Halloween Special- 3 Murder Cases in 1

Today’s episode will cover three different cases. First is the murder of Kendra and Alysha Suing at the hands of their stepfather, Lawrence Harris. He would claim that it was a protection spell he learned studying witchcraft that went awry, which caused the girl’s death. Then we take a look at John Crutchley, the “Vampire Rapist.” Crutchley was convicted of kidnapping and rape, but he is suspected by authorities to be a serial killer with as many as 30 victims. Last, we will take a brief look at Richard Jordan Tarver, who knew he could survive a zombie apocalypse… but only if he knew what it felt like to kill someone.

Halloween

Halloween tends to bring back memories for a lot of us as we get older. This time of year, it’s easy to get caught up in the nostalgia and remember that feeling of excitement leading up to going out with your friends and family to trick or treat. Maybe as you got a little older, instead of trick or treating, you went to parties with your friends.

For me, it was a vampire. I swear I went like 5 years in a row as a vampire.

According to a Reader’s Digest article, here are some of the most popular costumes throughout the years.

Throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the most popular costumes centered around pop culture icons, ranging from Batman to Marilyn Monroe to the Beatles and Elvis. There were also some classic costumes mixed in there, like cowboys, Dracula, Frankenstein, and astronauts. In the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, movie and TV characters became a staple in the Halloween costume scene. In the 80s, when campy horror movies were at their peak, we had Michael Myers, Freddy Kreuger, and Jason Vorhees. Also topping the lists from the 80s were Michael Jackson and Madonna, with Beetlejuice and The Ghostbusters mixed in there as well. The 90s were full of movie characters, ranging from Marty McFly in Back to the Future, to Lloyd and Harry from Dumb and Dummer, to Neo from the Matrix. The Simpsons were another popular one in the 90s, along with the Spice Girls. And no list of 90s costumes would be complete without Ghostface from Scream. The 2000s and up were dominated by movie and pop culture characters, from Harry Potter to Star Wars and everything in between.

Halloween is amongst the oldest traditions throughout the world. Not specifically trick or treating, but some observance of the holiday has existed for years, mainly marking the transition from summer to winter. Every recorded civilization has created some form of a ritual observance focused on what happens to people when they die, and how the living can honor and interact with them. Mexico has the Day of the Dead, which is a time when family and friends gather to pay respects and remember friends and family members who have died. (If you haven’t seen Coco, the Pixar/Disney movie, please go watch it. It is fantastic.)

Traditions abound when it comes to Halloween too. Trick or treating and dressing in costumes are at the top of the list for most kids! But there’s also carving Jack-O-Lanterns, and subsequently letting it sit on your front porch until Thanksgiving and it starts to grow legs in an effort to throw itself away. Carving Jack-O-Lanterns originated in Ireland, but originally they carved turnips instead of pumpkins. It’s based on a character they called Stingy Jack, who repeatedly trapped the devil and only set him free if the devil promised that Jack would never go to Hell. When Jack died though, he learned that Heaven didn’t want his soul either, so he was doomed to wander the earth as a ghost for all eternity. The devil gave Jack a glowing lump of coal inside of a hollowed out turnip to light his way. The local people then began to carve out scary faces into their own turnips and pumpkins to scare away evil spirits.

Speaking of traditions, many people throughout the world gather with friends and family to tell scary stories. Today, we will take a look at two different cases, one involving witchcraft and the other a modern day vampire.

Lawrence Harris

Kendra Suing was 10 years old in January of 2008. She was in fifth grade at Irving Elementary School in Sioux City, Iowa. She was an avid reader and wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up. She was learning Japanese, a notoriously difficult language to learn. In her free time, she wrote short stories, and enjoyed listening to music and playing her Game Boy.

Kendra’s younger sister, Alysha, also attended Irving Elementary. She was 8 years old in January of 2008. Like her sister, she loved to read and play her Game Boy. She also enjoyed arts and crafts and hanging out with friends and family. Both Kendra and Alysha loved to spend time on the weekends at their grandmother Cheryl’s house.

The girl’s mother, Marla Stroman was married to Lawrence Harris, who was their step-dad. Marla had an older son, and Larry had an infant son whom he had won custody over in Minnesota. For Marla, life was going great. She felt like she had a good life, and was happily married to Larry. She had a stable job that she enjoyed as a residential assistant with Midstep Services, which provides residential, vocational, educational, and recreational services to people with intellectual disabilities in the Sioux City area.

