Identified! PA - White Haven, 'Beth Doe' & Unborn Baby 169UFPA, 16-22, Dec'76 - #1 - Evelyn Colon

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Now - indulge me a bit on this. :twocents:

Frank Angelo Osellanie lived in Scranton, was a mechanic with 2 garages, no wife/kids that I saw referenced. He was convicted of (it's been a few days since I read the articles so I may be slightly off) rape and murder of a 9 year old girl in 1989. He lit the body on fire and a passer-by saw it.

He is suspected of being involved in 3 other cases ( 1 missing adult f - 2 mudered f victims) from 1978-1987.

He had a boat on Lake Wallenpaupack - so it is reasonable to say he fished (filet knife used on Beth Doe?).

He lit his victim(s) (one confirmed to be him) on fire with Coleman type lighter fluid so it is reasonable to say he camped and possibly hunted.

More interesting also is that he had a garage at 417 Walnut Street

written on the hand, almost definitely was WSR. Next to that was either a 4 or a 5. Below and to the right was either a 4 or 7.

Now the suitcases had a lot of paint to obscure them visually - to make them less......recognizible. I'm wondering of she flew into Scranton recently before the murder, for whatever reason, and ran across him - or was there to see him. 3 suitcases would probably mean she was moving - but she wouldn't have been carrying 3 by herself if she was heavily pregnant at the time.

His DOB in in 1945 so he was certainly a possible Vietnam Vet (as mentioned before about the nose and ears) but I couldn't find and past reference to where he was before Scranton.

Some of the missing cases he is suspected in involve water and/or areas that are not very far from White Haven.

Any thoughts?
 
Sounds possible. Did he know his victims? Did he ever confess to his crimes? Was he ever questioned about Beth? Just wondering.
 
Someone posted the full article which appeared in a local paper about Osellanie on Project jason's forum. I tried the link they posted but it was dead so i tried to pull up the article myself but since it is archived I would have to pay for it so I posting the forum link. The article is in the 5th post down.

Mods - let me know if this is not acceptable and I will remove.

http://www.projectjason.org/forums/index.php?topic=973.0
 
http://scrantontimestribune.com/projects/ColdCaseFiles/ColdCaseFiles.html

I found this when searching for Osellanie. My gut feeling is he was not involved with Beth Doe because the none of the other possible victims who were found had not been mutilated. I am no expert but it seems to me that the mutilation of Beth's body, if done by a serial killer, would be ritualistic to the SK and he most likely would have performed similar mutilations on his other victims.
Because of the way Beth was killed, mutilated and dumped I feel strongly it was someone who knew her and wanted to disfigure her to the point of making her unrecognizable so she could not be linked back to him.
 
Spurser - He never confessed to anything. From what I remember of my reading he knew at least one of the victims.

gaja277 - I wondered about the mutilation differences also. I'm wondering if repeat perps tended to evolve their crimes with the advances of forensics, better fingerprinting and DNA. So in 1976 a perp might just try to remove the head and/or hands or something to prevent an ID. That same perp would likely use different tactics today to prevent ID. I thought maybe the fires he used was an evolution of his attempt to prevent a hasty ID.
 
Good point, apearn. If this was one of his earliest crimes, he might well have changed some of his methods. The very rigid serial killer with the strict methodology is the kind that gets the most press, but not all sk's are so ritualistic. Or perhaps there are similarities in the victims, but disposing of them is just a matter of convenience.
 
I'm wondering about the clothes also...or lack there of. No real thought on it though.
 
http://cnnnancygrace.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/00901.jpg

This one from the Rodney Alcala photos.
I'm curious about his timeline becuase he was a Photographer and Photographers have a lot of use for flat black paint - for developing film. I have it becuase I have a darkroom. He was between NYC and LA but I'm not finding anything definate for the end of '76.
 
http://cnnnancygrace.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/00901.jpg

This one from the Rodney Alcala photos.
I'm curious about his timeline becuase he was a Photographer and Photographers have a lot of use for flat black paint - for developing film. I have it becuase I have a darkroom. He was between NYC and LA but I'm not finding anything definate for the end of '76.

Somebody has posted a tentative timeline: Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Police asks help identifying the people in photos taken by murderer

It looks like he was in NYC in 1976.
 
