The Murder of Kathy Lynn Beatty

Richard, thanks for the link and re-posting of the current police cold case information.

Let me get something straight, she was last seen safe and sound on a Thursday, July 24 1975? And she was found on a Friday morning?

With respect to all involved, especially the professional investigators who have kept this investigation alive after all of this time, how sure are they of the witness placing Kathy Beatty as walking on West Frankfort near Parkland Junior High at 9:00PM?

I know of at least one person deeply involved in this neighborhood and case who might be considered less than reliable as a witness. Then again, as the newspaper coverage relates, a lot of people were pretty evasive or misleading in their answers to questioning.

How can anyone know what to believe about this, with so much misinformation fed into the investigation? I suppose all that anyone really knows for a fact is that a teenage girl died and nobody's certain about a lot of details.

Over the years I've heard some rumors that were beyond bizarre. I suppose I should refrain from repeating them here. Having spoken with some of the investigators in recent years, I'm sure that they know whatever I know, and more.

Yet because they can't close this case one way or the other, everyone who lived in the neighborhood at the time is pretty much under at least some degree of suspicion.

I'd love to lean towards the theories that it was a serial killer. I know that a fair number of people want to tie it in with the disappearance of the Lyons girls. But there's that report of two teens carrying a female across the road in the direction of where Kathy was found. Two teens carrying a body doesn't sound like an adult serial killer, adult serial killers usually operate alone and I guess that most of them would have access to a vehicle.

But let's say that if it was an adult serial killer (or even a one-time killer, but adult), and they lost their key to a GM 1972 car, they couldn't use a vehicle to transport. Yet how could an adult serial killer get teens to do their transporting for them?

Thomas Hardman said:

We'd love to have photos of all of the proscpective suspects such as Crutchley, Buzbee, and Coffey as they appeared back in 1975. As to who hung out up around "the trails" or "the rocks" back in the day, the local police know who are all such persons, and could certainly find those who are still alive to show them such photos to jog their memories.

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Not sure that this photo of Buzbee will help since it's dated 1982, but those who knew him in 1975 might still be able to recognize him.

Buzbee Indicted on Rape Charges - Connected Communities

Thomas Hardman said:

...Let me get something straight, she was last seen safe and sound on a Thursday, July 24 1975? And she was found on a Friday morning?

With respect to all involved, especially the professional investigators who have kept this investigation alive after all of this time, how sure are they of the witness placing Kathy Beatty as walking on West Frankfort near Parkland Junior High at 9:00PM?

I know of at least one person deeply involved in this neighborhood and case who might be considered less than reliable as a witness. Then again, as the newspaper coverage relates, a lot of people were pretty evasive or misleading in their answers to questioning. ...

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Here is the generally accepted/known time line just prior to the attack on Kathy. This was on Thursday evening, 24 July 1975:

6:30 or 7 PM: A boy who lives next door stops by to see Kathy at home. He had brings her a shirt from Ocean City, chats with her awhile, then leaves.

(So it was known that Kathy was at home around this time. Her house is on Frankfort Ave. Verifying proof would have been a new, folded T-shirt in the house, or at the site of the attack if she wore it.)

About 8:30 PM: Near Parkland Junior High School, Kathy is seen walking alone by several known youngsters about Kathy's age. Although they later say that they saw her at the school, none of them claim that they were with her. Several later refused to take polygraph tests.

(This was the last known sighting of her, and several children were interviewed, all saying the same thing. West Frankfort ends at Parkland Middle School parking lot, so Kathy would have been on the street or sidewalk between the school and her home at this point.)

Some time after 8:30 PM: Kathy receives a fatal blow to her head and is left lying behind the K-Mart at Georgia and Connecticut Avenues.

(Since, 8:30 PM was the last known sighting, it follows that her attack occurred near or after that time. Her sister found her near the K-Mart the following morning, unconcious and badly injured.)

Thomas Hardman said:

... I'd love to lean towards the theories that it was a serial killer. I know that a fair number of people want to tie it in with the disappearance of the Lyons girls. But there's that report of two teens carrying a female across the road in the direction of where Kathy was found. Two teens carrying a body doesn't sound like an adult serial killer, adult serial killers usually operate alone and I guess that most of them would have access to a vehicle.

