FL FL - GERARD SCHAEFER -- How Many Victims?

[Roselvr]

Sorry I have not replied here in awhile. Backwoods, the organization that was in the article is run by a very good friend of ours who has helped us every chance she gets. The biggest problem we have with finding if she is buried down there somewhere in a paupers grave, is that Florida claims to have no girls in her age range.

Today marks another year. Another year of hitting our heads against brick walls. Another year of searching all the unidentified and not finding anyone who even comes close enough to her for a comparison. Another year of pain, anger and frustration.

Praying that 2015 is the year that you get a miracle to bring your beautiful sister home to lay beside your parents!
Not seeing anyone that could match Deb in NamUs in Palm Beach county

SSA, the WS "Unidentified" thread linked below is from 2010, consists of only one post, AND the link to the newspaper article is not working, BUT in the post itself there is the name of an organization I thought might be of interest/help to you. You may have seen this already:

FL FL - Unidentified bodies in South Florida to be exhumed for DNA testing - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

found a working link
Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office exhumes bodies to collect DNA samples
May 9, 2011|By Jerome Burdi, Sun Sentinel

May 9, 2011|By Jerome Burdi, Sun Sentinel

WEST PALM BEACH — The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office is going underground to solve cold cases.

Detectives and the Medical Examiner's Office have started digging up unidentified bodies that were buried before the widespread use of DNA. Samples of DNA will be taken from the skeletons and put it in the FBI's DNA database to look for matches.

Working with a $40,000 federal grant, the Sheriff's Office is unearthing 15 bodies to determine whether identifications can help close the cases, which are from 1974-1999. Three are homicides victims; the rest were found in canals, sugar cane fields and the ocean.

Pembroke Pines-based Missing Children International Ministries is working with the Sheriff's Office to bring closure to families who have had questions for decades.

"There's a mother, father, sister or brother of someone that's out there that keeps asking what happened," said Dinorah Perry, who founded the nonprofit group in 2004. "Someone will finally get that little taste of closure.

"You can't change what has happened," she said. "They know their loved one is dead. They just don't know what happened."

The exhumations started in March, said Sgt. David Conklin, the cold-case supervisor. On Wednesday, five bodies, including that of a baby boy, were unearthed from a West Palm Beach cemetery.

 

[margarita25]

I am so sorry for your loss, and what you and your family have had to endure. Are still having to endure. I can barely imagine your pain and frustration. I have many memories of walking to school with my two older sisters in the 1970's, and my heart aches just thinking about this happening to either one of them.

~ The fact that the file on your sister's disappearance was only four pages 'thick' speaks volumes. Was Schaefer still an active duty police officer when Debbie disappeared?

~ In one of your posts above, I believe you said that Schaefer visited your home both before and after Debbie went missing. This is chilling, to me. Do you remember the circumstances of his visiting after she disappeared?

~ Some of his victim's remains were found on Hutchinson Island.
Link: http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/apr/27/panel-recalls-serial-killer-gerard-schaefer-whose-/

I wonder if there were other, unidentified bones recovered from that area.

It stands to reason that Schaefer would continue to use the same 'killing grounds' repeatedly. After using the area one time without being detected, that is where he would return the following times with subsequent victims. He would be comfortable there.

There may also be a chance that Debbie's remains were never recovered, as it sounds doubtful that the area was ever properly searched back then. And, that being Florida, with hurricanes and a time-span of almost four decades...

I am not familiar with that part of Florida, so I pulled this from Wikipedia, just as a reference: [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutchinson_Island_%28Florida%29[/ame]

~ Do you know if Schaefer was ever even questioned about your sister's disappearance? Was this one of the confessions he recanted? Or was the connection not officially made until after his death?

This is truly a horrifying case. I understand why you need answers. Again, I am very sorry for what this monster has done to your sister, and your family.

The timing and geography are off for Stano. In February, 1972, Stano was enrolled in school in Pennsylvania. He spent time off and on with his grandparents in Ormond Beach, FL, but didn't move there permanently until late 1972, I believe. I could be wrong, but I don't recall that he was known to have commited murder in south Florida, either. Most of the crimes were in central Florida around Pinellas and Volusia Counties.

To gain perspective, I've put together a partial timeline on Schaefer for the period near Debbie's disappearance. This is what I've come up with so far:

09/03/71 - Hired by Wilton Manors Police Dept

12/17/71 - graduates from the police academy at Broward Community College

01/05/72 - Belinda Hutchens, 22, goes missing after she is seen by her husband as she leaving home with a man in a blue Datsun. The husband later ID's Schaefer's car as the vehicle.

02/29/72 - Debbie disappears

03/16/72 - Chief Scott of the WMPD is fed up and ready to fire the new rookie, but Schaefer wins a reprieve.

04/20/72 - Scott reaches the end of his rope, and Schaefer's employment is terminated.

06/30/72 - Schaefer is hired by the Martin County Sheriff's Department

07/23/72 - He is fired and arrested by Martin County Sheriff Richard Crowder. A few days earlier, Schaefer had come across two teenage girls hitchhiking, Trotter and Wells. He drove them to a halfway house and promised to take them to the beach the next day. On July 22, he picked them up and drove them into the swamp at Hutchinson Island where he threatened them and left them tied to a tree with nooses around their necks. He returned the next day to find they had escaped. Then he called the Sheriff and told him what he had done. The girls still wore handcuffs when Sheriff Crowder later found them walking near the forest.

