People That Helped Solve Their Own Murders: #1 Sgt. Floyd Moore Jr.

He was well liked in his department and a family man.

On January 28th, 1986, Sgt. Floyd Moore Jr. was the second in command of the Bay County Florida Sheriff Office Special Investigation Unit. Still dressed in his police uniform, he was at his second job providing security at an apartment complex in Panama city when he radioed for a marked car to come to the building. When a unit arrived they found Floyd lying dead in the parking lot. It turned out that he had been shot in the head with his own gun. Investigators interviewed the resident's of the apartment building, but no one reported seeing anything suspicious.  The investigation of the crime scene didn't turn up anything either. It wasn't until the medical examiner took a look in Floyd's breast pocket that a significant clue was found. The driver's license belonging to 37 year old Walter Grant Kyser was inside. Investigators surmised that Floyd approached Walter in the parking lot after he had caught him stealing and questioned him. When Floyd turned away to check the suspect's identification information, the suspect shot Sergeant Moore. Floyd was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Murders Caused By Television Shows: # 3 Scott Amedure And The Jenny Jones Show.

Scott Bernard Amedure

He was generous to a fault, he took in several homosexual friends with AIDS, caring for them when others had shunned them.

Scott was born on January 26th, 1963 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to a local tractor-trailer driver named Frank and a housewife named Patricia Graves Amedure. In 1970, his parents divorced and Scott lived principally with his father, as did his three brothers and one sister. When he was 17, he quit high school to join the Army, where he finished his GED and was trained in satellite communications. While assigned to Germany, he learned to ski, and broke his leg while skiing in Switzerland. After three years, he received an Honorable Discharge, with the rank of Specialist. After working several years in technical communications and telephone type jobs, he became a bartender, because he enjoyed working at night. 

On March 6, 1995 and Scott came in to tape an episode of the Jenny Jones Show entitled "Same Sex Secret Crushes." None of the guests were told the title of the show or what it was about until they were on stage. Scott was encouraged to share his sexual fantasies to the host and audience about his crush named Johnathan Schmitz. Scott left the stage, so they could surprise Johnathan. Only knowing that someone had a secret crush on him and with the producer of the show hinting around it was a woman, Johnathan walked onto the stage. When Scott came out, the two friends shared a quick hug, before the host, Jenny Jones, shared the fact that Scott was Johnathan's admirer. Scott then laughed nervously as said that he was completely heterosexual. 

After the taping the two went out drinking together and an alleged sexual encounter occurred.

Three days after the taping of the show, Johnathan found a sexually suggestive note from Scott at his house. After finding the note, he withdrew money from the bank, purchased a shotgun, and then went to Scott's mobile home. He had a conversation with Scott about the note which lead to an argument. Johnathan then returned to his car, took his gun, and returned to Scott's trailer. He then shot Scott twice in the chest, killing him. Johnathan left, called 9-1-1 and confessed to killing Scott.

Johnathan was arrested and found guilty of second degree murder. He was sentenced to 20-25 years in prison. He appealed and his sentenced was overturned. He then had a retrial and was found guilty a second time. Johnathan was released from prison on August 22, 2017.

Murders Caused By Television Shows:#2 Rebecca Schaeffer And My Sister Sam

Rebecca Lucile Schaeffer

She was born on November 6, 1967 in Oregon, and was the only child of  child psychologist Benson and writer and instructor Danna Schaeffer. 

She developed a passion for drama at an early age, but initially wanted to be a rabbi. Later, Rebecca was approached to try modeling. Just a couple of years after starting as a teen model, she moved to New York City to pursue a full-fledged career in entertainment.

Rebecca initially scored a role on the soap opera One Life to Live, among other opportunities, but her big break came when she landed the role of Patti on the sitcom My Sister Sam. 

The TV show brought her back to her home coast, and she moved to California in 1986.

She was the covergirl for Seventeen’s March 1987 issue, and she went on to star in several movies.

In 1989 she also became a spokesperson for Thursday's Child, a charity for at-risk teens.