But let's say that if it was an adult serial killer (or even a one-time killer, but adult), and they lost their key to a GM 1972 car, they couldn't use a vehicle to transport. Yet how could an adult serial killer get teens to do their transporting for them?

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As I mentioned when I first started this thread in 2006, there are more than one possible scenario as to what happened to Kathy. One main theory is that acquaintences of Kathy attacked her. Another is that a stranger - possibly a serial offender - attacked her.

Regarding the story of two teen males carrying a girl across the street:

I would consider that as possibly true, but I would also strongly question it, since over 30 years went by before it was first related to police. It does fit with what police have always suspected (that neighborhood kids were responsible), but it could also be a story concocted for a number of different reasons.

It is also possible that it was an absolutely true sighting of an incident unrelated to Kathy's murder. I would truely love to hear more specifics about it, such as what time was this sighting, who saw it and what were they doing at the time, and why did they wait 30 years before coming forward?

Regarding possible links to the Lyon Sisters Disappearance and serial offenders as suspects:

I mentioned early on in this thread some coincidences and similarities between the disappearance of Sheila and Kate and the murder of Kathy Lynn Beatty. Nothing has ever been proven to link the two cases, but there are strong possibilities of such a link; especially when one looks at Fred Howard Coffey, Jr. and his activities before and after his residence in Maryland.

Coffey, of course, is not the only pedophile/rapist/murderer known to have been in the area at the time of these heinous crimes. Others have been mentioned who might also have had the opportunity and the ability, and the psychotic make-up to have committed one or both (or more).

The passage of TIME in cases like these can be both a disadvantage and a benefit when trying to solve them.

The disadvantage is that as time passes, the trail goes cold, evidence is lost, and witnesses scatter, die, or forget. And other cases occur which take up investigators' time and efforts.

The benefit of time passage is that "time will tell" on the perpetrator. Patterns emerge or cause the perpetrator to be recognized as a possible suspect. This is true of most of the possible suspects mentioned in these threads. They were not known to police investigators at the time, but when they were later caught and convicted, looking back at where they were, what they did, etc, vectors point back to previously unsolved crimes that fit their patterns.

maconrich said:

Not sure that this photo of Buzbee will help since it's dated 1982, but those who knew him in 1975 might still be able to recognize him.

Buzbee Indicted on Rape Charges - Connected Communities

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Thanks for the photo link. Buzbee could be a potential suspect in Kathy's murder. He lived in the same Aspen Hill neighborhood at the time. I do not know if he was acquainted with her or any of her friends or if he was ever questioned about her death.

The link indicates that his earliest suspected/known rape at the time of his arrest was in April 1977, which was only a year and nine months after Kathy's murder. He was, I believe, 18 years old and had just graduated from High School in July 1975.

Richard, thank you for that photo link. Tim Buzbee's mug shots from his early 1980s rampage shows a man who is very "generic" in appearance. I can't tell, though, what was his hair color. Judging from the "present day" photo, would his hair have been red, auburn, or reddish-blond when he was a young adult? By the way, I understand that he lived more over towards "Flower Valley" than in this part of Aspen Hill. Went to "Our Lady of Good Counsel", a Catholic school then located in downtown Wheaton.

Your admonition about the passage of time having a useful effect in that patterns of behavior may become evident later which were not known at the time of some event. (I hope I am understanding you correctly.) At the time, huge number of neighborhood kids were junior-high and high school "partiers". A lot of them went on to lead lives that turned out to be less than exemplary and many died quite young. Most of those deaths fell into two categories, mostly death-by-misadventure or accidental death not resulting from criminal intent; and, those who died of drug overdoses or drunk driving accidents. It's not quite true to make a statement such as "of those who might reasonably be thought to potentially be involved, the majority were dead by age 25", but such a statement would not be far from the truth. Yet some managed to survive. Think of it as evolution in action. Some were too stupid to learn, so to speak, and some were too bold to fear the dangers. Some were one degree or another of such. But some were lucky and some had more sense than to really push the envelope. Most of the survivors learned and however much they were reckless partiers in junior high and high school, they learned to tone it down and stay off the radar of the authorities, if not necessarily above the suspicions of friends and neighbors. The point here being that they didn't escalate.

