FL FL - Nancy Leichner, 21, & Pamela Nater, 20, Altoona, 2 October 1966

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http://www.wftv.com/news/4743737/detail.html

On October 2, 1966, 21-year-old Nancy Leichner and 20-year-old Pam Nater came there with their boyfriends. As the men went scuba diving, the women went hiking. They were never seen again.

"We'd like to bring this to closure one way or the other," said Herman Nater.

Nater is Pam's father. For 39 years, he has tried to find his only daughter. Recently, Nater wrote a passionate letter to the Lake County sheriff.

"We feel that somebody knows what happened that day," Nater said.

"We are now beyond the mid-80 point in our age, so little time remains. Your reply with comments would be appreciated. Sincerely, Herman A. Nater," Detective Ken Adams read from Nater's letter.

Adams is the lead detective for the Lake County sheriff's cold case squad. Nearly four decades after the women vanished, he is searching for fresh clues. Detective Adams believes the girls were probably abducted, taken from the forest, and murdered. But he thinks there may still be people alive, who know for sure.

"Mr. Nater, in particular, I don't think he's ever really given up hope and I don't want him to," Adams said.
-----------------
Time and forest swallow traces of 2 from Pinellas

The disappearance of the women on an outing in 1966 haunts their families and a former Lake County deputy.


[url]http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/14/State/Time_and_forest_swall.shtml
[/url]
 
Interesting article! Thanx for sharing. I hope re-newed interest brings them some luck. Makes me angry about the Sherriff, wonder if him and his "good ole boys" had anything to do with them girls gone missing.
 
I have nothing really to add, but to say, how sad for these parents to live this long with all this pain and suffering with no closure.

Prayers of peace to this family.
 
Gosh, this is heartbreaking.

Thank goodness, the era of Big Boss Sheriff is over, for the most part.

Somebody who knew that forest well enough had to take those girls.
 
It has been 40 years since Nancy Leichner and Pamela Nater went missing. They have been mentioned on Websleuths threads in the past as possible victims of a serial killer or as possible matches to Jane Does. I thought that they should have their own thread to feature their case on the 40th anniversary of their disappearance.

----------------------------------------------------
Nancy Leichner
Missing since October 2, 1966 from Alexander Springs Recreation Area, Altoona, Lake County, Florida
Classification: Endangered Missing
Vital Statistics
Date Of Birth: July 24, 1945
Age at Time of Disappearance: 21 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'3"; 115 lbs
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Blonde hair; green eyes.
Clothing: Bathing suit, 2 piece, blue bottom, blue-red stripe top.
Dentals: Available

Agency Case Number: 66-10-0000
NCIC Number: M-357881491
The Doe Network: Case File 1498DFFL

http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/1498dffl.html


------------------------------------------------------------

Pamela Ann Nater
Missing since October 2, 1966 from Alexander Springs Recreation Area, Altoona, Lake County, Florida
Classification: Endangered Missing
Vital Statistics
Date Of Birth: May 30, 1946
Age at Time of Disappearance: 20 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'4"; 120 lbs.
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Dark brown hair with reddish highlights; brown eyes.
Clothing: Blue/white 2 piece bathing suit and blue/white pinstripe boys Gant or Hugger short sleeved shirt.
Dentals: Available
DNA: Available

Agency Case Number: 66-10-0000
NCIC Number: M-357882188
The Doe Network: Case File 1497

http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/1497dffl.html

-----------------------------------------------

Circumstances of Disappearance
Nancy Leichner and Pamela Nater disappeared from a skin diving club picnic on Sunday, October 2, 1966. The picnic was in the Alexander Springs Recreation Area of the Ocala National Forest in Lake County, Florida. They planned to scuba dive, canoe and picnic.
Pam Nater was a 1964 graduate of Clearwater High; Nancy Leichner (pronounced LIKE-ner) was a 1963 graduate of Largo High. Pam was a nurse at Morton Plant Hospital; Nancy worked for Honeywell. They had met each other just once before. The common thread was their respective boyfriends, who were diving buddies.

