TX TX - Julie Moseley, 9, Mary Trlica, 17, Lisa Wilson, 14, Fort Worth, 23 Dec 1974 - #2

[kemo]

There was a technique used by LE at the time for "high profile cases"(and I am thinking of the "Ted" case in Seattle). A public "plea" for “any information you might have” would be made and non-LE operators would take the calls. The problem was that there would be thousands of calls and no effective way to screen them. Apparently in Seattle three callers fingered Bundy but hundreds of others were also fingered and Bundy was never checked out. It would be interesting if the record of the call and how it was disposed of was retained and the FWPD willing to release the information. Hutchin's lead seems to have been huge and it’s hard to believe it wasn't checked out thoroughly. You never know however. What really matters isn’t what he later remembered but what he actually said at the time.


The Post office used to hire a lot of temporary employees in December (often college students) and, according to a friend who did this work at the time, there was a big push to get mail (generally Christmas cards) delivered by Dec 24th. My understanding is that LE could never be sure of the originating PO due to the smeared postmark. Postmarks were applied by hand and if things were really busy, it is entirely possible that the "quality" of the postmarks applied were allowed to drop. I think it is likely that any letter dropped off at any FW PO on the 23rd with a FW address would have been delivered on the 24th.

DeBardeleben is a good suspect with ties to FW but I am not aware there is any evidence that he ever did abduction like this. His ties to Maryland make him a good suspect for the Lyon sisters but that is the extent of it. In the 1970’s, there were a lot of unsolved high profile abduction/sexual slayings and some were probably committed by “big name” SK’s who got famous later. His status as a "serial killer" is based more on conjecture than anything else. He was a strong suspect in one murder and that about it. He certainly could have done a lot more. We’ll probably never know.

 

[thefirstman]

If you want to find out more about the Missing Trio case there is one person in the world that I hypothesize as worth contacting. I believe Carol Miller, James Mitchell DeBardeleben's 4th wife knows quite a bit.

She may talk now that her ex-husband is dead.

She married him in 1971 2 miles from the Wheaton Plaza in a church on Georgia Ave.

She went to school and graduated in 1971 in Arlington, VA. She fled into hiding with her parents help to Arlington, VA in the fall of 74 to get away from DeBardeleben who was still in Fort Worth on Spurgeon Street. I think DeBardeleben threatened Carol Miller that he would harm children if Carol ever tried to leave him.

These crimes (missing trio and Lyon sisters) were done in layers, and were meant to communicate things to Carol.

Carol was Mike DeBardeleben's accomplice in much crime in the 70's including bank robbery of the bank in the parking lot of Wheaton Plaza. She robbed the elderly, committed extortion, participated in kidnapping and God knows what else with him.

She was likely less of a criminal then a torture victim, slave puppet. I think of the movie Blue Velvet when I think of DeBardeleben.

DeBardeleben pulled the Tape Recorder Man routine in the Lyon sisters case intentionally so that a drawing or sketch of him could show up in the papers and the media. And it did.

He had been sketched before, many times before. So he knew how to be just visible/invisible enough to menace people and not get known.

DeBardeleben had a set of false teeth and disguises and he was likely tweaking his face just enough to be seen by Carol and not be given away too much to make himself vulnerable.
Carol Miller, IMO, knows that James Mitchell DeBardeleben committed these two sets of kidnappings.
The police reportedly gave her immunity for having helped with information that put DeBardeleben for the rest of his life. She would not have to fear the law for her answers. She may fear her own conscious. And she may not be a fully functioning human being - after all she was the wife of DeBardeleben for a few years. But who knows maybe she will tell all if the right person asked the right questions.

 

[TheHiredGun]

I received a reply from the local TV reporter who interviewed Hutchins back in 2001. He said that he vaguely remembers the interview and could not remember any specifics. I gave him info on DeBardeleben and he said he would read up on him a bit. He also said he'd love to do a follow up story on the Missing Trio in the future.

