It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. You hear the brakes of a school bus squeak as it pulls up to your child’s bus stop. A moment later, it pulls away. Your kiddo should be appearing in the driveway any second…but minutes pass and there’s no sign of your child. The bus stop is only 100 yards away, after all.
There is no reason to panic, not just yet. She’s probably talking with her friends. So you put on your coat and shoes and walk to the bus stop, but no one is there — not your child, not anyone else’s, either.
…
Even if you don’t know the story behind the murder of 45-year-old Texas wife and mother Missy Bevers, you’ve probably seen the absolutely bone-chilling CCTV footage associated with it.
In the pre-dawn hours of April 18, 2016, surveillance video from inside the Creekside Church of Christ in Midlothian, Texas, caught the image of a person clad in police-type tactical clothing wandering around the building, looking inside rooms, carrying what appeared to be a hammer or similar type of weapon.
Last June, I told you all about an 18-year-old Amish girl who went missing in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The story was near and dear to my heart because I grew up there.
Shortly thereafter, a man named Justo Smoker was arrested for kidnapping her. She was presumed dead, but her family was left without answers as to where she was…until yesterday.
A body was found on April 21 near the area of Gap, 10 months to the day after Linda disappeared. This afternoon, District Attorney Heather Adams said the body was confirmed to be that of Linda Stoltzfoos. [4]
Here’s…
I haven’t been blogging much lately. There has been a lot going on in my life. My husband is battling cancer and it takes every ounce of energy I have to write. The motivation just isn’t there, but I’m trying.
I was recently involved in a true-crime story of my own, though. I’d been dying to share it with you, but I couldn’t at the time because it was sensitive information.
On February 1, we had a new neighbor move into the apartment beside us. He seemed like a nice enough guy. He kept to himself and was very soft-spoken…
Spring break is a time for teenagers to enjoy fun in the sun, and for many, it’s their first real taste of adulthood and freedom. But the innocence and inexperience of youth means that spring break is often wrought with peril.
In April 2009, Brittanee Drexel was a 17-year-old high school junior from Rochester, New York, who was excitedly preparing to embark on a spring break trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. [1] Her mother, Dawn Drexel, was dead-set against her going. She felt in her gut that something bad would happen.
When something dark and sinister occurs in a small town, the news media always says the same thing: “Things like this don’t happen here.” But isn’t a small town the perfect place for darkness to hide?
In the 1980s, the village of Ina, Ilinois, was a sleepy small town where the crime rate was increasing. Murders were not unheard of, but the massacre of an entire family was not something that people expected or feared.
That is why, for the last 33 years, residents of Ina have been haunted by the unsolved murders of three family members, including a toddler…
When Amy Joy Wroe Bechtel disappeared in July 1997, her life held much promise. [1] Newly married and in peak physical health, the 24-year-old was making memories with her husband and planning for the future.
But this up-and-coming young woman’s future was called into question when she failed to return to her Lander, Wyoming, home later that same night.
Where did Amy go, and who or what decided to rip her from the arms of her loved ones before her time?
Life Was Good
As I’ve said countless times on this blog, safety is an illusion.
Even those of us who get strong gut feelings about certain people and situations struggle to follow those feelings and make decisions based on them. Gut feelings are usually right, but we worry that in following them, we are being judgemental or plain old silly.
Even when we’re surrounded by red flags, we don’t always want to believe the worst.
On February 2, 2008, 24-year-old Lindsay Buziak, a ReMax Camosun Realtor from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, was murdered on the job. When she was asked to show the…
In 2017, the news in my part of Pennsylvania was buzzing with the disappearances of four young men from Bucks County. One by one, these young men — kids, really — vanished from the face of the earth, and their families and the police struggled to connect the disappearances.
It would eventually emerge that the men were connected by one person with a long history of mental illness, police run-ins, and unsettling behavior, who, over the course of about ten days, carried out a reign of terror that would haunt Bucks County forever.
The First Sign of Trouble
Bucks County is not a small area…
Viewers of KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, may or may not have noticed the absence of anchor Jodi Huisentruit on the morning of June 27, 1995, but her co-workers certainly did. [1]
Jodi wasn’t the type to just skip out on work. So when Jodi still wasn’t on set when the cameras started rolling on the 6 o’clock morning news broadcast, KIMT-TV employees knew something was very wrong.
But they didn’t expect to still be wondering where Jodi is more than 25 years later.
Something is Amiss
The True Crime Times
My name is Julie Fidler. I’m a writer, author, wife, and animal lover. I shed light on unsolved mysteries and shocking crimes.
