Three Native American women lost their lives with a brutal end. One went unidentified for 17 years, and their assailant is still unknown. This serial killer, who horribly mutilated their bodies, that is still relatively unknown to the public. Welcome to, or welcome back, to, the Great Unsolved Podcast, many episodes.
Not sure if that's what I want to call it yet, but that's what we're going with for now. This is a monthly thing where I post a bonus episode for those of you that are in the $5 tier or higher of my Patreon. This gives me the ability to cover cases that may not have enough information for me to make an actual episode about them. This is one that someone mentioned to me on Twitter when I began talking about the Kansas City Butcher, and ever since then I have been amazed by these cases.
There's almost nothing online about any of these cases, which made it very difficult to research, but looking them up individually does help someone. Just looking up the OKC Butcher virtually brings up nothing. So to keep things from getting confusing, let me tell you quickly about the Kansas City Butcher. It is completely unrelated to this case.
Robert Burdella, the Casey Butcher, was caught and has died as of now. He was a serial killer who had kidnapped and raped and tortured victims in up to six weeks of captivity, and is known to have murdered at least six men. The Oklahoma City Butcher is still widely unknown. The Oklahoma City Butcher, also known as the OKC Butcher, took the reign of terror in the 1970s and 1980s in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Only three murders are thought to be linked to the OKC Butcher, but there could be many more that have not been connected or even discovered yet. Many believe that with only three murders under his belt, it may be difficult to get a view of their MO or the type of victim they would go after. However, I don't believe this is the case at all. Each victim was of Native American descent, a woman living on the streets, and two of three were confirmed sex workers.
It is also possible that the third one was just isn't confirmed. Dismembering the bodies was his choice of disposal. He dismembered these women in an unorganized and rushed way, and also seen that the killer wanted his victims to be found. In each case, at least some of the body parts were left fairly unhidden, where someone would almost definitely stumble upon them at some point.
Sometimes serial killers will do this for the sheer fact that they want their crimes recognized, in some way or another. There were no cases where all of the body parts were found, so to this day is unknown where those pieces ended up. Some may think that the killer kept these pieces kind of as like trophies. And another thing I should mention, because it's fairly important to the case, each of the victim's sexual organs were missing also.
Just as every state does, Oklahoma has their long list of vicious crimes, their other history. However, there are a few more well-known cases coming from Oklahoma than other states surrounding it. If you are as the penetrant crime as I am, then I'm sure you've heard of these other cases quite a few times. In 1977, the Girl Sale murders took place in Oklahoma at Camp Scott.
This was a case where three young girls aged nine to ten were murdered when night at camp. All three were raped and brutally murdered. Then, in an attempt to scare or warn off the rest of the camp, these three bodies were essentially laid in a path from their tent to the showers at the camp. These murders are still unsolved today.
I was actually on a camping trip last week, and I started talking about this case when I was pitched blackout, and we're just sitting by the fire, so I'm not sure if those people want to go camping with me again, but I enjoyed the story. In 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing took place. This was a domestic terrorist attack in the form of a truck bombing at the hands of Timothy McVane and Terry Nichols. This act killed 168 people and injured about 680 more.
It also damaged at least 325 buildings in the area. Between 1974 and 1978, Roger Stafford killed the Lorenz family and six workers at a local restaurant in Oklahoma. In addition to these murders, his wife also implicated him in about 34 others, spanning over seven states. So as you can see, violence and murder is not really a new concept to Oklahoma, but many believe that the OKC butcher could have learned from a previous killer in the area.
As a true crime author and a forensic psychology major, I like to dive into what exactly the killer's profile may include. None of this is an exact science. We're kind of just spitballing and trying to look at other cases that may have resemblance to this and see what those killers were like. In each case, there are multiple ways that the killer could go, but getting them all down is the first step.
So targeting Native American women could push to a few different things, when being a racism towards them. You see, one type of killer is actually called a mission killer, and they seek to rid society of a group of people that they themselves deem unfit. This kind of killer could also go along with the idea that these women could have been linked through being sex workers. Maybe he didn't approve of that job, and he thought the best way to deal with it was to essentially get rid of them.
