MS MS - Rose Marie Levandoski, 13, Ocean Springs, 1 February 1973

Himmie14

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Another cold case that has recently been reopened near my hometown. Rose Levandoski was taken from St. Martin Junior High on February 1st, 1973. Her body was found nude in the Tchoutacabouffa River in Biloxi. She had been stabbed in the back.

A tip had come in the day she disappeared from a trucker using the CB handle 'Yellow Bird' claiming she was at a ballgame. Other people have come forward with information, but nothing that leads to her killer. A week before her body was found, one woman remembers hearing a "blood-curdling scream" near her house. Other incidents include a girl calling the family and saying that she knew where Rose was and a man who threatened to do the same thing he did to Rose. The threat was made to a female working in a Gulfport office.

I'm posting this information in hopes that someone knows who killed Rose.
 
Posted on Sunday, January 16, 2011
By Margaret Baker | The (Biloxi, Miss.) Sun Herald

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/16/106895/cold-case-searching-for-roses.html#ixzz1TZLrbxG6


Rose met her abductor sometime after she asked to be excused from class to go to use the restroom.

In order to go to the restroom Rose had to exit the bldg she was in and enter another bldg.

(the link to full article isn't working for me)

http://z13.invisionfree.com/Ms_Missing_and_UID/ar/t695.htm
Here is a link that has the article copy and pasted.

I searched google archives and there appears to be maybe 2 other articles but they are pay per view.
 
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4087024091373614890&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

In her amended declaration, the administratrix alleged:

"On February 1, 1973, the deceased [13-year-old Rose Marie] had a math class from 12:00 to 12:50. Thereafter, she remained in the same classroom for her next class, an English Class which was to be taught by the Defendant, Mrs. Kenneth R. McGill. During the ten minute break from 12:50 to 1:00 P.M. between the Math and English classes, Miss Levandoski left her books in and on her desk and her coat and her purse on the top of her desk and clearly within the visibility of any person in the classroom; she left the classroom at this time and was not seen alive again."

administratrix= Rose's Mother, she lost this suit. Even though a teacher admits to having marked Rose present in a class after she had gone missing and IMHO that delayed trying to find Rose. This case is referenced in a lot of other cases.
 
That's why I posted it. A car that was reported in the area of the school on the day Rose disappeared was used in an attempted kidnapping in Pascagoula, a few miles east as well as an attempted St. Martin kidnapping. The case has been reopened, but most of the witnesses have moved or are died.
 
I wish there was more info to be found on the internet Himmie. When I was looking for background info to add to Rose's thread I saw Janie Sander's facebook page.

Do you think those might be connected?
 
Darren, the detective working Janie's case, says that they do have similarities but that at this time they don't have enough evidence linking the two cases.

Personally I think that they could be related, but there's no proof. Darren says it would be scary to think of two child killers working the same county at the same time.
 
The Sanders case and this case sound similar and are related, imho.
 
Does the murder of Rose Marie Levandoski have a connection to the abduction and murder of Mary Ann Favre? Dont know, but how many murderers of young ladies were roaming the coast of MS in the early '70s? (Approx. 40 mile distance between Bay St. Louis and Ocean Springs.)


MS - Mary Ann Favre, 1974 - Websleuths
 
Does the murder of Rose Marie Levandoski have a connection to the abduction and murder of Mary Ann Favre? Dont know, but how many murderers of young ladies were roaming the coast of MS in the early '70s? (Approx. 40 mile distance between Bay St. Louis and Ocean Springs.)

MS - Mary Ann Favre, 1974 - Websleuths
There were probably more murderers traveling the Gulf Coast in the 1970's than you'd think. Of these five that remain unsolved, the first three from Jackson County are most likely to be linked.

