunteers combed the area and the surrounding woods, but Timmy wasn’t discovered until 11 months later, when his partial remains were found half-buried in a marsh on April 23, 1992.
Nearby was a blue blanket. Lodzinski said she didn’t recognize it.
Horrible, right? But the horror of the case grew when it became clear that Timmy’s young mother—she was only 17 when she had him—was giving inconsistent statements about his disappearance.
She said, at various points, that a go-go girl named Ellen had taken him, or that he vanished into thin air, or that a man held a knife to his throat and snatched him away.
Still, police had no hard evidence to tie her to Timmy’s murder. The case went cold, and Lodzinski moved on with her life, moving away and having two more children.
But in 2011, when Timmy’s case was reviewed among several other New Jersey cold cases, investigators decided to show the blue blanket to one of Timmy’s old babysitters. She recognized it right away: it was Timmy’s favorite blanket, she said.
That was the evidence investigators needed to bring a case against Lodzinski.
In 2016, Lodzinski was convicted of Timmy’s murder and sentenced to 30 years. But six years later, the New Jersey Supreme Court overturned her case, saying there wasn’t any physical evidence showing where exactly she had killed Timmy, or why.
Today, Lodzkinski remains free.
Dive Deeper
Read: Murder Case of 5-Year-Old Timothy Wiltsey Roils NJ 30 Years Later, New Jersey Monthly
Listen: The Disappearance of Timothy Wiltsey Part 1, The Bold Sidebar
Watch: The shocking case of Timothy Wiltsey, The Crime Reel
2006: Three bodies found in the Richardson family home
Jasmine Richardson, of Medicine Hat, Alberta, earned herself a dubious superlative at age 12: she became the youngest person in Canada to be convicted of a triple murder.
Her victims? Her mother, father, and 8-year-old brother. Their crime? Her parents had grounded her for dating a 23-year-old named Jeremy Steinke, who claimed he was a 300-year-old werewolf and wore a vial of blood around his neck.
To Richardson, who had a page at VampireFreaks.com and called herself “runawaydevil,” this punishment was unacceptable. On her profile, she wrote things like “Have you ever been arrested? Not Yet,” and “Have u ever cheated on someone? Yes . . . Many Years Ago.” (Reminder: she was 12.)
She and Steinke refused to stop seeing each other. Instead, they got amped up for their crime (or inspired to do it) by watching the killing-spree film Natural Born Killers.
Hours later, they stabbed the other three members of the Richardson family to death. Steinke killed the parents; Richardson killed her little brother.
Richardson was given the maximum sentence possible: ten years. Steinke, a full-grown adult, got three life sentences. In 2016, Richardson walked free after completing her sentence.
The judge claimed she was remorseful and rehabilitated, though some of the Richardson’s neighbors found it hard to agree.
Dive Deeper
Read: Jasmine Richardson walks free a decade after she and boyfriend massacred her family, The New Zealand Herald
Listen: Jasmine Richardson & Jeremy Steinke Part 1, Morbid
Watch: The 12-Year-Old Who Became a Triple Murderer..., Coffeehouse Crime
2015: Hannah Wilson’s friends see her for the last time
Indiana University senior Hannah Wilson had just taken her last college test and was pretty sure she’d gotten an A. She was on top of the world! She had a job lined up and grad school plans, and she was ready to party.
On the night of April 23, Wilson went out drinking with friends, but by the time they reached their third drinking destination, her friends decided that Wilson was too drunk to continue.
Instead of letting her into the sports bar where they were headed, they put her in a cab and sent her home.
Surprisingly, given how her story ended, Wilson did actually make it home. Her cab driver saw her staggering onto the sidewalk by her house, her roommate heard the front door of their home open around 1 a.m., and her purse and cell phone were found on her bed the next morning.
But Wilson herself wasn’t there.
Her body was found miles away the next day, hair matted with blood. She’d been beaten to death with an object—possibly a flashlight.
Her killer? Daniel Messel, 50, who’d likely never crossed paths with Wilson before that night. Security camera footage showed his car following her cab down the street and circling the area around her home several more times.
Messel had a history of violence. He’d previously been convicted of breaking a bone in his own grandmother’s face and bashing another woman over the head with a two-by-four. He was given a sentence of 80 years for Wilson’s murder.
It’s unclear how Messel got Wilson into his car—did he go into her home, or did he somehow convince her to come with him?—but it’s not unclear that he killed her. Her blood was found all over his car and his clothes, and his cell phone was found at her feet.
Wilson’s father clung to that last fact as proof that his daughter had fought hard for her life.
Dive Deeper
Read: Hannah Wilson verdict: ‘She fought him off, and now he’s off the street’, IndyStar
Listen: MURDERED: Hannah Wilson, Crime Junkie
Watch: Disturbing details of Hannah Wilson's murder revealed in court documents, WRTV Indianapolis