I was hoping that maybe he kept some notes but I guess not. Oh, well.... onward!!!

 

[thefirstman]

"DeBardeleben is a good suspect with ties to FW but I am not aware there is any evidence that he ever did abduction like this".

I am not sure what you mean by "evidence that he ever did abduction like this".

He was convicted repeatedly and given 300 plus years in Federal prison for countless kidnappings of young girls and women. He did police impersonations with police sirens, handcuffs, fake badges. He pulled women over in the middle of the night on isolated roads, told them he was police, kidnapped them at gunpoint, tied them up to an I bolt on the floor of his car, took them to safe houses and raped them repeatedly for days.

He took photographs of himself in the act which was ultimately used to convict him.

It was not speculation that he was a serial killer -HE WAS A SERIAL KILLER OF THE HIGHEST ORDER!. He was not convicted of murder, but he was known to set up many very elaborate ruses and murdered women in psycho-sexual dramas. He whipped a woman to death with his belt buckle. He murdered two different realtors one in 71 in Louisiana and another in Rhode Island in 82. He failed, only by the grace of God to do the same to a third realtor who fought for her life. DeBardeleben's gun jammed when she fought back. She bloodied him good but still was almost choked to death by him. His list of suspected victims and their stories could fill volumes. His crimes were well thought out, planned meticulously and he either let his rape victims go after days of torture or they were NEVER seen or heard of again.

The Secret Service does not as a rule act on a case to convict suspects of rape and kidnapping and the types of psycho-sexual crimes that DeBardeleben perpetrated. But the Secret Service was so troubled and so outraged by DeBardeleben's personal effects of personal *advertiser censored*, personal audio tapes of him committing actual rapes, sirens, fake badges, guns, knives, ropes, bloody underwear that they made a herculean effort in a massively unprecedented move to throw all of their police resources at convicting this serial killer, rapist.

People have a tendency to underestimate DeBardeleben - but these two mall kidnappings - missing trio and Lyon sisters - fit DeBardeleben's modus operandi to a T!

But don't take my word for it here is the quote on the True TV web page:

Back at the Washington Field Office, agent Greg Mertz looked through the assortment of distasteful items they had found in DeBardeleben's storage locker and then listened to one of the tapes. He was utterly stunned by its contents, and it soon became evident that DeBardeleben, in the words of one expert, had a criminal history "unmatched anywhere for its sadism, its scope and his success at eluding detection."

The tapes recorded intense and disgusting torture sessions with women, who begged their tormenter to either stop or kill them. They appeared to be somewhat scripted and revealed a man full of self-hatred who needed to experience pain in others or himself to get aroused. According to Michaud, many of the investigators believed that DeBardeleben was the "most dangerous felon ever at large in America." Agents Greg Mertz, Dennis Foos, and Mike Stephens went to work on a case the likes of which they'd never seen before or since.

 

[TGIRecovered]

It sounds to me like that reporter was being purposely vague. It's not as if the interview you asked him about was some kind of boring assignment.

I'm impressed that you have gone to such lengths to investigate this case!

I live about three hours east on I-20, and I spent several years in the DFW area in the '80s. Back then, I worked in retail management and spent more than my share of time working in malls and their surrounding strip centers. Security guards aren't well-paid. The most dependable and trustworthy were the retired cops.

When I was in my very early 20's, I worked in a clothing store in a mall. All of our part-time employees were teenage girls. Over the span of several weeks, a man would call the store, and when one of the young girls answered, he would make crude remarks, even asking them if they were on their period! The weird part is that either myself or the other manager always made a habit of being the one to answer the phone if we were available, but this man always called when we were away from the counter, like when one of us left to get lunch or go to the bank for change. We felt spied-upon and made a practice of calling mall security to see us safely to our cars after closing. After several weeks of this, a good-looking 30-something mall security guard was fired. Turns out the calls were being made from the security office! Ewww!

 

[TheHiredGun]

I replied back to the TV reporter that interviewed and asked if he thought his segment would still be in the stations archives and also if might have kept Hutchins' contact info for a possible follow up story.