Side by side of your picture with Beth's sketch and reconstruction:
 

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I found some of his photos that were large sizes and blew them up to look at them. In NYC his apt. had brick painted black and it appeared he had a few of those smaller sized suitcases (although none directly matched the ones in this case) that looked like he used to put his lights in. The handles were on them but they had tags in some cases so....IDK.
I sent an email to the PD suggesting that is any of the girls were pregnant, they should take a look at this case.

He used, what looked like, old sheets as backdrops so i was hoping to see the bedspread but to no avail. Many of the girls were nude though so they don't show the whole picture.


From this article: http://www.skcentral.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=4275&pid=84155

".....She discovered a mutilated body of a young girl whose head had been partially severed from the body and whose hands and feet had been severed.

Surprisingly, she did not report this finding nor did she reveal it to anyone, feeling guilt over not having reported what she had seen five days earlier.

It wasn’t until July 2, 1979, that a colleague of Crappa’s discovered some bones in the area and reported it to the authorities. By this time, however, wild animals had so disrupted the decomposed remains that it could not be determined what had caused the death or whether the person had been sexually assaulted.

At this time, the skull was completely separated from the spine, and the front teeth were smashed in. A “Kane Kut” kitchen knife was found near the main portion of the remains;....."

That type of knife is serrated. hmmm.
 
I found some of his photos that were large sizes and blew them up to look at them. In NYC his apt. had brick painted black and it appeared he had a few of those smaller sized suitcases (although none directly matched the ones in this case) that looked like he used to put his lights in. The handles were on them but they had tags in some cases so....IDK.
I sent an email to the PD suggesting that is any of the girls were pregnant, they should take a look at this case.

He used, what looked like, old sheets as backdrops so i was hoping to see the bedspread but to no avail. Many of the girls were nude though so they don't show the whole picture.


From this article: http://www.skcentral.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=4275&pid=84155

".....She discovered a mutilated body of a young girl whose head had been partially severed from the body and whose hands and feet had been severed.

Surprisingly, she did not report this finding nor did she reveal it to anyone, feeling guilt over not having reported what she had seen five days earlier.

It wasn’t until July 2, 1979, that a colleague of Crappa’s discovered some bones in the area and reported it to the authorities. By this time, however, wild animals had so disrupted the decomposed remains that it could not be determined what had caused the death or whether the person had been sexually assaulted.

At this time, the skull was completely separated from the spine, and the front teeth were smashed in. A “Kane Kut” kitchen knife was found near the main portion of the remains;....."

That type of knife is serrated. hmmm.

Thank you for doing that! I did not realize some of his victims were cut up like that. There are a lot of similarities, aren't there? I can't definitely identify any of the bags but he seems to have a whole stash of similar-sized ones for the photography equipment.
 
He seemed to have a thing about mutilation, especially with the face & genitals from the little I read. I'll look into it further. There was nothing about the nose and ears so far. I'm wondering if he dumped her on the way back out to L.A.
 
That one is very similar but it looks like a flip open type one - where the ones she was in had a zipper top. He has another flip open one that is also similar - in the photo with the blurry girl in her underwear (it's under an end table to the extreme left) - but it is also a hard case flip open one.
 
An interesting tidbit - NYU film school is very near Washington Square Park (WSR?). He attended there. I don't know trains but maybe the numbers are the #4 then the #7 train or something.....idk.
 
An interesting tidbit - NYU film school is very near Washington Square Park (WSR?). He attended there. I don't know trains but maybe the numbers are the #4 then the #7 train or something.....idk.

I'm fairly sure several of those outdoor group photos are in Washington Square, though I can't see enough detail to be positive. (I've only been there twice, and that was many years ago.) I don't remember how NYC numbers its trains -- letters, I think. But maybe a bus? Or Washington Square Restaurant?

I keep thinking that the reason somebody usually writes on their palm is they have to make a note and they don't have paper. If she had just landed at Kennedy or come in to Grand Central Station and called him from a phone booth, she might well have written directions like that.

If it was him, the pregnancy probably doesn't even enter into it as a factor. The overkill and the mutilation happen with all kinds of women. And if the photos are any indication, he seems to have been remarkably eclectic in his choice of victims.
 
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