Have you ever had a gut feeling that something terrible was going to happen? Have you ever gotten a feeling that something bad was going to happen to you? You’ve heard of gut instinct and that you should always listen to it. A man woke up one day and had a gut feeling that he was going to die. This is that man’s story.
Francis Leavy was a kindhearted man who worked as a firefighter during the 1920s. He was loved by many and disliked by few. He was always smiling and willing to help anyone. On April 18, 1924, his peers saw a change in his personality and got worried. Leavy wasn’t smiling; he was grumpy and upset. His peers wanted to know what was wrong with him and how they could make him feel better. Leavy was washing a window at the Chicago Fire Department when his co-workers asked him what was wrong. He replied by saying he had an eerie feeling, the feeling that he was going to meet his demise that day. Right when he said that the bell rang out signaling, there was a fire somewhere that needed to be taken care of.
All of the firefighters got on their gear and left, racing towards the fire. The fire was in a multi-level building. When they got there, Leavy and the other firefighters assessed how many people might be on the top floors and how they could help them. The firefighters were confident that everyone would be rescued but the fire had other plans. The flames claimed the bottom layer of the building, and the roof caved in. The walls caved in and pinned people in their path under the rubble. Leavy was one of the ones pinned under the burning rubble.
Francis Leavy died that day, making his premonition come true. While all of the firefighters that lived were trying to process the death of their colleagues, something strange happened. They were sitting at the firehouse the next day, remembering their fallen men when something odd appeared on a window. It was the window that Leavy had been washing the previous day before the call. A handprint that looked distinctly looked like Leavy’s handprint. People were shocked and confused.
The handprint of Francis Leavy on the window of the firehouse.
A fireman tried to wash the window to get the handprint off. The handprint remained on the window no matter what cleaning products or chemicals were used to try to get it off. For years, the handprint remained on the window, and the mystery surrounding it never was solved. The only way they were able to get the handprint off was by a newspaper boy who accidentally threw a newspaper into the window shattering it in 1944.
There have been many mysteries that have originated in China, and I am about to tell you one of them. There are plenty of villages in China. Some are strange, and some are normal. However, is there no village, town, city, state, or country that doesn’t have its odd people, strange tales, and suspicious whisperings?
The village of Yangsi, China, maybe a town you have never heard of, but it is a village that you’ll soon remember. Yangsi is located in the Sichuan Province. There are only eighty villagers, but that’s not the reason they are famous. The Chinese government has banned visitors to Yangsi because of the mystery surrounding it.
What the region around the area looks like.
Yangsi was claimed to be cursed. There are a couple of different stories of how they were cursed. One story is that the village felt dark forces descend upon the village because the citizens believed they were cursed because of their ancestors’ anger over improper burials. Another story is that a turtle cursed the village. Villagers cooked and ate a black turtle, and soon after, that’s when the curse hit. However, no one knows the real reason for the strange curse.
Over 60 years ago, a curse befell the villagers. A curse that caused a disease to plague the town. The disease affected the younger children, ages five to seven the most. The disease caused them to stop growing. Most people know this medical condition as Dwarfism. However, the condition only appears in 1 of 20,000 people. Around half of the villagers have Dwarfism. This is a medical anomaly that so many people in one village would have the same rare condition. It is said that several hundred dwarfs were residing in the Sichuan region at one point.
Some of the villagers from Yangsi.
Some of the children who got it also appeared to suffer from other disabilities. They had children who only grew up to be around 3 feet tall.
It seems like, after all of these years, the villagers are growing out of the disease. The youngest generation has seen a decline in the medical condition.
Who knows what caused it in the first place? Was It a curse? Was it just human nature? We may never really know. All and all, I’d say that if the villagers are happy and they feel normal, that’s all that matters.
This is another story that I have some ties to. It’s the kind of mystery I usually don’t write about because it is more fantastical than it is realistic. However, I have had personal experience with the events and the location of this mystery.