He again replied back, and had gone to the trouble of tracking down the script to the story and pasted it in the email. It was a very short script from the local evening news in 2001 which included the studio cues and set terms, etc.

It was also an exact duplicate of the story that was carried by the local paper which I posted here earlier. As I had originally assumed, the story in the paper had been derived from the TV report.

He told me that the interview with Hutchins was done some 10 years ago and has done literally 100's of stories since. You know... hop in a news van, catch a nap during the 2 hour drive, throw on a jacket when you arrive, get the interview and then back to the station to edit and script.

He also said he remembered that Hutchins had lived in a small town somewhere around Tyler, TX at the time of the interview. However, he couldn't remember exactly where.

That narrows it down a bit and I will now dig a bit deeper.

 

[thefirstman]

http://kidnappingmurderandmayhem.blogspot.com/2010/12/who-was-tape-recorder-man.html

Please read this blog and please see the sketch of the TRM on the bottom of the page. I cannot copy and reproduce articles published in the Washington Post and the now out of business evening DC paper Washington Star articles - they are downloaded on my computer as PDFs and therefore simple copy and paste does not work - Re writing them is quite laborious so I refrain.

To me this was so clearly a sketch of DeBardeleben. A Tape Recorder Man was the last person seen in public speaking to the Lyon sisters. This blog describes some of the details of the TRM history as having been "bothering" girls/women in area malls in the weeks leading up to the girls having gone missing. Notice the nice school teacher face. Many others described DeBardeleben this way over his years as the "mall passer" or while doing other crimes at crowded shopping malls. Also notice that he looks in the sketch like he has a bag of marbles in his mouth - as he was known for putting his false teeth in when doing certain crimes.

Compare the image with an a photo image of DeBardeleben taken around 1976 - at his arrest for attempting to pass fake $100 in a "montgomery county shopping center" (Wheaton Plaza is in Montgomery County).

DeBardeleben had a birth anomaly that left his nose distorted. The sketch certainly indicates this.

This Sketch is 2 of 2 in a sequence where Montgomery County police first published a sketch in the days following there having gone missing. They followed it up with a second "more reliable" sketch because the police phone lines flooded with girls/women reporting they too had been "bothered" by the TRM asking them to read cue cards into a microphone for his "phone answering machine".

 

[thefirstman]

Here's the reference citation and the exact quote from the article related to the Lyon sisters' case and the 3 missing Maryland state police uniforms in February of 1975.

Please note my previous posts connecting DeBardeleben to both the Missing Trio and the Lyon Sisters cases.

Reference:

Impostor Sought by State Police
By Courtland MilloyWashington Post Staff Writer The Washington Post (1974-Current file); Sep 19, 1975; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Washington Post (1877 - 1993) pg. C1

The article that points out the 3 maryland state police uniforms stolen from a Baltimore dry cleaning business.

Last paragraph of the article -

It was also the first such incident reported to police since the disappearance in February of three State Police uniforms from a dry cleaning firm in Baltimore police said: Three months later, nearly $10,000 worth of police badges oraments (misspelled in article) were stolen from a Baltimore manufacturing company.

 

[justthinkin]

firstman,

I'm not sure TRM sketch is Debardeleben. The hairline is vastly different, and even if Debar pulled his hair back, I'm not sure he'd have that much forehead based on the photos of him I've seen.


When I found out the 3 girls had gone to that Army Surplus store in Ft. Worth prior to going to the mall, I felt like that was where a suspect first encountered them, then followed them to the mall from there.

I still have a problem with a single person, in broad daylight, confronting the girls on some phony shoplifting charge. Reason being, the older girls would loudly object, and attract attention of onlookers. Inside the mall or outside, omeone would've noticed on such a busy shopping day. I just can't get that last idea out of my head.

I guess that or a similar thought is what made the FWPD say they think the girls went off with someone they knew.