But if Kathy Beatty's death was indeed an assault, an attempted murder that did in fact cause her demise some 10 days later, and/or a sexual assault, I guess that the expected trajectory or learning curve associated with some types of serial offenders, just never happened. So was this a one-time thing? Or was the an initial offense that hasn't yet been associated to the career arc of someone, for example the idea that this could have been a very early Buzbee case. Or for that matter of John Brennan Crutchley.

I still haven't seen a contemporary-to-1970s photo of Fred Coffey so I can't say whether or not I ever saw him. But I have a pretty good idea of what Buzbee would have looked like and I can't remember ever seeing him up at "the rocks" or "the trails". But I'm pretty sure I can also say I never saw Crutchley up there either, unless perhaps it was a chance encounter at, say, the 7-11 store.

One other thing about the passage of time: not only do memories fade, but dreaming and imagining and thinking that one understands something, these things can all mix and become confused and inseparable. This was a traumatic time for the whole community, which was pretty much up in arms. Memories from a time of trauma can become fixed in the mind, and conjectures from a time of trauma can also become fixed in the mind. Some person might have been in an emotionally agitated state at the time, and have arrived at a conclusion based on conjecture, and with the passage of time they might remember it as fact. Or, as time goes on, they might find themselves wondering whether they actually remember something, or if they're remembering a story they heard, or if they're remembering a vivid dream or nightmare. Or, they might have an excellent memory that's undistorted by the passage of time, and I suspect that is actually sort of rare.

So, 30 years later, someone reports that they heard someone say something 30 years ago? It's got to be hard to tell how accurate anyone is along the chain of reporting.

I was just writing about the risks of "confabulation" as time goes by, where true memories could merge with memories of conjectures or hearsay. But what about conflation? You suggest that it's important to find some way to discern whether, even if the delayed reporting is 100-percent accurate and the time and day and descriptions are right, does this actually have anything to do with the situation at hand?

An additional risk in this particular incident and its circumstances is this: a lot of people who hung out at "the trails" and particularly at "the rocks" were there for the sole purpose of drinking and doing drugs with their friends. It's possible that someone saw something but was too stoned to know what they were seeing, or whatever they saw never made it past perception into cognition and into memory. Or maybe it did make it into memory, but only comes to the surface 30 years later. And maybe in that 30 years they've done a lot of drinking or whatever.

Someone might or might not come forth with a story or story that's an even mix memory, mis-remembered speculation, or even half-recalled snippets from late night television channel surfing while drunk. This has to be a tough job for the investigators, sorting through all of that.

Plus there are witnesses who might be telling unadulterated truth but you just can't put them on the witness stand due to "character" or other issues. For example the "boy next door" who gave Kathy an "Ocean City" T-shirt. As a witness he would be pilloried by any defense council, and most of the people who knew him as a young adult would say that if he said "the sun is shining" you'd have to go look for yourself, and take him with you as you went to look so that he wouldn't steal you blind while you were looking to see if he was telling the truth. The sad part is that he was far from the only such person in the neighborhood peer group. And most of the "party" kids had long since become adept at telling fibs to parents and other adults.

But let's not discount all reporting since there are people out there with honest hearts and good intentions and better memories.

As for me I was attending summer-school at the time, and it being a Thursday I'd have had to be home before dark, myself. Plus I was on restriction for something or another, so I had two reasons to not be at the "Yes" concert, and not up behind K-Mart, either.

I wish I could be more helpful to the investigators without just, well, making stuff up or speculating wildly or repeating rumors.

Thanks for providing the links, Mr. TT.

The Blogsite Bluelineradio got the story on Coffey in its entirety from what I had posted on Websleuths several years ago. I contacted its owner last month and asked that they credit their source and provide a link to this forum, and that was done. But it looks like this link is an older version which does not state source information.

It is nice to know, however, that folks are seeing this information and relaying it to others. Before the answers will come, the right questions have to be asked. And those questions have to be asked until the right person sees/hears them.