07/24/72 - Schaefer is charged with aggravated assault and false imprisonment, and released on bond.

09/27/72 - Teenagers Susan Place and Georgia Jessup leave in a car with an older man to play guitar at the beach. Place's mother notes the license plate but with an error. The girls never return. Six months later, Place's mother realized her mistake, and in March of 1973, she visits Schaefer in jail with the girls' photos. He claims he has never seen them.

10/23/72 - Two 14 year-old girls, Mary Alice Briscolina and Elsie Farmer are reported missing.

12/21/72 - Schaefer is convicted and sentenced to a year in jail and three months probation. His sentence commenced on 01/15/73.

01/08/73 - Colette Goodenough and Barbara Wilcox, both 19, set out from Biloxi, MS, hitchhiking to Florida and are never seen again. Identification and papers belonging to the girls are later found in Schaefer's mother's home. Both bodies were recovered in 1977 at Port Saint Lucie.

01/15/73 - Schaefer begins serving his sentence for the crimes against Trotter and Wells.

01/17/73 - Farmer's remains are discovered near Plantation High School. Briscolina's remains were found in February, 2000.

04/01/73 - The remains of Place and Jessup are found in Hutchinson Beach. Evidence at the crime scene revealed the girls had been tied to a tree.

04/07/73 - Police search his mother's home and find a collection of guns and knives, pictures of unidentified women and of Schaefer in women's underwear, plus a vast assortment of articles belonging to his victims, including Susan Place's purse and a piece of jewlery belonging to Elsie Farmer.

Schaefer was eventually convicted of the murders of Place and Jessup, and was stabbed to death in prison in 1995. He was never prosecuted for any other murders, yet he was one of the most savage and prolific serial killers of the 20th century.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/gerard_schaefer/1.html

Gerard John Schaefer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/Gerard_Schaefer

Schaefer left behind a collection of disturbing writings in the form of letters to an ex-girlfriend, Sondra London, which are compiled in a book entitled Killer Fiction. Amazon.com: Killer Fiction (9780922915439): G. J. Schaefer, Sondra London: [email]Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com[/email]/images/I/51VsITwd8ZL.@@AMEPARAM@@51VsITwd8ZL

I downloaded it to my Nook awhile back, but haven't read all of it. It's not easy to read. I'm sure I'll go back and finish it now.

My heart goes out to you and your brother, Still_Seek_Answers. I'm glad you're determined to keep searching. Victims' families should never be met with such obstacles as you've faced. The timeline I posted is just a glimpse into the crimes of Gerard Schaefer. Besides Debbie, there is a long list of unsolved murders and disappearances that could very well be attributed to Schaefer. How many other victims' loved ones are facing the same struggle for answers?

If there is something that you believe is distinctive that was in Debbie's possession, have you had a chance to provide LE with a picture or a sketch of the item(s)? I think there could be a few reasons why LE wouldnt want to share trophies with family members, but maybe there is a way to work in the other direction if you havent already.

Yes the center set in the ring ws aquamarine. (March birthstone ring) Which I know made no sense since Debbie was a Virgo ( born in Sept.)The bottom had have 4 flower like petals, all were white and each one had a blue dot

Ok y'all this time I really need your skills. Somewhere in he many articles I have read over the past few days I remember seeing that Schaefer may have victims in West Virginia and/or PA. I need to know if he was actually connected to any missing person cases in W.Va......it dawned on me I maybe looking at this all backwards....If he promised to bring my sister back to W.Va....or maybe he did bring her back to here.....Maybe it gave him such a sense of power and control....But I keep looking and I can't remember where I saw it at........

Actually Schaefer had several "burial grounds". Some of which have been stumbled across as they develop more and more swamp land in Florida. Is it going to take a miracle to find Debbie, and the rest of his victims, yes, without a doubt. Add into the problem, the fact that he was questioned about murders in 15 states, and we are talking a big miracle. But that is ok, we all believe in miracles, we have saw some occur. My mother was told she had a tumor on her brain back in 1985, she was also told she would die within 6 months. We were all so full of pain, but not my Mom, she looked at us and said no I don't think so, I'm not dying till I am ready, and a few months later we were told she had no cancer......so we believe in miracles.....and we believe someone saw our sister that morning as she walked along that block, her books were found at the end of the block from where she left us, all we wanna know is what kinda car, stopped to talk to her, and abduct her. Mostly we want her body found and brought home. Oddly, we want to see the items taken from Schaefers house, he took our sister, so certainly we have the right. We not just want, but to find peace, we have to see if anything of Debbie's is there. There is a different kind of closure in knowing something with no doubt,right now we can say we strongly suspect, but if we actually saw the things recovered, and one of them was hers, then we would know. Are we asking to much?

The newspaper articles say LE in 15 states wanted him for possible homicides,yet we can not seem to come across what states. I did a search on Homicide victims relating to Gerard Schaefer, and I have looked in both his Killer Fiction and Yvonne Masons Silent Scream book, to no avail. If anybody out there knows of which states, or even any of the sates, we would greatly appreciate the info.

I am sorry, I forgot to answer your question about his MO,some of his victims have been found with the hangman's nose still around their necks,while others have been found decapitated. To date...to the best of our knowledge.. nobody has found the missing heads, now isn't that just beyond horrible.
Thank You for NOT adding to Sondra London's wealth. The fact that she uses her money to help serial killers almost angers me beyond speech. The fact that she maybe holding the very story that was written by that monster about my sister....he has taken enough from us I think,he should not get to continue torturing us from beyond the grave.