We're left with 2 scenarios, either the girls followed their killer/s in their own car, and the killer/s brought the car back later or else the girls left with their killer/s, and the car sat in the mall parking lot the whole time.

I also have trouble thinking it was one killer due to the ages of the girls, and the ability of a single person to control all three, even with a gun.

If something bad is happening before a person's eyes, I think they would instinctively know they couldn't save that person, and take off running, that is if there was only one killer. He wouldn't risk the sound of a gunshot though, at least in my mind. I guess that would also all depend on the location the girls were at when they realized they were in deep, deep trouble.

I wish some of you from Ft. Worth could tell what you know of any teen activity out at that old airport that shut down, and was abandoned for so long before most of the property was redeveloped. It's in town, and it would seem the ideal place to take someone, and not have any sounds heard down in those tunnels. I got the creepiest feeling about that place when I first read about it. I wonder if those tunnels were ever checked back when the girls disappeared.

Maybe I'll see what our forensic astrologists here have to say. Wish we had a last known time the girls were seen. I know that would be of help to them.

I just hope one day, the answers to what happened to the girls will be known, and before their parents pass on.

 

[JeannieC]

firstman,
Snipped

Maybe I'll see what our forensic astrologists here have to say. Wish we had a last known time the girls were seen. I know that would be of help to them.

I just hope one day, the answers to what happened to the girls will be known, and before their parents pass on.

I think the forensic astrologists are no longer available here.

I've been reading all this and it is so sad. I hope the truth is found for the sake of the families.

I had never heard of DeBardeleben until I read this thread. I wonder who has all the pictures and videos he made and if they are available (pictures) for others to see.

I wonder how many other unsolved cases relate to him. How many states do you know he lived in, committed crimes in, etc?

I wonder if they got his DNA. Was he executed or did he die in prison? When was he tried and in which state?

Three girls at one time and in a mall is so strange. I wonder if he did it and had his wife along to assist. Did all of his wives participate? (Did I read that he had 3 wives)? How many children did he have? (DNA).

 

[thefirstman]

Justthinkin,

A bit about TRM and DeBardeleben: DeBardeleben was consistently underestimated in his ability to be extremely cruel, deliberate, and NOT get caught. The amount of crime he did would boggle most people's minds. I found articles in the washington post, including police sketches of a man who was scamming elderly women - well dressed posed as a police officer in plain clothes - "mam the $20 bill you gave to that clerk is counterfeit, Please take me to your home - I need to see all the bills in your home."

Scared and overwhelmed the women would give up cash - $1000 or $3000 back in the early 1980's that is comparable to $4,000 to $7,000 or more today dollars.

IF Debardeleben was to be going to malls PRIOR to a kidnapping as a TRM - he was using techniques to change his appearance. He was trying to look older, pull his hair back, use his false teeth or not. Somewhere in the Secret Service's process of arresting and trying DeBardeleben they found a large amount of material that he used to produce disguises. Look at the spacing of the eyes in the TRM sketch. Look at the asymmetry in the drawing of the eyes. Look at the anomaly on his nose and the sketch of the nose. Please note too that there were two sketches of the TRM: one that came out 3 days after the Lyon girls disappeared, created from the eye witness account of 2 boys who knew the Lyon girls and witnessed them speak into TRM's microphone at the mall a few short hours before going missing. And as a result of the boy's testimony and the subsequent first sketch, a second drawing was produced when over 300 phone calls pouring in from mothers and girls who were "bothered" by TRM in the 4 to 5 weeks prior to the Lyon girls kidnappings. The second sketch would be more reliable - that is the one you were looking at - because it was the result of the collaboration of many witnessing describing the man to an artist.

About the Missing Trio: IF DeBardeleben was the kidnapper disguised as a security guard, I doubt DeBardeleben told the girls that they were in trouble. Instead why not enlist their help.

"We have been tracking a man for some time here at the mall and if you girls could help for a few minutes a potential handsome reward would come to you - and you would be a tremendous help to the security team and to the police".

