Captive Market (short story)

Transcription

From eerie hitchhiking spirits to opportunistic mass-murderers, we count ten terrifying tales that will remind you why thumbing a ride home with strangers is a terrible idea. 10 – The Orange Sock Murders, • One sinister night in 1982, a brazen killer abducted and murdered two women in two separate incidents. The murder–abductions occurred in a safe Colorado community called Breckenridge, where hitchhiking occurred daily. • On a January evening, twenty-nine-year-old Bobbie Oberholtzer told her husband she was out with friends at a local bar and would catch a ride home. Her body was later found, dumped and shot to death, in a remote field. Curiously, an orange sock that did not belong to her was found nearby. • Six months on, the body of twenty-one-year-old Annette Schnee was found in woodlands not far from where Bobbie was discovered. Annette had been sexually assaulted and shot to death. She was also wearing the matching orange sock from Bobbie’s murder scene. • It’s believed the same person picked up and murdered Bobbie and Annette at different points during the same night. Bobbie and Annette were believed to have been hitchhiking. Annette’s orange sock likely remained in the killer’s vehicle and somehow fell out at the spot Bobbie was murdered. • Bobbie’s husband, Jeff, was an initial suspect. Miraculously, because hitchhiking was such a common and accepted form of travel, Jeff had actually picked up Annette on a previous occasion and given her his business card. The card was found on Annette’s deceased body. Jeff was eventually cleared as a suspect and the ‘Orange Sock Murders’ remain unsolved. 9 – Lydia, The Vanishing Lady, • ‘Lydia, the Vanishing Lady’ is an urban legend about a phantom hitchhiker in North Carolina who mysteriously vanishes. • The story goes that on a rainy night in 1923, a young woman named Lydia was returning from a dance with her boyfriend. The couple was driving on Highway 70 when they collided with another car at a narrow underpass. Lydia, who happened to be wearing a white gown that night, died instantly, and numerous sightings of a female hitchhiker matching this description have occurred at this location ever since. • One notable sighting involved a motorist named Burke Hardison. While driving near the underpass one night, he saw a woman in a white gown signalling for help. Hardison picked her up and agreed to take her to her High Point home, since her mother would be worried. She provided an address, but when Hardison arrived the girl had vanished. • After knocking on the door, Hardison learnt he was not the first person to show up at the house describing this experience. • Researchers have uncovered a death certificate of a nineteen-year-old High Point girl named Lydia, who died in a car accident that year. Today, the legend of this mysterious vanishing girl lives on. 8 – The Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders, • The Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders were a series of seven unsolved homicides involving female hitchhikers that took place in the North Bay area of California in 1972 and 1973. An eighth probable victim disappeared and her body was never located. The bodies of the seven victims were found naked in rural areas near steep embankments or in creek beds near roads. The victims, who were all known hitchhikers, were: • Twelve-year-olds Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber, who vanished on their way home from an Ice Skating Rink and had their clothes and a single gold earring each stolen by the killer; Kim Allen, a nineteen-year-old college junior, who was found strangled with clothesline and bound at her wrists and ankles; Lori Kursa, who was found with a broken neck; Carolyn Davis, a runaway who’d been poisoned and was found in the exact same spot as Sterling and Weber; Therese Walsh, the oldest known victim, who’d been hog-tied with nylon and sexually assaulted; and Jeannette Kamahele, another college junior. • The identity of the killer – or killers – remains unknown. Some believe the murders were committed by the infamous Zodiac Killer, while others believe Ted Bundy was responsible. The case of The Santa Rosa murders remains open. 7 – The Disappearance of Connie Smith, • Ten-year-old Connie Smith was attending Camp Sloane in Salisbury, Connecticut in the summer of 1952. On a July morning, she had a violent altercation with some other campers and left with a bloody nose. Connie said she was returning an ice