Please excuse me if I am wrong. I am assuming that LE didn't know what kind of vehicle the keys belonged to.

The keys would be the evidence that was needed and yet no one found out who they belonged to. LE should have known what kind of keys the vehicle keys belonged to. IMO all they would have had to do was to take them to a local place that makes the keys and ask the person to make them one. The person would be able to identify what kind of vehicle keys they were.

Also the door key, did they check out the door lock on the camper? From what was described, it didn't sound they the boys were just sleeping outside in the back yard. From what I gathered they were in a camper.

Puglover said:

Please excuse me if I am wrong. I am assuming that LE didn't know what kind of vehicle the keys belonged to.

The keys would be the evidence that was needed and yet no one found out who they belonged to. LE should have known what kind of keys the vehicle keys belonged to. IMO all they would have had to do was to take them to a local place that makes the keys and ask the person to make them one. The person would be able to identify what kind of vehicle keys they were.

Also the door key, did they check out the door lock on the camper? From what was described, it didn't sound they the boys were just sleeping outside in the back yard. From what I gathered they were in a camper.

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A previous post has a link to photos of those keys. There were two of them on a ring with a leather fob.

One key fit a 1972 General Motors Ignition. That could have been any kind of vehicle, such as a car, van, pick up truck, etc. Some vehicles of that year had ignition keys which also worked in the doors, so it is possible that this is one of those since no second vehicle key was with it. That would tend to point to the vehicle being a van or pick-up truck, as GM cars always had two keys back then.

General Motors keys were different each year. For example, a 1972 ignition key would not fit into a 1973 ignition. The grooves along the side of the key were in different places for each model year. That is how they could tell that this was for a 1972 model.

The other key on the ring was one which fit a Schlage door knob lock. These lockable doorknobs were of the type found on residential house exterior doors. They were in use in the 1960's and 70's. They have not been made or sold for many years. I doubt that it was used on a camper or trailer. At least, it would not have been standard on one. It is possible that someone installed such a lock on a camper, but not likely.

It was also NOT the type which would have been found on a motel door or an office door.

Richard, Puglover,

I seem to recall that the family of the person usually described as "former boyfriend" or "boyfriend" had a smallish camper trailer. I don't think it was an Airstream but one of those box-like little things that had a door in the middle of the side, and with room for a bed or bunk to each side of the door. Not very large, maybe 6 or seven feet wide and maybe 10 to 14 feet long.

Also worth mentioning, although I am not sure how it would fit into evidence for this case.

Vitro Labs, which employed Fred Coffey for a short time right about the time of the incident, was located right across Georgia Avenue. You might want to look at the google maps once again. The satellite view is probably most useful.

Right nearby is the Northgate Plaza Shopping Center. Back in the day -- including at the time of the incident -- the A&P grocery store there was frequently used as a meeting place for Russian spies and their local informants. (This can be found in the Mitrokhin Archive. It was covered in a <a href="http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-603544.html"><i>Washington Post article</a> "The Spies Who Came In To Aspen Hill; Notes From KGB Show Rendezvous In Suburban Md", Ruane, Michael E, Stuever, Hank, Washingotn Post, September 26, 1999)

Every once in a while, we kids would see them sitting in their cars in the parking lot ,and also over in the nearby Aspen Hill Shopping Center. We all thought they were undercover detectives, because of the cars they were driving, which were the same as the standard County fleet cars at the time.

7-11 -- which was right across the street from Vitro, and bounded on one edge of the K-Mart parking lot -- was something you had to pass to get to "the rocks" if you were coming from our neighborhood on foot. Since it was the only all-night convenience store for miles around, you never knew who you might encounter in the parking lot. Sometimes it could get very strange there. You could be walking through and a car could pull up with a group of kids from a nearby school outside of our neighborhood district, and they'd jump out and and try to beat you because you resembled someone they had a grudge against.

