TN TN - Glenda Sirmans, 13, Farragut, 29 Nov 1969

[Kell1]

Unless theres more evidence, the best thing is to apply a general profile to the offender, and see if anyone fits it ..

Animals destroyed, too much of the evidence

 

[boathaul]

Unfortunately, I don't think that this case will ever be "solved". The only suspect that the Loudon County Police had is dead and hopefully roasting in hell. I have been married to Glenda's older sister for 35 years and I know that she feels the same way. My wife and her sister were only one year apart in age and they were best friends.

 

[bessie]

Unfortunately, I don't think that this case will ever be "solved". The only suspect that the Loudon County Police had is dead and hopefully roasting in hell. I have been married to Glenda's older sister for 35 years and I know that she feels the same way. My wife and her sister were only one year apart in age and they were best friends.

Boathaul, please tell your wife how sorry I am that she lost her sister. No child, and no family, should ever endure this kind of horror.

 

[Kell1]

Unfortunately, I don't think that this case will ever be "solved". The only suspect that the Loudon County Police had is dead and hopefully roasting in hell. I have been married to Glenda's older sister for 35 years and I know that she feels the same way. My wife and her sister were only one year apart in age and they were best friends.

Its possible it wont

However if science has taught us anything its to "never say never, and never say always"

Sometimes you get lucky with a deathbed confession, or after someone dies, their kin feel obliged to divulge such information.

The problem however, is how primitive criminal investigation was back then.

 

[boathaul]

I want to thank ya'll for letting me share my thoughts in this venue. For 35 years, I have never said anything to anybody about this. My wife has no idea that I have submitted these comments. I know that she thinks about Glenda daily, but we have only spoken about it twice. My wife and I met while we were both working at Sears West Town Mall. I had no idea that she was related to the girl that I knew had been murdered. I just knew that she was the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. It wasn't until six months later that she told me about her relationship to Glenda. Again, thank you for letting me get this off of my chest.

 

[Kell1]

I want to thank ya'll for letting me share my thoughts in this venue. For 35 years, I have never said anything to anybody about this. My wife has no idea that I have submitted these comments. I know that she thinks about Glenda daily, but we have only spoken about it twice. My wife and I met while we were both working at Sears West Town Mall. I had no idea that she was related to the girl that I knew had been murdered. I just knew that she was the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. It wasn't until six months later that she told me about her relationship to Glenda. Again, thank you for letting me get this off of my chest.

Nooo man thank you for sharing, I hope for you , your wife, and family it gets solved one day and the ba$tard hangs for it

 

[boathaul]

Thank you RichKelly. It is greatly appreciated.

 

[Kell1]

Thank you RichKelly. It is greatly appreciated.

Welcome

 

[ellroy1958]

Posting to remember Glenda.

The dates and days of the week of the calendars of 1969 and 2014 match up.

Tomorrow, Sunday December 14, 2014, will be the 45th anniversary of Glenda's body being discovered on Sunday, December 14th, 1969.

 

[ellroy1958]

Precious little info online regarding Glenda. In trying to track down info on suspects, in this forum on post #29, boathaul described a suspect this way:

" The police suspected a man who attended church with Glenda, but could never collect enough evidence to convict him. He died before police could get enough evidence."

Found a few more details posted in the comments section of the a Knoxville News Sentinel article at topix.com (post listed as being by Kevin Jackson of Knoxville):

"She was walking from her house on Virtue Rd to her friends house on Evans Rd. She was murdered where she was found off of Lakeland Dr in Loudon County. The main suspect was a deacon in the same church Glenda attended. I believe he was a friend of the family because it was reported she was friends with his step daughter. That man was a fugitive living under a different name. About 7-8 months later he killed his wife and step daughter and dumped the bodies in Ft. Loudon lake. He was convicted of those murders and escaped from prison in 1977 with James Earl Ray. He was caught but escaped again in the mid 80's. He was killed in a police shootout."
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/eagleton-village-tn/TVI9DLDG62LRFF97I

 

[ellroy1958]

"That man was a fugitive living under a different name. About 7-8 months later he killed his wife and step daughter and dumped the bodies in Ft. Loudon lake. "

In reading the description of a POI as posted at topix.com, a lot of this thus far seems to match up with a convicted suspect named in the public records regarding a murder that happened 7 months after Glenda disappeared.

