Chalkboard Thoughts

     Constance May Thomas was 19.  She had graduated from Decatur Central High School, just southwest of Indianapolis, and was attending Beauty School working toward a career. She was living in Indianapolis at the  Lucille Raines Residence, a home for young women who were single and working or attending school at 947 Pennsylvania street.     It should have been a happy time for her. She was young and had her whole life ahead of her.  But she was largely all alone in the world. Her father had died in October of the year before. Her mother had died when she was only 15. Her adolescence had been a tragic one. Her parents had also had very hard lives in their younger days.     Her father, Joel, was an older father.  He was born in 1897 and a search on Ancestry produced a WW1 draft card AND a WW2 draft card. In the 1900 census his father and mother were living at 1205 Sycamore Street in Cincinnati. His father, Joel ...

        18 year old Susan Haab was almost home.  She had worked that day as an office assistant placed by a temp agency. She was back in Indianapolis on Thanksgiving and Term Break from Ball State University and was trying to earn a little extra money. It was Tuesday December 3rd 1968 and she was scheduled to work again the next day as well. She had gone out that evening with a friend and was returning home just after midnight.     She was driving southbound at 12:20 a.m on Kessler Boulevard North Drive and was only a quarter of a mile from her parent’s home.     She had dressed very smartly and casually in preppy brown Bermuda Shorts, long white socks, a white blouse and brown shoes.     It was a normal drive home until something unexpected happened on her street.  No one saw how the incident began but several neighbors saw the aftermath. Susan’s car was parked with the lights on and the d...

        When I first read about this next case; I immediately thought of Jeffrey Hand and the Pamela Milam case because the victim was left in her car trunk.  Then I remembered that Hand was in state hospital custody from mid year 1973 to mid October of 1976. So this one couldn’t have been committed by him.     Sometimes I think I should rename this blog “Trigger Warning”.  All these cases are terrible.  This one is no different and it may even be worse as it involves the murder of an infant.     On the morning of November 14, 1974, Mrs. Paula Utterback,19, had finished work and had picked up her five month old son, Jason, from the babysitter.     I remember when my babies were five months old.  At that age babies are finally sleeping a bit more through the night. They are smiling and playing with toys.  They are crawling and getting into all sorts of things. Mine were a trem...

        Monika Maria Mason was originally from Brilon, West Germany. She was born in 1945 to Maria Deppe and Klaus Schon. Her life began in the tumult and terror of World War Two and ended in the unprecedented violent crime tsunami of the late 1970’s.     We know she had been married to William Mason but was now divorced. Monika was the manager of a restaurant in Hammond, Indiana.     Because she had no family here in the U.S.; it’s difficult to know much of her story. Most of what we know comes from her death certificate and from newspaper articles surrounding her death. Unlike Ann Harmeier, who would be abducted later that year; Monika did not have the benefit of growing up in a small town in Indiana that mobilized with billboards and bumper stickers and numerous interviews and articles.   We don’t know Monika’s favorite song.  We don’t know her favorite food.  We will never know what made her lau...

         Vickie Lynn Harrell was 25 years old in August 1972. She worked in Bloomington, Indiana.  Bloomington was and still is a fun college town.  It’s the home of Indiana University. Whenever I manage to get there I like to enjoy lunch at the Trojan Horse and order the flaming cheese. Mama Bear’s pizza is also a delicious place to have lunch. It’s a town of bookstores, restaurants and so many cultural offerings. I’m sure Vickie Lynn enjoyed living there in 1972.     (The movie, “Breaking Away” is set in Bloomington in the mid to late 1970’s and shows many views of this college town and the campus of Indiana University. You also get to see the rural settings outside town. It’s a really good movie in my opinion.)    Vickie worked as a clerk in a department store. She shared an apartment with a roommate.  She was 25 and enjoying life in a vibrant college town.    She was last seen alive getting ...