I tend to believe he was seen at 11:30 PM in the parking lot of the South Seminary Mall with the girls in the pickup truck. He may have used drugs to calm them - likely without them knowing. A little research, a bit of ingenuity, and a drug dealer or a physician's prescriptions would allow him to offer a soda or a water to to the girls while waiting that was loaded. I will refrain from speculating which drugs would be most effective - this simply would not be difficult to foist on the 3 trusting and eager girls hoping to help the security guard which in their minds would help the police and potentially earn them a reward in return.

I think he wanted to be seen and wanted to be sketched.

I think he told his 4th wife Carol Miller - "If you leave me, I will kill children". And then wanted to prove it to her by being sketched in newspapers in cities she was most likely to be living and then notice. He also was an extreme sadist so I believe he wanted to be seen in the paper in a sketch so as to make it as though he was just out of reach of most any citizen and the police. A way to sew confusion and inflict maximal pain. DeBardeleben had been sketched in papers after murdering the realtor Edna MacDonald in 1971 - and likely numerous times before.

I do not know enough about how the Fort Worth Police responded to the Missing Trio crimes in the hours, days, weeks immediately after the girls went missing. What little I do know it seemed as though, the Fort Worth Police were incredibly unprofessional and irresponsible. They likely dismissed the reality of the trauma facing the victim's families and community by neglecting to take the case seriously. DeBardeleben tried by 2 to get the community to react to a kidnapping in broad daylight of 3 middle class white girls. Because the FW police were so non-responsive to the reality of the crisis, his efforts to create fear and alarm in the community to some extent seemed to have FAILED. (again I do not know enough about the actual larger media and police reaction to these crimes in the immediate hours, days and weeks after the girls went missing but the sense I got was that the FWPD dropped the ball from the get go - more information about these details would be helpful to me),. He tried by being seen, at night with them in his pickup truck (likely a stolen vehicle with stolen plates) and 2 sending a note to the family's home.

So his next attempt, in a carbon copy crime - the Lyon girls - included this bizarre, psycho-sexual behavior of the TRM in advance of the crime as a way to vastly increase the likelihood that he would be sketched in the papers.

 

[justthinkin]

Some good points there, firstman. I know more than I care to know by reading about Debardeleben's activities. I've also seen both sketches of the TRM man. And yeah, I can even believe Debardeleben would torture his ex-wife by blaming him killing children on her.

But, but, but, Debardeleben was short, and his face is very much a triangular shape, while the TRM guy has a long face in both sketches which would lead me to believe he was a taller person. I agree with your point about the nose in the second sketch. I think the first sketch of TRM looks like Coffey.

 

[thefirstman]

You cannot trust your senses.

Have you ever searched for your car keys and discovered they are in your hands? Ever searched for glasses while they were on your face or on your head or around your neck? Ever searched for the bottle of ketchup and looked right at it and simply cannot find it?

Additionally, memory is highly unreliable - we cannot trust our memories.

Since sketch 2 was a collaboration of many eye witness testimonies, vs sketch 1, which was from a 13 year old boy intrigued with the "interview" of two of his schoolmates in an open air mall on March 25, 1975. Because you had many more details and many more points of cross reference to go upon, sketch 2 carries more weight. Please note thought that sketch 1 contains the separated eyes.

Some information documented on DeBardeleben including his height (on the of description list below):

Sex
Male
Race
White
Number of victims
8+
Country where killing occurred
United States
States where killing occurred
Louisiana, Rhode Island, Greece
Cities where killing occurred
Bossier City, Barrington, Lake Ontario
Type of killer
Organized lust, sexual sadist
Height
6’0”

I am not sure why some question his height in relation to TRM. Others who actually eye-witnessed TRM (Jeb on the Lyon sisters websleuth) also questioned if DeBardeleben was "tall enough". I do not understand this - am I missing something? His height was documented as 6 feet.

Also Justthinkin, you made a statement in your first post "The hairline is vastly different, and even if Debar pulled his hair back, I'm not sure he'd have that much forehead based on the photos of him I've seen".

