Ken Rossignol - Murder USA: True Crime, Real Killers

MURDER USA

TRUE CRIME, REAL KILLERS

KEN ROSSIGNOL

Copyright 1988 - 2019

Ken Rossignol

Privateer Clause Publishing

THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY LLC

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

Dedicated to all the many victims of crime;
may the killers be brought to justice.

Books by Ken Rossignol

All books are in Kindle, paperback and Audible formats

TITANIC 1912

TITANIC POETRY, MUSIC & STORIES

KLAN: KILLING AMERICA

WRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX

PANAMA 1914: The Early Years of the Big Dig

LEOPOLD & LOEB: Killed Bobby Franks

BATTLE OF SOLOMONS ISLAND

COKE AIR Chesapeake Crime Confidential Book 1

CRUISE FACTS

FIRE CRUISE

NINETY-NINE CENT TOUR OF BAR HARBOR MAINE

CRUISING THE WATERFRONT RESTAURANTS
OF THE LOWER POTOMAC

BANK OF CROOKS & CRIMINALS

CHESAPEAKE 1850

CHESAPEAKE 1880

CHESAPEAKE 1910

PIRATE TRIALS: Dastardly Deeds & Last Words

PIRATE TRIALS: Hung by the Neck Until Dead

PIRATE TRIALS: Famous Murderous Pirates

PIRATE TRIALS: The Three Pirates

THE CHESAPEAKE: Tales & Scales

THE CHESAPEAKE: Legends, Yarns & Barnacles

THE CHESAPEAKE: Oyster Buyboats, Ships & Steamed Crabs

THE CHESAPEAKE: A Man Born to Hang Can Never Drown

THE CHESAPEAKE: Country Cornpone Cornucopia

THE CHESAPEAKE: Tidewater Sagas

ST. MARYS TODAY NEWSPAPER: THE STORY OF THE RAG

MURDER USA: True Crime, Real Killers

CHESAPEAKE TRUE CRIME:
Top Stories From THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY

THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY All Crime, All The Time (Books 1-30)

The Marsha & Danny Jones Thrillers

THE PRIVATEER CLAUSE

RETURN OF THE SEA EMPRESS

FOLLOW TITANIC

FOLLOW TRIANGLE VANISH

CRUISE KILLER

BEHEADED

WHO COLLECTS THE SOULS

PANAMA GOLD
Six Killer Thriller Novels (Books 1-6)

Introduction

MURDER USA: True Crime, Real Killers

These stories of murders and of a few cases of attempted murder over sixty years include vivid descriptions of ghastly crimes with explicit photos not intended for the faint of heart or children. Parental Guidance is mandatory. Many of these murders went unsolved for long periods, some still have not been solved, and justice obtained for the victims. One case of a killer allowed out of a mental health facility after he killed two people on the East Coast allowed him to rape and murder 3,000 miles away on the West Coast. Another serial killer wiped out an entire family in one night of terror and is believed to have killed dozens more. A task force that included seventy-five FBI agents and a dozen county and state police from two states found the killer who set the gold standard for serial killers. The story of a rare case of an Amish Murder-Suicide is included along with that of a Navy Ensign who killed his estranged wifes lover with a crossbow and then carved him into pieces with a saw.

DEPRAVED HEARTS

BEASTLY EVIL

These are their stories.

Writing about fictional murders is easy, much easier than writing about true life make that true death murders.

This book is about murders I have covered in one way or another over three decades as a reporter, lived nearby as they happened, lived near where the crimes occurred, or have been introduced to the aftermath of the acts of the killer's victims, the victims families and on others.

One of the influencers on my decision to dig deep into these murders took place before I began reporting on these horrific crimes. Marylands quixotic legal system continues to the present day as retrials are ordered and vicious killers set loose upon the public by new court rulings.

The difference between being a consumer of such news stories, which abound across America and the stories I write about in this book is that in many of these stories, I have an indirect connection. Not personal in that I knew the killer or the victim but some detail or connection. Some have even confessed their crimes to me.