The Marfa Lights is a Texas phenomenon that is known throughout the country. It is a strange event that happens every night in West Texas, on highway 90 east of Marfa in Presidio County, Texas. Every night when the skies grow black with only little white twinklings of stars and the moon to light the night, something otherworldly happens. The stars and the moon soon are not the only lights in the sky. White lights suddenly appear in the air, hover, and then disappear. Sometimes the lights move in unpredicted ways that are not like shooting stars. Sometimes they have been known to change colors. They appear out of nowhere, and they disappear just as fast. These lights are called the Marfa Lights, Chinati Lights, or the Marfa Mystery Lights.
An artistic representation of the lights.
Before you think this is all a hoax and that someone is in charge of it all, the lights have been spotted since the 19th century. The first documented encounter with the lights was in 1957 in an issue of Coronet Magazine. They have been around for nearly seventy years, which makes it more probable that a person isn’t behind this phenomenon. People are not just having a collective hallucination because there have been hundreds if not thousands of people have visited the site and have seen the lights for themselves. The lights have been documented by scientists and celebrities. James Dean was entranced by the lights and kept a telescope with him while filming the movie Giant to watch them every night.
You can see them at the Marfa Lights Viewing Center; it is the best place to view them. Ghost lights have been a phenomenon that happens worldwide. If you’ve ever seen the Disney princess movie Brave, Merida refers to the orb of light she finds as a will-o-wisp, but other names aren’t as intriguing. While these kinds of lights are widely known through many cultures, no one knows what causes them. Some people believe they are paranormal; others think they are roaming spirits. The people who are skeptical of the lights justify their presence as just reflections from campfires or headlights of cars.
People watching the Marfa Lights at the viewing center.
Two notable studies have been done on the Marfa lights. One study was done by the Society of Physics students at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2004. The other research was done by a group of scientists from Texas State University four years later. They both seemed to come to the same conclusion. They claim that the lights were caused by the headlights of cars driving on Highway 67, or by small campfires in the distance. An unhappy conclusion to the visitors of Marfa who’ve seen the lights themselves. People want mystery. They love the excitement of the unknown.
I want to challenge these findings because I have been to Marfa, and I have seen the lights for myself. My family loves to travel, and road-tripping has been a staple in my family. I was seven weeks old when I went on my first road trip; it wasn’t necessary; my parents just love to travel. I love to do it, as well. We went to Marfa solely for the mystery lights themselves. I was younger, and it was freezing cold outside. I was excited at first but soon became bored and disappointed after about an hour or so had gone by, and there was no “lights” insight. Just as we were about to leave, something bright appeared in the distance. After that, lights became present, showing up and disappearing. It was mesmerizing. As wondrous as it was, we were cold and had been observing them for a while, we left. I have always been curious about those lights, and from someone who saw them in person, they did not seem like reflections of headlights.
A short video of the lights and people’s experiences with them.
We have seen reflections from miles away on the heated pavement where the road looks wet but indeed isn’t. Some describe this as one possible explanation for those lights. Sure, this could be a reason, but I have never seen those same types of reflections in the sky. Also, if this were true, then don’t you think we would have more occurrences of these types of phenomenons around the country. If we see the heat waves coming off the ground on any roads, wouldn’t it seem like we would see the same kind of reflection with car lights and campfires all of the time? If that were the case, then the Marfa lights would be nothing special. Also, the lights were spotted in the 1850s before Texas even had roads or cars. It could be campfires if it isn’t cars. However, I don’t know about y’all, but I have never seen any weird moving orbs of light reflected from a campfire before. I’m not saying it’s something otherworldly, and I’m not saying it isn’t. There is one thing I believe for sure, and that is that the Marfa lights are more than just mere reflections from car headlights and campfires. What do you guys think might be the cause of the Marfa lights? Let me know down in the comments.