Larry grew up in California with his younger brother Kyle Harris. It was while they were growing up that Larry became interested in Witchcraft. His brother would later testify that Larry learned and would cast spells to protect his family or for beneficial outcomes in events that were coming up. Larry told Kyle that he had cast a spell for a positive outcome in the custody battle for his son. It wasn’t a secret that Larry was enamored with witchcraft. Marla knew, as did their friends and family. Before meeting Marla, Larry had had substance abuse issues, but by all accounts, he had overcome that, and Marla described him as “desperate” to be a good father.

Larry had a history of self-harm, social isolation, and mental illness. He had been prescribed medication, which he had been taking. But, no one knew that in the months leading up to January 2008, Larry had stopped taking his medication. Marla had discovered this and gave Larry an ultimatum; she told him he had to start taking his medication again, attend anger management classes, and attend couples counseling. If he refused, she was going to leave him, something she didn’t want to do at the time, but to protect her family, she was fully prepared to.

That brings us to January 6th, 2008. Marla was at work and was told that something had happened at her home. Earlier in the day, Larry called 911 and told them that their home was on fire. When emergency services arrived, they were met on the front porch by Larry who said “They’re (expletive) dead, they’re dead.” Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze and discovered that it had been started in the basement. Upstairs though, both Kendra and Alysha were found dead. When questioned, Larry told the police that the girls had died when he was casting a spell that went amiss. When they brought the girls’ bodies out, Larry started hunching over and dry heaving. During their investigation, it was determined that the girls had died before the fire was set, from strangulation and stab wounds.

During his interrogation, the officers noted that Larry had blood caked under his fingernails and some on his chest. They also found what he described as his “ritual blade” in the basement of the home. It was covered with DNA from the girls as well. Larry told the officers that he was trying to cast a spell of protection for their older brother, but something went wrong and it ended with “severe consequences.” Investigators didn’t buy this though, and he was arrested on 2 counts of first degree murder. In July of 2008, Marla was granted a divorce from Larry, and as a reason for the dissolution of the marriage, she wrote “Lawrence killed 2 of my children.”

For his trial, the defense said that he was legally insane. There were doctors and a forensic psychiatrist who testified. They concluded that with his actions before the girl’s deaths combined with the evidence of the fire being a coverup, it was clear that he was aware that what he did was wrong. Not insanity.

The prosecution alleged that he was trying to get revenge on Marla. He suspected that she had cheated on him. He was also upset that in a few months, the girls and Marla’s older son’s biological dad was going to be visiting the children, and Marla offered to let him stay in their house. Kyle Harris testified that Larry had told him that he could hurt Marla in the worst possible way without touching her. He also said that Larry regularly made threats against Marla to him after the couple had arguments.

There were 2 weeks of testimonies before the case was handed over to a 12 member jury. They deliberated for only a few hours before returning a verdict of guilty on both counts. Harris was given 2 life sentences to be served consecutively and was ordered to pay $450K in restitution. He is currently incarcerated in a maximum security facility in Fort Madison, Iowa. Marla has tried to move on with her life. She has remarried and started a new family, but the loss of her girls weighs heavy on her heart.

John Brennan Crutchley

In November of 1985, in Malabar, Florida, a 19 year old girl was fighting for her life. Her kidnapper had left her alone, handcuffed in his bathroom, and she was able to escape out of the window. She shakily made her way to a nearby road, where several vehicles passed her by. She was crawling by the road when someone finally stopped to help. She was nude and both her hands and ankles were handcuffed. When the man helped her into his vehicle, she begged and pleaded with him not to take her back to “that house.” She told him to remember which house it was, and the man made a note of it. He took her to his house and called the police and an ambulance.

When the authorities arrived, she was rushed to the hospital. When they examined her, they determined that she had lost 40 to 45 percent of her blood supply, and she had ligature marks on her neck. Then, she told her story….

She was hitchhiking the day before, and a man stopped to give her a ride. He said that it wasn’t a problem for him to take her to where she wanted to go, but he just needed to stop by his house first and pick something up. As he parked, he invited her in, which she refused. Then, the man exited the vehicle and slipped into the back seat. In a flash, he was choking her, until she lost consciousness. When she later awoke, she was tied to a kitchen countertop. She was unable to move both her arms and legs.

She noticed that a camera had been set up, recording everything, as well as some lights. The man raped her. Then, he used needles to draw blood from her arm and wrist. He then sat in front of her and drank her blood. The man told her that he was a vampire.

