John Famalaro : The Ice Chest Killer

on the morning of June 3rd 1991 Dennis and ioni Huber woke up like it was any other morning their daughter Denise had attended a concert with a friend the night before and it seemed she hadn't returned but she was 23 years old and her parents always gave the young woman her space still she was a very considerate person always letting them know when she was going to stay somewhere else trying not to worry Dennis and ioni assumed she got busy and just forgot As Time passed with no word from their daughter ioni began calling friends and family when she discovered that nobody had heard from her they began to panic they called local hospitals asking if there were any patients that matched Denise's description but found nothing a call to the local police found no record of an accident involving a blue Honda Accord by that evening with friends and family being no closer to locating Denise one of her friends went out searching Tammy Brown was one of Denise's best friends she was so worried that she got into her car and drove the route that she thought that Denise would have taken she knew that Denise left the concert and dropped a friend off before heading home instead of taking the Pacific Coast Highway to Newport Beach Tammy thought that Denise would have taken I-405 South then used Highway 73 to get home she drove along the interstate slow enough to scan the side of the road she was looking for anything that looked like a clue as to where Denise had gone when she transitioned from the interstate to Highway 73 she didn't get far before she noticed something on the shoulder of the road under a large traffic sign directing drivers to either continue South on Highway 73 or take the exit to go on to Highway 55. Tammy saw silvery blue Honda Accord on the shoulder of the road the car's hazard lights were just barely flashing and the rear passenger tire was flat Tammy didn't want to touch the car in the event the police needed it for evidence so she pulled off of the highway and used a pay phone to call Dennis and ioni Huber she gave them detailed directions to the vehicle and it only took the parents a few minutes to arrive their hearts were in their stomachs as they approached the vehicle it was dark and there was no telling what they might find inside the car as Dennis opened the driver's door ioni opened the passenger door at the same time they looked into their daughter's abandoned car but there was no sign of her the reality set in that their daughter was really missing this is monsters [Music] [Applause] [Music] John fomalara was born in 1957 in Long Island New York the last of three children born to Angelo and Anna fomilaro John had been a difficult pregnancy for Anna so she spent time in bed recovering after his birth his sister Francine stepped in to care for the infant and he never really had much opportunity to bond with his mother even after Anna got her strength back John's care remained in the hands of Francine and his maternal grandmother throughout his earliest years Jon was sick more often than his siblings he had frequent colds chickenpox measles frequent headaches and issues with his colon when John was still an infant the family moved across the country to Orange County California Angelo took a job selling storm windows and aluminum siding which he continued to do for 30 years in 1962 the famularos built a six-bedroom house in Santa Ana Francine recalled her mother focusing most of her attention on the oldest sibling George and neither her mother nor her older brother seemed to have any interest in the two younger siblings George was outgoing on the debate team and a talented piano player when John started attending school Francine said she took on the role of his protector he was small and weak which caused him to attract bullies at the same time he was regularly in trouble he also developed a habit of locking George out of the house something his mother got angry about but she didn't make any effort to stop him from continuing to do it both George and Francine recalled their mother being overly controlling their father let her have the reins in an effort to keep the peace in the household but Anna was aggressive with her control she would show up at the kids Catholic school until the nuns exactly how her children should be taught she kept strict rules that didn't allow the children to bring home any friends one rule was that the children weren't allowed to whisper to each other they weren't allowed to have conversations amongst themselves and Anna would even put one child in the front passenger seat and sit between the other two children in the back on car rides to prevent the children from talking to each other she would save every piece of paper the kids wanted to throw out so she could go through them and make sure it wasn't important but she never did so papers just piled up around the house Anna was also a strict Catholic who used religion as a punishment more than anything else the children were taught that they couldn't make any mistakes or they'd go to hell Anna saw herself as the person who had to make sure their souls were saved when George was 13 years old he hinted to his mother that he might want to become a priest so he was sent to Our Lady Queen of Angels prep school in Los Angeles this was a school designed to prepare