TN TN - Reba 'Kay' Green, 14, Nashville, 9 Jan 1966

[ellroy1958]

Remembering 14 year old Reba Kay Green of Nashville, whose unsolved murder took place in the middle of the night/early Sunday morning, January 9th, 1966, 50 years ago tomorrow.

This is one of three unsolved murders of young girls in Nashville in the 1960s, the other two being Wanda June Anderson in 1965 and Kathy Jones in 1969.

Reba Kay was asleep in her bed lying next to her twin sister, Rita Shay, when someone mysteriously entered their house at 1820 Nassau Street, stabbed her once in her left chest, and left. She died before she was brought to General Hospital. Her twin sister was left unharmed. Eight people were in the house at the time. Her 19 year old brother, Neal, found her, and yelled out to wake the family. A 9 year old sister, Georgia Diane, told police she saw a man standing over her sister Reba Kay, but her mother said she doubted this.

 

[ellroy1958]

'...Reba Kay Green was stabbed as she slept in a bed next to her twin sister. She was just 14-years old. Her sister, Rita Shay Hudgins, can not forget her mother waking her up.
"I said what's wrong. She says turn around and look at your sister and I did. I flew out of the bed," said Hudgins.'
http://www.officialcoldcaseinvestig...?9482-3-Girls-Murdered-Nashville-Please-Help-!!!

 

[ellroy1958]

"She was found in her bed, and she had been stabbed one time. In the bed with her was her twin sister when she was stabbed," Postiglione said.

Someone killed 14-year-old Reba Kay Green while her family slept inside their north Nashville home on Nassau Street.

"It was really bizarre for someone to come in, and stab her one time, then leave. That was very unusual," Postiglione said.

http://www.wsmv.com/story/19024068/cold-case-detectives-seek-publics-help-in-grisly-killings

 

[Laughing]

"She was found in her bed, and she had been stabbed one time. In the bed with her was her twin sister when she was stabbed," Postiglione said.

Someone killed 14-year-old Reba Kay Green while her family slept inside their north Nashville home on Nassau Street.

"It was really bizarre for someone to come in, and stab her one time, then leave. That was very unusual," Postiglione said.

http://www.wsmv.com/story/19024068/cold-case-detectives-seek-publics-help-in-grisly-killings

How did LE determine that there was an intruder?

I guess half a century later we'll never know....

 

[ellroy1958]

Hello Laughing, your questions are the ones I have, too. There were a couple of articles the Nashville papers about the murders at the time. The first article I have is from the January 10th, 1966 Nashville Banner, in which Reba Kay Green's mother is reported to have said the intruder entered the house "by reaching through a broken glass pane in a storm door, then flipping off a night latch." Metro police gave a lie detector test to the brother who discovered her stabbed in bed, and the Banner reported in this article that the test results were "inconclusive". The article also reports complaints at the time of peeping toms in the neighborhood, as well as one attempted assault that took place the previous August, 1965, when 14 year old Wanda Kay Martin, who lived across the street at 1823 Nassau Street, was pulled by her feet out her bedroom window. She screamed, and her assailant let her go.

 

[ellroy1958]

The Nashville Tennessean, January 10th, 1966.

The 19 year brother, Edgar Neal Green, tells the police that "something, I don't know exactly what," woke him up. "I went to the bedroom and saw somebody walking past the window... They appeared to be laughing."

Nine year old Diana Green tells police she had gotten up to go to the restroom. "I saw a man standing over Kay's bed... I ran back to bed."

The mother speculates that the knife attack which killed Reba Kay may have been intended for her twin sister as the girls switched sides of the bed that Saturday night, "that Reba Kay was sleeping where her sister usually slept."

The article describes the house as a four-room frame house with ten people sleeping there that night.

 

[ellroy1958]

Photographs from the January 10th, 1966 Nashville Tennessean.

 

[December]

I have heard about this case my entire life. It is creepy. Nassau Steet , by then, was kind of a bad neighborhood from what I understand. I am not saying anything bad about this family, but I just mean there was crime around there. I don't have any problem believing there was a peeping tom. That doesn't explain this murder though.

 

[Richard]

Reba Kay Green, 14
Murdered 9 January 1966

 

[dotr]

Oct 29 2024

Nashville Police launch new website chronicling cold homicide, missing persons cases

Nashville's new cold case website details cases as far back as the mid-1960s with cases as recent as last year.

www.tennessean.com

''Who killed 11-year-olds Wanda June Anderson and Glenda Faye Mitchell, and 14-year-old Reba Key Green?

That's a question Nashville's cold case investigators are hoping to answer some 55-plus years since their deaths. The three girls are the Metro Nashville Police Department's oldest cold case homicides, featured on a new website launched Monday.

The website, nashvillecoldcase.gov, features homicide, unidentified and missing persons cases from the mid-1960s to 2023.

Investigators hope it will preserve the memory of those killed and bring visibility to their cases "to bring those responsible for these acts of violence to justice and to bring about a resolution for the families of both homicide victims and missing persons."

 

[dotr]

1965-000000 – Wanda June Anderson - Nashville Cold Case

Shortly after midnight on Friday, July 16th, 1965, Kay May and her husband Howard returned to their apartment at 1213 ... Read more

nashvillecoldcase.gov

''Shortly after midnight on Friday, July 16th, 1965, Kay May and her husband Howard returned to their apartment at 1213 16th Ave. S. to discover blood on the bed and Wanda June Anderson, Kay May’s younger sister, missing. They began looking for her and found her in the back yard. At some point in the two hours they had been gone, she had been taken out of the home, raped and received severe blunt force trauma injuries to which she succumbed the following day, on July 17th, 1965. Wanda June Anderson was 11 years old at the time of her death.

If you have any information regarding the murder of Wanda June Anderson, please contact the Cold Case Homicide Unit at [email protected]

You can also call the Nashville Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Division anonymously at 615-742-7463''