Next, he took her into his bathroom and put her in his bathtub and left her alone. A few hours later, he returned to the bathroom and did it all again. Then, he left her there for the night. The next morning, he returned, and did it for a third time. After the third time, he handcuffed her, and told her that he was leaving, but he would be back later to rape her and drain her blood again. He told her not to try to escape, because his brother was there, and if he heard her, he would kill her. She sat quietly and listened for the man to make his way through the house and leave. She heard a car drive off, and then she started to try to figure out how to get out. She was able to push her way through the bathroom window, and make her escape to help. The doctors said that if the man had taken her blood for a fourth time, it would have likely killed her.

With the help of the man who rescued her, she was able to lead the police right to the house. It belonged to John Brennan Crutchley. Crutchley was 39 years old, and worked for The Harris Corporation, a company that did contract work for NASA. Growing up, Crutchley was a loaner, without many friends. He preferred the company of electronics and gadgets that he could tinker with in the family basement. His family was described as “well to do,” meaning that they had money. His love of electronics paid off for him early though, as he was able to earn money in high school by fixing electronics for people around town. He graduated from Defiance College in Ohio with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1970. After that, he earned a masters in engineering administration from George Washington University, during which he also married his first wife.

After his graduation though, the marriage failed, and he moved to Indiana. He took a job with an electronics company that designed and manufactured large facility security systems. He worked there for several years as an electrical systems engineer. He left though, when he came under investigation by the plant security for some materials that went missing. He relocated to Virginia in the mid 70s. While he was there, he worked for several high tech companies over the course of a few years. It was also around this time that several teenage girls in the area went missing. Then, in 1983, Crutchley and his 2nd wife moved to Florida, where he started work at The Harris Corporation.

That brings us back to the police investigation at hand. A search warrant was obtained and served at Crutchely’s home that he shared with his wife and son, who were out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday. They found the video camera that the victim mentioned, but the tape inside had been erased. He was arrested, and photos were taken of the house during this initial search. In these photos, a stack of credit cards several inches thick could be seen. Authorities contacted FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler, who is often credited with coining the term “serial killer.” He had worked several high profile cases including Jaffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Richard Chase.

When Ressler came in and talked with Crutchley and looked over all the notes from the case, he immediately said that Crutchley had killed before. He classified him as a “serial killer of the organized type.” Ressler suggested they obtain another search warrant, which had a much wider scope. During this search, the stack of credit cards was missing and were never located. They also found a stack of index cards (72 of them). Each one had a womans name and a description of of their “sexual performances.” When the women were contacted, some said that while they were with Crutchley, he had crossed the line from “kinky” consensual acto into sexual assault. His wife was aware and in some encounters, participated. She stood up for Crutchley, and even said the attack on the teenage girl was “a gentle rape, devoid of any overt brutality.”

In June of 1986, Crutchley pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape charges, in exchange for prosecutors dropping a charge of grevious bodily harm. Crutchley said that drinking blood had been introduced to him in the 1970s by a nurse as part of a sexual ritual. He said that the drinking of the blood shouldn’t be considered during his sentencing because by the time he went to drink it, it had coagulated, and he wasn’t able to get it down. His wife didn’t testify on his behalf, but talked to the press saying that Crutchley was just a “kinky sort of guy.”

The judge sentenced him to 25 years to life, with 50 years of parole if / when he was released. After the conviction in 1986, Ressler wrote about the case, and said that he expected that Crutchley would be released by 1998.

In 1978, whild Crutchley was in Virginia, he dated 25 year old Debborah Fitzjohn. While he was dating her, she went missing. She was last seen alive in the trailer park where he lived. He was questioned on several occasions, but due to lack of any evidence was never charged, even after her remains were found by a hunter a year later. Crutchley also lived in Pennsylvania for a bit, during which time several women were reported missing as well. There was also a teenager, Kathy Lynn Beatty who went missing in the area where Crutchley’s in-laws lived.

In the end, Crutchley was never arrested for any of these women’s murders or disappearances, although he is suspected to be involved in 30+ disappearences in places he lived throughout the country.

FBI profiler Ressler predicted that Crutchley would be released in 1998, but he was actually released in 1996, after serving 11 years and getting out for good behavior. He was transferred to an Orlando halfway house where he would serve out his 50 year parole and undergo counseling and pay restitution. The day after he was released, Crutchley failed a drug test by testing positive for marijuana and he was arrested for probation violation. He said that he didn’t smoke it, but that other inmates blew it in his face. At the trial for his parole violation though, the prosecution provided evidence of Crutchley confessing to a corrections officer that he smoked it because of his legal troubles, saying it had a calming effect. On January 31st, 1997, Crutchley was given life in prison under the three strikes law. His first two convictions were for the kidnapping and rape of the teenage girl.