students to become priests he lasted two years but told his mother that he was no longer interested and she let him quit but after that her favoritism began to wane she claimed that he became a chronic liar after leaving the Prep School if Anna thought that Jon might be the one to become a priest it was evident early on that he wasn't headed down that path he was regularly in trouble at school he was sent home on multiple occasions and the nuns were calling home even more often John was expelled from school in the fourth grade and was enrolled in a boarding school where he only came home on weekends family said that John did focus more after he began attending boarding school and his grades improved Anna's religious devotion made her completely intolerant of any talk about sex if one of the children mentioned any subject related to sex she would become enraged and threaten them with hell they also weren't allowed to experience anything that had even the slightest sexual reference holding hands was the limit in the famularo household and Anna would sit by whenever the children were watching television ensuring they looked away of anything she deemed dirty appeared on the screen unfortunately completely insulating children from any information about sex doesn't usually come with a positive outcome at the least it leaves a young adult in a position to make mistakes that could lead to pregnancy or STDs at the worst it leaves a person with a sexual repression that can manifest in less than healthy means it's not entirely uncommon for a sexual predator to have a history of sexual repression this seems to be the path that John headed down as the children Grew Older they were also not allowed to explore any type of self-sexualization Francine said that their mother would hover outside both George and John's rooms then suddenly barge in to see if she would catch them masturbating when George began dating she went as far as hiding in the back of his car during the date but never caught him doing anything untoward when George graduated high school and went to Palmer Chiropractic College in Davenport Iowa Anna called his girlfriend Vilma Finch and demanded she stopped dating her son she even threatened to stop paying for his school if he didn't break up with her after George left Francine was also itching to get away from her mother by this time the famularos had put their house up for sale and Anna explained to her daughter that the Russians were coming she had already been stocking up on food and silver for when the United States was bombed to Oblivion of course years went by with no Invasion by the Russians so when Francine graduated from high school she also enrolled at Palmer Chiropractic College just when Francine thought that she would soon be out from under her mother's thumb Anna announced that she would be joining her in Iowa Anna moved to Davenport and lived in an apartment with her daughter in order to continue her control John was in boarding school and George had left so the only child she had left to control was Francine and she was not about to relinquish it the arrangement lasted two months before Francine worked up the courage to tell her mother to leave she told her that she wanted a normal college experience and Anna returned to California but she completely cut her daughter off without financial support Francine wasn't able to continue going to college but she met a man and they married eventually she was able to return to school to become a nurse but the whole time Anna refused to speak to her daughter Anna was now left with only John to hover over and it was these last few years of his childhood that she really paid the most attention to him if only because she had no one else when John graduated from high school Anna took him on a trip around Europe when they returned John enrolled at St Thomas Aquinas and was soon on his way to becoming independent like his siblings the threats that Anna had made to both George and Velma didn't stop them from dating when Anna cut her son off financially just like she would do later to Francine Velma dropped out of school and got a job to help George complete his degree as far as girlfriends go I'd say Velma was a keeper but clearly Anna wasn't playing with a full deck eventually Anna was able to convince her son to move back to California to start his Chiropractic business and when he left Velma stayed back in Iowa the distance caused the couple to break up but eventually they decided to try to work things out and Velma went to Santa Ana and spent two weeks with George she stayed in a motel in an effort to not anger Anna one night after Velma had gone to bed there was a knock on her door when she asked who it was a woman said that they were a friend of George's and that they needed help when Velma started to open the door the woman pushed it open hard and knocked Velma to the ground when a stunned Velma looked up she saw Anna standing over her yelling at her that she knew she loved to [ __ ] her son but that she was going to die that night she slapped Velma and told her that she couldn't have her son Velma offered to go straight to the airport and leave but Anna said it was too late she was going to die that night Anna lunged at her and began strangling her but Velma was able to kick her away and ran out of the motel room she made it