On July 18th, 1989, Rebecca was waiting excitedly at her west Hollywood home for The Godfather Part III script to be delivered. She had an opportunity to audition for the role Mary Corleone. When the doorbell rang she rushed to the door, but to her surprise it wasn't the mail courier. Instead, it was a man with an autographed picture of her. After a brief conversation, she asked him not to come back. He did in fact leave, but then returned an hour later dressed as a flower delivery man. He rang her doorbell once more. Rebecca again answered the door and told him that he was wasting her time. All the of sudden, the man then pulled out a gun out of a brown paper bag and fired twice in the chest at point-blank range in the doorway of her apartment building. Rebecca screamed "Why? Why?" and collapsed in her doorway as the man fled. Hearing her frantic screams, her neighbor, actress Lynne Marta, phoned paramedics.The man ran along the Hollywood block before ditching down an alley. When the paramedics arrived they transported Rebecca to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Sadly, she was pronounced dead 30 minutes after her arrival.

The next day, people driving down interstate 10, called police to report a man running down the road. He was arrested and confessed to killing Rebecca. His name was Robert Bardo and he was a fan who had been stalking her for three years. 

Robert Bardo had been abused as a child and his teachers described him as a time bomb on the verge of exploding. He became obsessed with My Sister Sam and built a shrine to Rebecca in his bedroom. He then wrote numerous letters to Rebecca, one of which she answered. Robert even traveled to Los Angeles hopes of meeting Rebecca on the set of the show, but security turned him away. He returned a month later armed with a knife, but security guards again prevented him from gaining access. 

Robert then saw the movie that starred Rebecca that was called The Class Struggle. The movie contained a sex scene between Rebecca and a male actor, which enraged Robert and he decided that he needed to punish her. Robert paid a detective agency $250 to find Rebecca's home address in California DMV records. His brother helped him get a Ruger GP100 .357 handgun because he disclosed that he had prior mental health issues. Robert traveled to Los Angeles a third time and roamed the neighborhood where Rebecca lived, asking people if she actually lived there. Once he was certain that the address was correct, he carried out his plan.

Marcia Clark prosecuted the case and Robert was found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

As a result of this case, The Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which prevents the DMV from releasing private addresses, was enacted in 1994. Heather's death also helped prompt the 1990 passage of America's first anti-stalking laws.

Murders Caused by Television Shows:#1 Nancy Campbell-Panitz And The Jerry Springer Show

Ralf Panitz, who is German, apparently met Nancy Campbell-Panitz through the Internet and later moved to the US and the two got married. The two had a troubled and volatile relationship.

On July 24th, 2000, The Jerry Springer Show aired an episode that was recorded three months before called "Secret Mistresses Confronted". During the episode Nancy, who was married to Ralf  for 15 months until February 1999, learned for the first time that Ralf and his mistress Eleanor were married. Until recently, she had shared a home with the couple even after divorcing Ralf. Ralf and Eleanor accused Nancy of stalking them and making their lives miserable. On the show, she revealed that she thought she had been asked to appear so that she and Ralf could reconcile.

Just hours after the taping, a judge issued a restraining order against Ralf. She told a judge how he had allegedly chased her with a knife and threatened to kill her and her family. Ralf wasn't allowed near Nancy or her home. 

Eleanor, Ralf and Ralf's nephew Marcus, were drinking at a bar while watching the episode as it aired. They decided to go pay Nancy a visit despite the restraining order. The police were summoned to the house after a neighbor said she could hear loud arguments and found Nancy's body, strangled and with her head beaten in. Eleanor and Ralf fled the state, but were later arrested. Ralf said that on the day Nancy was killed, he was so drunk he couldn't remember anything that happened. Ralf is now serving life in prison for Nancy's murder.

Chandra's Suicide Was Finally Ruled A Homicide. Her Family Has Waited 19 Years For Justice. Can You Help?

Chanda Diona Turner

“God says justice will be mine, well that's up there. I want justice on Earth.” 

Joe Turner

She had a kind heart and was humorous. She was always joking around. Chandra was born May 4, 1977, in Pauls Valley to Joe Dale and Donna Jean (Shelton) Turner. She graduated school from Elmore City and was working for Sprowls and Readnour Attorneys at Law. Chandra was about to start paralegal school and also she attended the Beaty Baptist Church. 