According to the timeline posted upthread, he was still working as a rookie cop in the local PD when Debbie went missing. Correct? Would he have had a chance to go very far away at that time and still make it back to work? Did he have 3 day weekends? How much time did he have between his work week and his time off?

I REALLY like this part of your idea. Even though he usually used his police cruiser to abduct the girls, he still had a degree of risk of getting caught.He could hardly be seen driving around with young girls, and yet never actually bring them in to be charged......plus he had to stay close enough to answer his radio calls, which is what saved the lives of the two girls that got away.....you have a very sound theory.......

Play with how you use the colored pins too. Using different variations causes you to look at it different ways. Like separate colors for each murder on one map, then separate it so there is one color for all the murders he committed while living at each address on another map.

But consistently make sure that you use his address, his abduct site and his dump site. You might also want to add in his work site too.

How many murders did he commit while living in your area? Did they find all the other remains?

ok, I just sent my son done to the Dollar Store to buy me colored pins, and I talked to his geography teacher who is going to print me a detailed map of Florida. To answer your questions.....to the best of my knowledge, Schaefer has never been connected to any murders outside of Florida, though it was rumored that Detectives from other states did wish to question him on missing girls. He stayed close to Broward County, (which he lived in) and Martin County (which he worked in)but he has always been the lead suspect of two women from Pinellas county. I will double check my info on that.To answer your second question, nobody knows how many people he actually killed.....he would confess to murders in the short stories he wrote....then he would recant. While in prison he bragged the count was closer to 100, then filed a lawsuit when someone suggested the number was closer to 30.....he objected to being referred to as a serial killer. He was only ever convicted of two murders ( Susan Place and Georgia Jessup). Not all of the remains of his victims have been found. So I will use the info I have that I know is correct. I will use one color for his suspected victims, a different color for his confirmed victims, and see if I can get any type of location zone on him....It has been almost 40 years....many people have tried many things,so rather or not this works....and it sounds solid, so it just might give us a "body Zone"...the only time lost is the time spent not looking, so I will start on it tomorrow.

In the area in which you lived as a child, how many went missing who were later thought to be his victims? Were they all found?

I have a reason for asking. He was a frequent visitor to your home. It is known that some SK's will return to the dump site to "relive" the crime. I am just wondering about the possibility that while he was visiting you, if perhaps he passed by a turn off to where some remains were dumped, or within easy location of a body.

Or to take it one step further, your home could have become part of a comfort zone.

The scrapbook my mother made of girls who went missing around the same time,with similar appearance as my sister contains about 15-20 girls. Most of them are "suspected Schaefer" victims, but I am not sure how many of them lived close to us.I am sure he enjoyed visiting after her disappearance for two reasons...(1) to see if they had any suspects....(2) to taunt my parents, with horror stories of all the different things that happen to missing girls...I do know he went back to the crime scenes to dig up the bodies and have sex with them....Pompano Beach has grown up so much since we lived there. At the time we lived there we lived right off one of the main thru fares....we lived on SW 8th St...and he lived in Ft.lauderdale...so I need to do some research, and get his moms address...cause the house his GF lived in at that time, was in a huge housing project....way to much traffic and no trees to hang anybody....so most probably one of the yet undeveloped areas between our house and lauderdale.....a 10-15 mile base area....roughly....also explains why he brought her books back to that trash can, he was driving right by it to come to our house.....and added to the "run away" theory.
Right now I wish I had been older then...important things can go by a kid.....so much I can't recall.....but I can work on what I do.....

-17-year-old Susan Place and 16-year-old Georgia Jessup had vanished from Fort
Lauderdale.On April 1, 1973, hikers found human bones near Blind Creek, on Hutchinson Island.

Bonadies' remains were found in the subdivision of Boca Del Mar
which was under construction at the time in Boca Raton, FL in January 1978.

21-year-old Nancy Leichner and 20-year-old Pamela Nater, Pinellas
County residents who vanished on a 1966 picnic in the Ocala National Forest.


19-year-old Iowa residents Collette Goodenough and
Barbara Ann Wilcox left Biloxi, Mississippi, hitchhiking to Florida.
Skeletal
remains of both victims were found at Port Saint Lucie in January 1977,

Briscolina and Elsie Lina Farmer were added to the missing list Farmer’s skeletal remains were found on January 17, 1973 (eight days after Schaefer went to jail), at
a construction site near Plantation High School. Briscolina was found on February 15, 200 yards
away. I doubt I will ever forget these two....the caption when they were found read.....Don't worry she said,now she and friend are dead. If ya saw the video reenactment, these are the girls the scrapbook shows before you actually start the video.

AS you can see....I am not so sure he picked locations by location, so much as by privacy.....he did not mind the risk, as much as he needed the "what the heck ever" that serial killers get from being able to take their time...but once I get it all pinned out....I will let ya know how it looks...the hard part will be finding his pick up zone...since several of his kils were completed before anyone knew they were missing...