to the front office where inside she told the family who owned the motel about the attack and they called the police when officers arrived Velma pressed charges and Anna was arrested for assault Velma stayed in the area an extra week in order to continue the process of Seeking Justice for the attack but it wasn't long before George asked her to drop the charges he said that it would be a favor for his father so their name didn't get dragged through the mud Velma reluctantly agreed but after that she saw that their relationship was not going to work and she returned to Iowa George eventually moved on and got married but on February 13 1980 he was arrested after a ten-year-old boy claimed that George had molested him while he was at a chiropractor appointment when information about the arrest appeared in the local newspaper a 16 year old girl also came forward with claims that Dr fomalaro had sexually abused her George maintained his innocence and went to trial for two counts of sexual contact of minor patients he was found guilty and was sentenced to a psychiatric facility he spent two and a half years there before being released while at College John met a woman named Helen Lyons and the two began dating John finally decided what he wanted to do with his life and transferred to school so he could become you guessed it a chiropractor though he attended a school in California he heard the same calling that his siblings had heard and enrolled at the Cleveland Chiropractic College which was in Los Angeles not Cleveland he made it through two years of school and arrived to take the test to get his license but before the test began John left to use the restroom and never returned he never got his chiropractor's license instead John applied for entry into both the Orange County Sheriff's department and the Los Angeles Police Department's training academies according to John he passed the test for both with flying colors and he ultimately chose to work for the sheriff's department when he was notified about his acceptance to the program he never responded and lost his opportunity to become an Orange County Sheriff people believe it's because a breakup between him and Helen threw him into a deep depression a few months later John applied for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department and was accepted when he entered the academy he was issued a dress uniform and he purchased a lighter weight uniform that could be used if he was going to be out in the field after four months he sustained a knee injury and left the academy he turned in his dress uniform upon departure but he kept the one he had purchased John continued going to school taking courses toward degrees in biology and Anatomy during this time Helen returned and the couple began dating again resulting in Helen becoming pregnant this would be her second pregnancy with John the first one ending with an abortion this time she decided to have the baby but she didn't want to raise it with John she left him while pregnant and would go on to put the baby up for adoption with Helen gone and all of his other professional Avenues being dead ends John finally decided to use none of the education he had received at college and started a house painting business with the business being a success John had the money to Lavish gifts onto any woman he met his next girlfriend was a woman named Darlene Miller for her birthday in 1987 he flew her to New York and took her to three Broadway Productions they stayed in a fancy hotel and dined at the finest restaurants that wouldn't be the most memorable part of the trip though one morning after waking up John began playing around with Darlene in bed tickling her and play wrestling suddenly John pulled out a pair of handcuffs and before she knew it she was handcuffed to a metal bar on the window John then stripped off her clothes and opened the curtains so people in other buildings had a full view of her then he left he was gone for hours Darlene yelled for help she kicked the wall but nobody heard her when John came back he was laughing like it was all a funny joke when he removed the handcuffs Darlene curled up in the fetal position while John tried to hug and kiss her he had absolutely no idea how traumatizing his actions were she did her best to play nice long enough for them to get back to California where she told John she never wanted to see him again she would see him again though four years later after Jon had dated other women all of whom would later tell stories of being handcuffed by Jon one girlfriend said he nearly raped her before she yelled at him that she would report him to the police if he continued Darlene ran into Jon after she had moved to Oregon for college she was back for a summer and ran into him on the street against her better judgment she started dating him again and eventually moved back down to Orange County it was then that she noticed John's unusual living arrangements he rented a warehouse space for his painting business but he had converted the office area into a living space she only saw the space a few times but she said the place was locked up like Fort Knox eventually Jon asked her to marry him and she said no that was the beginning of the end of the relationship John would soon grow tired of the emotional rollercoaster of a consensual relationship