Media Links Only - *No Discussion*

New Posts

Posted by Richard on thread #1

The following ran in The Item newspaper on August 12, 2001.

The Mystery: No I.D., No Leads, No Justice
By Sharyn Lucas-Parker, Senior Staff Writer, The Item

In August of 1976, a woman and a man were found slain beside a dirt road in Sumter County. The deaths are unsolved and they still are unidentified. But they are not forgotten

The two people buried in Bethel United Methodist Church cemetery whose bronze plaques read ''Male Unknown, Aug. 9, 1976," and ''Female Unknown, Aug. 9, 1976,'' never attended a service at the Oswego church or paid tithes there. But for the past 24 years, the members of the church have made sure their resting places remain free of weeds and overgrown grass and that fresh bouquets of flowers mark their graves.

There has been no one else to do it.

''If it were some of our children, we would hope someone would do the same thing for us,'' said the Rev. Michael Henderson, who has been the pastor for six years. ''It's part of that 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'"

Somewhere, perhaps thousands of miles away, or maybe just a state or even only a county over, local authorities believe there are heart-sick relatives who might suspect, but don't know for certain, their loved ones are dead.

Twenty-eight years after the young woman and man were found dead on a dark, secluded Sumter County dirt road between Interstate 95 and S.C. 341, their identities as well as that of their killer or killers remain a mystery.

That thought haunts Sumter County Coroner Verna Moore and drives her to continue trying to find the answers she needs to solve this puzzle that dates back to Aug. 9, 1976.

"I have not given up on this case,'' said Moore, who was deputy coroner back then. ''The reason I am haunted is, I cannot understand how two young people disappeared from somewhere and that their parents would not be looking for them. This does not make sense to me. Somebody somewhere is missing a son or a daughter.''

The case also bothers Sumter County Sheriff Tommy Mims, who was an investigator with the sheriff's office at the time.

''This is one of several cases over the years that we would certainly love to bring to a close so we can identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice on this,'' Mims said.

The story begins around 6:20 a.m. on August 9, when a trucker driving along what was commonly known as Locklair Road, a frontage road just off the interstate, stopped to rest.

Instead, he found a disturbing scene: Two people lying by the road.

Links: http://www.crimelibrary.com/notoriou...ystery_couple/
progress.gif
 
Florence Morning News from August 11, 1976 that says they thought they were shot right there and that nearby residents heard gunshots between midnight and 1:00 a.m.


Bodies Located Monday
Are Still Unidentified
SUMTER (AP)-​



Sumter authorities believe an unidentified man and woman whose bodies were found Monday on a dirt road near the Florence County line probably were out of state travelers. "We've sent teletypes everywhere," Kumler County Sheriff I. Byrd Parnell said, adding that they had received inquiries from as far away as Rhode Island. He also said that bulletins describing the two have been sent to other states and missing persons reports are being checked. The two were found about 6:20 a.m. near 1-95 and S.C. 141 by a man on his way to work. The dead man was about six feet tall, weighed 150 to 160 pounds and had brown shoulder-length hair. The woman was about 5-5, weighed about 110 pounds and had reddish brown hair. Both are believed to have been in their early 20s. "This girl was very young and very pretty. He was clean shaven. They were well groomed. They weren't the hippie-type. They looked like the All-American boy and girl travelers," Parnell said, "It looks like they were executed right there."



Sumter County Coroner J. Bennie Raffield said the bodies were about four or five feet apart and that both were lying on their backs. The two are believed to have been shot between midnight Sunday and 1 a.m. Monday, the coroner said. Area residents reported hearing gunshots from the area about that time.​
 
news story on the 30th anniversary from 2006


(Sumter) May 25, 2006 - There are two bodies buried in a cemetery in Sumter, but no one knows their names. After almost 30 years the case still haunts Sumter County Coroner Verna Moore.
But she won't give up on her silent victims. "I feel there is possibly someone who knows who they are."
She wants that person to come forward.
Not only are their identities a mystery, but their killer or killers are as well.
Their bodies were found off Highway 341. They were both shot three times, once in the throat, chest and back.
A longtime resident, Jerry Locklair, still remembers that August day the bodies were found. The once-dirt road was closed for days. "The community wasn't so upset as much as curious as to what happened. It was evident it was something off I-95. We'd just like to see it resolved at sometime."

