Ch.36:Linda Unverzagt:Taken from the Disco

 

   28 year old Linda Unverzagt was living the late 70’s dream as a part time disco dancing instructor.  She led classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays she was a student and took a belly dancing class at the same location. Disco was all the rage in 1978. That week Alicia Bridges iconic disco hit “I Love the Nightlife”was at number 13 on the Billboard charts and climbing. I always think of Linda now when I hear disco songs. 

   But dance was only a hobby for Linda. She held down a full time job as a utility clerk at Indiana Bell. It was a good Union job and Linda was a member of the Communication Workers of America, local 5714. She had worked there for ten years. (Her Union would go on to raise a large reward fund to try to find her killer.)

   Linda was also a mother to a 3 year old little girl, Amanda. Linda and her husband had married and divorced twice but remained friends. Linda and her daughter attended church and Linda’s friends and family described her as having a very strong faith.

   It was November 4th 1978 and Linda taught her usual Friday evening class. But she didn’t make it home that night.  Her housemates, a married couple, were immediately concerned and went looking for her on Saturday.  They found her car in the parking lot of the disco where she taught.  Her purse was inside.  Fearing that someone might steal her purse if they left it there; they took it home and called the police. 

   Linda was not missing for long.  Someone found her body in the basement of an abandoned house on the 2800 block of Cold Spring Road on that same Saturday November 5th. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of her body were not reported in the papers. Police said that the killer would have had to have been familiar with the area as the house wasn’t visible from the street.  The area is just south of Marian University and today that area has a neighborhood on one side of the street and a golf course on the other.  I used to drive that route on my way to tend bar at the racetrack for the Indy 500 and other events in May.  

   Linda had been beaten, raped and strangled. Strips torn from a man’s shirt and a piece of wood, a lath from the lath and plaster basement wall, were used to garrote her. Her body was posed in a fetishized way.  Police determined that after the killer had raped her. He forced her to put on her underwear and a faux leather coat and then strangled her while she was seated in a chair. 

   The killer had to have been familiar with that house.  He would have had to know that the basement windows would let in enough light to see what he was doing or he might have arranged for a light source to be there in advance. He did not just happen upon a victim and then happen upon this abandoned house. Had he used this house before?  

   Initially police suspected a local body builder and former professional wrestler. Richard Lee Thomas was a 33 year old Indianapolis man. He had been admitted to Central State Hospital on November 13th 1978 on a disorderly conduct charge involving a shooting incident. He was arrested in mid December at the hospital ahead of a planned holiday furlough.  Police suspected him after a tip came in that he claimed to have known Linda and he was a bodybuilder and a very strong man. After a grand jury found no evidence tying him to the crime; he was released on March 9th, 1979. 

   The case went nowhere until late April of 1979 and the tragedy of what happened to Terry Lee Chasteen and her three young children brought the Linda Unverzagt case to the forefront again. When Steven Judy was arrested; investigators immediately looked at him for the murder of Linda Unverzagt as well. But as we discussed in the last chapter; he wanted a quick trial for the Chasteen murders and even pushed to be given the death penalty. He confessed to killing Linda Unverzagt, and numerous other women, to his foster mother in the days before his execution in the electric chair in 1981.

   Linda’s daughter, Amanda, is still seeking answers about her mother’s murder.  She and the family of Ann Harmeier have asked for police records concerning the investigations of these two murders. Indiana State Police have so far denied them access to the records which probably means that police are working on positively identifying their killer or killers through DNA. 

    It is easy to look at all these cases in the 1970’s and 1980’s and get very frustrated with the investigations.  But it is important to remember that police departments were being inundated with a rise in violent crime in those decades.  The serial killers that we all know about now were not the only people committing crimes.  And these big headline grabbing murders were happening at a much higher rate than ever before.  Police were also operating without the benefit of all that we know now about these types of crimes. When someone went missing then; they would often look into the family finances in case a ransom was demanded.  It did not immediately occur to some investigators that money was not the motive in these cases. The motive was so much more diabolical and sadistic. The average person in those days could not conceive of such a thing. 

   I think Steven Timothy Judy could have had access to that house because he worked construction jobs occasionally. He might have been to that site at some point for that reason. 

   And what of the other victims of Steven Judy? Hopefully the Louisiana murders are being investigated as well as the other Indiana cases that he confessed to. Each of these victims and their families deserves a thorough investigation. 

   

    Everyone deserves answers.  Every victim deserves Justice. 

 Rest in peace Linda.