Honestly, my mother kind of put it together before his arrest....nobody listened,after all she was just an uneducated nobody from the hills of WV, she did not understand...etc...she kept telling police to look at her scrapbook, all the local girls going missing were similar in appearance...long straight brown hair...facial features all similar....she did not connect it to Schaefer, but she connected it to a hunter, not a random killer....both of our parents went into what I call burnout....my father was seldom seen sober, alcohol became his safe place,and he crawled into a bottle and stayed there....my mother had one goal...get her remaining kids "home" and out of danger...she did agree to take us back the next fall....and we did return, but we were not even allowed to go to school....we sat out a entire year, she could not risk it, losing another child. When Schaefer was arrested my Mom made several attempts to get them to investigate Schaefers link to my family, these requests fell on deaf ears, and no link was made till a Few years ago when Brother James took over the search. He has kicked down the doors so to speak...and Debbie is now considered a Schaefer victim......My mother managed to raise the 3 of us who were left at home, with no help from my father before his death, to give him credit where credit is due....he searched for Debbie everyday.....somedays Mom would just get this look on her face...and we'd ask her what was wrong.....nothing was always her reply...but we all knew.....that look meant she was in Debbie place....and it haunted her till the day she died....she was never at peace....but no, to my knowledge they never saw or spoke to Schaefer after his arrest..my mother usually just said, if I ever get near him I will cut his heart out....and she very much meant it, those were not just words......my mother believed in "old time" justice...so it was probably for the best, that she returned to WV that year

A map is going to be interesting. I'm not real familar with the area so I can't read all of them. But what I do see is that he seems like an hunter. Yet he wasn't above hunting in his own home grounds, as he took two from near his home. He is also confident, taking two at one time. He hunted as much as 4-5 hours away, but his dump sites will be relatively close (1/2- 1 hour or so) to the abduction site. Were the disposal sites near the bondage sites?

Your sister would have been an anomaly for him. First he had an aquaintanship with her. Not with the others. Second she was a single, and he seemed to like to abduct doubles. So yes, there might have been changes in some of the MO on her. Third she was younger then his usual age range that I am seeing so far. Still it has happened before that an SK will have one younger than the usual.

As a hunter he would be looking for several things. Opportunity....the girls/women would need to be in a situation that he could get to them without a lot of close witnesses. They would need to appeal to him. He would need to have the time for the hunt, activity and disposal. (LE schedules would be ideal for that, in that he would have odd days and hours off. eg he might get off work at 6:30 am on wed and not be due to report back to work till midnight on fri.)

Don't forget Trotter and Wells, the two known victims who miraculously survived and provided key testimony at his trial. He "befriended" them when he picked them up hitchhiking in Stuart, FL. (After promising them a trip to the beach, he picked up the girls the next day and brought them to the Hutchinson Island swamp where he left them tied up and nearly hanging from a tree.)

I like the idea of tracking his footsteps on a map. You never know, a pattern might develop. He seemed to kill so randomly, though, that I'm not sure you'll find one. He also travelled rather extensively, as far away as Europe and Africa, and roamed the US for several months with a travelling vocal group.

In the letters to SL published in Killer Fiction, GS boasted that he didn't follow one MO, and that he used a variety of means to dispose of his victims, reminding SL that he had a fishing boat. I think he was telling the truth.

BBM

I was wondering how he was managing to abduct two at at time without attracting attention, and managing to keep them under control until he was away from people. It sounds like he used the "friendly, helpful" ruse rather than a blitz attack. If he could at least get them in his car, he could most likely control them until he got someplace isolated.

If we can just map the Florida murders, it will be a start. We know those will be in the same time period as Debbie's abduction so the MO's should be somewhat similar.

bessie, your post made me think of something. Charter captains. I've a friend who used to be a delivery captain way back when- Stuart, Port St Lucie, Hutchinson, and all along the FL intercoastal waterway and Atlantic.
Maybe we should pin a map using waterways as well? :waitasec:

(Marking my spot and quoted some posts I'd like to reference /review. So far I've read all posts up to #165.)

Hugs to you SSA. You are amazing beyond words. Come home Debbie. Praying!

 

[margarita25]

I am so sorry for your loss, and what you and your family have had to endure. Are still having to endure. I can barely imagine your pain and frustration. I have many memories of walking to school with my two older sisters in the 1970's, and my heart aches just thinking about this happening to either one of them.

~ The fact that the file on your sister's disappearance was only four pages 'thick' speaks volumes. Was Schaefer still an active duty police officer when Debbie disappeared?

~ In one of your posts above, I believe you said that Schaefer visited your home both before and after Debbie went missing. This is chilling, to me. Do you remember the circumstances of his visiting after she disappeared?

~ Some of his victim's remains were found on Hutchinson Island.
Link: http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/apr/27/panel-recalls-serial-killer-gerard-schaefer-whose-/

I wonder if there were other, unidentified bones recovered from that area.

It stands to reason that Schaefer would continue to use the same 'killing grounds' repeatedly. After using the area one time without being detected, that is where he would return the following times with subsequent victims. He would be comfortable there.

There may also be a chance that Debbie's remains were never recovered, as it sounds doubtful that the area was ever properly searched back then. And, that being Florida, with hurricanes and a time-span of almost four decades...

I am not familiar with that part of Florida, so I pulled this from Wikipedia, just as a reference: [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutchinson_Island_%28Florida%29[/ame]

~ Do you know if Schaefer was ever even questioned about your sister's disappearance? Was this one of the confessions he recanted? Or was the connection not officially made until after his death?

This is truly a horrifying case. I understand why you need answers. Again, I am very sorry for what this monster has done to your sister, and your family.

The timing and geography are off for Stano. In February, 1972, Stano was enrolled in school in Pennsylvania. He spent time off and on with his grandparents in Ormond Beach, FL, but didn't move there permanently until late 1972, I believe. I could be wrong, but I don't recall that he was known to have commited murder in south Florida, either. Most of the crimes were in central Florida around Pinellas and Volusia Counties.

