46:Teresa Osborne:Small Town

 

   On August 20th, 1973, 18 year old Teresa Osborne went to pick up pastries at the Cake Box Bakery at Third and Ewing Streets in Seymour around 5 p.m.  The pastries were to be delivered to her workplace at Rose Acre Farms where she worked as a secretary.  There was to be an evening management meeting and refreshments were a regular feature of these meetings. 

   Rose Acre Farms produces eggs commercially.  It’s a very big business for little Seymour, Indiana.  They started in the 1930’s with two hen houses and a thousand hens. That’s impressive for a business founded during the Great Depression.  They must have been flourishing in 1973 to have an office and at least one secretary. So, if you are thinking of a little farm with a few chickens; expand that quite a bit. A place like that would need dozens of workers tending chickens, cleaning up, gathering eggs, cleaning and grading eggs, packaging and in distribution. There would be deliveries coming of feed and other supplies. There would be truckloads of eggs leaving for supermarkets. It would be a busy place. 

   Teresa was working at Rose Acre Farms for the summer. She wasn’t content to remain a secretary. She was looking forward to starting classes at Ball State University in a few weeks. She would be moving away from little Seymour, Indiana. 

   Teresa was a valued employee.  According to her family, her boss, John Rust, offered her $200 a week to stay on as a secretary full time. Minimum wage in 1973 would have been around $64 dollars a week. $200 was a fortune for an 18 year old. She turned the offer down as she wanted to go away to college.  He offered to pay for her tuition as well if she remained employed and attended a local college part time.  She declined that offer as well. She really wanted to go away and have that traditional college experience. 

   Also, I don’t know if you have smelled a commercial egg farm but I cannot imagine any pretty 18 year olds who would give up college to dwell in that smell. 

   You may know Seymour as the small town home of John Mellancamp. This was 1973 and John had attended Vincennes University for a year. His music career wouldn’t get started for a few more years. 

   Teresa signed for the pastries but did not make it back to work to drop them off. The next morning, her mother found that Teresa had not come home the night before. Her employers called the bakery and were informed that she had been in. Teresa, like so many other victims we write about here, was responsible and dependable. She was reported missing by her employers and her family. They initially suspected that she might have had a car accident. But Teresa’s fate was something none of them could imagine. 

   Searches were launched. Rewards were offered. 

   Ten days later employees at Muscatatuck Wildlife Refuge would stumble upon a burned out car.  In the trunk they would find Teresa’s body. She was burned and unrecognizable.

   The FBI worked with local police on the case because the Wildlife Refuge is Federal Land. 

   Her murder was never solved. 

   Who knew where she was going?  Who knew her itinerary? Who had a motive? 

   Her employer, John Rust, certainly felt very strongly about keeping her around as a secretary.  The days were slipping away and soon she would leave for college. 

   Her boyfriend had an alibi.  

   It could have been a random person who saw her and followed her.  That’s not as likely.  Seymour is a small town and it was even smaller then.  Rose Acres Farms was busy but not terribly busy after 5 p.m. People were at home or definitely heading that way.  

   I wonder if any evidence was saved and preserved correctly.  Because the body was burned; its unlikely that the killer’s DNA would have been preserved under her fingernails.

   She was just 18.  When you search her name and the year of her death in newspaper archives; her senior awards day comes up.  She won a medal for Senior English. 

   If it was not someone she knew or was acquainted with; who was it? 

    Jeffrey Lynn Hand was in custody for murder and abduction at this time. So it can’t be Hand.

    It might be Steven Timothy Judy.  He was reported to have been in Louisiana in 1973 but that may or may not be accurate.  He would not be arrested for the murders of Terry Lee Chasteen and her three children until 1979. He was certainly brutal enough. But he didn’t burn any of his known victims.  He did not seem to think that he would be caught or care that he would be caught.    

   Burning the victim says you want to conceal this crime in a way.  You want any bruises, cuts, scrapes, saliva and semen to be burned away. You don’t want any fingerprints to be found on that car. You also are mad enough at this person to obliterate them.  You are mad enough to deny their parents an open casket funeral. So, I don’t think it was Judy.  He did not try to conceal his victims after his crimes. 

   Teresa’s murder involves overkill. That says that this crime was personal. 

   In the years following Teresa Osborne’s death; two other suspicious deaths would happen in Seymour.  One was labeled an accident with the victim burning to death in his car. The other was a murder of a secretary. Both victims worked at Rose Acre Farms. 

   None of these murders and have been solved. 

If you have a tip or information about the murder of Teresa Osborne, please call the Seymour Indiana Police at (812) 522-1234.