and move on to unwilling participants Denise Huber was born on November 22 1967 in Modesto California her parents Dennis and ioni Huber gave her a brother a few years later and the family lived a fairly idyllic life in the suburbs of Sacramento Dennis worked in the pricing Department of a Modesto wine maker before taking a position as a mortgage Banker with a firm in Sacramento ioni worked as a substitute teacher the bank transferred Dennis in 1973 and the family moved to Northridge just west of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley like the famularos the Hubers were also deeply religious but their faith was not used as a weapon by either parent when Denise was a senior her father was transferred to an office near Dallas but Denise stayed in California to finish high school once Denise graduated she attended College in Texas for two years before enrolling at Covenant College a Presbyterian College near Chattanooga Tennessee by the time Denise was finishing her education in Tennessee Dennis got another transfer back to California which took them to Newport Beach Denise joined her family back in California and while she decided what she wanted to do with her life she worked part-time at a department store while also working part-time as a waitress at the Old Spaghetti Factory he was at the restaurant where she met both Rob Calvert and Stephen Horrocks Steven had purchased two tickets to see Morrissey perform at the Forum and had invited Denise to join him Denise didn't really date at this point in her life she was interested in hanging out with friends and having fun she was a huge lover of music like her brother they had both taken piano lessons growing up though Jeff would go on to play multiple instruments and form a band Denise had more of a passion for listening to music Morrissey was one of her favorites and she gladly accepted the offer unfortunately Steve wasn't able to get the time off from his bartending position at the restaurant so he offered the other ticket to Rob Denise told Rob she would pick him up at 7 30 p.m on the evening of the concert and drive them to the Forum the couple made their way to the concert and enjoyed hours of music together before heading to a restaurant and bar called El Paso Cantina to have a few drinks and chat about the show they ran into another friend and visited until last call when they continued their journey home Denise dropped Rob off at his home at about 2 A.M and should have made it to her own home in 30 to 40 minutes but she never arrived when her car was discovered on Highway 73 the evening of June 3rd 1991. Dennis and ioni Hubers filed a missing persons report at one o'clock the following morning officers were at the site of the abandoned Honda searching the area for Clues to where Denise may have gone they looked at the flat tire and determined it hadn't been tampered with it was shredded in a way that indicated a typical blowout if Denise had been abducted it must have been a crime of opportunity they used a canine unit to track Denise's scent but the dog lost it about 225 feet or 68 meters down the highway Dennis even brought their own family dog out to the site and tried to get him to find Denise's scent but they were unsuccessful of course both Rob Calvert and Stephen Horrocks were investigated but were quickly ruled out Steve went on the news to let people know that there was no way Denise just took off especially not leaving her car on the side of the highway with a flat tire for some reason with almost no evidence to guide investigators the case eventually went cold the Hubers hired a private investigator who ended up giving them a report claiming that Denise's car wasn't parked along the highway until after 5 30 a.m the flat tire had been staged the interior of the car was wiped down and that Denise's friends were involved in her disappearance oh and that Denise was likely Dead all of these details had no evidence to back them up and were actually fairly easy to prove incorrect the family was disappointed not only to get no leads into the whereabouts of their daughter but by realizing that the private investigator only seemed to be interested in making money not actually investigating the disappearance Jack and Elaine Court were paint suppliers in Phoenix Arizona they would regularly travel out to Prescott about a hundred miles or 160 kilometers North to sell products in an open-air Market there it was there that they met a local painting contractor and he told them that he had a huge supply of colorant at his home and he offered to sell it to them on July 9 1994 they followed him from the market to his home to take a look at the products when they arrived he took them around the side of his house where they saw a box truck parked on an auxiliary parking pad on the side of the house it wasn't the main driveway but looked like something used to park an RV the truck had been partially covered by a tarp but you could still see the Rider logo on the side indicating it would normally be used as a rental truck looking at the tires you could tell by the weeds growing around them the truck had been there for a while the paint suppliers immediately had a bad feeling about the situation so they made note of the license plate which was from Massachusetts they purchased a load of paint colorant and left the home and