Jean Tuggy Jean Tuggy was a 60-year-old woman who lived
alone in a small house on Irion Street in Pine Grove Mills. Friends and family described
her as friendly, caring and kindhearted. She was in charge of the library at the State
College Alliance church and worked two jobs; One as a longtime bus driver and another
at a grocery store called Wegman.
On January 21, 2016, Jean failed to show up at
a friend's house. Her friends became worried as this was out of ordinary for her. Her friends then
decided to check up on her and visited her house. They found her door to be locked and her
blue Honda civic was in the driveway.
They soon found a basement door which was
left unlocked. They went inside and found Jean lying dead in a pool of blood. They
immediately notified the police. Jean's body was lying on the living room floor, her
sweatshirt pulled up to reveal her stomach and her sweatpants pulled partially down.
An autopsy was performed and it revealed that Jean had been shot twice, one bullet was found in
the left side of her face near her neck which cut through her spinal cord and embedded in her spine,
while the second bullet was found in her left hip. A ballistics expert confirmed the bullets belonged
to a 9mm pistol. During their investigation, two coworkers told detectives that Jean had
mentioned a male co-worker from Wegman's with whom she had developed a friendship and that
he had become romantically interested in her. However, the police were unable
to identify the male coworker.
Then in 2019, Peter Coray who was a friend
of Jean told investigators that Jean had once told him about a male coworker of her that had
rubbed her back while visiting her at her home. Peter said the man was named Chris and had
polish sounding last name that ended in ski. The coworker was in his late 20s or early
30's and attended Local Lutheran church.
The investigators were soon able to identify
the male co-worker as 34-year-old Christopher Kowalski through information from a
church he attended, internet searches and address records. Christopher had worked at
Wegman from November 2007 to October 2015.
The police went through Jean's computer hard
drive and found Facebook chat logs between Jean and Christopher in which they discussed their
friendship and their experience of loneliness. In 2019, another friend of Jean told investigators
that she recalled a conversation with Jean where Jean told her that she believed Christopher
wanted a more romantic relationship than she did and that he got upset whenever
she refused his sexual advances.
Her friend said that Jean was planning to
invite Christopher to talk to him about their relationship remaining platonic.
The police did a firearm check on Christopher in May 2019 and found that
Christopher had purchased six 9mm handguns. One of the six handguns, a Walther CCP, was
purchased one month prior to Jean's death and then sold off about eight months after her murder.
The investigators tracked down the pistol to its current owners, who had bought the pistol from
a Pennsylvania sporting goods store about 10 months after Jean was murdered. The gun was
owned only by 2 people since it was made.
The owners allowed the investigators to take the
gun for testing. A forensic testing was done on the gun and the bullets recovered from the crime
scene. Although the results were inconclusive, the test bullets and the bullets recovered
from the crime scene had similarities and matched the bullets in all characteristics."
An expert stated that the minor differences in the bullets could have been caused by someone cleaning
the barrel of the pistol with an abrasive tool.
Police found and interviewed Christopher
at his home in South Carolina. He initially claimed he and jean were just
friends and nothing else. However, he later said that he and jean were romantically involved.
He told investigators that on the day Jean was murdered, he went to her apartment to watch movies
together. He claimed that as he was taking off his coat to hang it on the coat rack, his gun from
his coat pocket fell to the floor and discharged a bullet that hit Jean in the hip. He then
allegedly picked up the gun and it was jammed and when he tried to clear it, it fired
again and struck Jean in the neck. He stated that blood was everywhere and claimed he did not
try to save her as he knew it was too late.
After the police told him that his story did
not make any sense, Christopher admitted to shooting and killing her intentionally. He
allegedly said “The truth is, I killed her, I killed her because I was depressed, down and
hopeless. I was having a mid-life crisis.” He said he first shot Jean in the hip and she fell
over the couch. The gun jammed but he was able to clear it and shot her again in the neck. He also
turned off her oxygen to make sure she was dead.
He said he pulled her pants down and had
planned to take pictures of her undressed, but did not as he was afraid his
clothes might get blood on them. He then picked up the shell casing, locked
the front door shut, left the house from the basement door and disposed the casings
outside a restaurant. He told investigators that he had planned to kill Jean before her
murder and that he chose to kill her because she was an easy target. He moved to South
Carolina in 2016. Christopher was arrested and charged with Jean's murder. He will be
extradited to Pennsylvania to be prosecuted. Felicia and DenNisha Howard
Felicia Howard was a 21-year-old woman
who lived with her 4-year-old daughter, DenNisha in their second-floor apartment
at 3804 Washington St., Gary, Indiana. Felicia and her daughter, DenNisha had recently
moved from Indianapolis to Gary in January of 1992. They stayed with Felicia's father for
a few months but on June 7th she decided on moving from her father's house and get her
own place on Washington Street. However, her landlord would send her an eviction notice
on July 10th reportedly due to her "Lifestyle.