Chandra lived with her boyfriend, Robbie Tucker. They had a very turbulent relationship that became for volatile as it progressed. Her family began to notice and didn't like the way Robbie treated Chandra. He was very manipulative and needed to be in control. He would even take her to work and sit there in the truck wait for her to get done. Chandra would speak to her family often about wanting to leave Robbie.

Early in the morning in July 2000, police responded to 23-year-old Chandra's home. She allegedly was found by Robbie, who had been napping, after he walked outside their house and found her dead on the back porch, with a gunshot wound to the chest. He claimed that he then moved Chandra off the steps and laid her on the ground. Then, instead of screaming for help or calling the police, Robbie left and drove a half mile down the road to his father's house to use the phone. He then drove back to the house with his father, who was a criminal defense attorney, in tow. An hour after Robbie claimed it found Chandra's body, 9-1-1 is called by his stepmother.

When police first arrived, they first treated it as a homicide. Three hours later, the medical examiner ruled her death was ruled as a suicide. Her parents didn't believe for one second that Chandra's death was a suicide. Her parents were flabbergasted when they found out that Chandra wasn't taken to the morgue to have an autopsy, but taken to a funeral home instead.When Chandra's parents went to the funeral home to view her body, they were shocked yet again to see bruises and cuts all over their daughter's body. Donna noticed another suspicious detail when she went to Chandra's house to get her favorite dress to be buried in. Once inside the house, she had to step over a pool of blood. 

Her parents begged and pleaded, but the sheriff's department never preformed an autopsy on Chandra. Since there was not going to be an autopsy, Donna and Joe wanted to preserve evidence encase they had an opportunity to use it in the future in their quest for justice for their beloved daughter. 

They had Chandra sealed an an enclose crypt on the highest piece of land they could.

Months after Chandra's death, Donna and Joe received a package from an anonymous stranger. In the package there was all the police reports, witness statements and crime scene photos that the sheriff's department had. In light of the new evidence, Donna and Joe hired defense attorney Jaye Mendros to look at their daughter's case. After Jaye poured over all the evidence and facts pertaining to Chandra's demise, Jaye came to the conclusion that Chandra's death was a badly staged suicide. Jaye said that there was apparent crime scene tampering and that the scene didn't match Robbie's story of what happened. There was photos showing blood everywhere all over inside Chandra's house. There was blood on the curtains, walls, the floor and even blood on the mattress of her bed that had been stripped down. There was a bottle of cleaner by the bed. Jaye also stated that along with the injuries on Chandra, Robbie had some fresh ones as well.

The were other problems with the case. Besides all the traffic from a ridiculous amount of people helping work on the crime scene, there were numerous relatives tromping all over the place.

Nothing much happened with the case until 2009, when ordered Chandra's body be exhumed and autopsied and was examined by two different doctors. One of the doctors worked for the Oklahoma medical examiner's office and the other one was hired by Chandra's family. The path of the gun shot wound was from front to back a little downward and a little from the left of the right. There was a defect in the door, but the angle didn't match the path of the bullet wound. The examiners theorized that Chandra was shot in her bedroom, not on the porch. The gun shot residue on her hands didn't necessarily mean that she had shot herself either. The examiners thought that she might have tried to either pull the gun away from the shooter or she could have tried to push it away from pointing at her face. Something else was discovered in the autopsy. Chandra apparently bled out for quite sometime and if 9-1-1 had of been promptly called, she could have survived. Examiners stated that Chandra probably would have been crying for help up until the end, lying there in agony. Both examiners came to the conclusion that Chandra's death was a homicide, but before her death was changed to a homicide, the doctor from the medical examiner's office was fired.

Eventually Chandra's cause of death was changed to undetermined. And later the investigation into her death was reopened once again by the new sheriff.

Robbie is currently in jail after being charged with shooting with the intent to kill as well as aggravated assault and battery against his girlfriend that he was with after Chandra's death.


Chanda's family won't give up, they won't go away. They are offering a $100,000 reward for information about her death.