On March 30, 2002, correctional officers entered Crutchley’s cell and found him dead with a plastic bag over his head. On August 1st, 2003, the Florida Dept of Corrections declared that Crutchley died of autoerotic asphyxiation.

The Walking Dead Made Me Do It

In July of 2015, in Bay, Arkansas, just southeast of Jonesboro, Patsy Scott had been trying to reach her 90 year old mother, Lavinda Counce on the phone. After not being able to reach her, Patsy and her husband drove to Lavinda’s house to check on her. When they got there though, Lavinda’s car was gone, which wouldn’t set off any alarms, but it was later in the day, so they went in the house to wait for her to arrive back home. When they got inside though, Patsy noticed that the beds were unmade, which set off alarm bells. If there was one thing Lavinda never did, it was leave the house without the beds being made.

When people describe Lavinda, you always hear the same thing, “You couldn’t meet a better lady.” One of the elders in her church had known her all his life. He said that she was the same woman that she was 50 years ago. She was always more concerned about the needs of others and putting her family first. The preacher at her church, Mark Brewer said, “She’s greatly loved. Not only by her family, but also by her church family, by everyone here in the community. Ms. Lavinda was one of the sweetest ladies. She was always here, always faithful, concerned about the community, concerned about every member. If someone was missing, she was the one who was concerned.”

Back at Lavinda’s house, Patsy found a black bag on a chair in the living room. Initially, she thought it was a new bag that her mom had, but she said when she went to lift it up, it was heavy. She opened it up and her heart began to race and sink at the same time. Inside she found a washcloth, hammer, hatchet, rope, and a club wrapped in plastic tape. Patsy said, “I can’t describe the panic I had not knowing where she was. I picked [the bag] up, then dropped it and started praying.”

They called the police and a search commenced. The day after Lavinda went missing, her car was found in nearby Jonesboro in the parking lot of NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital. There was security footage of the parking lot, and when they reviewed the footage, they saw a man park the car then get out and walk away.

Several groups of volunteers had formed to search areas for Lavinda. For days they looked all over, and as each day passed, they grew less and less confident they would find her alive. Lavinda had been reported missing on July 3rd, and on July 12th, a volunteer searching a remote corn field came upon her body. She had been shot in the head and left there.

With the discovery of her body, their investigation turned from a missing person to a homicide, and they had to find the man from the tape. They questioned a man named Cory Phillips who lived near the hospital where the car was found. He told them that a friend of his had randomly showed up at his house the day the car was parked. He asked Cory for a ride and said that he was dropped off at the hospital earlier to visit someone. That friend was Richard Tarver. When they asked what time that was, it matched up with the timestamps on the tapes, so they zeroed in on Tarver.

Five days after they found Lavinda’s body, authorities went to Tarver’s home and spoke with him. Initially, he thought they were there about something else, an altercation he had with a police officer. But, it became clear as they spoke why they were really there. While questioning him, Tarver confessed to killing Lavinda.

Tarver said that on the night of July 2nd, he had been binge watching The Walking Dead before going to sleep. The next morning, he woke up and walked to Lavinda’s house and knocked on the door. She answered and he pushed her inside and got her car keys. He forced her into the trunk of the car and began to drive, looking for a remote place to stop and kill her. He settled on the corn field and got Lavinda out and shot her. Then he drove her car to the hospital and walked to his friend’s house and asked for a ride.

Tarver’s DNA was found on the washcloth inside the bag that was found in Lavinda’s home. When his trial took place, his defense tried to claim that his confession was given under duress, and he feared that if he didn’t confess that the police would arrest his wife and take his daughter away. They said that during the confession, he “blanked out,” and would have said anything they wanted. Tarver said that the officer who served him with the initial search warrant was a “monster” for coming into his home, which the prosecutor said was extremely ironic, considering what he did to Lavinda. When the officers tried to execute the search warrant, Tarver refused to open the door, so they forced entry. They found Tarver with his wife and daughter inside the living room, watching on a CCTV mounted to the wall. They found a .38 caliber weapon that had been defaced (the serial number had been removed.)

Throughout the trial, the prosecution kept bringing up Tarver’s infatuation with zombies and the apocalypse. The jurors were shown video footage of his confession in which he said “I have been watching a lot of ‘Walking Dead.’ An old person is the closest thing you can get to a zombie. I can’t explain it.”

Tarver was found guilty of capital murder, kidnapping, aggravated residential burglary, abuse of a corpse (for leaving her body in the corn field), theft of property, and possession of a defaced firearm. He was given three life sentences plus 22 years.