Victoria Lynn McDonough: 1974, South Bend

 

   Victoria Lynn McDonough was born March 31st, 1952 in Alabama. She grew up, however, in Big Rapids, Michigan where her father taught middle school Science.  Victoria graduated from high school in 1970.  She enrolled at Ferris State University in Big Rapids but later left college to explore other options. She moved to South Bend, Indiana to stretch her wings as a young adult. 

   Ferris State was founded in 1950 as part of a huge higher education push in the United States. WW2 changed a lot of things in the United States.  Seeing the advantages of the Autobahn; the U.S. began building better roads and an interstate system. They knew if they had to they would not be able to move troops quickly on U.S. roads. In the late 1930’s when Einstein and other scientists went to Roosevelt to talk about the fact that they suspected Germany could be building a nuclear bomb; Roosevelt realized only a handful of Americans had the education and background to understand this kind of physics. He quickly saw the need for more colleges and greater funding for education. After the war; many new colleges and junior colleges were funded all over the country. The baby boom also made the building of new schools for all ages an imperative.

   Vickie had moved to South Bend around 1973.  In November of 1974, Victoria “Vickie” Lynn McDonough went missing. Her parents had last spoken to her on the phone in late October. 

   On November 18th, two boys reported finding a body under a mattress. 

   It was not until November 27th, though, that the body was recovered by authorities. 

  The body of a young woman was covered with an old mattress in what was then a rural area. Not far south of Brick Road and Highway 31(Now called IN 933) near a railroad track; the body of a young woman was found badly decomposed.  She had been shot twice in the back of the neck. Her date of death was determined to be November 10th, 1974. 

   Today this area is not rural at all. Shopping centers and suburban sprawl and the railroad tracks have been paved to provide a walking and bike path. Behind the stores and gas stations it is wooded and overgrown. 

   Did the boys and their friends revisit the body at all from the 18th to the 27th? Did authorities not believe the boys? Who dropped the ball there? 

   This body was not immediately identified as Vickie.  In December some artist’s renderings of the unidentified woman and clothing appeared in the papers. A friend of Vickie’s called in a tip because she recognized the sandals that were displayed. Now, police suspected that this might indeed be Vickie Lynn McDonough. 

   

   Police, however, initially told her parents not to travel to South Bend to view the body as it was so badly decomposed. The mattress had held in the heat and gasses of the body and hastened decay even in the cold of late November in South Bend. Police wanted to positively ID her through dental records. They asked the McDonough family to forward Vickie’s dental X-rays. 

   Sadly, Vickie’s dentist had destroyed all his dental records when he moved to the Upper Peninsula upon retirement.  If ever there was a time NOT to destroy dental records it was the early 1970’s.  Readers of true crime know that what was coming in the 1970’s and 1980’s was not a crime wave but a violent crime tsunami. I don’t think it is hyperbole to say that the early 1970’s was probably the worst time in the history of dentistry for a dentist to destroy all their patient records. 

   Her body was sent to the Indiana State Crime Lab. Investigators there made the determination that this was indeed Victoria Lynn McDonough. 

   Her parents, however, refused to believe that the body found on November 27th in Clay Township, South Bend was indeed their missing daughter, Victoria. Grief is powerful. Hoping against all odds can be something to hold onto. 

   Victoria Lynn McDonough was first interred in the Pauper’s Cemetery of Saint Joseph County. Her parents wanted to hold onto the hope that this body was not her despite the Indiana State Police Crime Lab’s decision that it was. 

   Her parents were later convinced by Anthropologists at Indiana University who had assisted the I.S.P. in positively identifying her body.

   According to Find A Grave, Victoria is still at the County Home Cemetery of Saint Joseph County. According to a South Bend Tribune newspaper article from June 10th 1975, Victoria was disinterred and taken to Big Rapids, Michigan that summer.  It does not appear that this actually happened,however.  There is a marker for her there at the County Home Cemetery of Saint Joseph County. Perhaps her parents had a change of heart and did not take her home to Big Rapids?  Searching for her possible Michigan grave turns up no results.  I also searched for her Dad, Lloyd.  I thought I might find his grave and then find hers.  I had no luck there.  I haven't found her Mother’s name.  In all the newspaper articles she is just listed as “Mrs. McDonough”. The frustrating misogyny of the 1970’s that erased women and made them merely an appendage of the husband often makes research difficult.  

   Hopefully someone in her family will upload more photos and information to Ancestry at some point. 

   But who caused Vickie’s death? How did she end up “a short distance from Brick Rd. and IN 31”?  Who shot her twice in the back of the neck and why? Who covered her body with a mattress? 

   In the early stages of the investigation the parents accused police of botching the investigation. There were accusations that some City or County officials had been dating Vickie and that there was a cover up. 

   In June of 1975; investigators traveled to Monterey, California. William J. “Billy” Mack, 25, had been a resident of South Bend and had worked for the Youth Services Bureau and later for the Human Rights Commission from May 21st to October 1974 as a field representative.  By March of 1975 he was in Monterey, California facing a nine month sentence for auto theft. He had some arrests in Indiana for petty crime in his younger years. 

   It is suspicious that he moved all the way to Monterey, California sometime around the time of the murder. We know he was working in October in South Bend. We do not know when he left for California. 

   He had a criminal record and reoffended once he was in California. But auto theft is not murder.  Was Billy Mack responsible for the murder of Victoria McDonough?

   Without hard evidence tying him to the crime he was never charged. Neither was anyone else. Two suspects I thought of Earnest R. Tope and Richard A. Heckert of Decatur, Indiana were already in jail for the April 1974 murder of Cheryl Felger. 

   Victoria Lynn McDonough’s murder is still unsolved.