I hope everyone is doing okay right now. I know it’s difficult and for the people who go to my school we’ve been in this quarantine now for two weeks and who knows when things will be normal again. It also kind of sucks that everyone had their spring breaks canceled, but, in some ways, I guess it was for the best. It allowed families to spend quality time with each other. It also helped people get more comfortable with the idea and reality of living in quarantine. This situation is truly the best way to keep ourselves and other people safe. I hope it doesn’t last two months like scientists are estimating it to be. I miss my friends and the normalcy of what every-day life used to be like, but I know you all feel the same. I hope everyone is making the best out of this situation. It really is the only thing we can do right now. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Texas has reportedly the most monetary amount of buried treasure compared to every other state in the U.S. The estimated amount in Texas is $340 billion in buried treasure. That $340 billion is from a reported 229 treasure sites across Texas. Today we are going to be talking about one of those specific treasures in Texas. A supposed treasure was hidden by Sam Bass, a famous train, bank, and stagecoach robber.
Sam Bass
In 1878, Sam Bass had gone with his right-hand man Joel Collins to Big Springs, Nebraska, where they robbed the Union Pacific Railroad. They ended up getting 3,000 brand new 1877 $20 gold pieces. People have recovered $25,000 and some jewelry, but no one knows where the rest of the loot went. The rest of what they had stolen was said to be $60,000. This is the heist that mad Sam famous and in an important criminal to catch in the eyes of the law.
After they robbed that train, they headed to Round Rock in Texas, where they hid out. In their time of hiding, they were planning to rob another bank. They decided to hide the loot they had gotten from the Union Pacific Railroad job and other jobs in the Hill Country by Round Rock.
Round Rock
Unfortunately, on July 21st, 1878, Bass died in a shootout with the Texas Rangers in 1879 when he was 27 years old. What was truly saddening about his death was the fact that he died on his birthday in extreme pain from a fatal gunshot wound.
No one has found his treasure yet, but some people think they have gotten close. Since his death, people have claimed that the treasure is in a hollowed-out tree on the road that has now been named Sam Bass Road, which is two miles west of Round Rock.
He has been known to have hidden his loot from people in all sorts of places from other robberies. Some other sites he is known to have hidden his treasure is in a cave in Signal Hill and a cave near Grapevine Lake. I guess he liked hiding things in caves. People haven’t found those treasures yet either. The question is….. are the legends true, and these places do have buried treasure, or they are just misleading tricks to make sure no one will know the actual location of his treasure.
New Year’s Eve 2011. Businesses were closing early; people started gathering at bars, clubs, restaurants, and each other’s homes. Friends, families, and people all over the world were getting ready to end this year and greet the coming new year with a bang and some Champaign. Only something was amiss that night. Although people were having a great time, it was about to get strange on the streets of Beebe, Arkansas.
At 11:30 pm on New Year’s Eve, reports were coming in from Beebe, Arkansas, that birds were falling dead from the sky. Officials estimate around 5,000 Red-Winged Blackbirds, European Starlings, Common Grackles, and Brown-Headed Cowbirds fell dead before midnight.
A picture of a fallen Red-Winged Blackbird.
There were reporting’s of fireworks going off before midnight, and that’s what sent the birds out flying. “Right before they began to fall, it appears that really loud booms from professional-grade-fireworks – 10 to 12 of them, a few seconds apart were reported in the general vicinity of a roost of birds,” said Karen Row, an ornithologist from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. “There were other, legal fireworks set off at the same time that might have then forced the birds to fly over than they normally do, below treetop level, and these birds have very poor night vision and do not typically fly at night.” From then on, scientists say that they had crashed into cars, buildings, trees, and other objects. They think that is what caused the bird’s death.
The first picture is of some of the birds that died on the side of the road together. The second picture shows people from Arkansas Game and Fish Comission collecting the dead birds to disect them to figure out the cause of death.
Apparently, 5,000 birds randomly dying is a reasonably small amount. These types of birds usually congregate for winter, and the record for the most amount of birds in one roost is 23 million birds. It doesn’t seem like scientists were too worried and that everything seemed normal.
Not only was Arkansas affected, but other countries had the same thing happen to them in the same week! Louisiana and Sweden also had reports of birds falling from the sky. However, if scientists think that it was caused by fireworks, then why was it reported in other places on a different day than New Year’s Eve. Yes, people do shoot off fireworks on the days leading up to New Year’s Eve but not to the degree of which would terrify that many birds at once.