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4952583
 
Partial Quote from Porchlight:
Several interesting details in this article I had not read, including the couple stayed at the KOA campsite for approx. 2 weeks and Jock said he was a school teacher..

http://www.crimeandjustice.us/forums/lofiversion/index.php?t12233.html

QUOTE:
Verna Moore remembers the day the two bodies were found. As an assistant to the coroner at the time, she combed their matted hair before a photographer took their pictures.

"The thing that impressed me about her was her beautiful, long eyelashes. You don't often see them like that," Ms. Moore said.

"They were clean. They had no drugs or alcohol in them. They had nice jewellery on. They had stayed someplace the night before and taken showers. That impressed everybody. You couldn't say they were hitchhiking or living on the streets."

She has never forgotten the case. Now at age 81 and having since been elected chief coroner, Ms. Moore wants to reunite the couple with their relatives before she retires.

At the Sumter County Sheriff's Office she has found a ready partner.

"The case went cold, so far as their identity is concerned," said Sergeant Ray Mackessy, who is in charge of police evidence storage. "It had just been in a box on the shelf, and it laid there for years and years."

Much work had been done and some mistakes made.

Perhaps the best chance for solving the mystery came four months after the murder when a South Carolina man was arrested for drinking and driving. Under his car seat police found a .357-calibre handgun. Tests linked it to the slayings. The man with the gun, Lonnie George Henry, was asked about the murders while hooked up to a lie detector and the experts declared he was telling the truth when he said he did not kill them; he was, however, lying about where he got the gun.

Police were sure he knew more than he was saying.

"No charges were ever laid in it, and he has since gone on to his just reward," said Sgt. Mackessy.

Mr. Henry died in 1982, without revealing his secrets.

"We're obviously not going to get a prosecution in this," Ms. Moore said. "I just want to find out who they are."

Ms. Moore and Sgt. Mackessy have retraced the case as best they can but leads are dwindling. Their hopes now rest on Canada.

----

There have been many guesses over the decades as to what brought the young couple to Sumter County. Some have suggested they were in the Witness Protection Program. Others suspected they were couriering drugs up from Florida. Victims of a deadly carjacking was a popular theory. Others whispered that their parents might have had them bumped off.

"There are all kinds of guesses all really based on nothing," said Sgt. Mackessy. "It's like they came here from another planet."

Or, as investigators now believe, Canada.

"Even after all these years I realized there were things that had not come out and not followed up on. It never came out that he said he was from Canada," Ms. Moore said.

The Canadian connection comes from a four-page report found in the evidence box, written a year after the murders by Lieutenant James E. Gamble of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

Lt. Gamble received a phone call from a man named David Batson who said he recognized the dead man. Mr. Batson's wife, Janie, worked at a nearby KOA Campground, the report says. While at the campground, Mr. Batson met a young man and woman who said they were passing through on their way to Florida. A few days later, they returned to the campground, telling Mr. Batson that they liked it there more than in Florida. They stayed at the KOA for a couple of weeks and Mr. Batson shot pool with the man several times. He later believed his pool partner was the mystery victim.

"The man was called Jock," says Lt. Gamble's report.

"He stated that he believed the man had mentioned he was from Canada; that he had formerly been a schoolteacher and that his father was a medical doctor. He further stated that the man told him that his family had practically disowned him because they had wanted him so badly to be a doctor."

One evening as they played pool, "Jock" tried to sell Mr. Batson a ring he was wearing. The ring looked "very similar" to one police found on the dead man's finger, Mr. Batson said.