Solved Halloween Murders:#3 Maria Ciallella And The Thrill Killer.

Maria Theresa Ciallella was bright, athletic and quiet until she got to know someone. She loved going to concerts with her friend Lilly Murray. 

Maria's favorite bands to listen to were The Grateful Dead and Dan Fogelberg.

She was born on September 27th,1964 to Armando Ciallella and Mary Nosti. They were a close-knit family and religious.

They were members of the Saint Dominic's Roman Catholic Church. 

In 1981 Maria was a senior at Brick Memorial High School. Her favorite subjects in school were art and English. 

Maria wanted to attend South Carolina College to study music after she graduated high school. During the previous summer break Maria had worked at a local motel on the beach, she loved the beach.

When Halloween night rolled around Maria asked her mother for a dollar before she left her home in Brick Township, New Jersey. Maria's mother only had a 10 dollar bill and told her to ask her father. As Maria went out the door, her father told her to be back early. Little did he know, that was the last time he'd ever see his daughter alive.

It was 6:30 p.m. and a little chilly when 17-year-old Maria left her house to look for a Halloween party by the beach. She was wearing a white fur jacket, beige slacks, denim vest, tinted eyeglasses and moccasins.

Well, Maria didn't come home early that night and before they went to bed her parents left the window open so she could hop through it when she got home. But Maria never came back that night and when her parents got up and realized she hadn't made it back they called the police. 

The police informed Maria's parents that policeman on patrol, Michael Whittles, had seen her just after midnight, walking towards her home, just two miles away on Route 88. The officer returned shortly to offer her a ride, but she was nowhere to be seen. 

Maria's parents knew she hadn't run away. She had left her jewelry and clothes behind. She had also left her contacts sitting on her dresser.

For two years Maria's family searched for her to no avail. They hired a private investigator and even talked with psychics. One of the psychics said that Maria was alive and well. The other one claimed that she was buried in a wooded area in Ocean County. 

The detectives searched the local wooded areas as well as behind houses along the Point Pleasant Manasquan Canal. The private investigator rented a helicopter and surveilled all the wooded areas in the county. Despite all the searches turning up fruitless, Maria's mother never stopped hoping that she was alive.

Then on January 14th, 1983, two boys spotted a body in the underbrush behind a Burger King on Route 35 and Sunset Avenue, fully clothed with no signs of sexual assault and with four bullets in her head. 

It wasn't Maria, but Anna Marie Olesiewicz. 

Anna had beautiful auburn hair and blue eyes. She was the youngest of five children born to Camden firefighter captain Robert Paul Olesiewicz and his wife Anna Marie Whittaker. 

They lived on 1194 Morton Street in Camden, New Jersey. 

Anna was just 10 years old when her mother died on June 5th, 1973. On the seventh anniversary of her mother's death, Anna's boyfriend Michael Knoblauch gave her a ring with a gold band and a dark sapphire. 

In 1982 Anna had graduated from Paul VI High School in Haddon Township. By June she had broken up with Michael, but she still wore his ring. Michael had hopes that that meant that one day they'd get back together. 

On August 28th, 18-year-old Anna was wearing faded blue jeans and a black shirt that tied jut about the elbows. 

She went with her, friend Denise Hunter, to Jersey Shore in Asbury Park. Anna wanted to get away for the weekend before she started classes at Camden County Community College. She was due back home on Sunday, but never returned. Denise went the the bathroom Anna was gone. 

"I knew something was wrong, because she wasn't the type of person to go off without letting anyone know," said Anna's brother Robert.

Every weekend after that, Robert went to Asbury Park with a picture of Anna. He walked along the boardwalk, showing strangers the picture and asking if they had seen her. It was if she had vanished.

Theresa Smith went to police and told them that ex, Richard Fan Biegenwald, told her that he was the one who killed Anna. She also said that he would take people at random and kill them just for the thrill of it.

Police looked into Richard's past and found out that his father was an alcoholic and he was beaten as a child. At the young age of 5, Richard set his house on fire and was then sent to a psychiatric  hospital. At 9 years old, he was given electroshock therapy and then sent to a state school. Richard didn't finish 8th grade until he was 16 years old. After that, he went to high school for 3 weeks before dropping out. 

