MN MN - Mary, 15, & Susan Reker, 12, St Cloud, 2 Sept 1974
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Shot tower17
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This case is such a mystery! Wasn’t the younger one dragged by her sweater to be hid in the
tall grasses? Wasn’t blood found on the clothing? Have the Authorities invited Parabon Nanolabs, (which have solved older cases with old degraded DNA) to help look at the DNA in this case, besides BCA? This is still an Open and Unsolved. The accomplice may still be alive and law enforcement seem so close to solving the Reker Sisters Case.
Wouldn’t a Parabon snapshot DNA analysis be helpful?. Genetic DNA testing is scientifically advancing since it was looked at last. The mother deserves her day in court. Very Sad.
tall grasses? Wasn’t blood found on the clothing? Have the Authorities invited Parabon Nanolabs, (which have solved older cases with old degraded DNA) to help look at the DNA in this case, besides BCA? This is still an Open and Unsolved. The accomplice may still be alive and law enforcement seem so close to solving the Reker Sisters Case.
Wouldn’t a Parabon snapshot DNA analysis be helpful?. Genetic DNA testing is scientifically advancing since it was looked at last. The mother deserves her day in court. Very Sad.
TedMac
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Yes to all of your questions except Parabon-not sure about that one. Welcome to Websleuths!
ELOCsoul
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There have been DNA tests performed in the last two years and were inconclusive. Herb Notch has been named as the top suspect but it’s believed he had an accomplice
CastlesBurning
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KARE 11 Investigates: New lead in cold case double murder | kare11.com
A carnival worker convicted of murdering two Maryland sisters in 1975 may be connected to the 1974 unsolved murders of the Reker sisters in Minnesota.
A carnival worker convicted of murdering two Maryland sisters in 1975 may be connected to the 1974 unsolved murders of the Reker sisters in Minnesota.
Wow, she was attacked just a couple of days before the Reker girls were murdered. She wrote about it in a scrapbook that she kept all these years.
from the linked article:
“So, I want to make sure I have this straight,” asked Lagoe. “You met the man who assaulted you across the street from the Zayres?”
“That’s correct,” Georgianne said.
“And where you were sexually assaulted was less than three-quarters of a mile from where the sisters' bodies were found?” he asked.
“That’s correct,” she replied.
Georgianne says she reported her attack to authorities back in 1974. But she says Lawrence Kritzeck, an investigator for the Stearns County Sheriff at the time, told her they didn’t think there was a connection to the Reker murders.
Her attacker was never located.
BBM
Years later, when she saw Lloyd Welch's photo, she recognized him as her attacker.
This is probably the reason so many cold cases got that way. Local LE in small towns and cities just didn't have enough experience to investigate these kinds of crimes. Stearnes county LE, though, still refuses to consider Lloyd Welch the killer of the Reker sisters.
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ELOCsoul
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I have spoken to Georgianne. She actually approached me but declined to answer some pretty basic questions about the contents of her journal. The reporter’s work was fairly shoddy on this story, but headlines sell. I did some research on carnivals operating in the area, including one performing at St Anne’s Catholic Church in Kimball the weekend of the Reker murders. I also read the book, The Last Stone, about the Lyons murders. I could find nothing to substantiate the assertion that Lloyd Welch was anywhere near Minnesota at the time of the killings. I am very skeptical of any connection, and so is SCSO.
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CastlesBurning
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Bumping this unsolved and active double murder case up.
It seems that a number of potential suspects have been considered and investigated over the years.
Lloyd Lee Welch, Jr., confessed and convicted killer of the Lyon Sisters (Wheaton, Maryland 25 March 1975) seems a likely suspect. Welch was about 17 at the time and at some point worked as a traveling carnival employee. It is of coincidental note that early September is when many County fairs occur in Minnesota.
It seems that a number of potential suspects have been considered and investigated over the years.
Lloyd Lee Welch, Jr., confessed and convicted killer of the Lyon Sisters (Wheaton, Maryland 25 March 1975) seems a likely suspect. Welch was about 17 at the time and at some point worked as a traveling carnival employee. It is of coincidental note that early September is when many County fairs occur in Minnesota.