when they got back to their business Elaine put the note with the license plate info on her desk and tried to forget about it three days later a friend came in to purchase some paint and he just so happened to be a detective with the Phoenix Police Department the courts told him about the rider truck they had seen and gave him the license plate number detective Steve Gregory went to his office and called the writer company but they told him they didn't have that truck listed as missing detective Gregory was a thorough guy so he asked the representative to double check and call him back sure enough someone from the security division at Ryder called him back and told him that that truck had been reported missing six months ago from Orange County California the detective passed the information onto the avapai county sheriff's department and they sent a deputy out to check on the vehicle when he arrived at the address he spotted the truck but it had a different license plate number and the plates were from Maine still in his vehicle he called in for more information and called for backup when the other Deputy arrived they both went onto the property and checked the VIN number it was a match for the stolen Rider Truck the property owner had switched the plates after the courts had left maybe he saw them looking at the truck or maybe he was just playing it safe but it was clear that the man who lived there had a stolen vehicle on his property the deputies believed that they may have found a makeshift drug lab so they called in the narcotics department when they arrived they found no evidence of chemicals in any of the buckets around the house but there was an extension cord coming out of the back of the rider truck that ran through a nearby fence and that along with the fact that it was stolen was enough for authorities to get a warrant for the truck nobody answered the door of the house so one of the investigators called in the info for a Dodge pickup in the driveway to get the identity of the owner of the residence when the call came back in the investigator was informed that that truck belonged to John fomalaro once the warrant was signed a locksmith opened the back of the rider truck and the investigators were met with not a drug lab but a pile of junk cans of paint were stacked on the side and in the front of the cargo area there was a chest freezer which was attached to the extension cord to keep it running the Seal of the freezer had several layers of masking tape and the lid was locked the locksmith made quick work of this lock and when the lid was opened a foul odor rushed through the truck investigators were still expecting this mystery to have something to do with drugs so the smell of death was confusing inside the freezer was some sort of object in black plastic one of the detectives reached down and felt the plastic and suddenly pulled his hand back and said quote it feels like a human arm the narcotics investigators realized that this was not their crime scene they closed the freezer and called in a homicide Sheriff's Lieutenant Scott major arrived on the scene with other investigators and when they opened the freezer they pulled back some plastic until they had uncovered the nude body of a young woman nobody knew it yet but Denise Huber had finally been found the sheriff's department had the entire truck towed to the Arizona State Crime Lab where the medical examiner could take the entire freezer in for investigation there Dr Ann buckled slowly thawed the body and after collecting fingerprints The Remains were positively identified to be Denise Huber the doctor was able to collect a small amount of semen from the body the skull was crushed and when it was reconstructed it was revealed that she had had a white plastic bag put over her head and then she was beaten with multiple weapons there were 31 impact points on her skull the same day that investigators found the body John and his mother arrived at his home and John was immediately arrested for auto theft the extension cord from the truck actually ran to a neighboring house and it was learned that that house was where John's Mother Anna lived they got search warrants for both houses they didn't find anything of importance in Anna's house but in a box marked Christmas in John's Garage they found Denise's clothes and shoes a visual inspection of the shoes showed drag marks on the heels also in the Box was an empty box for a pair of handcuffs a pry bar with possible blood stains on it and a cloth with blood stains they found a second box that was also marked Christmas and in it was a blood-stained backpack a claw hammer with spots of blood on it and a black plastic bag that contained items with Denise's name on them they found a set of handcuffs offs handcuff keys and Denise's identification they found receipts for the purchase of the freezer from an Orange County Woolworths just days after Denise's disappearance they found some of John's clothes with Denise's blood on them and in his basement they found a police uniform and some sort of dungeon it seemed he had broken a hole in the cinderblock foundation wall which is extremely stupid on its own then he had dug out the Earth on the other side to build a storage area that was filled with one gallon paint cans the area would eventually be searched for other bodies but nothing