I remember one time I ran down from "the rocks" to call an ambulance for someone who was hurt really badly, and a man was on the payphone. I remember him as being about 35-45, maybe 5-10 or so, not bulky but with a sort of ex-military build. He was yelling into the phone, having a fight or browbeating someone or something, and I begged him to let me use the phone and he actually shoved me away and went on yelling into the phone. I went inside to ask them to call an ambulance and they said they weren't allowed and that I'd have to go back out and use the payphone. I went back out to see if the man would let me use it, and he just grabbed me and threw me into his truck or van (things get very hazy at this point. Drugs and/or alcohol may have been involved). Then he drove me around the neighborhood, reading names off of a list and pointing at houses and asking if so-and-so lived at this-or-that house. He was yelling like he was agitated enough to really hurt someone. But I got the idea he was looking for someone that he thought his kid had run away with, or something along that line. Something he wanted to handle really badly, but personally like he didn't want to get the law involved, and the way he was going about it was like someone who was ex-military or a heavy Fed or something.

After a while he sort of just kicked me out of the door and drove off. I seem to recall a brown "econoline" van, and then I seem to recall a big "chevy suburban" type of SUV.

Keep in mind that this is probably my memory kicking out something that is probably composited from several different incidents, people's parents showing up at places like the junior-high and berating whoever was there about information on their kids, that was almost commonplace. I couldn't say exactly which year it was, other than probably 1974 or 1975 (before the Beatty incident, since that place was shut down forever after that) and in the summertime.

Sometimes kids would be hanging out someplace, and someone would zoom up in a vehicle and drag the kid off, sometimes kicking and screaming. We got almost used to it, which is why almost all of the kids would run off and hide as soon as they saw car headlights. So this is one reason I'm a little skeptical that some stranger might have driven up to Kathy Beatty and snatched her into a car or something. We all knew to be careful of that sort of thing.

And there's still that question about the two teens reported as being reported to cross from the neighborhood towards K-Mart carrying a female...

Very, very interesting and valuable wealth of information about the time and crowd.

I would like to add that rumors are usually based on truth. Friends of mine back in high school knew a boy that disappeared. Small town, bumbling LE, so not much has happened. Of course, the truth was exaggerated but it is my opinion that rumors are frequently based in truth, ESPECIALLY in this case and the case I am talking about. When it involves teenagers and groups of kids the same age, the truth does get out though convoluted. I would also like to add that you are allowed to post rumors on this website as long as you make it clear that it is a rumor. Of course, completely understandable if you would not like to share them - just thought I would let you know.

Vitro was a Defense Contractor which did a lot of classified work for the Navy and the Department of Defense. It would naturally be a target for foriegn espionage agents.

Vitro had four locations in Montgomery County and two of them were in Aspen Hill. The older building was located where the Home Depot is now. The parking lots for Home Depot are pretty much the same as when they belonged to Vitro, but the old Vitro Building is long gone.

The second Vitro Building in Aspen Hill was known as "The New Vitro" and also "Vitro Number Four". That building and its surrounding parking lots still exist and were recently called BAE Systems (which is what Vitro became along the way after buyouts and mergers, etc). It was vacated earlier this year after many years of existence and is currently vacant.

Both Vitro sites are/were adjacent to each other and border on the Aspen Hill neighborhood of Kathy Lynn Beatty. Looking at the lay of the land and existing parking lots, it is easy to see how a kid might walk through the property on the way to 7-11 or K-Mart. In fact, there are several places which would be perfect "choke points" to intercept someone making such a hike.

Richard said:

...

One key fit a 1972 General Motors Ignition. That could have been any kind of vehicle, such as a car, van, pick up truck, etc. Some vehicles of that year had ignition keys which also worked in the doors, so it is possible that this is one of those since no second vehicle key was with it. That would tend to point to the vehicle being a van or pick-up truck, as GM cars always had two keys back then.....

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Just a note of clarification, for those who might not be familiar with GM cars of the 1970's... General Motors produced the following Automobile makes: Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac.

GM produced Pick up trucks and Vans under the Chevrolet and GMC names.

Richard, you are totally correct about kids cutting through from the neighborhood to stores and party places.

Let me direct people to a very useful site, historicalaerials.com and specifically to http://www.historicaerials.com/?poi=8326 and click to see the 1970 image. Contrast and compare to the modern-day maps.google.com display. Possibly most useful is the "compare tools' swipe, comparing the Historical Aerials of 1970 and 2002.