The young women decided the 72-degree water in the spring was too cold and didn't go in. So as their boyfriends dived and took a canoe ride, the women began packing to go home. About 4 p.m., as the Aquaholics gathered to leave, the boyfriends began searching for them. They found Nancy's prescription glasses and both women's purses and shoes at a picnic table, but no trace of either woman.

Nancy was last seen on a nearby nature trail, a winding path that follows the Alexander Spring Creek. That was shortly before 12:30 p.m. Pam was last seen about an hour later a short distance from the trail.

Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Lake County Sheriff's Office 352-343-9529

Source Information:
Lake County Sheriff's Office
St. Petersburg Times 3/14/05
The Doe Network: Case File 1498DFFL (Nancy Lichner)
The Doe Network: Case File 1497DFFL (Pamela Ann Nater)

Links:

http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/1498dffl.html

http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/1497dffl.html
 
This is such a coincidence. I only discovered Websleuths yesterday and signed up. This was one of the cases I was reading about when I was surfing around the forums last night. This is an old Florida story that us long-timers have been reading about, and wondering about, for many years.

Then this evening, I found this story on the Orlando Sentinel's web site. Apparently this case may have been solved!

I hope this will bring some peace to the families, after 41 years....


http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...e071707,0,6945767.story?coll=orl_tab01_layout

Lake County investigators say they have solved 41-year-old murders

By Katie Fretland
Sentinel Staff Writer
5:32 PM EDT, July 17, 2007
TAVARES

Lake County sheriff's investigators said today they have solved the 41-year-old cold case of two Florida women abducted and killed after a scuba-diving expedition at Alexander Springs in the Ocala National Forest.

Evidence points to convicted murderer and former law-enforcement officer Gerard J. Schaefer as the killer, cold-case investigators said.

On Oct. 2, 1966, 21-year-old Nancy Leichner and 20-year-old Pamela Nater went missing and their bodies were never found. In 2004, investigators began going through old case files and re-interviewing witnesses, including Brant Hoover, who was in a canoe on the lake that day. When shown a picture of Schaefer, Hoover said he was certain he saw Schaefer following the two girls before they were abducted.

Schaefer, a former Martin County deputy sheriff, was convicted in 1973 of murdering two other women. Schaefer was killed by an inmate at Florida State Prison in 1995.
Investigators discovered that Schaefer had confessed to a fellow inmate at Avon Park Correctional Facility to killing Leichner and Nater, Lake County sheriff's Sgt. Ken Adams said. The inmate kept detailed notes of the conversations and turned them over to a corrections officer.

Schaefer kept gruesome accounts of murdering and cannibalizing in writings that he said were fiction. As a law-enforcement officer, he frequently pulled over women, one who was reported missing and never found, Adams said. The belongings of seven other missing people were found in Schaefer's possession, but he was never convicted of more crimes, Adams said.

In 1983, Schaefer wrote a letter to dozens of state-law enforcement agencies asking if he was a suspect in any murder or disappearance of women.

"How about those two that 'disappeared' from up at Alexander Springs in Oct. 1966?" he wrote. "There are some cops and newspaper people figure I got 'em. What do you say we talk about it?"
 
Correction -- I think the only thing that would truly bring peace to the families is if the girls' remains were found. That doesn't seem likely given that Schaefer has since passed away.

However, I googled Pamela Nater and found this great story that ran in the Tampa Tribune in the fall of '05.
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cach....html+"pamela+nater"&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

Apparently Leichner's mother was still alive at that time and living in Largo. She said it would be "a miracle" if the case were ever solved... so sad to think that she has had to wait all these years to get some closure.
 
This is such a coincidence. I only discovered Websleuths yesterday and signed up. This was one of the cases I was reading about when I was surfing around the forums last night. This is an old Florida story that us long-timers have been reading about, and wondering about, for many years.

Then this evening, I found this story on the Orlando Sentinel's web site. Apparently this case may have been solved!

I hope this will bring some peace to the families, after 41 years....


http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...e071707,0,6945767.story?coll=orl_tab01_layout

Lake County investigators say they have solved 41-year-old murders

By Katie Fretland
Sentinel Staff Writer
5:32 PM EDT, July 17, 2007
TAVARES

Lake County sheriff's investigators said today they have solved the 41-year-old cold case of two Florida women abducted and killed after a scuba-diving expedition at Alexander Springs in the Ocala National Forest.