I don’t think that all of those birds’ deaths were from fireworks creating loud sounds. If this were normal, why wouldn’t it have happened every year like this? Why wouldn’t the same type of thing happen on the Fourth of July? It was only one year that all of these birds dropped dead from the sky, and it must be from more than just firework displays. This is too unique for it just to be “loud noises from firework displays.” The only question is, what really is the cause for these bird’s death? Tell me your theories in the comments below.
So this week has been tough for not only me but for the whole world. We are going through a crisis right now, and it’s like something no one has ever seen for over 50 years. I hope everything works out for the best and that this quarantine works. Since everyone has been told not to go out and about, I guess this is the time for reading blogs. I hope mine can give you some enjoyment throughout these hard times. Thank you for reading and enjoy this week’s blog!
Georgia Rudolph, a nurse from Macon, Georgia. Believes that she is the reincarnation of Sandra J. Jenkins. Ever since she was little, she had visions of a woman in the early 1900s. She claimed that the visions would feel like memories, and others would feel like dreams. She was adopted at five years old, and that is apparently when the visions began. She started drawing the face of a young woman as well as a house in her pictures. She claims to have seen the woman either as a teenager or as a young girl. She saw wheels from a boat and a river in her memories as well as visions of a young man.
In 1984 Georgia started having meet up with Douglas Smith, a psychologist who took her through several regressive hypnotic sessions. During these sessions, she claimed that she believed she is the reincarnation of Sandra J. Jenkins. She knew specific thins about this woman like how she was born in 1895 and had a fiancé named Tommy Hicks. Tommy Hicks was the man that she saw in her visions.
Soon her visions started getting more vivid and specific details of this woman’s life. She claimed that the boat she saw was Sandra’s family’s boat and that Tommy died in 1914 from falling off a ship. She also claimed that Sandra committed suicide when she found out that she was pregnant with Tommy’s baby after he died. She said that Sandra was buried in an unmarked grave because she died from suicide.
Georgia went to Marietta, Ohio, because she had mentioned Marietta in her sessions. When she got to Ohio, she met up with Ted Bauer, a resident who worked at the newspaper and toured around the town. While going through the city together, Georgia would point out places where old buildings from the early 1900s used to be, and every time, she pointed out a place, Ted would tell her that she was correct. He told her that some of the buildings she pointed out were built in the 1900s but were changed in the mid-1900s.
Georgia found no records for Sandra J. Jenkins in Marietta. She then went to Newport, which was five miles out of Marietta and was a small farming community. It was there that she found the old house that she believed Sandra grew up in that house. Georgia found the gravesite of Sandra’s grandmother was nearby that house. Her headstone had the name “Mary Bevan Greene.” Georgia then researched the house and found out that it was owned by the Greene family as well as some of the same types of boats that she saw in her visions.
Georgia never found proof of birth or death records for either Sandra or Tommy. However, she did find some of the Greene’s living members, and they had a picture from 1908. In that picture, Georgia found the lady that was in her dreams. A family member told her that the girl had drowned in the river behind the house.
The possible picture of Sandra J. Jenkins.
Her case was broadcasted to the public. From that broadcast came Jack Turnock, a college professor who claims that he was Tommy Hicks. To make sure he wasn’t coming forward to get attention and that his memories were faked, he went under regressive hypnosis with Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith decided whether he was telling the truth. That all of the similar memories that he shared with Georgia were real, at least to him. Unfortunately, we will never know for certain if they were truly reincarnated or not. In 2013 Georgia Rudolph died.
Texas is known for many reasons and beloved for many more. In Texas, there are a lot of lizards, and one of the most loved and known lizards in Texas are the horned lizards. Horned lizards are also known as Horney Toads as an affectionate nickname. My dad and I were both born in Texas, so even though I have mostly grown up in Arkansas, Texas will always be my home as well. When I was little, my dad used to tell me stories of how he would catch Horney Toads and play with them when he was growing up. Based on the stories he told me, I have always had respect and a place in my heart for them ever since. When I found this story about a Horned Lizard in Texas, I knew I had to share it. A little Horned Lizard has made a town in Texas famous. He never intended to be a miracle lizard, but somehow, he was.
