- Suspected carnie serial killer liked little girls
Toronto Sun
by Brad Hunter
Jan 28, 2017
For decades, William Henry Redmond operated in the sleazy neon slime of the American carnival.
At one time, carnivals were the place to hide: From cops, ex-wives, military service and, maybe, yourself.
Drifting from town-to-town, Redmond would sit stone-faced operating a ferris wheel.
And when each show was done, he hit the road again, ambling into the next town.
But too often, cops believe, Redmond was leaving behind the corpses of brutalized young girls.
Cops fingered him for the Pennsylvania murder of Jane Marie Althoff, Beverly Potts murdered in Cleveland, Barbara Gaca in Michigan, maybe Connie Smith in Connecticut. There are likely many more.
Where Redmond went, girls seemed to end up dead — or simply vanished.
I thought about Redmond this past week when it emerged a killer who died in prison, Bob Evans, was likely responsible for a slew of bodies in the U.S. northeast.
For decades, Redmond — a lean-faced, ill-tempered, hard man who seldom smiled — eluded cops and prison. He was never far off the radar.
Ohio-born Redmond’s penchant for young girls first appeared in 1935 when he sexually attacked two young girls in Lancaster, Ohio.
In 1938, he was busted again in Ohio for the attempted rape of a pre-teen girl. He skated on another sex assault beef in Florida in 1949.
And then, detectives believe, he turned to murder.
Joanne Lynn was just 11. On Sept. 30, 1949, she was found shot to death outside Rochester, N.Y. At the time of her murder, Redmond was working at a fair, 9 km away.
On April 25, 1951, Jane Marie Althoff, 8, was found murdered in a pickup truck on the grounds of a carnival south of Philadelphia. His fingerprints were in the truck.
On Aug. 24, 1951, Beverly Potts, 10, of Cleveland, attended a local carnival. She was never seen again.
Connie Smith, 10, disappeared from a Connecticut YMCA camp in July 1952 and was never seen again. Cops like Redmond for this one too.
Eight-year-old Barbara Gaca’s body was found March 31, 1955 in an empty lot in Detroit. She had been missing for a week and cops determined the small child had been raped and murdered.
Redmond moved to Grand Island, Neb. in 1962 and then seemed to fall off the radar. But one Philadelphia detective, who was handed the yellowing, dusty Althoff homicide file, was stunned how Redmond’s name jumped out.
Other cold case cops got interested real fast, too.
Redmond was arrested in 1988 and charged in the grisly Althoff murdered that haunted her childhood friends decades later. Thing was, detectives had zeroed in on him the day after the child’s slaying.
“They had this guy the day after it happened ... And they let him go,” her school friend Robert Price told the Associated Press in the early 1990s. “But they finally got him.”
Redmond started blabbing — Jane Marie had bothered him for more rides on the ferris wheel and he smothered her to shut her up. Cops had issued an arrest warrant for Redmond just months later in early 1952, but he could not be found.
He was arrested at his Grand Island home and extradited to Pennsylvania in 1988. Inside his grim abode, cops found a treasure trove of soiled panties — the kind young girls would wear.
And then, a judge ruled that detectives weren’t playing by the book and let the senior out on bail for $1.
Detectives in Detroit, Cleveland and New York state used new advances like DNA to pin their murders on Redmond. They were racing against the Grim Reaper.
And then, while awaiting trial at his Nebraska home, Redmond died at age 70 in 1992 of acute emphysema and heart troubles.
His death sealed shut forever many of the answers generations of detectives and loved ones had desperately longed for. But there was never any real doubt about the ‘who’ part of the equation.
An inmate turned stoolie told cops that Redmond smirked when he told him about the Althoff murder: “They may have me on this one but not the others.”...
LINK:
Suspected carnie serial killer liked little girls | Toronto Sun