One such murder, that of a gas station attendant in Lexington Park, Maryland who was killed as he worked the night shift at a 24-hour self-service low-cost outlet known as Savon Gas. Thomas Anthony Tommy Tippett was shot dead for the cash in his booth by Joseph Edward Louis, 22, of Lexington Park, Md., and his partner in the robbery, Ernest Thomas Briscoe.

I didnt know the Tippett family, but I knew Tommys employer, Harry Waller. As I was a frequent visitor to Harrys office on business and would stop to talk to him when I saw him seated at his park bench at the edge of the busy gas station, I viewed that murder scene hundreds of times. It was difficult to look towards that attendant booth where the murder took place without seeing a vision of the killer taking the life of a young man who was working the midnight shift to be earning money to be able to attend college. He begged for his life, the armed robber already had the money from the cash drawer, and then he executed the young man working the graveyard shift.

One of the killers was the grandson of a cheery woman I knew through politics, Bertie Bowman. She was so full of life and spirit; it was hard to imagine that someone in her family could be a vicious killer. But he was.

The Tippett family began a very successful effort to erect a memorial to the life of their son, and that effort bloomed into a dedicated Youth Memorial that contains the last earthly memories of young people who have been killed at the hands of criminals or drunk drivers and other acts of violence.

The memorial park sits alongside the busy Maryland Rt. 5 in Great Mills, Maryland and its purpose is largely unknown to those who drive past it each day. The stones with the names etched in every so often are well tended by the families who contributed the lives of their loved ones to remember them in death.

CONTENTS

MONETA JO STRICKLAND BEATEN
TO DEATH ON HIKING TRAIL

.

-SUICIDE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Maryland Archives, St. Marys County Library,
Library of Congress, The Washington Post, The Evening Star, Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, Virginia State Police,
Historical Society of St. Marys County, Talbot County Library,
Hon. Daniel Morris, Sen. Walter B. Dorsey, Gregory Laxton,
Benjamin C. Bradlee, Hon. George R. Sparling, Thomas Longobardi,
Philip H. Dorsey, District of Columbia Public Library, Val Hymes,
George Bussler, Richard Fritz, Sheriff Dallas Pope, Sheriff Rex Coffey, Sheriff Troy Berry, Sheriff Fred Davis, Sheriff L.C. Bootsie Stinnett, Captain Jimmy White, Sheriff Tim Cameron, Sheriff Mike Evans,
Lt. Col. Jesse Graybill, Toby Jean DuCellier,
Major Gregory Shipley, Capt. Cindy Allen, Eugene L. Myer,
Sgt. Bobby Rawlings, Col. David Mitchell, Detective Ernest Carter,
Hon. Larry Jarboe, Todd Shields, Congressman Steny Hoyer,
Congressman Roy P. Dyson, Major Norman W. Dofflemyer,
Lt. Col. Stewart Russell, The Baltimore Sun, Dr. Sue Thompson,
Jack Kershaw, Saint Marys Beacon, WRC, Charlie Bragale, WUSA,
Dave Statter, Michael Suessmann, Susan McNeill, Ballard Spahr,
Ashley Kissinger, Lee Levine, Seth Berlin, Alice Neff Lucan,
Kevin J. McDevitt, John A. Mattingly Jr., Bruce Leshan, Frank Owens, Edward Canfield, Donald Purdy, William Bell, Gregory Guise, Dan Patrick, Jeremy Settle, Jaclyn Fuller, Fran Callaway, Toni Hewes, Thomas Bugbee, Jim Nichols, Pat & Doug Gourley,
Senator Thomas E. Mike Miller, Hon. Patrick M. Buehler, Irene Parrish, Hon. Barbara Stinnett, Harvard Associates, Bruce Goldfarb, Maryland Office of Chief Medical Examiner, Hon. John L. Bohanan Jr.,