Mystery couple murdered in South Carolina, 1976 - #4

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When I was in high school, I took a general psychology class and, as an assignment, we were to write a paper and make a presentation about a serial killer of our choice. My partner and I did ours on Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.

They're active years are between 1960 (specific to Henry, when he killed his mother) to 1983 when they were arrested.

The problem with Henry is that he was constantly lying. He confessed to over 600 murders, but only 6 have been confirmed. He and Ottis claimed that, on their lazy days, they would hit hitchhikers with their vehicle because they didn't feel like getting out of the car. Henry and Ottis were all over the South in the 1970's and 1980's. Ottis was from Jacksonville FLA and Henry from Virginia.

It makes for a promising attack, since they both killed men and women, and targeted hitch hikers and drifters. However, the state of the bodies prove it wasn't Henry.

Henry preferred necrophilia. Ottis was a cannibal. The bodies weren't sexually assaulted or, to put it bluntly, eaten. I also believe that Henry didn't use guns. I could be mistaken, but I believe he preferred strangulation.

Just thinking out load. I know these two have already been ruled out.

Pee Wee Gaskin is another serial killer that's been ruled out, as he was arrested in 1975. To my knowledge, these are the only two serial killers in the area around the time.
 
Youshouldve....I tell you, it really makes me angry when children, teenagers and pregnant women are murdered.

This was so brutal, so very cold, done to innocent people by these evil deviants!
 
Guys, Has anyone mentioned 'our unnamed couple' should have had at-least 3 high school class reunions by now?

Why hasn't any of their class-mates/students from school, College or Church asked questions bout these 2 lovely people not being in touch with any school mates, friends, family, grandparents or attending their class reunions?

This makes me think this couple, just out of college, my guess is the school teacher, was possibly recruited and working 'undercover' for state, federal, CIA, drug enforcement DEA or other...

thus the reason for them staying in the I-95 area for several weeks, or longer. No one really knows how long they stayed around there, at the KOA or where else?
People don't stay in areas and not talk to people and make friends....they have to eat, so what about the grocery stores in that small Santee area of less than 500 people?

Did Barney Fife put down his coffee long enough to ask questions or follow the KOA or pistol lead?? It's hard to solve a case when leads aren't followed...
I've always heard the ole saying, "LE officials are like "cats in a sand box", always covering their S**t ???

Quote: The ugly truth is most local law enforcement agencies have never possessed the resources or manpower to crack bizarre cases, though the small town of Sumter has seen its fair share of those, being home to serial killer Donald 'Pee Wee' Gaskins Jr. There are more than 20 unsolved cases in Sumter County.
These two killings are among the oldest.

Working 'under cover' would explain the obvious cover-up, If the couple had leads on WHO was running drugs through this area, back and forth between Race tracks and racers, and someone 'important' or in LE was involved.
Making it necessary to make sure all leads to their identify and what they were doing there was erased....

Who knows, maybe their parents was sent a letter, by the people involved in the cover up and told a Lie about their children's disappearance/ deaths, so NO questions would ever be asked, pictures posted or fingers pointed.

Although my first theory is the couple was from some other country.

Can You Guys think of other reasons the family, friends and school mates would NOT try to find/ get in touch with either of these 2 people, over the years??....:banghead:
 
Notice Darlington is where many races are run. What was Henry doing in the Darlington race track area carrying his gun??

I'm sure L. Henry needed money since his wife was in the Monroe hospital. Yet the questions remain as to Why le let this man 'off the hook' so easily when it was a FELONY.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 it is a federal crime and a FELONY....for anyone that alters the serial number from a gun.
L. Henry ADMITTED to removing the serial numbers from his .357 S&W himself.
The law indicates its a crime to just be in possesion of an altered gun.
He was in possesion of his gun, the murder weapon.
He finally admits to being the one to alter the gun and he was pulled over for DUI, which is how they found the gun, but they just let him go because he couldnt have done it because he was at the hospital with his wife that night....Henry was never forced to explain how the gun left his possession long enough to commit the murders OR who returned it to him....if anyone..