At one point in time there were 4 or so places where you could cut through from Southend into the Vitro parking lot. From Landgreen you could also cut through probably 4 or 5 places. Also, "back in the day" until maybe 1970, you could get from Landgreen Court to the court end of Southend by walking through unfenced yards, etc. One of the ways to get from the "English Manor" subdivision was by walking down the stub block of Oakvale Street. The person described as "former boyfriend" or "boyfriend" lived on that stub block. I have to point out that the person was a decent guy as a teenager and probably moreso than a lot of folks we all knew from school and "around the neighborhood". Not known for getting into fights or being a jerk to people, not at all. Most of his close friends in the immediate neighborhood were pretty much the same way. Remember, he and I and a lot of other folks from the immediate neighborhood were in Scouting together, when we first started hanging around up at "the rocks" we were generally keeping it clean, not leaving lots of trash, it was just where we hung out.

Then some older and a lot of "rougher" folks found out about it and it started to become a pretty "sketchy" scene. The newcomers littered a lot, got drunk and rowdy and broke bottles on the rocks and got the broken glass all through the nearby woods. In the summer of 1974 it was mostly "and a good time was had by all". By 1975, it was sort of different. I wasn't up there all that much in 1975 because I had got my driver's permit and had frequent use of a family car (ours was a Plymouth driving family) and a really cute girlfriend over on the other side of the county, and I mostly hung out driving around in cars with my friends from my out-of-district school.

I have to mention something here. In summer of 1975 or so, I was hanging out with some friends at a "party park" in the Tilden Woods neighborhood of nearby Rockville, and some adult comes walking up to us and we said "what's goin' on?" which was a typical partier greeting and this adult comes out a little more into the light and says "what Is going on?" and we all saw that he was in uniform and we all scattered as fast as we could. He caught one of the gals and the rest of us just found out various ways home. Later we heard that he was a "police impostor" and had borrowed his room-mate's uniform (or something like that) and when he caught that girl, he tried to sexually assault her. She got away and called the real police (he was posing as a park police officers, I seem to recall) and the guy got arrested. Or so the story went.

Apparently police impostors are a pretty recurrent theme in this area, probably in other areas as well. And I can tell you that when this guy showed up dressed as a cop and when we all ran away, I'm lucky I didn't break a leg or run headlong into a tree trunk or snag off one of my toes (I was in sandals). The same goes for anyone else who was running from this guy, I guess, although they knew the terrain and I was just visiting.

I wonder if they retained any sort of tissue samples from this guy? DNA wasn't yet a LE tool but old samples just caught and closed cases on two rapists from the early 1980s:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/22/AR2010112206851.html

Montgomery detectives make arrests in decades-old rape cases with DNA
By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2010; 8:51 PM

Montgomery County detectives have made arrests in rape cases dating to 1981 and 1984, officials said Monday, by tracking down suspects through DNA samples taken from decades-old evidence.

One of the suspects, Hubert Allan Marlin, 53, was arrested in Bethesda over the weekend after spending parts of the past 26 years in Michigan, Oregon and Texas, a police spokesman said. Detectives received a tip about where he was staying in Bethesda. They staked out a parked car and arrested Marlin as he tried to get in the vehicle, said Cpl. Dan Friz, a police spokesman.

The second suspect, Joseph Nickens, 54, was picked up by officers in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. Montgomery police flew to California to retrieve him, and by Monday morning he was booked into the county jail, Friz said.

Detectives credited a federal grant that is allowing them to use old evidence for new DNA tests.

"That's becoming our bread and butter," said Detective Ed Golian of Montgomery's cold-case squad.
{...}

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Back to the Beatty case, though. On the 1970 Historical Aerials image, K-Mart isn't yet built, I seem to recall that it opened in maybe 1973. The 7-11 is there, though, and I seem to recall that it opened in 1969 or so. Track down the image to where Connecticut Avenue dead-ends. You can see where a track has been cleared for survey. Note that at the end of that track, there is a clearing that extends out into the right-of-way of the future extension of Connecticut Avenue. That clearing seems to be a part of the Gate of Heaven Cemetery but it's actually on "no man's land". At the top of that clearing, in the picture, is a small creek that is part of the Watery Branch (also called Turkey Branch) of Rock Creek. If you were to start from a spot halfway up the west side of that clearing, and headed due west about 2/3rds of the way to Georgia Avenue, that's where "the rocks" were.