Evidence points to convicted murderer and former law-enforcement officer Gerard J. Schaefer as the killer, cold-case investigators said.

On Oct. 2, 1966, 21-year-old Nancy Leichner and 20-year-old Pamela Nater went missing and their bodies were never found. In 2004, investigators began going through old case files and re-interviewing witnesses, including Brant Hoover, who was in a canoe on the lake that day. When shown a picture of Schaefer, Hoover said he was certain he saw Schaefer following the two girls before they were abducted.

Schaefer, a former Martin County deputy sheriff, was convicted in 1973 of murdering two other women. Schaefer was killed by an inmate at Florida State Prison in 1995.
Investigators discovered that Schaefer had confessed to a fellow inmate at Avon Park Correctional Facility to killing Leichner and Nater, Lake County sheriff's Sgt. Ken Adams said. The inmate kept detailed notes of the conversations and turned them over to a corrections officer.

Schaefer kept gruesome accounts of murdering and cannibalizing in writings that he said were fiction. As a law-enforcement officer, he frequently pulled over women, one who was reported missing and never found, Adams said. The belongings of seven other missing people were found in Schaefer's possession, but he was never convicted of more crimes, Adams said.

In 1983, Schaefer wrote a letter to dozens of state-law enforcement agencies asking if he was a suspect in any murder or disappearance of women.

"How about those two that 'disappeared' from up at Alexander Springs in Oct. 1966?" he wrote. "There are some cops and newspaper people figure I got 'em. What do you say we talk about it?"

Thank you for posting this. I check up on this case every once in a while and I'm glad to hear they may have solved it. Thanks again!
 
It would be nice to see a list of all the cases that Schaefer is suspected of having been involved with. If any of those victims have been found, perhaps others are buried nearby. On the other hand, if circumstances indicate that he killed his victims immediately, then looking for bodies in the vicinity of their disappearance might be a place to start.
 
It would be nice to see a list of all the cases that Schaefer is suspected of having been involved with. If any of those victims have been found, perhaps others are buried nearby. On the other hand, if circumstances indicate that he killed his victims immediately, then looking for bodies in the vicinity of their disappearance might be a place to start.


I link to two of his other presumed victims on Nancy and Pamela's profiles. http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/n/nater_pamela.html and http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/l/leichner_nancy.html
 
Update: Cases solved.

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/19/Southpinellas/Cold_for_years__murde.shtml


CLEARWATER

Investigators say a suspected serial killer who died in prison 12 years ago murdered two Pinellas County women who disappeared more than four decades ago.

The women - 21-year-old Nancy Leichner of Largo and 20-year-old Pam Nater of Clearwater - vanished Oct. 2, 1966, after a scuba trip in the Ocala National Forest.

Their bodies never were found.

A witness account and the recent discovery of long-mishandled confessions of the killer, a former Martin County sheriff's deputy, finally solved the mystery.
 
LE called this "bittersweet" and I feel the same way. This is not my family nor do I have anything to do with it, but I see no real closure to this - the bodies were never found, no details on how one man managed to kill 2 women.....

Don't get me wrong, this is great news, but it seems incomplete.
 
LE called this "bittersweet" and I feel the same way. This is not my family nor do I have anything to do with it, but I see no real closure to this - the bodies were never found, no details on how one man managed to kill 2 women.....

Don't get me wrong, this is great news, but it seems incomplete.

I agree. On the one hand, it is nice to hear that the case may be solved, but where are all the details? And where are the bodies? If this convicted murderer confessed to killing the girls, he must have said what he did with the bodies.
 
Not necessarily, Richard. Often a murderer will withhold the location of the bodies to have a bargaining chip later, or just because he's a mean son-of-a-gun who wants to continue bringing pain to the people around him. And if he was considering appeals at any point, he would have wanted to not have done something as inconvenient as lead the police to his victims through his own words.
 