To gain perspective, I've put together a partial timeline on Schaefer for the period near Debbie's disappearance. This is what I've come up with so far:

09/03/71 - Hired by Wilton Manors Police Dept

12/17/71 - graduates from the police academy at Broward Community College

01/05/72 - Belinda Hutchens, 22, goes missing after she is seen by her husband as she leaving home with a man in a blue Datsun. The husband later ID's Schaefer's car as the vehicle.

02/29/72 - Debbie disappears

03/16/72 - Chief Scott of the WMPD is fed up and ready to fire the new rookie, but Schaefer wins a reprieve.

04/20/72 - Scott reaches the end of his rope, and Schaefer's employment is terminated.

06/30/72 - Schaefer is hired by the Martin County Sheriff's Department

07/23/72 - He is fired and arrested by Martin County Sheriff Richard Crowder. A few days earlier, Schaefer had come across two teenage girls hitchhiking, Trotter and Wells. He drove them to a halfway house and promised to take them to the beach the next day. On July 22, he picked them up and drove them into the swamp at Hutchinson Island where he threatened them and left them tied to a tree with nooses around their necks. He returned the next day to find they had escaped. Then he called the Sheriff and told him what he had done. The girls still wore handcuffs when Sheriff Crowder later found them walking near the forest.

07/24/72 - Schaefer is charged with aggravated assault and false imprisonment, and released on bond.

09/27/72 - Teenagers Susan Place and Georgia Jessup leave in a car with an older man to play guitar at the beach. Place's mother notes the license plate but with an error. The girls never return. Six months later, Place's mother realized her mistake, and in March of 1973, she visits Schaefer in jail with the girls' photos. He claims he has never seen them.

10/23/72 - Two 14 year-old girls, Mary Alice Briscolina and Elsie Farmer are reported missing.

12/21/72 - Schaefer is convicted and sentenced to a year in jail and three months probation. His sentence commenced on 01/15/73.

01/08/73 - Colette Goodenough and Barbara Wilcox, both 19, set out from Biloxi, MS, hitchhiking to Florida and are never seen again. Identification and papers belonging to the girls are later found in Schaefer's mother's home. Both bodies were recovered in 1977 at Port Saint Lucie.

01/15/73 - Schaefer begins serving his sentence for the crimes against Trotter and Wells.

01/17/73 - Farmer's remains are discovered near Plantation High School. Briscolina's remains were found in February, 2000.

04/01/73 - The remains of Place and Jessup are found in Hutchinson Beach. Evidence at the crime scene revealed the girls had been tied to a tree.

04/07/73 - Police search his mother's home and find a collection of guns and knives, pictures of unidentified women and of Schaefer in women's underwear, plus a vast assortment of articles belonging to his victims, including Susan Place's purse and a piece of jewlery belonging to Elsie Farmer.

Schaefer was eventually convicted of the murders of Place and Jessup, and was stabbed to death in prison in 1995. He was never prosecuted for any other murders, yet he was one of the most savage and prolific serial killers of the 20th century.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/gerard_schaefer/1.html

Gerard John Schaefer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/Gerard_Schaefer

Schaefer left behind a collection of disturbing writings in the form of letters to an ex-girlfriend, Sondra London, which are compiled in a book entitled Killer Fiction. Amazon.com: Killer Fiction (9780922915439): G. J. Schaefer, Sondra London: [email]Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com[/email]/images/I/51VsITwd8ZL.@@AMEPARAM@@51VsITwd8ZL

I downloaded it to my Nook awhile back, but haven't read all of it. It's not easy to read. I'm sure I'll go back and finish it now.

My heart goes out to you and your brother, Still_Seek_Answers. I'm glad you're determined to keep searching. Victims' families should never be met with such obstacles as you've faced. The timeline I posted is just a glimpse into the crimes of Gerard Schaefer. Besides Debbie, there is a long list of unsolved murders and disappearances that could very well be attributed to Schaefer. How many other victims' loved ones are facing the same struggle for answers?

If there is something that you believe is distinctive that was in Debbie's possession, have you had a chance to provide LE with a picture or a sketch of the item(s)? I think there could be a few reasons why LE wouldnt want to share trophies with family members, but maybe there is a way to work in the other direction if you havent already.

Yes the center set in the ring ws aquamarine. (March birthstone ring) Which I know made no sense since Debbie was a Virgo ( born in Sept.)The bottom had have 4 flower like petals, all were white and each one had a blue dot

Ok y'all this time I really need your skills. Somewhere in he many articles I have read over the past few days I remember seeing that Schaefer may have victims in West Virginia and/or PA. I need to know if he was actually connected to any missing person cases in W.Va......it dawned on me I maybe looking at this all backwards....If he promised to bring my sister back to W.Va....or maybe he did bring her back to here.....Maybe it gave him such a sense of power and control....But I keep looking and I can't remember where I saw it at........