What a Texas Horned Lizard (Horney Toad) looks like.
In 1897, Eastland County was expanding and becoming more and more popular by the day. The people declared that they needed a new courthouse to keep up with the growing population. They held a ceremony for the new courthouse, and as part of the celebration, they decided to make a time capsule. They put a bible and some other documents and proclamations in the time capsule, but at the last moment, a justice of the peace decided to ad something. He had a Horned Lizard in his hand that his son had caught earlier that morning. He decided to put it in the marble block right before it was sealed and placed at the corner of the town square. The new courthouse was then built around it.
(As a side note, I feel so bad for that poor lizard because it was just living its life and then got placed in a box to die of starvation and no one cared.)
Thirty-one years later, in 1928, the courthouse needs to be replaced again because the population never stopped growing. The courthouse was torn down so they could make a new art deco courthouse in the same spot. The cornerstone (time capsule) was opened, they pulled out the Horned Lizard. It was flat and dusty but all of a sudden, it moved!
People were bewildered at the seemingly alive lizard. Lizards have a life capacity of usually only a couple of years. This makes it even more impossible to believe that a lizard could stay alive for three decades.
The community named the lizard Old Rip after the Rip Van Winkle legend. The lizard became a local celebrity from then on. Will Wood, who had found the lizard as a boy, took him on a grand tour to meet all kinds of people. One of the people Old Rip met was President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.
When Old Rip returned to Eastland, he was kept in a fishbowl with sand and received red ants for food. Unfortunately, a year after he was found in the time capsule, he was found dead of pneumonia.
When he died, Old Rip was embalmed and put on display in a velvet-lined casket. He was put on display in the lobby of the courthouse. Many people have paid their respects to him and continue to pay their respects to him today.
Old Rip in all his presevered glory.
A decade after Old Rips’ death, someone stole his remains. The person who stole Old Rip claimed that he and some other people had put the Horned Lizard in the time capsule before people reopened it to make it look like the Lizard had been alive the whole thirty-one years. Luckily though, Old Rip was returned unharmed.
The place where Old Rip was originally put on display.
There is a festival each fall called Ripfest. The festival has a lizard theme. When school children come to see Old Rip, they are taken to a courtroom to make a left-handed oath stating that the Old Rip legend is true.
I love how a little Horned Lizard can make such a fuss in a town that his legend has withstood time itself. The Ripfest that they hold every year reminds me of our Toad Suck Festival. It’s crazy that little animals can have a significant effect on towns and bring so many people joy. I hope you guys enjoyed this story as much as I have had writing it.
This week’s blog is a mystery and not, in fact, a murder. I thought it would be a nice change in pace. This blog is about a mystery in Arkansas. Have you been to Fouke, Arkansas? Did you know about the mystery and legend of the town? Well, that’s what our blog is about this week.
The legend of the “Fouke Monster,” also known as the “Beast of Boggy Creek,” has been widely known about mystery in Arkansas. People have even made a movie out of it. When I was a little girl, my parents took me there to find the beast for ourselves. We didn’t find anything sadly, but it sure was fun.
On May 1, 1971, Bobby and Elizabeth Ford had a terrifying incident with the monster. Late that night, Elizabeth was sleeping on their couch, waiting for Bobby to come home from a hunting trip. All of a sudden, a creature burst through their screen window above the couch she was sleeping on. She screamed so loud that Bobby, who had come back from hunting with his brother, had heard her and ran to help her. They chased off the monster by firing several shots as it ran into the forest. Apparently, at midnight the next night, the creature came back and grabbed Bobby by the shoulders, raised him in the air, and threw him to the ground. He broke free and crawled into his house, where he got his gun. He was later treated at St. Michael Hospital in Texarkana. Bobby had been smoking on the porch before all of this had happened, so I assume that after nightfall, the creature waited for Bobby to come out of the house unarmed.