Did Henry name the nurse or family member that sat or stayed ALL Sunday night with him (L. Henry) at the hospital...I would bet he can't... and Le says a 2 hour drive to the murder scene is too far for this guy to have driven, in the middle of a Sunday night...Hmmmm!.....I suspect he left the hospital Sunday evening inorder to be at work that Monday morning...Was he at work Monday morning ?

Quote:
Sole suspect
About four months after the murders, police in the Darlington County town of Latta arrested Lonnie George Henry for drunk driving. Under the seat of his car they found a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson with the serial number filed off.
Police sent the gun to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division's forensic lab for tests and later concluded that Henry's revolver had killed the mystery couple. Bullets taken from the bodies matched with the weapon.

When officers asked Henry point blank if he was the killer, his polygraph said he was telling the truth. No, he hadn't pulled the trigger.
But several other lie detector tests implied he was lying about something, at least, maybe covering up for somebody. Investigators wondered if someone had stolen his gun and whether a relative or friend of Henry's had killed the couple in Sumter.
But case files say Henry did lie about how he'd obtained the gun, first telling officers that he'd bought it from a truck driver. Days after the purchase, Henry told investigators, he discovered the serial number had been filed off. By then, it was too late to return the item for a refund.
SLED recovered the serial number and investigators tracked the gun from its manufacturer to Henry's Brother, who said he gave it to Henry as a Christmas present four or five years earlier.

The gun had been bought, stolen and resold several times BEFORE falling into the hands of Henry's brother. But he said the serial number was still there on Christmas Eve.

When confronted with the new information, Henry confessed to filing the serial numbers off himself.
It remains unclear why Henry lied IF he was innocent.

And it also remains unclear if he really was. Case files say Henry was a recovering alcoholic and had also gotten in trouble with the law for a slew of minor offenses.
At the time, his son had recently drowned in the Pee Dee River. He'd also accidentally killed one of his co-workers, by backing a dump truck over him.

Investigative psychologists even wondered if he'd killed the Sumter couple and simply couldn't remember doing it...
 
Can You Guys think of other reasons the family, friends and school mates would NOT try to find/ get in touch with either of these 2 people, over the years??....:banghead:


Some people just don't care much about reunions and keeping in touch with old high school and college friends. I shouldn't say they don't care, but for instance, I don't plan on going to my high school reunion. My college doesn't do reunions. There's no particular reason why I don't want to go, but mostly I feel like the people I cared most about in high school are still with me today.

I'm sure that if a reunion was held (a lot of high schools just do 25 year reunions, and not every 10 years - that's the way my parent's high school did it) the fellow classmates assume they were off being professionals and didn't have time off.

I can't think of any way to narrow down schools without knowing the location one or both of these people were from.
 
If the unidentified male, John Doe, was the son of a prominent doctor in Canada and his initials were JPF I found 2 prominent doctors from Canada.

1) Claude Fortier b. 6-11-21 d. 4-22-86
2) Frank Clarke Fraser b. 3-29-20
 
Why didn't John and Jane Doe have any wallets or ID on them at the time? My guess is that whoever murdered them took their wallet with any ID or money and because of that we don't know who these two victims are.
 
Has anyone suggested putting an Ad in the American Medical Journal and in a Medical Journal in Canada, also?
 
Notice Darlington is where many races are run. What was Henry doing in the Darlington race track area carrying his gun?? .

Latta--the town where he was arrested at isn't in Darlington County--it's in Dillon County. And carrying a gun in a rural part of SC wasn't unusual then--or now.
 
Latta--the town where he was arrested at isn't in Darlington County--it's in Dillon County.
And carrying a gun in a rural part of SC wasn't unusual then--or now......

WildHeart....You are correct about the county....on mapquest it seems that alot of counties join along that area....but the county was not my point.

My point was Latta, SC is only 31 miles from Darlington..which I consider 'close'....read Thread #2

Hmmm! I have never heard of anyone in 1976 that carried a concealed murder weapon with the serial numbers filed off..... it's very unusual to me then or now...

Of course, shotguns and rifles during hunting season, is not unusual...
 
