The unsolved disappearance of the Patterson family
Plus: Beauty Queen Killer, Green River Killer victim, and more.
1957: The mysterious disappearance of the Pattersons
Some said it was space aliens. Others said it was clearly a kidnapping. Or had they just run off to a tropical island to start a new life?
No one in El Paso could understand how William and Margaret Patterson had so thoroughly vanished—and 67 years later, we’re still no closer to an answer.
One day—either March 5 or 6, 1957, no one’s quite sure—the couple, who owned a photography shop near downtown El Paso, simply weren’t around anymore.
“It’s like they went for a walk and never came back,” said the El Paso County Sheriff, decades later. (He personally thinks they were spies and that the Russians called them back home.)
Oddly, William’s father wasn’t surprised by the disappearance. “My boy has done things like this before,” he said. “He made his living doing sleight-of-hand tricks.”
But William never contacted his father again, and eventually, even his father was forced to admit they were probably dead.
In 1984, over two decades after their disappearance, a new witness emerged with shocking evidence—or was it just another tall tale? Reynaldo Nangaray claimed that he’d seen blood in the Patterson’s garage and a piece of a human scalp on the propeller of their boat.
He also said he’d seen someone who worked with William take bloody sheets out of their house and tuck them into a car. But enough time had passed that even this shocking information didn’t give the case much new steam.
The Patterson mystery persists to this day. One of the most enduring rumors? Their bodies are buried right under their house in El Paso, and if you come by at the right time, you’ll see them—as ghosts.
Dive Deeper
Read: 65 years, many theories, no leads; El Paso couple the Pattersons still missing, El Paso Times
Listen: William and Margaret Patterson, Disappearances
1984: Elizabeth Ann Kenyon is never seen again
By age 23, Elizabeth Ann Kenyon had competed in several beauty pageants and turned down a marriage proposal. She worked as a special education teacher at Coral Gables High School near Miami, Florida, and modeled on the side.
She’d been at school until 3 p.m. the day she went missing, finishing a workout with the cheerleaders. She drove away in her convertible with a curling iron in her bag, and stopped by her usual gas station to fill up.
The station attendant noticed that a man pulled in right behind her, handed the attendant $20, told him to put $10 in Kenyon’s car, and began discussing something with Kenyon.
Based on the conversation that the attendant overheard, it sounded like this man was telling Kenyon about a modeling opportunity, and something about an airport.
That was the last eyewitness who ever saw Kenyon. Her car was found at the Miami International Airport six days later, but there was no record of her meeting anyone there or taking a flight.
Her parents hired a private investigator, who quickly tracked down a man named Christopher Wilder: her ex-boyfriend. They’d dated for about a year, and he’d even proposed, but he was 17 years older than Kenyon, so she said no.
The investigator contacted Wilder, who denied seeing Kenyon, but got out of town anyway. And then he continued on his kidnapping, rape, and murder spree—because, as it turned out, Kenyon was not his first victim, and Wilder was a serial killer who had been raping women since he was 17.
Over the next month, he kidnapped and tortured at least 12 young women, killing 8 of them, before shooting himself—accidentally or on purpose—during a tussle with the police.
Kenyon’s body was never found.
Dive Deeper
Short read: Elusive 'Beauty Queen Killer' Led Double Life as a Florida Playboy, A&E
Long read: The Snapshot Killer, Duncan McNab
Listen: Picture Perfect Murder: The Beauty Queen Killer, Once Upon a Crime
1990: The Green River Killer claims another victim
When she vanished, 36-year-old Marta Reeves was down on her luck. She was born in Hungary, immigrated to the US at 11, worked hard and dropped out of college to raise four daughters.
But her final two years were troubled. By 1990, she was estranged from her family and had turned to sex work to fund her crack cocaine addiction.
Marta's husband didn't hear from her after March 5, so he eventually went to the police, but her case slipped through jurisdictional cracks. (She had lived in Edmonds, Washington, but was now living in Seattle, so Edmonds police thought the case belonged to Seattle PD and vice versa.)
There was no progress on her case until ten months later, when her skeletal remains were found by a group of people hunting for mushrooms.
The area where her corpse lay was significant: three other bodies had been found there earlier, all victims of the Green River Killer, who was—at the time—still unknown.
"Police do not believe Reeves was a victim of the serial killer," reported the Tacoma News-Tribune in 1991. The theory at the time was that the Green River Killer was active during the early 80s, and Marta's 1990 disappearance didn't seem to fit the timeline.
But time would prove the police wrong.
Over a decade after Marta went missing, the Green River Killer was finally arrested and revealed to be Gary Ridgway, who would eventually confess to Marta's murder—along with the murders of so many other victims that he lost count.
"Choking is what I did," he said of his numerous kills, "and I was pretty good at it."
Dive Deeper
Short read: Daughters are eager for answers, The Seattle Times
Long Read: Green River, Running Red, Anne Rule
Listen: The Green River Killer, Cold Case Files
Watch: The Green River Killer: Mind of a Monster, Investigation Discovery
2008: UNC student Eve Carson is robbed, shot to death
Eve Carson was almost finished with college, and was surely looking forward to her summer—because her time at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill had been packed with activity.
She was on boards and programs and committees; she was the student body president and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a North Carolina Fellow, and pre-med with a double major.
But her full, busy life came screeching to a halt one night around 3 a.m. That was when two young men with extensive criminal backgrounds—Demario Atwater and Laurence Lovette, Jr—decided to drive around Chapel Hill looking for someone to rob, and spotted Carson walking toward her car.
They pulled a gun on her and made her crawl into the backseat of her car. They drove her around to various ATMs, withdrawing as much as they could from her bank account as she begged them not to kill her.
But Atwater and Lovette knew she’d seen their faces, and so they took her into the woods and—as she threw up her hands to protect herself—shot her five times with two different guns.
Both young men received life without parole, even though Lovette was only 17 at the time. To this day, Carson’s name is not forgotten at her alma mater. A fraternity and sorority at UNC host an annual Eve Carson Memorial 5K to raise money for her scholarship fund.
Dive Deeper
Read: Eve Carson murder case timeline (WRAL)
Listen: Student Body: Eve Marie Carson (Talk Murder to Me)
2009: A horrific murderer is found not guilty (sort of)
At the end of a quick trial with only two witnesses, a man named Vince Li was found "not criminally responsible" for a crime that involved stabbing, beheading, and cannibalism.
That he had committed the crime itself was not under dispute. Everyone knew Li had done it. Numerous people saw him do it.
Less than a year earlier, on July 30, 2008, 40-year-old Li had been riding a Greyhound Canada bus when he had pulled a large knife out and stabbed the passenger next to him, a 22-year-old carnival barker named Tim McLean.
In a panic, the bus driver pulled over and the rest of the passengers sprinted outside in terror. They then tried to rescue McLean, but Li chased them away with his knife.
As the driver and passengers watched (and vomited) from the side of the road, Li severed his victim's head, held it up so everyone could see it, and began eating McLean's body, including his eyeballs and part of his heart.
When police finally arrived, they heard Li declare, "I have to stay on the bus forever."
As it turned out, Li was schizophrenic, and his illness was completely untreated. He believed that young McLean was a force of evil and that God wanted Li to destroy him.
At the end of his trial, the judge declared, "[Li] did not appreciate the actions he committed were morally wrong. He believed he was acting in self-defense."
He was sentenced to a high-security mental health facility in lieu of prison and was given "absolute discharge" in 2017.
Still, Li seemed to know that something was wrong. When he appeared in court, he only said softly, "Please kill me."