pack, but instead left the camp entirely. Several witnesses reported Connie asking for directions to the nearby town of Lakeville. She was last seen thumbing a ride up US Route 44. The super attentive camp counsellors didn’t notice Connie was missing until they found her melted ice pack in her tent that afternoon. • Connie’s grandfather organised an extensive search campaign, but no trace of her was found. In 1958, hunters in Arizona found the bones of an unidentified young girl who became known as ‘Little Miss X’. • Four years later, an anonymous letter received by the Connecticut State Police claimed that Little Miss X was Connie Smith. Little Miss X’s teeth were compared with Connie’s dental records, but the results were inconclusive. Connie’s surviving relatives have submitted their DNA for a comparison, but – whether by conspiracy or negligence – Little Miss X’s remains can no longer be found. • After more than six decades, Connie Smith’s true fate remains shrouded in mystery. 6 – The Disappearance of Amy Billig, • Seventeen-year-old Amy Billig spent a lot of her teen years hitchhiking through the Miami area. On a March afternoon in 1974, Amy left her Coconut Grove home to hitchhike to her father’s office. She never reached her destination. • Amy’s mother, Susan Billig, spent many years embroiled in a desperate mission to find her daughter. A biker named Paul Branch approached Susan and told her Amy had been abducted by a biker gang called The Pagans. • Susan searched all across the country for Amy, but was often led on wild goose chases by the people she encountered. Branch died in ’97, after giving a startling deathbed confession. He claimed Amy actually overdosed the day she disappeared while attending a party held by The Pagans. The bikers did the only respectful thing they could think: they fed Amy’s body to some Florida Everglades alligators. • Susan also received harassing phone calls for over two decades. The caller was a man named Henry Blair, who claimed Amy was being held captive by a sex slavery ring. After his arrest in 1995, Blair claimed to know nothing about Amy’s disappearance. However, Amy’s diary did contain an entry about her wanting to run away with ‘Hank’, which was Blair’s nickname. • Unfortunately, Susan Billig passed away in 2005 and never learnt the truth about what happened to her daughter. 5 – The Albert Brust Abductions, • In 1973, a fifteen-year-old runaway named Mary Jones visited police with a very disturbing story. She’d been hitchhiking with her 16-year-old boyfriend, Mark Matson, when they were picked up by a middle-aged man calling himself ‘Eric’. Eric took the young couple to his home and forced them to perform sex acts at gunpoint while he took photos. • Mark was shot and killed during the night, and Mary was bound in chains and raped inside a makeshift soundproof torture chamber. Amazingly, Eric released her after twenty-four hours. Mary ran straight to the cops, but they didn’t believe her after a call home revealed Mary was a known pathological liar. • Days later, a concerned suburban community realised their forty-four-year-old neighbour Albert Brust had sat outside in his lawn chair for two entire days – even through a thunderstorm. They soon discovered he had taken his own life by drinking chocolate milk laced with cyanide. • A search of Brust’s house revealed he was the ‘Eric’ from Mary’s story. Mark Matson’s dismembered remains were found encased behind a slab of concrete, and a further search uncovered Brust’s hidden torture chamber, proving Mary’s story. Brust’s journal revealed his sick fantasies about holding a girl captive as his sex slave. In his last entry, Brust expressed immense disappointment with the actual experience, motivating his decision to commit suicide. 4 – Murder on the Victorian Border, • In 1990, the bodies of two teenage outcasts were found viciously stabbed in some grasslands on the Victorian side of the Victoria–South Australia border. Teenagers Fiona Burns and John Lee were last seen hitchhiking along the Western Highway, not far from the South Australian highway. • The pair were habitual runaways who frequented rough hangout spots like youth hostels and pinball parlours, where drugs and trouble are found. There are fears the pair may have been picked up by an opportunitstic truck driver. Fiona’s mother, however, believes their deaths could be linked to the pair’s association with an occult group. • Police even explored the possibility that this mysterious case was linked to famed Australian backpacker murderer, Ivan Milat, but with not substantial leads the case has gone nowhere. To this day, Victoria Police have not charged anybody with the murders. 