Tragic Dec. 8, 1974 murder of my Oakdale Junior High classmate

for 48 years the murder of a classmate has haunted me Maine's a cold and dark quarter of my memory it's this time of year when the foggy season starts in the Central Valley of California when I begin to think about that horrible night when Vivian Laughlin was murdered that particular night in December 1974 is one that I've been unable to shake cold and dark quarter of my memory I was 13 years old when I and my classmates at Oakdale Junior High School got her first lesson in the fragility of life and the vulnerability of Youth Oakdale California had been a safe place or at least we thought so but that all changed [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign in the 1970s this was Oakdale Junior High School this is where I attended school with Vivian Laughlin I have not been to this school since I graduated I may have come for some plays there's a great Auditorium here but this building has a decidedly Art Deco field I believe that it actually was built in the 1930s but this is where I went to Junior High School Vivian Laughlin and I sat in the same row of desk in one of these classrooms the Monday after the weekend tragedy I remember the soberness of principal gabbard's voice over the school PA system as he announced Vivian's murder and to offer counselor if we needed one the harsh reality hit us that one of us was lying in a cold morgue because of a heinous act by a mentally deranged young man just how horrific a death we would learn from newspaper accounts that followed we would have entered this school as seventh graders in September of 1973 and left here June 1975 as graduating 8th graders however in the middle of our eighth grade year Vivian Laughlin passed away it was only at this place that I knew Vivian Laughlin didn't know her outside of school but this school looks pretty much the same as it did back in the 70s so I remember there was one teacher that I liked she was young and she didn't fit my idea of a t-shirt her name was Robin Edgerton and I remember one day she came to school and said hey can I play some of my records would you mind well while you do your work we said sure you know back then it was records she said she was going to Play Lynyrd Skynyrd I remember laughing at what kind of name is Lynyrd Skynyrd and of course I was an ignorant dumb kid at the time had no idea who Lynyrd Skynyrd was of course we all know the impact that they had on the American music culture at that time [Music] second set of doors wasn't there at the time but uh looking down that hallway crazy to think how many years have passed since I've been here thank you foreign the death of Vivian Laughlin happened long before there was a 24-hour cable TV news cycle and didn't become a big media sensation like other young homicide victims and as we get closer to the half century away from the murder outside of her family Fabian has been mostly forgotten which is exactly why I wanted to do this video this would be my way to get the answers as to how this happened and to add some clarity to my Recollections that have grown foggy with time my starting point to research the case was our County Library where microfilm copies of the Modesto Bee newspaper are available my memory proved accurate when I located the front page article of Monday December 9th 1974 headlined Modesto boys held in killing rape of girl that article had more details than I expected it told me where the crime happened and where Vivian's body was dumped the article also contained details about the two victims including their names and addresses which you wouldn't see revealed in newspapers these days the article filled in The Lure details about what happened that night Vivian and her friend decided to go bowling in Modesto about 10 miles away after pulling the girls plan to get a ride from a friend but the arrangement fell through at around 7 30 PM the girls needed to find a way back to Oakdale and had no intentions of walking the 10 miles or so in the dark and cold so they waited out in front to get a ride Mike Alford rolled up and offered to take them back to Oakdale but he had evil intentions [Music] thank you so were you hitchhiking when you got picked up by Mike Alpert we were how far did you get away from the bowling alley right yeah we were going to go and she said my name's crazy and as soon as he said that I got a bad feeling about it in the weeks prior to the abduction and murder there had been multiple instances in which Mike Alford openly indicated he was out to pick up girls to commit heinous acts like rape and murder that was substantiated by one woman who had contacted me through social media and told me of a herring brush with Alfred the girl sized up Alfred and believed that he was as normal as he looked and took him up on his offer for a free ride Mike Alford was the son of a successful Modesto Banker but suffered serious psychotic episodes months before the kidnapping and killing of Vivian Laughlin Alfred had called the local Ambulance Company giving the nickname of zodiac and also crazy and falsely reported finding a woman's body on the train trestle when you were driving with him was he acting crazy or was he saying things that really alarmed you no not anything that besides that first thing that he said about I'm crazy there was not a whole lot of conversation at one point you probably knew that you weren't being driven to Oakdale right yeah yeah Waterford Highway and when he turned right instead of left I knew he wasn't okay and I asked him you know why how come your Oak tails that way he's like oh I have to um I'm gonna try my take cars with a fin later or something like that some stupid ass excuse and so it wasn't that long after that he pulled off to the side of the road my senses were already going off by then I don't know if hers were I think it caused her