The possible name is intriguing because on the underside of the dead man's ring are three engraved letters: JPF. If the letters are the three initials of his name, then perhaps the J stands for Jock; or, as Ronna Hutchison, a private investigator working on the case, suggests: If the man was from Canada, perhaps it is "Jacques" rather than "Jock."

Mr. Batson's tantalizing tip, however, seemed to get lost.

"There is nothing in the file to indicate they followed up on that information about Canada," Sgt. Mackessy said.

Both Lt. Gamble and Mr. Batson have since died and the KOA has closed. Ms. Moore, however, tracked down the former KOA owners. They told her they kept detailed records on campers - including names, addresses and even photographs. Those records, however, had been destroyed when their home burned.

"I can't tell you how disappointing that was," she said.

The elaborate dental work on the young male victim also seemed a promising lead, but when Sgt. Mackessy looked for the teeth they were missing. A note in the file said they had been sent to a dentist for analysis. When they tracked down the dentist, he said he had given the teeth to the local school for training purposes. School officials said they had recently been disposed of.

Ms. Moore next convinced the television show Unsolved Mysteries to feature the case. That prompted 200 calls, which were pursued without success.

In recent years, a small army of volunteers has sprung up to help Ms. Moore. One local woman hopes to write a book about the case; another writes poetry inspired by it. Psychics have offered their musings and several amateur online sleuths have created Web sites to publicize the case.

Ms. Hutchison, the private investigator, scoured lists of Canadian doctors practising in 1976, looking for a possible father to the dead man. She found a Montreal physician who bore a striking resemblance.

Ms. Moore phoned him and asked if he had a missing son. He said he did not.

----

Medical science might still play a part in putting names to the victims. Last summer, the two coffins were dug up.

When Dr. Keene Garvin, a forensic pathologist, learned whom he was going to be exhuming he was surprised. Back in 1976 he helped perform their autopsies.

"They were fresh and in good condition - they could have had an open casket funeral. They were a young, handsome couple; they had money. I remember saying somebody would identify this couple immediately," he said.

"I was shocked to find they were never identified."

Both were white, with olive tones to their skin and were between 18 and 26 years old.

She was 5-foot-6, weighed about 105 pounds and had brown hair, blue-grey eyes, long eyelashes and two small moles to the left of her mouth. She wore a white blouse over a peach halter top and blue Levi's jeans cut off into shorts with a floral scarf as a belt. She wore purple and pink wedge shoes and three silver rings with embedded gems.

He was just over 6 feet and weighed about 150 pounds. He had brown hair, brown eyes and bushy eyebrows. He was undergoing extensive dental reconstruction and had two scars on his left shoulder. He wore a red Coors T-shirt, blue jeans and brown sandals. He had a Bulova Accutron gold watch and a gold ring with a gem and the engraved letters JPF.

Their autopsy notes describe the couple simply: "slender, attractive" and "well-developed, well-nourished."

Three decades after he first saw them, Dr. Garvin once again returned to the couple's remains. He took bone samples he hopes will yield DNA.

Without something to compare the DNA with, however, it will be of little help. That means hope in Sumter County again turns to Canada.

"If someone in Canada came forward and said, ‘I think that is my brother or sister,' or whatever, then we could obtain an oral sample from them to compare. It's our best bet," Sgt. Mackessy said.

Added Ms. Moore: "I cannot understand how two young people disappeared from somewhere and that their parents would not be looking for them. It is unreal that after all this time - it will be 32 years this summer - that nobody seems to be looking for them."

Or maybe they have just been looking in all the wrong places.

National Post

http://www.canada.com/news/story.html?id=420192
 
Missing Colorado woman identified as victim of 1976 homicide
Pamela Mae Buckley of Colorado Springs was found shot to death 44 years ago in South Carolina along with James Paul Freund.

Missing Colorado woman identified as victim of 1976 murder | 9news.com

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A man and woman found shot to death just off Interstate 95 in South Carolina have been identified by DNA after more than 44 years.

The victims are 30-year-old James Paul Freund of Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and 25-year-old Pamela Mae Buckley of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Both had been reported missing by their families.

...