Ronald Lewis Sotka (aka "Ronald Lewis Freeman").

Sotka is now dead, having died in a police shootout on Wednesday, March 7, 1984.

Info is in the case "in which he was indicted for the first degree murder of his wife Patricia and his step-daughter Donna".
The murder was on June 26, 1970, and he dumped their bodies in Fort Loudon Lake.

Sotka v. State
503 S.W.2d 212 (1972)
http://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/court-of-criminal-appeals/1972/503-s-w-2d-212-1.html

More info on Ronald Lewis Sotka on page 37 ("I've lost a wife and gained a boat"):
http://www.tba.org/sites/default/files/journal_archives/2000/TBJ0400.pdf

More info in Masters of True Crime, edited by R. Barri Flowers, under Sotka's alias "Ronald Freeman":
https://books.google.com/books?id=7...A#v=onepage&q=" Ronald Sotka" escaped&f=false

 

[ellroy1958]

Haven’t yet confirm an address for Glenda living on Virtue Road, that she was going to a friend’s house on Evans Road when she was abducted, and exactly where she was found two weeks later.

Finding a few details on where she was discovered (WARNING: some details GRAPHIC) thus far in the Nashville newspapers:

“The girl’s badly mutilated body was shortly after noon Sunday on a wooded Hillside [sic]…”
“…officers thought the girl’s killer had carried the body about 100 yards from Lakeland Road along the ridge of the hill to the spot where it was found.”
A dog carried a shoe (with Glenda’s foot still inside) “to a house about 200 yards from where the girl was found.”
“The area in which the body was found is thinly populated with a scattering of houses and barns.
“Miss Barbara McGimsey, the owner of the dog, said the road [Lakeland Road] into the area was often used as a ‘lovers’ lane’ and cars are parked on it….
“Officers said the girl’s fingernails were badly broken, indicating she struggled with her assailant.”
Search Ends as Knox Girl Found Slain, The Nashville Banner, December 15, 1969

Her body was discovered “about 100 yards off Lakeland Road in Loudon County as officers responded to a report that a dog had returned to a nearby home earlier in the day carrying a shoe with a foot in it.”
"... it was believed they [dogs] had dragged the body about 50 feet from where it was left."
“The body was discovered about 1:15 p.m.”
“…rescue squad members from Loudon and Knox County and several other areas joined in the search near Ft. Loudon lake….”
Body of Missing Knox Girl Found in Loudon, The Tennessean, December 15, 1969

“Metro [Nashville] police said last night there is ‘little probability’ of connection between the sex slaying of 12 year old Kathy Jones here and the murder in Knoxville of Glenda Marie Sirmans, 13.”
“Glenda Sirmans reportedly left home ‘about 3:30 p.m.’ on a way to a friend’s house to study. She did not complete the 20-minute walk.
“Kathy Jones left home about 7:45 p.m. for a 20-minute walk to a Thompson Lane skating rink. She never got there, either.”
“’There are many similarities in the two cases,’ said [a] Nashville officer,’ but they are coincidences.’”
No Likely Link in 2 Murders, The Tennessean, December 15, 1969

“The preliminary autopsy report established that Glenda died of a slash wound across the throat, Waggoner said, and that she had not been molested sexually.
“’This is one of the most baffling cases I’ve run across in 40 years as an officer,’ said [Sheriff Bernard] Waggoner, who served more than 30 years with the Knoxville Police Department before his election as sheriff.”
Knox Officers Check Rumors in Girl Slaying, The Tennessean, December 17, 1969

 

[ellroy1958]

By the descriptions in the newspapers I've seen thus far, in a google map search it seems she was found approx. 100 yards off the road in the vicinity of:
Lakeland Dr, Lenoir City, TN 37772
https://www.google.com/maps?as_epq&...a=X&ei=5l-MVMjCE9LbgwTznIPwCA&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ

 

[ellroy1958]

Trying to connect those dots that are in the public record and match them up to online assertions about who a/the POI was in Glenda's murder, namely could it have been Ronald Lewis Sotka. Sotka was a murderer living in the area, and left two bodies in Fort Loudon Lake, the vicinity of where Glenda was found.

Some assertions out there about a potential (un-named) POI in Glenda's case are that he was a member of her church, was a deacon in her church, and that the church was on Everett Road.