by surprise he pulled over near the intersection of Rice Road in the Oakdale Waterford Highway where he pulled out a shotgun from behind the seat and ordered the girls out so there was no coming off he just stopped right there in the road so this attack happened in the road yeah position the roadway wow and then then he starts pulling out a gun right he's behind the seat I seen what it was pointed at us his head told us to get out and so of course I was on the uh passenger side she was in the middle and so I I was going to get out on the passenger side he's like no get out over here so we both got out on his side right and then when we did team went to raise it up again at us and she jumped on his back I was like behind her trying to you know I don't even remember at that point like I don't know people wrestling for the game or I don't know what we thought we were gonna do both girls tried to Brussel the shotgun away from Alfred the other girl frantically Broke Free into a dark field at one point running into her barbed wire fence she heard Fabian scream after a shotgun blast the car was running in the headlights for us she ran out in front of the car down the road and I took off behind the car over into a pasture and I think he was already aggravated at her for jumping on him and then when she took up her name in front of the car and a headlight he could see her better when I went around the truck and went to the pastor that was their cow Tasker there and I can see there was a house there and so that's where I headed let's get helped sheriff's deputies rushed to the scene unable to find Vivian dead or alive and you actually heard two gunshots I did I heard the first one and then I heard Pottery running and screaming at her and another shot so she glanced and ran after the first shot he said she got up and around 60 feet and then he saw her again and then he must have scooped her up and put her in the back of the pickup back onto the highway if you go up turn around come back and go back upright so he was looking for me I don't know if he told the investigators but he said he stopped and she was gasping for air and then when he got to where he was going she was not breathing so she wrote all the way from um okay water Highway Rice road all the way out to McHenry at that way station out there on um between Riverbank and Escalon right asking for air probably that just makes me sad I know it makes me sad too [Music] foreign [Music] station as the location where they filmed Vivian Laughlin's body now ironically this area no longer produces peaches it's an almond producing County basically as you can see there there's some Walnut holes that are piled up there and they are burning they reported that there was a stack of produce bins or Peach bins and that Vivian's body was back here it was actually believed that Mike Alford raped Vivian after she died he killed her about 10 miles away brought her here disrobed her body Mike Alford made it pretty easy for the sheriff's department to fight him because he called him Modesto Ambulance Company to report that he had killed a girl or that he had injured a girl who shot her and injured her when in reality he had actually killed her he told one of the employees there to send an ambulance to this location that you would find her wounded body behind a stack of Orchard bends he also made the threat that he had booby trapped this area he said after the sheriff's department came that he would blow up the place of course it was a bluff he was not that sophisticated he was given to Tall Tales but when they got here they found that Vivian Laughlin was not alive she didn't need an ambulance Mike Alford knew this area very well because his parents live right over there in the very prestigious Del Rio subdivision I think it was probably right back here a stack of boxes helped to hide his despicable crime this area hasn't changed at all since the mid 70s you can see why the owners are a little frustrated there's a lot of people who are dumping stuff here Furniture parts tires DirecTV dish and this weighing station here is full of crap that people are dumped [Music] after the kidnapping and murdered the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department worked overtime to find the killer but Alfred dropped plenty of Clues not long after dumping Vivian's body Alfred drove to the home of his girlfriend in series a cinematic crying one minute and boastful the next about killing a girl they didn't believe him until he took him out to the truck and shot him blood in the pickup bed after he left they promptly phoned the authorities deputies quickly identified who he was they just had to find him they even staked out his parents home in Del Rio but he didn't show up Alfred and his parents contacted their family attorney John Griffin and arranged for Mike to surrender at the law office at 1008 12th Street in downtown Modesto the next day around noon Alfred turned himself in and was booked into the downtown Modesto jail Alfred was convicted of murder in February 1975. he served five years and was released on parole in 1980 despite a mental health professional advising he was schizophrenic and in need of long-term care so in preparing this video I was contacted through social media by a woman named Melanie who recalled spending time with Vivian while staying at a friend's house a short time leading up to her death the girls talked about boys and played their favorite records Vivian picked some popular hits of the day and said she knew she was going to die and that she wanted those songs played at her funeral one of them was a song recorded by Bread the girls told Vivian to quit talking about dying but she insisted I know I am Melanie also said that Vivian offered her chilling premonition that she would be murdered while hitchhiking did she ever tell you that she thought she was gonna