Investigators say they were both shot several times with the same gun in August 1976. They were buried as Jane and John Does and in 2007 their bodies were exhumed and DNA was collected, according to the Sumter County Sheriff's Office, which held a press conference Thursday.

In June 2019, that DNA was sent to The DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that works to identify deceased persons using forensic genealogy. The nonprofit was ultimately able to identify Buckley and Freund.

...
Authorities say they hope the identities and photos either jog a memory or prod a guilty conscience to come forward so they can find the killer. The homicide investigation into their death is still open and active.
 
Genetic Genealogy Used To Identify Pamela Buckley As Victim In 1970 Shooting
CBS 4 - Denver
Genetic Genealogy Used To Identify Pamela Buckley As Victim In 1970 Shooting

On Aug. 9, 1976, a truck driver discovered the bodies in Lynchburg, just off of Interstate 95. According to The State, both victims were shot in the back of the head. No one knew who the victims were.

The victims were identified at 25-year-old Pamela Buckley, who was reported missing from Colorado Spring, and 30-year-old James Freund from Pennsylvania. both were last seen in December 1975.

Police have re-opened the case — and are still looking for their killer.
 
More than 40 years after their bodies were found, victims of SC cold case identified
The State
More than 40 years after their bodies were found, victims of SC cold case identified

In a statement, the office identified the victims as Pamela Mae Buckley and James Paul Freund. The families of the victims have been contacted, according to the office.

On Aug. 9, 1976, a truck driver discovered the bodies on Old St John Church Road in Lynchburg, SC just off of Interstate 95, the office said. Both victims were shot in the back of the head, the Sumter County Coroner said.

The sheriff’s office and other authorities put out photos and renderings of the man and woman for identification at the time. They had no success.
...

In 2007, former Sumter County Coroner Verna Moore exhumed the bodies and took DNA samples to try again to identify the victims. Investigators began working with Matt McDaniel, a Clemson resident interested in the case, the office said. He suggested in 2019 that investigators reach out to DNA Doe Project, an organizations that uses genetic genealogy to identify John and Jane Does.

McDaniel said that he spent eight years trying to get answers about who these people were and what happened to them. He shared a list of potential suspects over that time to investigators.

“Hopefully justice will be served for Jim and Pamela,” McDaniel said.

...

Buckley was born in 1951 and was from Minnesota, the office said. She was last seen in and reported missing from Colorado Springs in December 1975. Freund was born in 1946 and was last seen in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area in December 1975. No one appears to have reported him missing, according to the office. Buckley was 25 years old and Freund 30 when they were killed.

“It’s great to be able to bring the families some closure after starting this investigation so many years ago,” Sheriff Anthony Dennis said. “We also plan to reopen the investigation and follow up with a person of interest.”

Dennis said the case has always been a priority and investigators have worked “tirelessly to solve this case.”

There are still people in of interest in the case, Dennis said.

The sheriff office called the the identification “likely positive.” DNA can be extremely accurate but further investigations will have to be done, such as speaking with family members, to confirm the identities.
 
The lives of Pamela Buckley and James Freund, Sumter County's 1976 Jane and John Doe
Fox 57 22 Jan 2021

The lives of Pamela Buckley and James Freund, Sumter County's 1976 Jane and John Doe

The two were found shot to death on the side of Locklair Road in Sumter County on August 9, 1976. Before that, we’ve learned they each led full lives.

James, 30, grew up in Lancaster, PA and graduated from McCaskey High School on June 10, 1964.

Court records show he married Cherylene Albright on December 11, 1965. In September of 1971, James filed for divorce from Cherylene. His family reported him missing in 1975.

Pamela Buckley was 25 years old. The Redwood Falls Gazette reports she was the Redwood Jaycees Sno-Queen in February of 1970. She was set to become Miss Redwood Falls in 1971, but instead decided to tour the west coast with her folk trio ‘Sunlending’.

Her band made many stops along the coast. The group played at a coffeehouse in March of 1971 in San Diego, according to a headline in the San Diego State University Collegiate.