ELOCsoul
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I tend to doubt Welch’s involvement. There were two carnivals operating in the area that weekend. One in Kimball at St. Ann’s church. I spoke with the owner of that carnival and he said he had a young man named Lloyd on his staff, but he was from Appleton, WI and was arrested for writing bad checks in the area that weekend. The other carnival was put on by a locally owned operator. There were actually two local carnival operators at that time, the other was idle for the weekend based on classified ads in the papers.
According to the Minneapolis Star of September 3, 1974 (available from newspapers.com) the Minnesota State Fair closed September 2, 1974, the same day the Reker sisters were last seen alive. From same article by Minneapolis Star Staff Writer Randy Furst:
The fair is officially ranked third largest in the country, behind the Texas and Ohio state fairs. But fair authorities contend that because Texas and Oho only estimate admission, their numbers may be inflated and the Minnesota State Fair, which takes a turnstile count, may be the nations' largest fair.
Since (according to the article) 1,596,214 visited the fair, one can imagine accommodation may have been hard to come by in the Twin Cities area. St. Cloud is only about 70 miles away. And St. Cloud was hit by Minnesota's deadliest ever tornado April 14, 1886. Sure, only 20 of the dead were in St. Cloud whereas 38 of them were in what your book calls the rural Sauk Rapids area (which your book mentions as the location where there was an unconfirmed report the Reker sisters had been seen dining with two young males the day they were killed and where James Wagner was from, who on September 25, 1976, along with Herb Notch, Jr., did kidnap and sexually assault a 14 year old girl after robbing the store she was working at). The reason Sauk Rapids is rural is because the business district was devastated by the tornado and so was out competed by St. Cloud. Gillian Welch could have added a stanza about the tornado to one of her two songs about "Ruination Day". She mentions Lincoln getting shot in 1865, Titanic hitting iceberg in 1912, and 1935 Black Sunday worst-ever Oklahoma dust bowl storm were all on April 14 (but fails to mention Medora blew up in the Baltimore Inner Harbor April 14, 1842, killing 28, and that her hull was re-floated and remade for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company (the Old Bay Line) into Herald (as in David Herold) or that Mary Surratt's boys ended up working for the Old Bay Line). An accommodation train tried to flee to St. Cloud from Hinckley during the Great Hinckley fire of 1 September 1894, the same day sidewheel paddle steamer General Slocum lost her rudder after backing up into the tugboat that had rescued about half the occupants of the tug James D. Nicol (which had been chartered by the German speaking Herring club for fishing when it sank 24 June 1894 off Sandy Hook, NJ, the same day President Carnot of France was fatally stabbed by an anarchist in his carriage in Lyon, and the day after the future King Edward VIII was born and the Albion mine blew up killing 281, 50 years to the day before rare Appalachian tornadoes hit (most destructively) Shinnston, West Virginia, and also tiny Dry Tavern, Pennsylvania, where little Debra Makel, 8, had just gone to elementary school when last seen alive as she was leaving school bus in October 1973. Like I believe I said earlier in this thread, Linda Pagano was last seen alive in Akron on 1 September 1974. Just northwest of Akron is Bath (the 1927 Bath, Michigan, School massacre is still the deadliest school killing in US history), where Dahmer lived, and just northwest of Bath is Hinckley, and just northwest of Hinckley is Strongsville, where someone died from tornado in the 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak that happened on Pagano's eighth birthday, and where her remains were found not far from an Eastland Road. Keep going northwest and (eventually) you get back to Minnesota. The 1915 Eastland disaster trails insofar as number of dead Americans on a ship from a maritime purported accident only the Sultana sidewheel paddle steamer explosion that happened the day after Boston Corbett killed Booth and the 15 June 1904 sidewheel paddle steamer General Slocum fire. Fourth would be the 31 March 1865 sidewheel paddle steamer Army Transport General Lyon fire off Cape Hatteras.
Reker is a palindrome.