When Richard was 18 years old, he lived with his mother on Staten Island and stole a car with a friend. 

They drove to New Jersey where they stopped at a small grocery store and with a sawed off shotgun, Richard went inside and shot the clerk, 47-year-old Stephen Sladowski, grabbed $100 and left. 

Stephen Sladowski was not only a grocery store owner, but a“Man of affairs and lawyer," He was born on April 30th, 1911in Bayonne to Frank and Bessie (Wichrowski) Sladowski.

Two days later, Richard and his friend were pulled over in Maryland for speeding. As an officer approached the car, Richard fired twice at the officer and he fell to the ground. Richard and his friend peeled out of there. Later, they were pulled over again for speeding. And as the officer approached the vehicle, Richard again fired two shots, but this time missed and the officer fired back. Richard was hit, but he was trying to reload the gun as the officer ran up and kicked the gun out of his hand. Richard was then arrested and his friend was taken into custody as well. While in custody, Richard's friend told the police about Stephen's murder. Richard and his friend were both charged with first degree murder and facing the death penalty. Richard was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole and his friend was sentence to 20 to 30 years. While in prison, Richard met Dherran Fitzgerald, who was in there for armed robbery. Richard was released after serving only 17 years in 1974.

After his release, Richard worked odd jobs, and met a pretty 16 year old Theresa Smith, who was a neighbor of his mother. The girl was a normal, outstanding student. By 1977 he was engaged to the girl and her parents were shocked when they found out. Richard had not reported to his parole officer for quite sometime, and was suspected in a rape as well. He was arrested in Brooklyn in June 1980, and married his Theresa in the Brooklyn House of Detention. The rape charges were dropped when the victim failed to identify him in a lineup, but he still served six months for his parole violation. When released he moved into an apartment with his Theresa in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The apartment was managed by Dherran Fitzgerald.

After learning about Richard's past, a search of the house turned up pipe bombs, pistols, a machine gun, knockout drops, marijuana, a live puff adder snake, and floor plans of various local business'.  Police snagged Fitzgerald first and he told them everything. Richard had showed him a body in the garage, saying that she had been killed "for business reasons."  Fitzgerald also pointed to the locations of two more bodies in Jersey. One of those bodies was 17 year old Betsy Bacon. 

Elizabeth Jane "Betsy" Bacon was born in 1964 to Suzanne Saunders Bacon. Betsy was last seen at 11 p.m. November 20th, 1982, when she told her mother she was going to a Seven-Eleven store on Route 71 to buy cigarettes. 

The other body was that of  34 year old William J. Ward. Who was a "self-employed video game operator" and an alleged drug dealer who disappeared either September 21st or 22nd in 1982. 

Finally, Fitzgerald brought investigators to Richard's mother Sally Biegenwald's backyard. There police found Maria's body, cut into three pieces and buried in the yard of a rundown blue house in the Charleston section of Staten Island. In the shallow grave with Maria were the remains of another girl, Deborah Osborne, 17. She had disappeared from a Point Pleasant, New Jersey, bar the previous April.

In 1983, Richard was found guilty of killing Anna and was sentenced to death. He was then convicted of killing William and plead guilty to killing Maria and Deborah. He was given a life sentence for each of those murders, but not for the murder of Betsy. Fitzgerald stuck a deal and ended up serving 3 years of a 5 year sentence. Richard died in prison in 2008.

There are more suspected victims of Richard's out there...

Solved Halloween Murders: #2 The Kidnapping And Murder of Nina Louise Carter And Mary Elizabeth and Augustine Lena Carpitcher

Nima Louise Carter was born on March 23rd, 1976 to George and Rose Carter.

On October 31st, 1977, 19-month-old Nima's parents placed her inside her crib at their Lawton, Oklahoma home. She fussed when her parents put her to bed but was left to cry it out. 

When they awoke the next morning, Nima wasn't in her crib or anywhere to be found. The Carter family home showed no signs of forced entry.The windows remained locked from the inside, as did the house's front door. George and Rose checked the kitchen cabinets, the closets, outside by the doghouse, underneath the house and in the field behind the backyard fence. There was no sign of Nima anywhere and so they called the police. Police searched the local area, but found no trace of Nima either.