On July 11, 1992, Felicia picked up DenNisha
from her regular weekend stay at Felicia's father's house. This was the last time her
father ever saw them alive. On July 15, 1992, five days after sending the eviction notice,
her landlord brought prospective tenants to show the apartment. When he opened the door of the
apartment, he found Felicia and DenNisha's body. He immediately called the police.
Both, mother and daughter had been shot to death. Felicia had been shot in the chest. She had been
found lying nude in her bed and appeared to be reaching for DenNisha, who had been shot in the
head. The investigators were able to collect DNA of an unknown male from the crime scene. The
murders shocked the residents in and around Gary. Several locals raised money to setup a reward
for any information regarding the murders.
Neighbours would later report hearing Felicia
screaming: "please don’t shoot me in front of my daughter.” They also reported to have heard
a child standing on the balcony screaming "Help, help" and "Stop, stop" for about half an hour.
However, no one came to help. No neighbor mentions why police were not called despite obvious pleas
from the now deceased victims. With no leads and no suspects, the case would soon go cold.
In 2019, The FBI's Gang Response Investigative Team or GRIT, reopened the case and began
investigating the case. With the help of DNA technology and interviewing witness, they
finally were able to find a suspect in the case. In September, 2020, 56-year-old Victor
Lofton was questioned by detectives and asked to give a DNA sample in Tennessee. During
their questioning, investigators showed Victor a photo of Felicia and DenNisha and was asked if he
knew them. He reportedly bit his lip and admitted to living with a relative in Gary in the 1980's
but said he did not know Felicia or DenNisha.
Victor's relative confirmed that Victor lived
with him for a couple of months in 1992. He also told the investigators that Victor
owned a Browning .38-caliber handgun. The spent shell casing found at the crime scene had
markings consistent with a .38 caliber handgun.
The U.S Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives was able to recover the handgun owned by Victor and a forensic
analysis was conducted. However, the analysis could not identify or exclude the
bullet to have been fired from the handgun.
Investigators analyzed the DNA recovered from
the crime scene of Felicia and the Unknown male. The analysis showed that the unknown
male's DNA matched that of Victor. Its DNA profile was 1 trillion times more likely
to originate from Victor than from another male.
On February 5, 2021, Victor Lofton was
arrested and charged with 2 counts of murder. He is extradited to Lake
county and is awaiting trial. Claretha "Coco" Gibbs In the late night hours of June 26,
1984, Fort Myers police responded to a complaint of gunshots heard near
Palm Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard. Lying on the ground at the side of the road at
2831 Lincoln Blvd was Claretha "Coco" Gibbs, who was bleeding profusely from a single
gunshot to the abdomen. Coco was rushed to the hospital but she succumbed to her injuries
and was declared dead by emergency physiciansl. Prior to that fateful night, Coco
had lived close by, on Mango Street. Born in Tampa Florida Coco moved to
Fort Myers from Houston, Texas, in 1979. At only 31 years old Coco had had a rough life,
She was a street worker and therefore vulnerable to the various dangers of such an illegal
late night trade with anonymous customers. Coco was last seen entering a vehicle possibly
a pickup truck, with two different paint colors. Witnesses say that it was only moments after she
entered the vehicle that they heard a gunshot and the car peeled out of the area,
leaving the bleeding woman on the sidewalk. The driver of the vehicle was described as
a white male in his 30s with light brown or dark blonde hair. He was described as having
a thin build and was approximately 5’10” with a pale complexion, although the height was
hard to approximate as he was seated in a vehicle. Police said they recovered
a rag with the suspect’s DNA but DNA testing was not common
or very advanced at that time. After full DNA profile of the suspect had
been created from the unknown type of dna left in the rag, it was then entered into
CODIS, the FBI’s national DNA database, but it did not provide a hit to any known samples. In March of 2019 Fort Myers Police
Department’s Cold Case Unit investigators submitted the DNA evidence to Parabon Snapshot
in hopes that the advances made using genealogy research in the last decades could pinpoint
a suspect who was most likely still at large. On July 22, 2020, Parabon completed a report
on the genealogy which indicated that the DNA profile was linked through genealogy
databases to an individual identified as James Glen Drinnon, 65, of Okeechobee. Investigators began to look into
the current life and past histories of Drinnon and tried to get details on his
former link to The Fort Myers area and they were one step closer to answers when they