The Fords thought they had hit the monster, but no blood was found. The area was searched, but no one could find the creature. The search did find three-toed footprints close to the house, scratch marks on the porch, and damage to a window and the siding on the house. The Fords had only been living in their home for one week before the events and had heard odd noises but had never seen the creature until that night.
What people think the Boggy Creek Beast looks like.
In May of that year, three people Wilma Woods, D. Woods, and Mrs. Seagrass, reported to the police that they saw an ape-like creature crossing Highway 71 just south of Fouke. The creature was reportedly 7-8 feet tall, had thick long hair covering its body, and weighed about 300 pounds and walks upright. More sightings were reported in the upcoming months by tourists and residents. Large three-toed footprints along the banks of Boggy Creek and a soybean field. The footprints and the sightings were investigated by a game warden, Carl Gaylon, who had said he had never seen anything like that before. After people heard about the sightings of this creature, Little Rock’s radio station KAAY offered a $1,000 reward for the beast, dead or alive. Only once dogs were able to track the creature’s scent. The three dogs started whimpering and refused to go on, but the hunters only smelled something horrible and felt like they were being watched. Daylight was fading, and they decided to quit their search before it was too dark.
The Hwy 60 bridge where the Sulphur and Red Rivers merge.
In 1973 a documentary-style horror film was made based on the Boggy Creek Beast. It was a hit and grossed over $22 million. Interest in the beast had declined in 1974. However, in 1978, the same three-toed tracks were found by two brothers. Several ranchers had reported missing cattle, and the body of a dog was found in the woods. The creature was blamed for all the trouble, but nothing was ever proven. Ever since, there have been sightings of the beast, but no one has ever proven its existence.
This blog is a little more difficult to write than the others have been. This story hits close to home. When I say that, I mean it quite literally I’m afraid. This is the murder of Kacie Woody. She was a girl who attended the same school I did. I never went to school with her, but we did know her name and I know people who knew and went to school with her. It’s the one tragic story we have that everyone knows in my town.
At the time Kacie was 12 years old, she played the saxophone in the school band (something you won’t read about, but I know because of my band teachers), and was attending Greenbrier Middle School. She was well-loved by her classmates, as well as her family and friends.
This is Kacie Woody
Her father, Rick Woody, a Greenbrier Police officer, worked late at night, and her brother was taking night classes at college. Kacie was left alone most nights but her family thought she could take care of herself. With the nights alone, she became lonely and she lived too far out for her to see any friends regularly. So she turned to an online chatroom to keep her company. It was a Christian teen chat room. That is where it all began. She met two boys and they became instant friends. One of the boys was named David; he was 17 years old and lived in California. The other was named Scott; he was a 14-year-old from Atlanta, Georgia.
Kacie had a strong connection with David. They talked almost every day. She told him about how her mother died from a car wreck involving a horse in the road. He confided in her telling her about his aunt’s car wreck that happened in Arkansas and how she was doing badly in the hospital. They became each other’s best friend and leaned on each other for support. After a couple of months, they started talking on the phone. Her father knew that she talked to boys on the internet but when Kacie shared how David was turning 18 soon, he began to worry about the friendship and told her to stop talking to him altogether. But let’s be real, when you have someone you care about and you’re told to stop speaking to them, you’re going to keep talking to them.
As Kacie and David’s relationship had been getting closer but more forbidden. Kacie had found Scott, and they also became close quickly. Except for this time, Kacie and Scott became more than friends and they soon became an item. She told David about Scott and he said he wanted to remain friends. David had mentioned coming to Arkansas to see his aunt at the hospital and wanted to meet her but Kacie turned him down. She told her friends that she never intended to meet Scott or David in person.
Kacie had a photo of Scott in her locker. Her friend Sam noticed it and got concerned. If Scott had sent her that picture, then he knows her address. Who’s to say that David didn’t have her address too.
On December 3rd, 2002, her brother came back from classes to find she wasn’t there. He called his dad to see if he knew where she was. He didn’t know where she was; he came home immediately to figure out what had happened. When he got home, he had found the computer on with a chat screen opened in the middle of a conversation. He also found her shoes, coat, and glasses bent with one frame broken. He knew that wherever Kacie had gone, it wasn’t because she did it willingly.