3 – Stephen King Rides the Bullet, • Riding the Bullet is a Stephen King novella about hitchhiking. It was first published in 2000, and considered the world’s first mass-market electronic book. (Behold: the future!) It was later included in King’s short story collection Everything’s Eventual. • The story’s about university student Alan Parker, who learns that his mother has suffered a stroke back in his hometown. Alan doesn’t have a working car, so hitchhikes 120 miles to visit her. • Alan first catches a ride with a creepy old man, but the car stinks of urine and the old man’s crotch-tugging freaks him out, so he bails at the first opportunity. He ends up at a graveyard, where he finds the headstone of George Staub, a young man who died on a faulty amusement park ride. • Sure enough, the next driver to pick him up is George Staub, complete with stitches around his neck where his head had been reattached, and wearing a button that says: I rode The Bullet at Thrill Village, Laconia. • George tells Alan that he must choose who goes on the death ride with George: Alan or his mother. In a moment of fright, Alan saves himself and tells him to ‘Take her. Take my Mother’. George shoves Alan out of the car and Alan is left, feeling guilty and alone, at the graveyard, wearing the I Rode the Bullet badge. 2 – The Seven-Year Abduction of Colleen Stan, • In 1977, Cameron Hooker met experienced twenty-year-old hitchhiker, Colleen Stan, who felt safe climbing into Hooker’s blue van because Hooker’s wife, Janice, and their baby were also inside. Once they were in an isolated area, Hooker pulled off the highway and put a knife to Colleen’s throat. Janice relented to Cameron capturing a slave so she’d be spared from his violent bondage fantasies. • While captured, Colleen was forced to endure horrendous conditions. She was fed cold scraps, beaten, tortured and sexually abused. For years, she was locked in a tiny box beneath the marital bed for 23 hours a day, and given a small bedpan for bodily functions. During summer, the box reached temperatures over 100 degrees. • Hooker exerted control by psychologically breaking his victim. He led her to believe she was being watched by a powerful organisation called ‘The Company’, which would torture her and her family if she attempted escape. She was assigned a slave name and banned from speaking without permission, and was also forced to sign herself into slavery for life. • Even with an open door, Colleen made no attempt to escape. She had developed Stockholm Syndrome and her fear of ‘The Company’ kept her from seeking help. • After seven years in captivity, Colleen was secretly freed in 1984 by Hooker’s wife, Janice. Believing she could rehabilitate her husband through church, Janice begged Colleen not to say anything about her years of torment. Incredibly, Colleen agreed, telling no one. • Eventually, Janice realised neither prayer nor counselling could help her husband. She told her pastor and then police about the abduction. She also claimed her husband had murdered earlier slaves, though these could never be substantiated. • Colleen Stan wrote a book in 2009, which describes her ordeal and the hard lessons she learned. Her number one commandment was: Don’t hitchhike. 1 – The Castration Murders, • In 1982, twenty-two-year-old Marty Shook left his Nevada home to hitchhike to Colorado. Two days later, his naked corpse was discovered by a fisherman in Utah. He’d been callously shot in the back of the head with a .38-calibre pistol, and his genitals had been removed and were nowhere to be seen. • The case was cold until 1989, when authorities connected it to the murder of Wayne Rifendifer, another hitchhiker. Wayne’s body was found in some woodlands near Williamsburg, Pennsylvania. Like Marty, he’d been shot in the back of the head and castrated. The two victims physically resembled each other, and ballistics tests determined they’d been shot with the same weapon. • In 1986, the naked body of twenty-six-year-old hitchhiker Jack Andrews was found at a rest stop in Litchfield, Connecticut. The cause of his death was never determined, but he had suffered significant mutilation. His nipples and genitals had been removed, and both legs had been severed mid-thigh. • It’s possible the same person was responsible for all three murders, but so far the cases remain unsolved