Actually Schaefer had several "burial grounds". Some of which have been stumbled across as they develop more and more swamp land in Florida. Is it going to take a miracle to find Debbie, and the rest of his victims, yes, without a doubt. Add into the problem, the fact that he was questioned about murders in 15 states, and we are talking a big miracle. But that is ok, we all believe in miracles, we have saw some occur. My mother was told she had a tumor on her brain back in 1985, she was also told she would die within 6 months. We were all so full of pain, but not my Mom, she looked at us and said no I don't think so, I'm not dying till I am ready, and a few months later we were told she had no cancer......so we believe in miracles.....and we believe someone saw our sister that morning as she walked along that block, her books were found at the end of the block from where she left us, all we wanna know is what kinda car, stopped to talk to her, and abduct her. Mostly we want her body found and brought home. Oddly, we want to see the items taken from Schaefers house, he took our sister, so certainly we have the right. We not just want, but to find peace, we have to see if anything of Debbie's is there. There is a different kind of closure in knowing something with no doubt,right now we can say we strongly suspect, but if we actually saw the things recovered, and one of them was hers, then we would know. Are we asking to much?

The newspaper articles say LE in 15 states wanted him for possible homicides,yet we can not seem to come across what states. I did a search on Homicide victims relating to Gerard Schaefer, and I have looked in both his Killer Fiction and Yvonne Masons Silent Scream book, to no avail. If anybody out there knows of which states, or even any of the sates, we would greatly appreciate the info.

I am sorry, I forgot to answer your question about his MO,some of his victims have been found with the hangman's nose still around their necks,while others have been found decapitated. To date...to the best of our knowledge.. nobody has found the missing heads, now isn't that just beyond horrible.
Thank You for NOT adding to Sondra London's wealth. The fact that she uses her money to help serial killers almost angers me beyond speech. The fact that she maybe holding the very story that was written by that monster about my sister....he has taken enough from us I think,he should not get to continue torturing us from beyond the grave.

According to the timeline posted upthread, he was still working as a rookie cop in the local PD when Debbie went missing. Correct? Would he have had a chance to go very far away at that time and still make it back to work? Did he have 3 day weekends? How much time did he have between his work week and his time off?

I REALLY like this part of your idea. Even though he usually used his police cruiser to abduct the girls, he still had a degree of risk of getting caught.He could hardly be seen driving around with young girls, and yet never actually bring them in to be charged......plus he had to stay close enough to answer his radio calls, which is what saved the lives of the two girls that got away.....you have a very sound theory.......

Play with how you use the colored pins too. Using different variations causes you to look at it different ways. Like separate colors for each murder on one map, then separate it so there is one color for all the murders he committed while living at each address on another map.

But consistently make sure that you use his address, his abduct site and his dump site. You might also want to add in his work site too.

How many murders did he commit while living in your area? Did they find all the other remains?

ok, I just sent my son done to the Dollar Store to buy me colored pins, and I talked to his geography teacher who is going to print me a detailed map of Florida. To answer your questions.....to the best of my knowledge, Schaefer has never been connected to any murders outside of Florida, though it was rumored that Detectives from other states did wish to question him on missing girls. He stayed close to Broward County, (which he lived in) and Martin County (which he worked in)but he has always been the lead suspect of two women from Pinellas county. I will double check my info on that.To answer your second question, nobody knows how many people he actually killed.....he would confess to murders in the short stories he wrote....then he would recant. While in prison he bragged the count was closer to 100, then filed a lawsuit when someone suggested the number was closer to 30.....he objected to being referred to as a serial killer. He was only ever convicted of two murders ( Susan Place and Georgia Jessup). Not all of the remains of his victims have been found. So I will use the info I have that I know is correct. I will use one color for his suspected victims, a different color for his confirmed victims, and see if I can get any type of location zone on him....It has been almost 40 years....many people have tried many things,so rather or not this works....and it sounds solid, so it just might give us a "body Zone"...the only time lost is the time spent not looking, so I will start on it tomorrow.

In the area in which you lived as a child, how many went missing who were later thought to be his victims? Were they all found?

I have a reason for asking. He was a frequent visitor to your home. It is known that some SK's will return to the dump site to "relive" the crime. I am just wondering about the possibility that while he was visiting you, if perhaps he passed by a turn off to where some remains were dumped, or within easy location of a body.

Or to take it one step further, your home could have become part of a comfort zone.

The scrapbook my mother made of girls who went missing around the same time,with similar appearance as my sister contains about 15-20 girls. Most of them are "suspected Schaefer" victims, but I am not sure how many of them lived close to us.I am sure he enjoyed visiting after her disappearance for two reasons...(1) to see if they had any suspects....(2) to taunt my parents, with horror stories of all the different things that happen to missing girls...I do know he went back to the crime scenes to dig up the bodies and have sex with them....Pompano Beach has grown up so much since we lived there. At the time we lived there we lived right off one of the main thru fares....we lived on SW 8th St...and he lived in Ft.lauderdale...so I need to do some research, and get his moms address...cause the house his GF lived in at that time, was in a huge housing project....way to much traffic and no trees to hang anybody....so most probably one of the yet undeveloped areas between our house and lauderdale.....a 10-15 mile base area....roughly....also explains why he brought her books back to that trash can, he was driving right by it to come to our house.....and added to the "run away" theory.
Right now I wish I had been older then...important things can go by a kid.....so much I can't recall.....but I can work on what I do.....

-17-year-old Susan Place and 16-year-old Georgia Jessup had vanished from Fort
Lauderdale.On April 1, 1973, hikers found human bones near Blind Creek, on Hutchinson Island.

Bonadies' remains were found in the subdivision of Boca Del Mar
which was under construction at the time in Boca Raton, FL in January 1978.

21-year-old Nancy Leichner and 20-year-old Pamela Nater, Pinellas
County residents who vanished on a 1966 picnic in the Ocala National Forest.