important would be found in there the uniform they found was one of the backup uniforms that John had purchased during his short time training to become a Los Angeles County Sheriff it's been suggested that he used the uniform to impersonate a law enforcement officer so women would let their guard down but nobody knows for sure when a detective attempted to interview Jon he wouldn't speak to them during their investigation they learned that Jon had operated a house painting business in Orange County California not far from where Denise went missing he rented a commercial space to use for his business and when the space was searched they found a large area that had once had blood the new tenants said there was a big brown puddle in that area when they moved in and they cleaned it up but when investigators sprayed the area with luminol it still lit up luminol reacts to the proteins in Blood and can indicate the presence of blood even after an area has been cleaned it became clear that John had abducted Denise in the early morning hours of June 3rd 1991 and that he had held her for several days raping her repeatedly authorities believe that he killed Denise on or around June 23 1991 and kept her body in a freezer in his rented commercial space about six months prior to the discovery of the body John moved with his parents to Prescott Arizona and he rented the rider van January 28 1994 used it to transport the freezer to his new home and just never returned it when the investigation concluded that Denise had been murdered in Orange County California John was moved there to stand trial for first-degree murder Jean fomalara would continue to maintain his innocence with his public defender pointing out that he was a good Catholic boy I'm sorry but there have been enough Catholic pedophiles to prove that that title doesn't really mean anything just because you believe in a religion that teaches not to kill or rape or steal that's not evidence that you're a good person fortunately the mountain of evidence was strong enough for the jury to see the truth the prosecutor called witnesses to narrow down a specific timeline he showed the blood evidence in John's previous commercial space and the testimony that the DNA excluded the blood belonging to John but couldn't be excluded that it belonged to Denise the receipt of the freezer purchase the stolen Rider van Denise's body and belongings on John's property Denise's blood was on his clothes that were found in his house if John hadn't killed Denise he was a really unlucky guy the jury knew that that wasn't true and John fomalaro was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances added for kidnapping and sodomy he was believed that Denise was raped multiple times but the medical examiner was only able to recover seamen from a rectal swab due to decomposition the samples were minor and the investigators weren't able to get a complete DNA profile those special circumstances though made John eligible for the death penalty and that's what the jury eventually sentenced him to death John filed multiple appeals as all death row inmates do but they were all denied he will either be executed by the state or die in prison Denise's identification was not the only one found in John's home though there were about 10 other women's IDs found in the box with Denise's investigators scoured the property and even brought in cadaver dogs but no other remains were found at the house or underneath it when the identifications were investigated they all came back to women who were in fact alive one was a Phoenix area prostitute who had been picked up by John and taken to a vacant area where he attacked her she managed to get away and hide in the desert unfortunately Denise was not so lucky John fomalaro wanted to exert power over women but continued to fail in his efforts he decided that he would take a Woman by force and exert power that way which didn't make him a man it only made him a monster if you're the victim of domestic abuse please reach out to someone for help talk to your local shelter or call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at 1-800-799-safe that's 1-800-799-7233 or you can go to thehotline.org to chat with someone online this website is set up so that at any time hitting the Escape key twice will take you to a Google search page that way if your abuser is nearby you won't get caught seeking help if you're having feelings of harming yourself or someone else or even just need someone to talk to please contact your local mental health facility call 9-1-1 or call Mental Health America who operate the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-talk that's 1-800-273-8255 they're available 24 hours a day seven days a week thanks so much for letting me tell you the story if you enjoyed it subscribe on whatever platform you're on hit like rate US or leave us a comment you can also check out our other show somewhere sinister on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcasts if you'd like to support the show check out our new merch at Teespring the link is in the description thanks again and be safe

Channel: this is MONSTERS

Views: 334,004

Keywords: True crime, john famalaro, denise huber, icebox killer, murder

Id: luaUgb6tal8

Length: 34min 56sec (2096 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022