4. The Mysterious Disappearance of Cindy Song
On Halloween of 2001, 21 year old Pennsylvania State University student, Cindy Song disappeared after attending a Halloween party at a local night club. Around 2 am, still dressed in her bunny costume, Song left the nightclub and went to a friend’s house for two hours before being dropped off outside her apartment.
She was never seen again.
A search of her apartment revealed that Song had made it inside because the false eyelashes she was wearing as part of her costume were on the nightstand. There was no sign of a struggle.
Shortly after her disappearance a witness came forward saying she had seen a person matching Song’s description in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, some 200 miles from her apartment. The witness claimed the woman was calling out for help from a car driven by an unidentified male.
In 2003, a bank robber by the name of Hugo Marcus Selenski was arrested and when his property was searched, the remains of up to 12 people were found in his backyard. When questioned, Selenski told police that he and another man named Michael Jason Kerkowski Jr. had kidnapped and murdered Song. Kerkowski Jr. was unable to corroborate the story however, as he was one of the people whose remains were found in Selenski’s backyard. Selenski went on to tell police that he had murdered Kerkowski Jr. after he found out he had kept the bunny ears as a souvenir from Song’s Halloween costume.
Despite Selenski’s testimony, investigators have been unable to charge him with her murder due to a lack of evidence. He is still a suspect, however Song’s case remains unsolved.
3. The Halloween Babysitter Mystery
On Halloween night in 1977, 19 month old Nima Louise Carter was abducted from her house in Lawton, Oklahoma. It was thought that since the windows in Carter’s room were locked, the abductor may have been hiding in the closet, waiting for her parents to fall asleep before taking the child.
23 days later, a group of children playing in a nearby abandoned house made a gruesome discovery when they opened an old refrigerator. Inside was the body of a young girl, later identified as Carter.
A year and a half prior to Carter’s abduction, 3 year old twin sisters Mary and Tina Carpitcher had been taken from their home and locked in a refrigerator at another abandoned house about one mile from where Carter’s body was discovered. The sisters were found two days later. Tina had survived but Mary had suffocated.
Surviving sister Tina, identified her abductor as Jacqueline Roubideaux, a friend of the family. However, Roubideaux was not charged due to a lack of evidence. She was free and soon after, became the babysitter of Nima Louise Carter.
Despite the eerie similarity of the crimes, Roubideaux never admitted to, nor was ever convicted of Carter’s murder.
Some years later, she was retried for the murder of Mary Carpitcher. This time she was found guilty and received a life sentence.
2. The Texas Interstate Murders
On Halloween in 1979, the body of an unidentified female was found along interstate 35, in Georgetown, Texas. The woman was believed to have been between the ages of 15 and 30 and had been strangled. She was discovered wearing nothing but a pair of orange socks.
The following year, once again on Halloween, another young woman was found murdered. She too had been strangled. Her body was discovered by a truck driver along Interstate 45, near Huntsville in Walker County, Texas.
The manager of a South End Gulf station along with two employees at the Hitch ‘n’ Post truck stop claimed to have seen the young woman while she was still alive that Halloween night. One reported that she asked for directions to Ellis Prison, claiming she wanted to visit a friend there. She then set off towards the prison on foot.
Investigators showed inmates and staff at the prison a photo of the victim, however no one claimed to have seen her.
In 1982, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the murder of the woman in the orange socks. He claimed he had picked her up in Oklahoma and driven to Georgetown. Naturally, he became a suspect in the second woman’s murder however bite marks on her shoulder did not match his dental charts.
Lucas was eventually convicted of the murder of ‘orange socks’ and was sentenced to the death penalty. However, two years later Lucas recanted his confession and had his sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Further evidence was discovered showing that Lucas was likely working in Florida at the time of the murder and therefore probably not involved.
Despite exhaustive investigations, neither of the victims have ever been able to be identified and to this day their killer or killers remain on the loose.
1. Chilling Final Words
On Halloween in 1981 a 76 year old nun was attacked and murdered while she slept at the St. Francis Convent in Amarillo, Texas. Five weeks later, a 17 year old, intellectually disabled boy named Johnny Frank Garrett was arrested. He was convicted and sentenced to the death penalty.
Garrett was granted a temporary reprieve after Pope John Paul II asked for clemency. The Texas Board of Pardons then held a vote on whether or not to reduce Garrett’s sentence to life in prison. The death penalty was retained unanimously.
Garrett was eventually executed by lethal injection on the 11th February, 1992, despite maintaining his innocence the entire time.
In 2008, University of Houston Law School graduate Jesse Quackenbush, made a documentary about Garrett’s case titled The Last Word. In it, he argues that Garrett was innocent of the crime. The documentary claims that the investigation was performed poorly and that law enforcement officials acted hastily in order to secure a quick conviction. It also claims that new evidence uncovered years after Garrett was executed, actually proved that they had the wrong man.
In Garrett’s final statement before his death, he professed his innocence one last time then swore that he would get his revenge on those responsible for his murder.
That was 8 real unsolved Halloween mysteries. Pretty creepy hey? Which one spooked you the most? Let us know!