found that he lived in Lee County in 1984 putting him geographically in relatively
close proximity to the area coco was found. Drinnon, who was a local
mechanic, acknowledged that coco was a prostitute and he had invited her
into his truck to engage in her paid services. When police arrived at his house, Drinnon admitted
to the physical connection, but said that Coco had actually pulled a gun on him in order to take his
money after he picked her up for a roundezvouz. He claimed that they fought over the weapon and
that Gibbs was shot accidentally. Drinnon fled the scene and said that he subsequently threw
the murder weapon out the window of his truck. In addition to the murder of Coco in the
eighties, there were a known total of 16 women who in that same trade that were killed over
a 20 year period in the Fort Meyers area alone. While there is no concrete evidence that
Drinnon was connected to these crimes, he died of unknown causes at his residence
in Okeechobee before police could continue to question him of arrest him for cocos death ,
while no details were released, it is suspected he took his own life after realizing his
past crimes were coming back to haunt him. Annette Schnee and Barbara "Bobbie" Jo Oberholtzer 21-year-old Annette Schnee and 29-year-old Barbara
"Bobbie" Jo Oberholtzer were just starting their lives in a most adventurous way when it was
tragically cut short for the both of them. On January 6, 1982, 29-year old Bobbie Jo was
hitchhiking from her home in Alma, Colorado to her job in the nearby town of Breckenridge. Unlike today, in that part of the country
in the early eighties, hitchhiking was not seen as a dangerous act as it is today, and
both drivers and would-be passengers were far more comfortable with the idea of riding with a
stranger than one would be in todays millennium. At 6:20 PM, Bobbie made a call to her husband,
Jeff Oberholtzer, to tell him that she was going out for cocktails with friends at a local bar and
not to worry because she would find her own ride home. But Bobbie never made it home that night.
When her husband Jeff questioned Bobbie’s friends, they were surprised she never returned home
as she had left the pub alone at 7:50 PM. The next day, Jan 7th, Bobbie’s
husband received a call from a rancher who found Bobbie’s driver’s
license on the ground his property. On his way to investigate and get more
information on his wife’s whereabouts, Jeff was shocked to see his missing wife’s
backpack laying in a field alongside her gloves, which upon further examination had blood on them.
There were also some bloody tissues next to the bag. DNA testing was so infantile in 1982 that the
only information gleaned from the evidence left behind was the blood-type, which matched that of
Bobbie, but little else was known. That afternoon, around 3pm, Bobbie’s was discovered, deceased, at
the summit of a lookout point called Hoosier Pass, located 10 miles south of Breckenridge. She was
found about 20 feet off of the highway and was at the bottom of a snow embankment. The 29 year old
had been shot twice in the chest. She had plastic zip ties around one of her wrists and the other
was free. Also found on the scene was an orange sock that investigators did not think belonged
to the victim. Evidence shows, police said, that Bobbie attempted to escape the vehicle and
put up a fight before being shot and succumbing to her injuries: Her self-defense key ring, a tool
with a metal hook made for her by her husband, was found in the parking lot at the summit which was
approximately 300 feet from where she was found, suggesting that she might have escaped and
then was again confronted by the assailant. That same day that Bobbie was reported missing,
Annette Schnee, a 21-year old resident of the nearby town of Frisco, was also reported missing.
The young woman was last seen inside a pharmacy in Breckenridge at 4:45 PM the evening of the
6th. She was seen speaking to a dark-haired woman who police requested come forward but
never did. Annette was scheduled to be at work at 8 p.m. that night at the Flip Side bar
in Breckenridge and was known to hitchhike to get to her job. Though she went missing on the
same day as Bobbie, family and friends had to wait much longer for answers, and some still
held out hope that she would be found alive. The death of one woman and another missing
presumed dead alarmed those who resided nearby. The randomness of the two seemingly
unconnected girls unnerved the public and some spoke of a possible serial
killer descending upon the area. Almost six months after she was reported missing, on July 3, Annette’s body was found
in the shallow waters of a creek located near a remote side road, in rural Park
County about 20 miles south of Breckenridge. The snow and cold had preserved the body and
investigators were able to ascertain many details regarding her death. Much like Bobbie, Annette
had been shot to death, with the bullet going through her chest and exiting with no leftover
fragments, and police estimated that it was the bullet hole of a .38 a .357 or a 9mm handgun.
