From shop worker cracking ‘head in a bucket’ case to mum who snared child murderer… armchair sleuths who trapped killers
THEY’RE the amateur sleuths who spend hours on the internet attempting to crack crimes – not always with the blessing of the police.
But this new wave of armchair detectives have actually helped put away dozens of murderers, including the killer of an 11-year-old boy missing for almost three decades.
They have also snared a heartless murderer who dismembered his flatmate’s body and helped loved ones find the truth about a young student’s body found in a water tank at an LA hotel.
Now true crime aficionados have the chance to show off their own detective work by taking part in the search for a killer – hiding 9,000 miles away at a remote research station in Antarctica.
The fictional murder mystery in the new Spotify podcast series, Cold Tapes, centres on the death of 33-year-old behavioural scientist Andrew Fairfield.
With each episode, listeners will look to piece the clues together and uncover the killer – with a real £10,000 prize on offer for the winner.
As inspiration, we look at the dogged work of the most notable cases cracked by cyber-sleuths.
Head in a bucket
In 2001, Ronald Telfer brought home a plastic bucket filled with concrete that he found abandoned at Missouri truck stop.
He was hoping to use it to feed his pigs but when he tipped out the contents he found what he thought were animal remains trapped inside.
In fact, the grim discovery was the remnants of a human skull belonging to Greg May – who had been reported missing months earlier.
Greg had been murdered by his close pal Doug DeBruin – who intended on selling the victim’s valuable Civil War antiques.
With the help of his girlfriend, DeBruin dismembered the body and scattered it in various places, placing Greg’s head in the bucket and pouring in cement.
After the skull was handed into Missouri police, cops hired a forensic sculptor to re-create Greg’s face.
Enter Ellen Leach, a former supermarket worker who devoted her spare time to investigating cold cases from her home in Orange Grove, US.
In 2004, Ellen spotted a photograph of Greg on Iowa’s Missing Person website and linked it to the forensic recreation she’d seen on another forum.
Tips for armchair detectives
While there’s no set rules when it comes to investigating a cold case, amateur sleuth John Lordan has a rough plan he usually sticks to when making his videos.
He says: “Initially I’ll do a media review, going through everything that’s publicly available.
“If there’s any type of police material or statements that have been released, I’ll include all of them too. I’ll usually start without any direct contact with family, before hearing from them.
“People may initially be upset and ask why I didn’t reach out first to ask them about it, but I’ve found information from the family can be the most biased yet.”
Todd Matthews agrees and suggests the first step should always be to look through old newspaper articles, gathering all the public information you can together.
Meanwhile, according to an online Jack The Ripper tour guide, a few simple tips to stick to include paying attention to small details, distancing yourself if you become too invested in the research – as that may cloud your judgement – and being adaptable, catering your research to each individual case rather than following one uniform method.
Coincidentally, Greg’s memorabilia started showing up at different auction sites months later and cops were able trace the seller – who was DeBruin.
With Ellen’s groundwork, investigators were able to put both pieces of evidence together and convict DeBruin of first-degree murder and first-degree theft in 2005.
Mum snares masked abductor
In 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was cycling towards his local video store in Minnesota, with his younger brother and a pal, when he was abducted by a masked stranger.
Police arrived on the scene within six minutes but the youngster was already gone and for the next 27 years his case would go unsolved.
But the family’s agonising wait for answers inspired mum-of-two Joy Baker to launch her own probe.
The 57-year-old woman told The Sun: “Everyone was shocked and horrified and everyone wanted to help… it is so hard to describe what our state was like at that time.”
As the case remained open, Joy created a blog in 2010 called “Where are you Jacob?” – dedicated to the boy who had been missing 21 years.
She filled her content with archived police and newspaper files and attempted to discredit past theories.
She discovered local law enforcement failed to follow up on credible leads, evidence was mishandled and key witnesses were never interviewed.
Her research eventually led her to the case of another young boy who was abducted and assaulted by a masked man – just nine months before Jacob disappeared and only ten miles away.
Now a man in his thirties the victim, Jared Scheierl, desperately wanted justice and teamed up with Joy to expose a string of unsolved sexual attacks on young boys which took place between 1986 and 1897.