The Daily News of Bowling Green, KY, had two articles on on the same page on March 8, 1984. "Escapees Traveled to Ohio, Kentucky", and "Freeman was a former church deacon; Clegg was a thief who never shot anyone."
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...-4aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TEcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5306,1582293

The article, “Freeman was a former church deacon,” says Sotka/Freeman “was born Jan. 30, 1943, in the Cleyeland, Ohio, suburb of Euclid,” and that he and his family “belonged to Union Cumberland Presbyterian Church in the Knoxville suburb of Concord, and he was elected a deacon.”

Sotka would have been 26 years old in 1969.

Also, there is this church in the area:
Union Cumberland Presbyterian Church
400 Everett Road
Knoxville, TN 37934

It is not far from Virtue Road, but have not yet confirmed where Glenda Sirmand and family lived, and if they attended this church.

Also do not yet have an address where Sotka lived in Nov./Dec. 1969.

Thus far just trying to carefully/responsibly connect dots in the public record to see where (if anywhere) they lead. So far I have absolutely no official evidence that the police have ever looked at Sotka with regards to Glenda.

 

[bessie]

Have you read the entire thread, ellroy. I posted several articles and noted the key areas on a map. Not exact, perhaps, but close.

Thank you so much for your interest. This case is often on my mind. For such a horrific crime, it has received practically no attention all these years. Boggles the mind.

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10432953

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9880384

 

[ellroy1958]

Hello Bessie, I did see the articles, but I missed the map, thank you for pointing it out.

I haven't been able to get the link to the "Girl's Body, Throat Cut, Discovered" article to work, been trying to find a copy of that somewhere out there. It looks like it was published right on Dec. 14th. '69, the exact day she was found. Being that that could be one of the first, if not the first article to come out, I'd be really curious to see that.

And I agree - it is very strange, boggling - and sad - that there is such little info out there.

 

[ellroy1958]

Found one article at newspapers.com that was published after she went missing, but 9 days before she was found. “Hunt Pressed for Missing 13-Year-Old”, Panama City News-Herald from Panama City, Florida, December 5, 1969.
http://www.newspapers.com/image/39146845/?terms=glenda+marie+sirmans

The article had some more details about the day she went missing, including where she was going:

“Glenda, dressed in a pink and blue plaid jumper, a pink blouse and pink hose, with a green and white plaid coat topped by a fur collar, started out for the home of Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Pryse about 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

“She was seen by neighbors to arrive at the corner of a nearby road.

“Then she was not heard from again. Tegwyn Pryse, Glenda’s school friend, telephoned the Sirmans home about 5 p.m. asking if she were coming to work on the project.

“Mrs. Sirmans said her daughter should have been there long ago, initiated a search with the help of neighbors and notified her husband who finally called Knox County authorizes. Police action began about six hours after the girl was last seen.”

 

[bessie]

Hello Bessie, I did see the articles, but I missed the map, thank you for pointing it out.

I haven't been able to get the link to the "Girl's Body, Throat Cut, Discovered" article to work, been trying to find a copy of that somewhere out there. It looks like it was published right on Dec. 14th. '69, the exact day she was found. Being that that could be one of the first, if not the first article to come out, I'd be really curious to see that.

And I agree - it is very strange, boggling - and sad - that there is such little info out there.

Darn. I'm sorry the link no longer works. If I can find the article again, I'll re-post it.

 

[December]

For people not familiar with Tennessee, Nashville and Knoxville each had their own media. Living in Nashville, you would not see TV or hear radio out of Knoxville due to distance. To see a Knoxville newspaper, you'd have to specifically seek it out. Nashville had a high-powered radio station and is the state capitol, so people in Knoxville might be slightly more likely to hear info out of Nashville.

I don't know what newspapers published in Knoxville in 1969, but I wonder if they aren't online... maybe one went out of business a long time ago or something. I think Glenda's case HAD to have been covered locally even if we can't find much of that coverage now.

 

[Bargle]

I don't know what newspapers published in Knoxville in 1969, but I wonder if they aren't online... maybe one went out of business a long time ago or something. I think Glenda's case HAD to have been covered locally even if we can't find much of that coverage now.

In 1969, the papers would have been the News-Sentinel and the Journal. The News-Sentinel is still in business. The Journal I'm not sure about. They're no longer at their recent location.