JACKSON COUNTY

Rose Marie Levandoski, 13, Ocean Springs, 1 Feb 1973
On February 1, 1973, Rose Marie left class at St. Martin Junior High to use the restroom. Her body was found nude in the Tchoutacabouffa River in Biloxi. She had been stabbed in the back. Her case was re-opened in 2010.
http://www.wlox.com/story/13384024/who-killed-janie-sanders

Janie Sanders, 16, Pascagoula, 26 September 1975
Janie was walking home from school when a friend saw her getting into a car with a man near the corner of Louise and Lanier Ave. The car is believed to have been a blue El Camino. Janie's body was found in a wooded area near the intersection of Grand Bay-Wilmer Road and Airport Boulevard in Mobile County
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...lled-in-Pascagoula-1975&p=6964577#post6964577

"Sanders' body was dumped in a wooded area near the intersection of Grand Bay-Wilmer Road and Airport Boulevard in Mobile County. The crime was so heinous, so terrible, that it haunts Detective Versiga to this day. It makes him want to solve this case. Even more so than ever, he's driven to do it."

"'It needs to come out, we need to air it out, we need to see if we can find a suspect and put this guy in prison." Versiga said. "He killed this little 16-year-old girl. It's haunted Pascagoula. I can remember, I was 11-years-old when this happened and I can remember my mother not letting me go outside and play anymore because of what this man did.'"

http://www.wlox.com/story/13384024/who-killed-janie-sanders

Debra Gunter, 20, Gautier, December 1978
Kidnapped from her job as a clerk at a Gautier, Miss., convenience store and found stabbed to death five days later.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/public...s-girl-possibly-linked-to-more-deaths/2113744

Larry Eugene Mann, executed in 2013 in Florida for the 1980 murder of 10-year-old Elisa Nelson in Pinellas County, is a possible suspect for the the above three murders.

Mann once lived on Lanier Ave., and broke into a home and raped a woman on the same street in 1973. He was convicted, sentenced, and by 1975 was living in a work-release camp with limited access to wander the streets.
http://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/mann-larry-eugene.htm


HANCOCK and HARRISON COUNTIES

Mary Ann Favre 15, Bay St. Louis, 22 April 1974
Rode her little sister to school one morning, and was later seen pushing the bike after the chain broke. She was last seen buying a Coke at a grocery store on Dunbar Ave. The bike and Coke can were found on Dunbar Ave. the same day.

Nine months later, her badly decomposed remains were located in a field near Discovery Bay in Pass Christian. She'd been shot in the head.

Witnesses reported a light green '60s Chevrolet with three taillights on each fender parked on Dunbar Ave. The FBI released a sketch of a man in his 20's, medium height and build.
http://www.seacoastecho.com/news/exec/view.pl?archive=13&num=7846#.VpnmmlmfXh4

The case was re-opened in April 2014.

"Adam declined to say if there were any suspects at this time, but he said technology is on law enforcement's side."
http://www.seacoastecho.com/news/exec/view.pl?archive=13&num=7851#.VpnmoFmfXh4

Robin Coultas Rodriguez, 20, Gulfport 1976
In 2014, LE said they had a potentially identifiable fingerprints from her car.

"Around noon Rodriguez's body was found partially nude, with her hands tied behind her back, face down in shallow water at the end of Magnolia Drive in Pass Christian, about 11 miles from where she disappeared.

Autopsy reports indicate Rodriguez was strangled to death."
http://www.msnewsnow.com/story/2591...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

"...disappeared from a Li’l General store in west Gulfport. She was found dead hours later in a mud hole at the Wolf River near Pass Christian. She was naked, bound and strangled to death, and her car turned up in Long Beach."

A couple of weeks after her body was found, an unidentified man began making threatening phone calls to employees at the store at 15th Street and 42nd Avenue. One woman received the calls at her home, and then her family dog was found cut to pieces on her front doorsteps.

The unidentified man didn’t want them to talk to authorities, former employees told the Sun Herald in recent interviews. They believe he was the killer..
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/crime/article24602248.html
ETA: Samuel Little, aka Samuel McDowell, a serial killer who traveled around the South in the 1970's and '80s is a suspect in the 1982 murder of Melinda LaPree in Pascagoula. He was known to have been in Pascgoula as early as 1977.