The police theorized that culprits were either her parents, or that her abductor had been hiding in her closet and spirited her away while George and Rose were sound asleep in the living room. A lie detector test exonerated George and Rose. Besides Nima's parents, neighborhood babysitters Joy Smith and Jacqueline Roubideaux were on their list of suspects, since they had access to the house as well. 

A month later, a group of kids were playing in an abandoned house four blocks away from the Carter home. When they opened up the house’s refrigerator, they received a horrifying shock when Nima's decomposed body came tumbling out. It was determined that she died of suffocation.

Two months before Nima's abduction, someone vandalized their home and poisoned the family dog. No one ended up taking the blame for either of these incidents

This brings us to what happened to three and a half year old twin sisters Mary Elizabeth and Augustine "Tina” Carpitcher. On April 8th, 1976, Mary and Tina were living with their grandmother in Lawton Oklahoma. They were watching TV in the living room while their grandmother vacuumed in a different room. It was during this time that a female teen the children knew unlatched the living room door and coaxed the children outside. Since they knew their abductor, the twins followed her at first, but then became scared. A neighbor noticed the teenager dragging the twins by their wrists while they tried to pull loose. The neighbor never called the police.

The abductor then took the twins to a abandoned, white house that was near railroad tracks. When they got inside she took them to the refrigerator and told them to get in. She told the twins that their aunt would be there to get them out and take them for ice cream later. And with that the abductor shut the refrigerator door and left.

It was around 2 p.m. when the twins' grandmother was done vacuuming and she came into the living room to check on the girls and noticed the twins weren't there. She frantically searched the house, but couldn't find them anywhere. The grandmother thought that maybe the girls were with their mother, so she didn't call the police until several hours later. The police immediately started searching the neighborhood for the twins, but found no trace of them. 

Two days later, children were playing in a deserted house when they heard the cries coming from a old refrigerator. 11-year-old Kathy Ford and another neighborhood child opened the refrigerator door, and Tina  jumped out alive. Tina survived by breathing through a tiny hole in the refrigerator. Sadly, Mary wasn't so lucky and suffocated to death. 

Kathy asked Tina who put her and her sister in the refrigerator, and she replied, "Jackie Boo or Jackie Burr,” meaning Jacqueline Roubideaux, the twin's babysitter and friend of her aunt. After being taken to the hospital, Tina was interviewed by police and she confirmed again that Jacqueline was the abductor.

Jacqueline became the main suspect, buy with a a lack of physical evidence the investigation stalled after a few months. During this time, Jacqueline found an occasional job as a babysitter. By 1977, she agreed to sit for George and Rose Carter. They were a young American Indian couple known within her family circle. George and Rose both held full-time jobs but they'd party on weekends.

After Nima's death, someone remembered that Jacqueline had been questioned in the Carpitcher case, which had almost identical circumstances. Finally Jacqueline was confronted about Nima's abduction and murder. Jacqueline said she was playing bingo the night Nima disappeared.

Investigators believed that Jacqueline was the culprit, but could never get her to confess. She did however comment on Nima's kidnapping and murder with details only the murder would have know. There was also no fingerprints, no footprints, no hair, no blood, no physical evidence of any kind tying her to Nima's abduction and murder and Jacqueline again walked free.

No one was ever charged with Nima's murder.
"My wife and I lived for years with the what-ifs,” said George. "Nima cried that night when we put her down to sleep. We never got up to check on her. We figured we didn't want to spoil her; that she would eventually go to sleep. I now believe that person was already in her room, probably hiding in the closet. What if we had opened the closet? What if we had gotten up to check her that night? What if we had brought her in to sleep with us. What if? What if?”

As for Tina and Mary's case...

In 1979, Jacqueline stood trial for first degree murder, which ended in a mistrial due to the jury being deadlocked. Over a year later she went to trial again and this time convicted of Mary's death and sentenced to life in prison. Jacqueline died from liver cancer in 2005.