Another way for the Native American linkage to go would be that the killer was Native American. If they lived and or socialized in similar cultural circles, it could have given him a way to find these victims, rather than just the old way of picking up a sex worker angle and then killing them. If you didn't notice, I had been referring to the OKC killer as a he for the beginning of the episode, and that's because personally I believe it was a man and not a woman serial killer. All three women's sexual organs were missing, and obviously all three of these were female, which I believe shows a hatred towards females, and maybe even a rejection in the killers past from many females.
The telltale thing that makes a female infect a female is the sexual organs, and he strived to get rid of that. None of the organs from these women were ever found, so that could have been kind of a trinket he took home with him. The dismemberment of a body shows the vast carelessness towards it. If a killer is willing to desecrate a corpse, then they have no spec in their heart that cares for that victim, and probably anyone similar to that victim.
It also seems that the killer had to have been much larger and stronger than these women, and biology shows us that in general men are larger and stronger than women. In order to simply get these women along and kill them, the killer would have had been able to subdue them, since it does not seem that this killer was organized or very clever in their ways. The process of beating and mutilating the body tells us this. The first victim we will talk about was extremely badly beaten, and for that to happen, common sense just points towards them once again being stronger, and a hatred towards the victim.
Now let's jump into the actual individual cases of the OKC killer. The first victim was found by a pure chance. There was a construction crew working not too far from an abandoned house. Three of them undecided that on a lunch break, they were going to go explore inside because, you know why not?
There was nothing else to do around the area, so let's go look at an abandoned house. As they neared the house, they noted the odd scent wafting out to them. It was rancid, but somewhat sweet as well. Later reports would state that these men smelled the smell of death and decomposition when approaching the home.
However, I've always been one to question that how people know the smell of decomposition when never having smelled it before. In my opinion, a name to the smell probably came after the discovery they made. Right off the bat, when they entered the home, they found a severed human thigh. Nothing more was visible at that time, but I feel as if they knew they had found a human body already, because really, there's nothing else that mimics that.
For some reason, this did not have them running for the hills, but they actually morbidly searched further into the home. They did end up discovering one more piece of the body. A severed human head inside a partially covered popcorn bucket. Later reports from these men would state it was barely discernible as a human head, due to how black and blue it was.
This discovery took place on April 1, 1976. When the law enforcement arrived after being called, they were starting to search for any more bodies, any more body parts, or any identity to the body. The only new thing they would stumble upon though was the torso of the mutilated body. With many pieces of the body still missing, they weren't really sure where to go from this point.
But with the forensic abilities, they were able to not only note that the human head was female, but also that there was a black dahlia-like smile cut into it. By this, I mean that the corners of the mouths were extended to create a very creepy smile, what some would describe as an ear to ear mutilation. A sense of closure for this case would not come until 17 years after the body was found, and even then, there was not complete closure. So 17 years after this body was found, someone walked into the sheriff's office and asked if after 17 years they could still report someone missing.
As this woman began to voice, what the missing person looked like at the time they disappeared, it really struck a chord with the officer that was there. The officer taking the report recognized the description as a Jane Doe profile she had seen a long time ago. This was the break in the case. Dental records were the first test that the officer went to, but they learned that the Jane Doe's records had been lost in a fire many years ago.
However, when looking through the remains and evidence from the Jane Doe case, the officer has happened to find a tooth. When this was found, they contacted the woman who had filed the report, and asked her to bring in the closest relative to the missing woman. Miraculously, her sister was still alive and more than eager to submit blood DNA, to be tested against the tooth. When this tooth and blood DNA were tested simultaneously, they turned out to be an exact match.
Finally, after 17 years, Kathy's shackleford was given her name, given to her family, and laid to rest in peace. Vera, Kathy's older sister who gave the blood, was ecstatic at the news. She stated, quote, our search began that very year that the body was found, end quote. Kathy had been last seen around a month and a half before her body was found.
This was a confirmed sighting due to being from the University Hospital in the city, where she had been treated for some kind of ailment. At the time of her death, she was only a little over the age of 18. Her life was cut tragically short. Three years later, the killer of Kathy decided to strike again, April 19, 1979, a group of children from around the neighborhood were playing in a park due to being such a nice April day.