They believed she was killed where she was left. What conclusively linked the crime scenes of both
women was the presence of a second orange sock. While an orange sock had been found
at the crime scene of Bobbie’s death, police never believed the
sock actually belonged to her and it was to their surprise that they saw that
Annette was in fact wearing the other sock- an orange sock similar to the one that was found near
the scene of Bobbie’s murder. It became apparent that this was indeed a match to the orange sock
from Bobbie’s murder scene. On her other foot was a striped sock and the matching pair to
that sock was stuffed in Anette’s jacket hood. Police theorized that the killer probably first
picked up Annette who had been hitchhiking and murdered her prior to picking up Bobbie,
also while hitchhiking a few hours later and murdering her as well. Investigators wondered if
one of Annette’s orange socks, already separated from their owners in a violent and brutal act,
possibly fell out of the killer’s vehicle and landed erroneously at the scene that Jeff would
soon come upon while looking for his wife Bobbie. This is the reason that this crime was dubbed
the “Orange Sock Murders” in the media. Not to be confused with the
murder Debra Louise Jackson, who before the body was idenfified was
informally known as "Orange Socks”. Later, Annette’s backpack would be discovered in
another location off of Route U.S. 285. Police were puzzled to find that her bag contained a
picture of a man who was unrecognizable to friends or family of Anett. The photo was never identified
by police. Even stranger, Anette’s wallet also had Bobbie’s husband, Jeff Oberholtzer’s, business
card in it. When questioned by authorities, Jeff was shocked to recall, upon thinking deeply
about it that he had actually previoulsy picked up the 21 year old Annette back when she had been
hitchhiking months prior to the day of her murder. He recalled that he had given Annette his business
card, but starkly swore that he had never seen her again. Because of this strange and seemingly
unlikely coincidence, Bobbie’s husband Jeff was looked at as the prime suspect for both murders.
While Jeff did have an alibi for that night, he was in Alma hosting a friend, it wasn’t
until December of 1990 that the friend who had visited that night was finally tracked down
and questioned by police to verify Jeff’s alibi. Shortly thereafter, as DNA profiling became
more accurate and detailed, DNA testing was performed on the blood from Bobbie’s glove,
and found it was that of a male, not a female, and concluded that the blood was left
presumably when Bobbie fought back and likely punched her attacker in the nose which
perhaps explained the bloody tissues as well. The lab results showed that the blood belonged to
a male donor, but not to Jeff. The new DNA results finally exonerated Jeff, the long-grieving husband
falsely accused due to a shocking coincidence, but police were then faced with a shortening
list of other possible suspects. At one point they suspected self-proclaimed serial killer
Thomas Luther, who had supposedly bragged of taking the lives of two women in the Breckenridge
area, but when police questioned him in prison, he ominously said “They aren't my girls”.
Metro Denver Crime Stoppers helped fund the use of genetic genealogy in this particular case.
They funded it in hopes that the relatively new technology would helped bring closure as it had
done for at least five local cases in the past two years. This case would be no different
as new capabilities and databases enabled detectives to finally find a match to the
DNA left long ago at the scene of the crime. Testing and analysis indicated a possible
link to 70-year-old Alan Lee Phillips, a semi-retired mechanic and resident of Clear
Creek County to,aw enforcement spent over six weeks investigating and conducting surveillance
before finally arresting the the now elderly and disheveled man on Feb. 24 without a struggle
during a traffic stop made in Clear Creek County. Phillips was remanded to the Park County
Jail,without bail, on Chargers of Kidnapping, Assault with a deadly weapon and, Murder
after deliberation. He has lived in Colorado continuously since the killings and was
never considered a suspect previously. His last court date was scheduled for
March 8th 2021 but so far no details have come out in the media and it may have
been postponed due to current events. Much of this work can be attributed to
Denver police detective Charlie McCormick, who has been working on this case since 1989
and was skeptical that closure would ever come. In the chaos of the news, friends and family
still strive to remember the people lost: "All I know was she loved
people," a freind said of Anette, who is now forever 21 years old: . "She was
a fun loving person to be around. She was a wonderful person. That's all I can say, because
she didn't have a chance to do anything else."