Not necessarily, Richard. Often a murderer will withhold the location of the bodies to have a bargaining chip later, or just because he's a mean son-of-a-gun who wants to continue bringing pain to the people around him. And if he was considering appeals at any point, he would have wanted to not have done something as inconvenient as lead the police to his victims through his own words.

I agree with you. These dirt bags say only what they want to say and are ALWAYS playing games with investigators. Sometimes, they draw very detailed maps, and then claim that the police cannot find the bodies because they are not looking in the right place - and they could point it out, if only they could be taken there... And still the bodies are not found.

But my point was that if police think that they have enough believable evidence to close this case - what and where is it? They should give details of this man's statements. He is already long dead, so no on-going investigations and no pending trials would be jepardized by releasing the information. In fact, there might be cases in other jurisdictions which could be tied to him if the information were released.

It just seems that sometimes police keep files secret for the sake of keeping them secret (or maybe to cover up their own mistakes?) and then they eventually distroy or lose the file.
 
LE called this "bittersweet" and I feel the same way. This is not my family nor do I have anything to do with it, but I see no real closure to this - the bodies were never found, no details on how one man managed to kill 2 women.....

Don't get me wrong, this is great news, but it seems incomplete.

I agree, it is incomplete. I'm not sure he did murder the two women. Many of these guys, shades of Lucas, add to their tally to make themselves bigger and badder than they were. Currently I'm researching missing "twosomes" in other areas. Some seem promising.

You know what's a damned disgrace? That policemen and deputies, who are sworn to protect the public, KILL people. Kinda makes you wonder who you CAN trust.
 
Bump

Next month will mark 44 years that Nancy and Pam were reported missing. Come home soon.
 
Nancy Leichner and Pamela Nater disappeared from a skin diving club picnic on Sunday, October 2, 1966. The picnic was in the Alexander Springs Recreation Area of the Ocala National Forest in Lake County, Florida. They planned to scuba dive, canoe and picnic.

Pam Nater was a 1964 graduate of Clearwater High; Nancy Leichner (pronounced LIKE-ner) was a 1963 graduate of Largo High. Pam was a nurse at Morton Plant Hospital; Nancy worked for Honeywell. They had met each other just once before. The common thread was their respective boyfriends who were diving buddies.

The young women decided the 72-degree water in the spring was too cold and didn't go in. So as their boyfriends dived and took a canoe ride, the women began packing to go home. About 16.00, as the Aquaholics gathered to leave, the boyfriends began searching for them They found Nancy's prescription glasses and both women's purses and shoes at a picnic table, but no trace of either woman.

Nancy was last seen on a nearby nature trail, a winding path that follows the Alexander Spring Creek. That was shortly before 12:30. Pam was last seen about an hour later a short distance from the trail. Cold-case investigators in Lake County has concluded that a convicted murderer and former law-enforcement officer -- long since dead -- had killed Leichner, and Pamela Nater.

Investigators said that they have discovered evidence, including a jail house confession and eyewitness accounts, that points to Gerard J. Schaefer as the person who abducted and killed the two young women.

During his incarceration, Schaefer told a fellow inmate at Avon Park Correctional Facility, that he took Leichner and Nater by gun and knife point at Alexander Springs park and killed them. The inmate kept detailed notes of his conversations, which he turned over to a corrections officer.

In 1995, a fellow inmate at Florida State Prison stabbed Schaefer to death.

Source:

The Doe Network: Case File 1498DFFL (Nancy)

The Doe Network: Case File 1497DFFL (Pamela)

LINKS

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1498dffl.html

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1497dffl.html
 
It would be nice to see a list of all the cases that Schaefer is suspected of having been involved with. If any of those victims have been found, perhaps others are buried nearby. On the other hand, if circumstances indicate that he killed his victims immediately, then looking for bodies in the vicinity of their disappearance might be a place to start.

Many of us, the families of the suspected Schaefer victims, wish that somehow the bodies would be found. With the draining of some marsh lands for development, and some construction sites, a few of his victims have been found. None were ever located in places one thought likely, and many of us will go to our graves without every knowing, without ever having peace.
 
46 years have passed since Nancy and Pamela went missing. It has been determined that Gerard J. Schaefer murdered them, but their bodies have never been found.
 

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