die she did she had a little diary okay she had written in it that's the reason they played those songs wrote it down it was weird Melanie told me that she was cruising McHenry Avenue in Modesto with a friend a few weeks ahead of Vivian's murder the girls had stopped at a convenience store at the corner of McHenry and Orangeburg Avenues to grab something to drink when a creepy guy pulled up beside her car he asked him what they were doing and if they wanted to hang out Melanie asked him what are you doing in a tone of jest he answered I'm going to kidnap rape and kill someone a chill ran through both girls he had a creepy demeanor especially the look in his eyes Noni suspected that he wasn't joking the encounter spooked the girls so badly they told the strange man that they were headed home when Melanie saw the photo of Mike Alford published in the Modesto Bee she realized that he was the same man who approached her weeks before Melanie told me quote this is forever haunted me I still can see him in my thoughts and exactly where we talked to him calling the police would have done no good as MPD was quite familiar with him he had been making calls to the police station stating that he had just killed and raped someone Vivian Elaine Laughlin nicknamed Lanny was born to Georgie Alice Laughlin on May 25th 1961 in San Joaquin County Vivian's Father William Laughlin had little or nothing to do with his daughter but her older sisters often looked after her this was the only photo available of Vivian as a young girl with a much older sister earlier in her very short life Fabian lived in or near Stockton until her mother moved her to Oakdale where they lived in this apartment building on 6th Street Vivian was living here at the time of her death for killing Vivian Laughlin Mike Alford spent six years in state prison in April 1987 Alfred was once again in trouble with the law he found work as a taxi cab driver in Sacramento and picked up a 69 year old Rose Garcia who was heavily intoxicated at a bar the woman had also taken too much medication and had followed up a bar stool and injured her face when she was unable to pay for the ride Alfred asked her for sex at an isolated location while her clothes were being removed Garcia changed her mind and resisted highly intoxicated and unable to take care of herself Mike Alford left the woman in a canal where she was later found dead since there was no evidence to indicate that Alfred kilder Alfred later pled guilty to attempted rape The Plea came with a three-year sentence foreign [Music] exciting or attractive side of Oakdale right here is the Oak Lawn Memorial Park and it is here life know that Vivian Laughlin is buried now it just so happens that I did not attend Vivian's funeral held here in this Mortuary hundreds of my classmates gathered to say goodbye those who attended remember the tears that flowed especially when Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven was played [Music] but yeah it was a very dark time for those of us in that class now I was out here for quite a while trying to find Vivian's grave and I finally found it so I've been wanting to come out here for years ever since I was a kid but I just never did I found her grave right here there she is daughter and sister Vivian Elaine Laughlin 1961 to 1974. I came up here I tried to pull the weeds around the cracks here it's very stubborn there's an angel there a little quarter and I noted that on one side of her is buried a World War one private from Kentucky Robert truhit who died in 1972 just two years before Elaine she's buried right next to her mother who passed away years later I'm sure Georgie Alice Laughlin affectionately known as grandma bilke spent years of grief for what happened to her daughter so one of the things I remember about Vivian is she was pretty quiet I think she was on the shy side she's had a couple of chairs behind me in the same row I noticed that in the picture that they published in the newspaper the school picture that she's barely smiling in fact it's almost like she's trying to suppress her smile and her hair is almost like she's trying to hide behind her hair so I'm not sure what was going on with her at that time probably like a lot of Junior highs being insecure but she unhappy she wasn't unhappy she was like you know 13 14. you impression means everything yeah or image means everything so I think she is struggling with like herself her job was never around okay we're done skid rope somewhere pictures that death affected me in such a deep way perhaps because it was the first death of somebody young my age now a year later my cousin Sandra passed away from leukemia that was very dark and depressing event in my life somebody's so full of life and so innocent was taken by leukemia Fabian Laughlin's been forgotten I haven't forgotten her and nor have a lot of people who knew her but you know as time goes on her memory is going to fade and I felt like I needed to document what happened to her I thought this would be a good way to draw attention to not only her death her life but also the hazards that face young people when they throw caution to the wind now when you're 13 your level of judgment is kind of questionable and I know that today that people are more Savvy about the dangers that face young people but back then wasn't the case it was a more innocent age now we don't trust anybody for anything and maybe that's a good thing but I know that the thought of two girls getting in a vehicle with a young man that they didn't know is really never a good idea I felt like uh I paid homage to a classmate a child of God who died so long ago thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: History Hunters

Views: 134,429

Keywords: Oakdale California, Modesto California, 1974 homicide revisited

Id: 05IWpzDgtZw

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022