I have not seen a photo of his hairline. Mostly he does the "Moe" look from the 3 stooges - pulling his hair down with "bangs" I think its properly named. There are other crime scene sketches of DeBardeleben committing other crimes - Edna MacDonald was one - "mall passer" sketches were others that depicted DeBardeleben with his hair line showing. This is/was a simple technique to create misdirection or confusion. All that said, I have NEVER seen a photograph of DeBardeleben with his hairline or forehead showing.

Have you seen other photos? Can you send a link?

While it would be true that IF Coffey were a criminal that had been documented as having committed crimes that were loaded with sexual sadism; or was emboldened enough to blazon his face in public places, crowded malls prior to or while conducting child kidnappings I would be MUCH more convinced that the Sketch was an attempt at Coffey...But since SO very little of the Lyon sister crime characteristics fit Coffey's crime profiles that it stretches credulity to consider him more as a suspect. (All of the children victims Coffey has been strongly suspected of having harmed or killed, and or those he was convicted of killing, there bodies were found - Coffey was not known to have, nor was he actively suspected of, nor pursued by law enforcement for any crime of any child in which the body has remained missing - except he was suspected - for a period of time - of having abducted the Lyon girls. No-one in all of the DC metropolitan area could place Coffey any near the Wheaton Plaza nor any of the TRM reports in 1987. Please note that Coffey was employed, and therefore had public records and was in regular contact with co-employees. Public calls for help from the police in tying Coffey to anything remotely connected to the missing Lyon girls came up with nothing).

Also there was a man who strongly believed he eye witnessed the Lyon girls April 6, 1975 gagged and bound in the back seat of the kidnapper's car (also on the Lyon sisters thread "what happened next" I think Dmarsh). This eye-witnessing was documented in the Washington Post and reportedly corroborated by more then one eye witness.

He agreed that the man he saw looked like the 2nd published sketch of TRM and could very well be DeBardeleben based on photos circa 1975.

He also, independently concluded that the perpetrator would be a sexual sadist - and he came to this conclusion in the years after the kidnapping but before such a technical definition existed. Fred Coffey was NOT a sexual sadist - he does not belong in the "Great White Shark" category of sexual predators - he was a kidnapper, rapist and murderer - he was a pedophile and sick and vile criminal. The act of keeping the girls alive for days and putting them in a car in daylight and driving them around during rush hour indicates that the perpetrator was a sexual sadist.

 

[STANDREID]

Please forgive if this has been brought up before but, from the same era and region, has George Washington Hicks II been looked at regarding this case? He was a sex offender who also abducted and murdered Roxann Jo Jeeves as well as her little son Kristopher in Dallas County during 1981.

 

[justthinkin]

You cannot trust your senses.

Have you ever searched for your car keys and discovered they are in your hands? Ever searched for glasses while they were on your face or on your head or around your neck? Ever searched for the bottle of ketchup and looked right at it and simply cannot find it?

Additionally, memory is highly unreliable - we cannot trust our memories.

Since sketch 2 was a collaboration of many eye witness testimonies, vs sketch 1, which was from a 13 year old boy intrigued with the "interview" of two of his schoolmates in an open air mall on March 25, 1975. Because you had many more details and many more points of cross reference to go upon, sketch 2 carries more weight. Please note thought that sketch 1 contains the separated eyes.

Some information documented on DeBardeleben including his height (on the of description list below):

Sex
Male
Race
White
Number of victims
8+
Country where killing occurred
United States
States where killing occurred
Louisiana, Rhode Island, Greece
Cities where killing occurred
Bossier City, Barrington, Lake Ontario
Type of killer
Organized lust, sexual sadist
Height
6’0”

I am not sure why some question his height in relation to TRM. Others who actually eye-witnessed TRM (Jeb on the Lyon sisters websleuth) also questioned if DeBardeleben was "tall enough". I do not understand this - am I missing something? His height was documented as 6 feet.