19-year-old Iowa residents Collette Goodenough and
Barbara Ann Wilcox left Biloxi, Mississippi, hitchhiking to Florida.
Skeletal
remains of both victims were found at Port Saint Lucie in January 1977,

Briscolina and Elsie Lina Farmer were added to the missing list Farmer’s skeletal remains were found on January 17, 1973 (eight days after Schaefer went to jail), at
a construction site near Plantation High School. Briscolina was found on February 15, 200 yards
away. I doubt I will ever forget these two....the caption when they were found read.....Don't worry she said,now she and friend are dead. If ya saw the video reenactment, these are the girls the scrapbook shows before you actually start the video.

AS you can see....I am not so sure he picked locations by location, so much as by privacy.....he did not mind the risk, as much as he needed the "what the heck ever" that serial killers get from being able to take their time...but once I get it all pinned out....I will let ya know how it looks...the hard part will be finding his pick up zone...since several of his kils were completed before anyone knew they were missing...

Honestly, my mother kind of put it together before his arrest....nobody listened,after all she was just an uneducated nobody from the hills of WV, she did not understand...etc...she kept telling police to look at her scrapbook, all the local girls going missing were similar in appearance...long straight brown hair...facial features all similar....she did not connect it to Schaefer, but she connected it to a hunter, not a random killer....both of our parents went into what I call burnout....my father was seldom seen sober, alcohol became his safe place,and he crawled into a bottle and stayed there....my mother had one goal...get her remaining kids "home" and out of danger...she did agree to take us back the next fall....and we did return, but we were not even allowed to go to school....we sat out a entire year, she could not risk it, losing another child. When Schaefer was arrested my Mom made several attempts to get them to investigate Schaefers link to my family, these requests fell on deaf ears, and no link was made till a Few years ago when Brother James took over the search. He has kicked down the doors so to speak...and Debbie is now considered a Schaefer victim......My mother managed to raise the 3 of us who were left at home, with no help from my father before his death, to give him credit where credit is due....he searched for Debbie everyday.....somedays Mom would just get this look on her face...and we'd ask her what was wrong.....nothing was always her reply...but we all knew.....that look meant she was in Debbie place....and it haunted her till the day she died....she was never at peace....but no, to my knowledge they never saw or spoke to Schaefer after his arrest..my mother usually just said, if I ever get near him I will cut his heart out....and she very much meant it, those were not just words......my mother believed in "old time" justice...so it was probably for the best, that she returned to WV that year

A map is going to be interesting. I'm not real familar with the area so I can't read all of them. But what I do see is that he seems like an hunter. Yet he wasn't above hunting in his own home grounds, as he took two from near his home. He is also confident, taking two at one time. He hunted as much as 4-5 hours away, but his dump sites will be relatively close (1/2- 1 hour or so) to the abduction site. Were the disposal sites near the bondage sites?

Your sister would have been an anomaly for him. First he had an aquaintanship with her. Not with the others. Second she was a single, and he seemed to like to abduct doubles. So yes, there might have been changes in some of the MO on her. Third she was younger then his usual age range that I am seeing so far. Still it has happened before that an SK will have one younger than the usual.

As a hunter he would be looking for several things. Opportunity....the girls/women would need to be in a situation that he could get to them without a lot of close witnesses. They would need to appeal to him. He would need to have the time for the hunt, activity and disposal. (LE schedules would be ideal for that, in that he would have odd days and hours off. eg he might get off work at 6:30 am on wed and not be due to report back to work till midnight on fri.)

Don't forget Trotter and Wells, the two known victims who miraculously survived and provided key testimony at his trial. He "befriended" them when he picked them up hitchhiking in Stuart, FL. (After promising them a trip to the beach, he picked up the girls the next day and brought them to the Hutchinson Island swamp where he left them tied up and nearly hanging from a tree.)

I like the idea of tracking his footsteps on a map. You never know, a pattern might develop. He seemed to kill so randomly, though, that I'm not sure you'll find one. He also travelled rather extensively, as far away as Europe and Africa, and roamed the US for several months with a travelling vocal group.

In the letters to SL published in Killer Fiction, GS boasted that he didn't follow one MO, and that he used a variety of means to dispose of his victims, reminding SL that he had a fishing boat. I think he was telling the truth.

BBM

I was wondering how he was managing to abduct two at at time without attracting attention, and managing to keep them under control until he was away from people. It sounds like he used the "friendly, helpful" ruse rather than a blitz attack. If he could at least get them in his car, he could most likely control them until he got someplace isolated.

If we can just map the Florida murders, it will be a start. We know those will be in the same time period as Debbie's abduction so the MO's should be somewhat similar.

bessie, your post made me think of something. Charter captains. I've a friend who used to be a delivery captain way back when- Stuart, Port St Lucie, Hutchinson, and all along the FL intercoastal waterway and Atlantic.
Maybe we should pin a map using waterways as well? :waitasec:

Deputy Sheriff Gerard Schaefer stopped in his police cruiser

(Leah Hainline) She never came back, and her car was later found in a Fort Lauderdale ( but no mention of what kind of car....)
Hallock’s car found in a nearby parking lot a few days later. (Again no mention of the kind of car....)
Susan Place’s mother Lucille had been suspicious and had written down the license number of Shepherd’s blue Datsun.

THE DISORGANIZED/ORGANIZED SERIAL KILLER TYPOLOGY ... does not usually keep a hiding place ... drives a clunky car or pickup truck ..... Gerard Schaefer, another organized type, donated his trophies to Goodwill...