By 1975, K-Mart and the parking lot had been graded almost flat, cut out of the terrain which rose to a point where you could be at the northernmost point of the diamond-shaped K-Mart parking lot, and easily see over the top of K-Mart. You could see all of the way to Wheaton MD and this was a popular place to sit and watch Fourth of July fireworks, a person could easily see the Wheaton display and at least part of the Rockville display. From that high point, a trail headed due north for perhaps 150-250 feet and there were "the rocks". Probably a 4WD light Jeep could have driven up there but not a regular car.

The slope of the hills down to the parking lot was such that you could climb it, or climb down it, but if you lost your footing you'd probably roll all of the way down to the bottom (saw it happen a few times). Walking along the top of the slope from 7-11 to "the rocks", the slope was just a bit too much for riding a regular bicycle. I seem to recall that the path up the slope was right about at the edge of the slope, and that to the left (north) there was a slight gully for drainage.

At one point in time, to about maybe 1969 or so, there was a ruin of a very large house (or small mansion) that used to be called "the house on the hill" by locals, at one time belonging to the Woodworth family who owned most of that land. Some of the locals have mentioned a so-called "ranger" who I think was a resident groundskeeper. I don't know when they moved away. However this house was located atop the hill directly across Georgia Avenue from where Heathfield Road terminated. In the late 1960s Georgia Avenue was widened from a 2-lane country road to a 3 lane by 3 lane highway with wide median strip and left-turn pullouts. Before that time, it was possible to cross Georgia Avenue from Heathfield Road, take a left and an immediate right, and drive onto the Woodworth property. See the 1964 Historical Aerials image if you're interested. About halfway between "the rocks" and Georgia Avenue, along the decayed remains of what was once an estate driveway, was "the little rocks".

Some of the rumors I heard: variations on the location of the body. Some said she was found at "the rocks" themselves. The newspaper reports say she was found "in a ditch", near where kids rode "mini bikes" (sorry, it was motocross), but that could be either that creek feeding the Watery Branch, or any of a couple of other man-made drainage ditches. Another rumor says that she was found at the base of the hill by the K-Mart loading docks.

Rumors about her injuries were straight out of horror movies about sadistic mad doctors, as were rumors about the type, kind, and degree of sexual violations. Everyone repeated the same rumor about severe head injuries allegedly inflicted with a large rock. Rumors about the investigation itself got weirder over the years. I heard one rumor to the effect that the police knew exactly what happened but that their only witness couldn't remember it except under hypnosis and that was inadmissible in court. (I said they got weird, right?) I heard rumors that stray dogs got at her while she was passed out drunk. I heard it blamed on the supernatural. (I did mention weird.) I heard it was blamed on a black man that lived in the woods in a hut and practiced voodoo. I heard it blamed on wandering serial killers and that, at least, fits in with speculation about and the investigation of Fred Coffey.

There's a saying in any kind of investigation, whether it's criminal or scientific. It's the "principle of prosidy", usually phrased "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras".

I think we can reasonably rule out any substantive basis to claims of hoodoo hermits living in the woods, to say nothing of the actually supernatural. Actually within the realm of possibility is a random (or stalked) encounter with a serial killer or serial rapist, pedophile or somesuch. But the most likely explanation to me is that it started out as a motorcycle accident (unless there's some truth to some of the rumors about violations) and then by the time the authorities arrived, a very ambiguous crime scene and set of evidence and the lack of a narrative (evasive answers to police questioning) makes it look a lot more like murder-most-foul than it looks like "kid falls off bike and nobody cares enough to go back and check up on them, and they were too embarrassed to admit it".

In any case, negligence leading to death has to be pursued as negligent homicide, and a cover-up afterwards adds criminal intent to make it legally "murder". Or perhaps it is indeed murder-most-foul, with malice aforethought and direct intent.