Also Justthinkin, you made a statement in your first post "The hairline is vastly different, and even if Debar pulled his hair back, I'm not sure he'd have that much forehead based on the photos of him I've seen".

I have not seen a photo of his hairline. Mostly he does the "Moe" look from the 3 stooges - pulling his hair down with "bangs" I think its properly named. There are other crime scene sketches of DeBardeleben committing other crimes - Edna MacDonald was one - "mall passer" sketches were others that depicted DeBardeleben with his hair line showing. This is/was a simple technique to create misdirection or confusion. All that said, I have NEVER seen a photograph of DeBardeleben with his hairline or forehead showing.

Have you seen other photos? Can you send a link?

While it would be true that IF Coffey were a criminal that had been documented as having committed crimes that were loaded with sexual sadism; or was emboldened enough to blazon his face in public places, crowded malls prior to or while conducting child kidnappings I would be MUCH more convinced that the Sketch was an attempt at Coffey...But since SO very little of the Lyon sister crime characteristics fit Coffey's crime profiles that it stretches credulity to consider him more as a suspect. (All of the children victims Coffey has been strongly suspected of having harmed or killed, and or those he was convicted of killing, there bodies were found - Coffey was not known to have, nor was he actively suspected of, nor pursued by law enforcement for any crime of any child in which the body has remained missing - except he was suspected - for a period of time - of having abducted the Lyon girls. No-one in all of the DC metropolitan area could place Coffey any near the Wheaton Plaza nor any of the TRM reports in 1987. Please note that Coffey was employed, and therefore had public records and was in regular contact with co-employees. Public calls for help from the police in tying Coffey to anything remotely connected to the missing Lyon girls came up with nothing).

Also there was a man who strongly believed he eye witnessed the Lyon girls April 6, 1975 gagged and bound in the back seat of the kidnapper's car (also on the Lyon sisters thread "what happened next" I think Dmarsh). This eye-witnessing was documented in the Washington Post and reportedly corroborated by more then one eye witness.

He agreed that the man he saw looked like the 2nd published sketch of TRM and could very well be DeBardeleben based on photos circa 1975.

He also, independently concluded that the perpetrator would be a sexual sadist - and he came to this conclusion in the years after the kidnapping but before such a technical definition existed. Fred Coffey was NOT a sexual sadist - he does not belong in the "Great White Shark" category of sexual predators - he was a kidnapper, rapist and murderer - he was a pedophile and sick and vile criminal. The act of keeping the girls alive for days and putting them in a car in daylight and driving them around during rush hour indicates that the perpetrator was a sexual sadist.

I don't know where I got that Debardeleben was short. Guess my mind was on the fritz. I just bought the book, Beyond Cruel, by Michaud.
In it are pics of Debardeleben, and yes the forehead in the TRM sketches could fit, but there's one thing that always stands out with Debardeleben. He has very thick eyebrows, and it would be likely that anyone seeing him would remember those eyebrows and his nose over any other facial features. I really don't think someone seeing him would remember the nose without remembering his eyebrows.

 

[thefirstman]

Justthinkin,
Notice that DeBardeleben has a recessed hairline in the earliest photos of him in the Beyond Cruel book.

Also there was a statement by one of his victims - a woman kidnapped in Howard County Maryland in 1979 - she stated that her kidnapper, later convicted for the crime DeBardeleben, had a "receding hairline".

Also eyebrows are an easy fix for a kidnapper who was priming and preening himself as he put on a Maryland State police uniform that he had stolen from a dry cleaning firm a month to six weeks earlier.

The linkage characteristics overwhelmingly point to DeBardeleben in the Lyon girls case - and that in turn points back to The Missing Trio.