They mapped all the incidents which revealed an obvious cluster around the city of Paynesville, which they flagged to police.
Through Joy’s work, the case went viral and tips came flooding in.
In October 2015, advances in DNA testing since the late 80s meant evidence from the crime scene linked Jared’s attack to local man Daniel James Heinrich, now 59, who had originally been questioned by police over Jacob’s disappearance. He was a 100 per cent match.
Tragically statute of limitations had expired on Jared’s case, meaning he couldn’t be tried for murder, although the law has since been changed. But Heinrich was charged with 25 counts of child pornography and jailed for 20 years in November 2016.
Henrich confessed to the abduction, sexual assault and killing of the young boy and, as part if a plea deal, he revealed the location of Jacob’s remains which were buried in a field near Paynesville – where many of the other attacks took place.
Dead woman in a tent
Todd Matthews began his own armchair sleuthing after hearing how his father-in-law discovered a woman’s dead body wrapped in a tent in 1968.
The grim discovery in Georgetown, Kentucky, would later be dubbed the “Tent Girl” as the woman was never identified and the trail went cold.
Todd, who died earlier this year, began his own detective work in the 1990s and previously recalled: “You couldn’t Google a filing cabinet then. The struggle was real, you had to get in your car and drive up there to get any material.”
Due to the victim’s small frame, police assumed the “Tent Girl” was likely to be 13 to 16 years old.
This clashed with Todd’s father-in-law’s memories who recalled her having painted nails, full breasts and a child’s nappy in her bag – suggesting she was an adult.
Years later, with the birth of the internet, factory worker Todd was able to reach out to cold case forums and present his findings.
Todd said: “Eventually I saw a listing from a woman looking for her sister who was last seen in December 1967 in the area… I just knew.”
After sharing notes, the pair managed to have the body exhumed in 1998.
DNA testing identified the tragic find was the woman’s sister – Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor.
Rotting corpse in water tank
In 2013, Canadian student Elisa Lam‘s naked body was found floating in a water tank on the roof of a hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
The chilling discovery was made after guests complained about the smell and taste of the water at the hotel.
Authorities later released CCTV footage of her in the lift – shortly before the last time she was seen alive – which sparked a stream of online conspiracy theories.
The video showed her acting erratically and appearing to gesture a lot whilst also trying to hide.
Amateur sleuth John Lordan recalled: “People had all these wacky theories, one person said they saw a ghost in the elevator, another said it was someone in military camouflage gear. Some were extremely disrespectful.”
It prompted him to create a YouTube video about the case, aiming to debunk some of the theories.
As he investigated further, Lordan dug out legal documents from a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the hotel by Lam’s family and shared his findings with his followers.
He also visited the hotel himself and found there were only two ways up to the roof – an outside fire escape and an indoor stair well that was supposedly shut off with an alarmed door.
John explained: “The story was that the hatch [on top of the water tank] was closed when she was found, so how did that get closed? It had to mean someone was up there and put her in there.
“But when we got to the legal documentation, we learned the hatch was actually off. There was a deposition specifically from the guy that found her, he’d got up there and saw the hatch was removed.”
Through John’s findings and video recreations, Lam’s death was eventually ruled as accidental by a US court.
Don’t F*** With Cats
Possibly the most well known wide-scale armchair probe was by a group of cat lovers who brought down sick Canadian murderer Luka Magnotta.
The twisted killer, then 30, had courted internet infamy by circulating videos of himself killing kittens – even feeding one to a python.
In 2010, Magnotta horrifyingly shared another video of himself suffocating two kittens in a plastic bag using a vacuum cleaner.
For the next 18 months, internet sleuths tracked his online activity, in a bid to track him down.
But in 2012, his crime spree escalated and he murdered his lover Lin Jun, a 33-year-old computer engineering student from China, and released video online of himself killing Lin and abusing his corpse.
The cat-loving sleuths helped police nail the sick torturer and, in 2014, he was found guilty of killing Jun Lin, dismembering his body and posting his hands and feet wrapped in pink tissue to schools and political parties.
The extraordinary case went on to inspire the 2019 Netflix series Don’t F**K With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer.