WildHeart....You are correct about the county....on mapquest it seems that alot of counties join along that area....but the county was not my point.

My point was Latta, SC is only 31 miles from Darlington..which I consider 'close'....read Thread #2

Hmmm! I have never heard of anyone in 1976 that carried a concealed murder weapon with the serial numbers filed off..... it's very unusual to me then or now...

Of course, shotguns and rifles during hunting season, is not unusual...

Its in his truck, right? I can see how that'd be a concealed weapon, but being a truck driver, on the road alot, with cargo maybe, stopping at truck stops and diners with seedy people... I can see why he'd be carrying a gun. Especially in rural areas.
 
WildHeart....You are correct about the county....on mapquest it seems that alot of counties join along that area....but the county was not my point.

My point was Latta, SC is only 31 miles from Darlington..which I consider 'close'....read Thread #2

Hmmm! I have never heard of anyone in 1976 that carried a concealed murder weapon with the serial numbers filed off..... it's very unusual to me then or now...

Of course, shotguns and rifles during hunting season, is not unusual...

I'm from SC. Lord knows they love their guns in SC. I don't think the fact that gun was swapped and traded and sold several times over was all that unusual for that day and age and probably wouldn't be now either. SC at one time was called the "Saturday Night Special" center of the free world---guns were very easily brought, sold, and traded here. Heard a study not to long ago that said that guns brought in SC are still widely used in crimes committed in other states. Dubious distinction for a state to have huh? But anyway, that's the culture there, particularly in rural areas of the state.

What puzzles me is that this guy's wife was hospitalized not in the Pee Dee area of SC but in Monroe, N.C. Normally when people in this area were hospitalized in those years, they'd be hospitalized in Florence, Columbia, Charleston, places like that--not Monroe, N.C. Were they separated? Did they maintain different residences in separate states? Did she just get sick there and was hospitalized there or something? That's always struck me as very odd.

Here is what I DO know: if you wanted to get to Monroe back in the day there wasn't a direct way to do so by interstate. You had to take state highways to get there and the best way to get there from either Florence or Darlington (and I presume the rest of the Pee Dee) was to pick up Hwy 151 & U.S. 74 and go through Darlington, then Pageland, and Jefferson, right into NC and Monroe--and the Hospital was then and still is now right off the end of that route. Was that a road he traveled frequently? If so, it would take him right past the Darlington raceway.
 
From what I recall, he and his wife lived in NC and not SC. That's where they raised their family. If I'm mistaken, or if anyone can add the name (I believe it's Anson or Ansonborough, but that's a street here in Charleston, so I might be confusing it), please do.

He was a truck driver and often travelled to and through South Carolina. His wife being in a NC hospital isn't all that abnormal considering where they lived. If it were serious or if they needed a specialist, she would have been sent to a larger hospital. I would like to know why she was in the hospital, but I don't know if it's really pertinent to the case.

I also don't think Lonnie did it. I think he knew who did, though.
 
For some reason it was stuck in my head he was from SC. So now of course it makes perfect sense to me that if he lived there she would of course been hospitalized there. Thanks for clearing that up for me!

And the results of the lie detector test do seem to indicate that he had some type of knowledge he never chose to share with law enforcement about what happened to this couple.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong.
I remember reading Lonnie Henry lived in Wadesboro, N.C...:eek:nline:
 
From what I recall, he and his wife lived in NC and not SC. That's where they raised their family. If I'm mistaken, or if anyone can add the name (I believe it's Anson or Ansonborough, but that's a street here in Charleston, so I might be confusing it), please do.

He was a truck driver and often travelled to and through South Carolina. His wife being in a NC hospital isn't all that abnormal considering where they lived.
If it were serious or if they needed a specialist, she would have been sent to a larger hospital. I would like to know why she was in the hospital, but I don't know if it's really pertinent to the case.

I also don't think Lonnie did it. I think he knew who did, though....

Youshould...IF Lonnie didn't shoot the young couple, he certainly knew who did, they had to give him the Smoking Gun back....

I don't understand WHY LE allowed him to get out of the situation so easily.

I read he died in '82 taking the secret with him....:cop:
 
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