Who had a passion for doing crimes at crowded malls.
Who was a sexual sadist.
Who used Tape Recorders (Tape Recorder Man - TRM).
Who used cue cards and wrote excessive notes (TRM had cue cards in which he asked girls to read from them into his tape recorder for his answering machine).
Who impersonated Police.
Who kidnapped and kept victims for days (Lyon girls were seen alive gagged and bound in the back seat of a car some 10 days after their vanishing).
Who provoked police (notes to the missing trio homes and one also found written by Sheila Lyon in a bottle in a stream months after vanishing).
Who had proximity and knowledge of the area(s) (Fort Worth, and Wheaton, MD).
Who was known to be capable of multiple kidnappings in broad daylight at crowded malls.
Who was seen by some eye-witnesses at the scene of the crime and still able to go undetected and unknown to the larger public.
Who was bold, arrogant, and overwhelmingly sadistic!

 

[dashamarie]

In response to JeannieC:

I wonder how many other unsolved cases relate to him. How many states do you know he lived in, committed crimes in, etc? There are lists available in most bios of him. After being discharged from the military in Texas he mostly seemed to stick around areas where he knew friends and family. Texas and the Virginia/Maryland area were both common. He was arrested for counterfeiting and travelled a lot to stay under the radar passing fake bills. He was ultimately caught in Kentucky, I believe.

I wonder if they got his DNA. Was he executed or did he die in prison? When was he tried and in which state? If he was imprisoned for a felony at the time the laws went into effect his DNA would have been collected. He died in prison in 2010. He was imprisoned in NC but I don't know if he was tried there as well. However, the secret service pursued him, so I think that is Federal jurisdiction, which changes things some.

Three girls at one time and in a mall is so strange. I wonder if he did it and had his wife along to assist. Did all of his wives participate? (Did I read that he had 3 wives)? How many children did he have? (DNA). He had 5 wives. I think two were forced to participate. He had three children. One was given up for adoption.

 

[thefirstman]

Thanks Dashamarie for responding to those questions about DeBardeleben.

DeBardeleben likely used the kind policeman/security guard posture with these 3 victims.

His ruse was likely a call to them for assistance. He may have enticed them with a cash reward. The book Cruel Deception by Michaud gives the line for line transcription of his telephone ploys that DeBardeleben wrote out to fraud the elderly out of there money.

One question he used was "Mrs. __________ you can keep a secret, can't you...Good"...

So he was crafty, squirrelly (as Michaud described him) and was sensitized to saying things that would leverage people into giving him advantage.

As a security guard he could have offered them a cash reward for their involvement with a man that they had just walked past inside of the mall area. He likely spied them from the moment they parked and followed them by foot from a distance....Later when he encounters them returning to their car he parks their vehicle in with his own and asks them "Did you see the employee in The Gap store wearing an orange shirt? Well he has been under our suspicion for some time now and he has been likely the one who has gotten access to mall security deposits and has stolen quite a bit of money. You girls can keep a secret can't you? If you help our security team their could be a large bonus in this for you, say $2000 or more. What do you think? This will only take a few minutes".

Since Carol Miller (her actually name), his 4th wife had actually left him he was enraged and he may have even threatened her that if she left him he would harm children.

DeBardeleben likely had a safe house. Newspaper adds circa the late fall, early winter 1974 that show advertizements for rental properties in relatively remote areas may be of interest. He would have used an alias and may have paid by mail.

 

[Mystikal]

http://www.the33tv.com/news/kdaf-new-leads-missing-trio-fort-worth-story,0,4478815.story

Not sure if posted the link correctly but I was excited to see this case in the news again. I came across this case by accident almost 15 years ago and not a Christmas has gone by without my thoughts for these young girls and the families. I grew up in the area of Seminary South from 76-86. My mom was a young mother that shopped the mall frequently and as I grew up she never let go of mine or any of my 3 sisters when we were in the mall. This story of the missing trio is why. It pains me to know that an answer seems so close but so far away. As others have said in previous posts, someone knows what happened. I have been comparing pictures from missing persons and there are so many similiarities that can be seen everywhere. I hope the answers are comig soon for the families.

 

[amber1]

Still searching for the truth.
---
you are far from forgotten.