At some point, the group of children decided that basketball was the game they were going to play today and went to the courts. Midway through the game, one of the children paused to look at a dog who was just walking down the street. When the other children stopped to look, they all made a traumatic discovery. The dog seemed to be carrying a head in its mouth and it was indeed a human head.
Those among the group of children have this image etched into their minds to this day. Running as a group to the nearest house, they all had looks of pure terror. I can only imagine that is what made the adult believe them that they indeed had found a human head. The cops were called immediately and hopefully before the head was lost for good.
It seems that police did arrive in time as they were able to recover the head. They decided that they should do a search of the entire neighborhood, as it was most likely that is where the dog found the head in the first place. They turned out to be correct. Authorities were able to spread out over the entire neighborhood in the following two weeks and ended up finding many pieces of the deceased woman's body strewn about.
These pieces were covered however, unlike that of the first victim that was found. The killer recovered the pieces of this woman's body in a newspaper or like a brown paper bag type of material. By the end of the search, the police have recovered a hand at pelvis, multiple chunks of skin and multiple chunks of muscle and tendons. This victim's fingerprints were in the system and therefore they were able to find a match within a week.
Arlie Killian was a victim, a woman who had been shuffled into sex trafficking and prostitution throughout her life. Although that seemed as a bleak look back on her life, it still seemed she saw her family often. They reported that they had seen her only mere hours before the dog holding the head had been reported. This severely confused the police and the community.
How could something have gone so wrong so fast? It seemed that this killer was not scared of getting caught. He put pieces of a dead body out in broad daylight. After Arlie was found and identified, there were no similar attacks around the area.
There were no leads on who could have killed her and why they had been so brutal. At the time, it was unknown if Arlie's case was even being linked to Kathy's case, but the logical answer would be no. They happened three years apart and for a serial killer it seemed like a very unlikely long pause in their torment of the city. It wasn't until a case a little over seven years later that a serial killer would be considered.
On March 6th of 1986 would be the final date in which law enforcement thinks OKC Butcher was active. On the state, a torso and left leg were discovered in the backyard of a home not more than a mile away from where Arlie's body was found. A little over a week after this, another discovery linked to this body was found and it was the head. The tattoos on this woman's body were to think of a notch that police could connect her to a missing persons report.
That missing person was Tina Sanders, who was seen just the day before her body was found, alive and well. Sometime after Tina was found, the police in the area were able to link the three women's murders together. It did so by looking at a few key things that I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, such as the Maldean Native American, women, and possibly all sex workers and all being mutilated and hidden, but not really. But in addition to that, all three bodies were found within a mile of each other showing that the killer most likely lived somewhere in the area.
The killer was most likely hiding in planned sight and took pleasure in taunting the public, the gruesome finds, like many do. Besides the killer being unknown overall, the main question people have is why did these murders happen with so many years in between. Generally serial killers have the psychological need to kill, or at least they feel that they do. This often means that they're not long breaks in between killings because they would snap long before that.
One possible theory as to why they were such long breaks is that this killer was in jail for there's a few years in between. Often criminals have been criminals before, so it is safe to assume that the killer had other criminal records. Or maybe another reason he was gone from the area for so long, is that he was left from the area. Either way, that would mean he was unable to kill in that area during that time.
What that doesn't conclusively mean is that he didn't kill at all during that time though. Other cases from around the country could be the work of the O.K.C. butcher, and were just none the wiser. The second way to go also goes along with no gap in crimes, but instead of it being cases across the country, it could have been cases in Oklahoma City itself.
Many killers have one way of killing and disposing of the bodies, which we see in the three cases presented here, but it is not unheard of for killers to switch up their ways and try new things. Other unsolved cases in O.K.C. could be the work of this unidentified killer and just not have the telltale signs needed to connect them. If you have any information on this, please contact Crime Stoppers at 405-235-7300.
Well, that brings us to the end of the June Patreon case. I know it was a little late, but there's been a lot going on in classes started again, so I'm sorry about that. The July Patreon case will not be late, and I will tell you what that case is in a week or two here, but it will be up soon. So be sure to check out all our socials.
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