Wow isn't that amazing....other than the Blue Datsun, and his police cruiser,I see no mention of a car anywhere....I remember a dark colored car........and I am sorry but I can't seem to find anything else listed about his cars. Since two of his earliest victims cars were found removed from their homes, I would guess he used their car for body disposal......

I was reading Whoever Fights Monsters earlier,and I was amazed to see Schaefer show so many traits of an organized killer.yet also show so many traits of a disorganized killer. No wonder the professional's wanted to study his mind, this man was a master of insanity.....

But back to your question.....Blue Datsun and police cruiser are all I see.....and plz lemme know how mapping out the water ways turns out....

Sadly the list of comparisons for her is a very short list. We keep getting told that "most probably" any unidentified remains that needed ruled out from close to that time frame have long since been cremated and buried. That was the policy back then.....Now they do DNA tests as part of standard practise before cremating and burying. WE have been unable to find any list that gives the approx ages of any jane does to see if any might have matched her. We are told that from the time they started saying DNA till now, they have no unidentified remains that would belong to a 13 yr old child......I find that in itself nothing short of a miracle. WE search unidentified databases.....that is the only way I know how to get possible matches......her case is listed in Namus, but I can not get it to pull up to give you the link.....lol.....just the type of day I am having.
Any and all help is appreciated.....we are at the point now that if someone looks close....no matter where the remains were located......then they need submitted.......fresh eyes and fresh thoughts are always appreciated.

As sad as it is.....this article is very correct!!! We had begged, pleaded, written, called and done everything else we know how to do in attempts to even get a listing of the young girls buried down there, after my sisters disappearance so we could see if we could find the location of remains found that might be her. Nobody has the time. We look over and over the Florida unidentified database and just Shake our heads. So badly I want to look at many of those ignorant people and say Seriously? Seriously you want us to believe that Florida has no unidentified remains that could belong to a 13 yr old female?????What about the other unidentified people, Do they not deserve to go home? Do the families not deserve to know where they are? Do they not deserve a name? They have so many unidentifieds that seemingly are listed nowhere....... Do they not understand that there are families out there still waiting and wondering? Is it simply that they do not care? Whatever excuses they use, the excuses need to stop. Somebody needs to get off there butt and at the very least, every unidentified person needs to be listed in that database!!! There are no excuses for them not obtaining DNA profiles on these victims. Then again, sad as it is.....they do not need an excuse. All they have to do is say no, and families like mine are powerless to make them do it.

Few things amaze us any longer. I'd love to see a list of rule outs under her name. It would say that at least they are still searching. In all fairness to them I must admit the Gerard Schaefer was very good at hiding the remains of his victims. As the state grow developers have unearth a few of them, but many of them, including girls taken before my sister are still out there somewhere.
What angers us the most is the constant denial that there have been any remains unearthed that could be her. We are so scared that they have her down there in a Jane Doe grave.....found before they started taking samples for DNA......with no list of the info on these people....we have no way of knowing.
But still we search on...........
Thank you for your help, it is greatly appreciated.

(I've caught up now to post 265. Also, sorry for the long posts, I am bringing more quotes /posts forward for me to refer back to once I'm caught up.)

 

[miamaia]

Just popping in to say I have read through both of Debora's threads and will now carry her with me in a way. I am so terribly sorry for your loss, and do hope that we will be able to bring her home in this lifetime.

Also, I would say I have a pretty tough stomach, but I could only handle about two minutes of watching GS on Youtube. He is so arrogant and collected - I can't imagine running into him at all, let alone with him carrying a badge and gun! Sickening.

This may not be a popular question but I have to wonder - how many other psychopaths go into law enforcement for the power trip/sicko opportunities? It's an alarming thought. I'll certainly be more hesitant around them after reading this. :sigh:

 

[nerosleuth]

I found this website that has a lot of detailed background info concerning GS. While it may answer some questions about GS's background, I suspect it also raises other questions as well.


Source:

http://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/schaefer-gerard.htm

 

[nerosleuth]

SSA, as a fresh set of eyes looking into the case of your missing sister, I have some questions to ask you regarding the morning when you last saw your sister.

What was the weather conditions like that morning and was it still dark or did daylight just begun when she was walking to school?

Did your sister have a regular route that she took walking to school?

Did any other school students see your sister walking to school that day along her usual walking route?

Did any of your sister's classmates ever recalled seeing strangers that were stalking students before or after your sister's disappearance?

Were there any wooded areas that were nearby the school back then where your sister attended?

 

[Still_Seek_Answers]

Hello. Sorry, I am not here as much as I once was.

Moving to Florida from WV in mid winter....I can say to us the morning was beautiful. My sister carried her ponco with her, and my mother even commented to her that she wouldn't need it that day.

Yes, my sister took the same route to school every day. Other children also walked that route.

My sister's books were found in a trash can at the end of the block, Nobody saw her past that point.

Nobody saw anyone stalking her.

There were several wooded areas, I do not think any of them were very large,

The last words I recall every hearing my sister say were, I'll see ya later.

 

[Onaliv]

Bumping this thread - this family deserves to know what happened and if Debbie was a victim of GS.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Richard]

Gerard Schaefer, Serial Killer

 

[rainwaterstill]

TW -some WS members may want to skip reading this.

The crimes of ex-cop serial killer who murdered dozens of young women

Gerard Schaefer, a former Florida police officer, eluded capture for years, with investigators believing he is responsible for the deaths of up to 30 young women, including two teens aged 16 and 17.

www.dailymail.co.uk