In the absence of resolution, one way or another, the effects on the people living here are really bad. For one thing, except for the people known to have actually been at the "Yes" concert, everyone's a suspect. Everyone suspects everyone else. Everyone looks for guilty behavior or for behavior that would lead a person to suspect that another had the capacity for the crime as it was rumored or reported.

The problem with that is that almost anything that anyone does is subject to multiple interpretations. For example, if I am standing on my porch at the time that the schools let out, and I watch kids walk by, am I a pedophile, or am I on my shift doing Neighborhood Watch? The police have the resources to determine which is which, most people don't. But they may spread their suspicions around and their gossip chums all get the wrong idea, and act and believe as if it were verified fact. Also, people may decide to set up situations to get someone to reveal themselves, and perceived irregularities may be thought to be definitive proof. If everyone suspects everyone else and they're all doing this, all of society gets weird and weirder.

It's even worse in this case. For example, for the sake of the argument let's say that it really is a motocross accident that gets covered up in a way that leads authorities to call it murder. In this scenario, the whole neighborhood is suspecting everyone and each and all start taking notes, sneaking around and prying, trying to set people up, looking for a murderer that they will never ever find, because there's no murderer. There are people who covered up an accidental death, and that's criminal enough for them to keep their silence up. But an actual murderer? No. Yet the neighborhood's collective psyche and worldview gets totally warped. End of scenario.

Hi all,

Totally off topic but it seems that we may have yet-another serial rapist here in Aspen Hill.

Please see http://www.gazette.net/stories/11242010/aspenew224000_32536.php.

Regards,

This month marks the 36th year anniversary since the attack on Kathy Lynn Beatty. Her murder remains unsolved.

Police were never able to link this case to the disappearance of the Lyon sisters, but there certainly are a lot of similarities and possible connections.

Kathy was walking alone, barefoot, in her Aspen Hill neighborhood in the early evening of Thursday, 24 July 1975.

She was found early the next morning in a field near the K-Mart parking lot badly beaten, unconcious, and barely alive. She died 12 days later in the hospital of her injuries, never having regained consciousness.

I do not believe that this death was accidental. All the proof I need is that Coffey left town as soon as he heard Kathy was still alive. Where did he go after he damn near killed her and can someone provide info on his killing that little Amanda girl?

scriptgirl said:

I do not believe that this death was accidental. All the proof I need is that Coffey left town as soon as he heard Kathy was still alive. Where did he go after he damn near killed her and can someone provide info on his killing that little Amanda girl?

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I don't know where Fred Coffey actually went in late July 1975. He did not tell his employer (Vitro Laboratories) that he was leaving. Later, he wrote them a letter in which he explained that his wife and daughter were in a bad car accident in Kentucky. This was a lie and he used exactly the same story a few years later when suddenly leaving another job.

Coffey, in his letter to Vitro, requested that they mail him his last paycheck. So he must have given them a mailing address (which police would have).

He may have gone to Bristol, Virginia for a while, because that was his home town and where his mother lived. Or he may have returned to Virginia Beach, Virginia because he as arrested there in October 1975 for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" with a 15 year old girl. By late 1975, he enlisted in the North Carolina National Guard, so he may have gone there after leaving Maryland.

There is a thread in Websleuths Cold Case Topic area about Neely Smith (age 5) and her alleged killer, Fred Coffey. There is also information about Amanda posted in that thread.

Thanks Richard. How long did he stay in the Coast Guard and wasn't he a bit old for that job? Also, with his record of contributing to delinquency of a minor-how did he get into the coast guard? Wouldn't they have done a background check? Re contributing to deliquency of a minor-does that mean rape?

Fred Coffey was in the Navy for 12 years (3 consecutive 4-year enlistments). He was given an honorable discharge at the end of his 3rd enlistment, but was not allowed to re-enlist for a fourth time due to his abduction and rape of a 13 year old girl.

"Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor" means that he was at least partly responsible for someone under the age of 18 becoming involved in illegal activities of some sort. It might be that he pled guilty to that to get out of more serious charges of abuse or rape or abduction, or something else with the 15-year-old girl.

He joined the North Carolina National Guard late in 1975. I do not know how long he remained with the National Guard, but certainly not past 1986, as that is when he was arrested for the murder of Amanda and the molestation of three other children.