"In Mississippi, Pascagoula cold case Detective Darren Versiga is re-investigating the killing of Melinda LaPree, a 22-year-old prostitute found strangled in 1982. Little had been arrested in that crime but never indicted, Versiga said. The detective has tracked down old witnesses and is working to reconstruct the case file because much of it was washed away during Hurricane Katrina."

[...]
"In Pascagoula, LaPree went missing in September 1982 after getting into a wood-paneled station wagon with a man witnesses later identified as Little. A month later her remains were found, and Little was arrested in her killing and the assault of two other prostitutes. Versiga believes grand jurors failed to indict in part because of the difficulty in determining a precise time of death but also because of credibility problems due to the victim and witnesses working as prostitutes."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/07/samuel-little-trial-states-cold-case_n_3033665.html
http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2013/01/pascagoula_cold_case_heats_up.html
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...s-thru-final-arrest-2012&highlight=pascagoula
 
Bessie, thanks for putting together the above list; viewing the victims' names all in one place as well as the methods of murder is helpful, albeit jarring.

A few notes:

Each victim was abducted in plain sight, and then found elsewhere in a discarded manner.

Robin Coultas Rodriguez and Debra Gunter both were abducted from convenience stores at which they worked in 1976 and 1978, respectively. However, one was strangled to death and the other stabbed to death, and occurred in different counties; perhaps reasons LE did not connect these two murders.

If Mann or Little/McDowell are not responsible for at least one of the listed victims' deaths is yet another frightening thought.
 
201502041049200.jpg


Rose Marie Levandoski Homicide
February 21, 1973

Rose Marie Levandoski – February 21st, 1973
Location: Tchoutacabouffa River

On February 21, 1973 the body of 13 year old Rose Marie Levandoski was discovered in the Tchoutacabouffa River East of Corsos Bridge in Biloxi, MS. Levandoski was missing from St. Martin Junior High School on February 1, 1973 where she was a student. Harrison County Sheriff Office Investigators were assisted by Investigators from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and several leads were followed up during the investigation.

Nice Photo of Rose Marie at Link below.

LINK:
Mississippi Coast Crime Stoppers
 
Oct 27 2022 lengthy article.
1666904511606.png
''We had a good family life until we went to school and the nightmare started,” her brother, Alan Levandoski said.
“She was murdered,” St. Martin student, Missy Lucas said. “How did this person get her, abduct her? It’s a mystery, and it’s remained a mystery for almost 50 years.”
“The lack of investigation is unbelievable,” Dr. Strycker said. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
“We’re still back at the beginning, there’s not much to go on,” Captain Coley Judy with the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office said.''

''It was the first of February 1973, a frigid morning. 13-year-old Rose Marie Levandoski had been sick at the end of January, but on this day, she grabbed her purse and brown poncho to get ready to leave for school. The 8th grader told her mother she had assignments to turn in at St. Martin Junior High.
“Rose was sitting on the first row and I was sitting on the second row, next to her,” classmate Kim Inman Reeder said.
“What we know is she got up and left the class and never came back,” Captain Judy said.
“She leaned over and said I’ll be right back,” Reeder said. “As far as did she get permission, I don’t know if she got permission, if she asked to go to the restroom, she just said I’ll be back and she didn’t come back.”


“Somebody was fishing; and they found my sister in the river,” Levandoski said.
That fisherman who was also an off duty Biloxi police officer found Rose Marie’s body about 75 yards east of the Corso bridge. The coroner’s inquest documents one puncture wound in her back and a laceration on her face. She was nude and to this day, her clothes have never been found.''

''If you have any information, even the smallest tip would help investigators. Call the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office at 228-896-0678.''
 
LINK:

 
Last edited:
Dec 16 2022
''The search for clues and connections have led investigators to look at other cold cases where young girls were stabbed to death. A car – likely an El Camino with a camper shell or station wagon – is one common thread investigators are following.

In the 1973 disappearance and murder of 13-year-old Rose Marie Levandoski, witnesses told investigators they saw a yellow car in the area.

In 1975, when 16-year-old Janie Sanders body was found in Grand Bay, Alabama, a blue el Camino was spotted leaving the scene. Investigators believe it could have been the same car, perhaps painted''.
 

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