But, small coffee shops weren’t the band’s only stop. A story in the University of Minnesota Morris newspaper shows Sunlending in concert on campus on March 11, 1975 along with We Five, who at the time was nationally known. Her family reported her missing that year.
 
Inside Edition 26 Jan 2021

Victims in 1976 Cold Case Identified as Investigation Resume

Victims in 1976 Cold Case Identified as Investigation Resume

Pamela Mae Buckley, 25, of Minnesota, and James Paul Freund, 30, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, were reported missing by their families, according to The Associated Press. The bodies of the pair were discovered off of Interstate 95 in South Carolina by a truck driver on August 9, 1976, with multiple gunshot wounds, but remained unidentified until recently.

Buckley was last seen and reported missing from Colorado Springs, Colorado, in December of 1975 and Freund was last seen in the Lancaster area during the same time, according to the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, WAHC News reported.

For nearly four decades, investigators followed different leads, but came up cold. The pair were eventually buried as Jane and John Doe. In 2007, their bodies were exhumed and DNA was collected, according to the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, reported the AP.
 
The Denver Post

22 Jan 2021
Colorado Springs woman among bodies found shot to death in S.C. identified after 44 years
Pamela Mae Buckley, then 25, and James Paul Freund were found by a trucker in 1976

Colorado Springs woman among bodies found shot to death in S.C. identified after 44 years

James Paul Freund was 30 and Pamela Mae Buckley was 25 when a trucker found their bodies in August 1976 on a narrow paved road just off Interstate 95 near Lynchburg, Sumter County Sheriff Anthony Dennis said.

Both hadn’t been seen for about eight months before they died, and investigators are still trying to figure out their relationship, Dennis said.

Freund and Buckley were both shot several times with the same gun and the fatal wound was to the back of their heads, Sumter County Coroner Robbie Baker said.

...

Whoever shot them has not been found and authorities hope naming the victims and releasing their photos might jog a memory or reach a troubled soul.

Freund was from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Buckley was from Colorado Springs, Colorado, Dennis said. Their families have been notified and asked for privacy.

Buckley had been reported missing in 1975. A missing person report was never filed for Freund, investigators said.

The sheriff said his investigators have always had a person of interest or two in the killings and they plan to reopen the case and press hard for an arrest.
 

Lancaster man identified as deceased in 44-year-old South Carolina cold case
James Freund was living in Lancaster when he was shot and killed alongside another person in 1976.

WMPT Fox43 (Lancaster area)

Lancaster man identified as deceased in 44-year-old South Carolina cold case | fox43.com

LANCASTER, Pa. — Investigators in Sumter County, South Carolina have identified two people who were found murdered 44 years ago in the county, including a man who had been living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania at the time of his death, according to WLTX.

Sumter County Sheriff Anthony Dennis announced on Jan. 22 that the two people were Pamela Mae Buckley, 25, and James Paul Freund, 30.


Freund was a Lancaster resident at the time of his death in 1976.

Freund graduated from McCaskey High School in 1964. He played JV sports and joined various clubs, including English Study, Baseball, and Pinochle. The school's yearbook indicated he wanted to pursue a career as an accountant. To his friends, Freund was known as "J.P." According to newspaper records, he lived on West Walnut Street in Lancaster.

Buckley and Freund were found by a truck driver in 1976 along Interstate 95 and Old St. John Church Road in Sumter County. Once the coroner arrived on the scene, she determined that they had been shot. Both had been shot execution style - two in the front and one in the back of the head. Until now, the case had gone cold.

...

Dennis said that the case has been reopened and that there are still persons of interest in the case, according to WLTX.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

DNASolves

Who is Escambia County John Doe (1989)?

Members online

... and 92 more.
Total: 3,798 (members: 93, guests: 3,705)

Online statistics

Members online
93
Guests online
3,705
Total visitors
3,798
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
591,661
Messages
17,957,192
Members
228,583
Latest member
Vjeanine
Back
Top