He got together a search team, and the town started to look for her. Everyone was worried but no one had even come close to finding her by the next morning. It wasn’t until the police talked to her best friends that they had a lead. Her friends told them about Scott, but how they had never met him or seen him in real life. The FBI got involved at that point and looked at Kacie and Scott’s conversations. They traced his computer to where he told Kacie he lived. Scott was telling the truth.
Scott had police show up at his home. His mom answered the door. His parents knew nothing of Kacie nor that Scott even had a girlfriend. Scott, hearing what had happened, was worried about Kacie but had proven he was in Georgia the night of her disappearance.
After finding out that Scott was who he said he was, the girls remembered David, and so they told the police about him and how he was talking about coming to Arkansas. The police checked around local motels and hotels for any leads. They found a car with a California license plate and asked the reception desk about who from California had been staying there. The vehicle registration belonged to David Fuller and he had booked the hotel room for the week. Some odd things that the receptionist had mentioned about him were that he turned down maid service and was angry about the poor internet connection. When they entered his room, it looked like no one had even slept there. They found camouflage clothing and rubber gloves in his room. They checked his phone number with Woody’s phone records and it was a match.
After checking out David’s background, they discovered he was 47 years old and was married with two children. He also had recently used his credit card at a storage facility. At 6 p.m. on December 4th, police arrived at the storage locker, where the door was closed but unlocked. The police opened the door, and the world stood still. A single gunshot rang out through the air. No one knew what to do. SWAT came soon after and tried to negotiate for three hours trying to communicate with whoever was inside. Eventually, SWAT gave up and they entered the room.
Inside they found David Fuller and Kacie Woody’s bodies. Kacie was tied up with chains to the rental van he had kidnapped her in. She had been shot in the head. David was found with a self-inflicted gun wound. He had raped and then shot Kacie.
It turns out David had been to Arkansas more than that one time. He had come twice to spy on her and to rent the storage facility. He claimed to be a traveler that bought expensive cars and sold them but needed a place to store them temporarily. David had kidnapped Kacie by using chloroform. When doing an autopsy, it appears that she may have been unconscious from the moment he captured her to the moment she died. I know that’s not super reassuring but hopefully, she was not awake when all of those horrible things happened to her.
Her father has since set up the Kacie Woody foundation, where he educates parents and children about the dangers of talking to strangers online and internet predators.
Kacie’s father with pictures of Kacie
This blog was harder than I thought to write. I am so sorry for the loss of Kacie. She seemed like a wonderful person, and I wish I had never gotten the opportunity to write this story. I thank you for your efforts in teaching people about internet dangers. I also thank you, officer Woody, for your service every day as a police officer.
You may have heard of her story, or if you haven’t you might have seen that her story is going to be told in a new show Man with a Van on Investigation Discovery. The episode was aired on Thursday. Her story was actually on an episode of Web of Lies which is also another show on Investigation Discovery. That episode was aired in 2014. I will have a link to that episode at the bottom if you want to watch it for yourself.
Themurder investigation from the mountain kingdom of Lesotho
You’ve heard of kings and queens murdered and people’s bloodlust for the crown in stories of fiction, but what if it happened in real life? What if a case were to occur in today’s time? Well, apparently it has, and it has happened in a remote kingdom. That kingdom is on the tiny mountain of Lesotho.
This is a picture of Lesotho.
Maesaiah Thabane is currently the first lady of Lesotho. She has been charged with the murder of Lesotho’s previous first lady, Lipolelo Thabane, as of last Tuesday. She was also charged with the attempted murder of another woman. She is in police custody as of now.
This is Maesaiah, the current first lady of Lesotho.
The country of Lesotho has less than Two Million people. South Africa surrounds it. Prime Minister Thomas Thabane was forced to promise his resignation and expose the bad politics that have poisoned Lesotho for far too long because of this scandal.
The previous first lady was gunned down by unknown assailants outside of her house in June 2017. Lipolelo had been separated from Thomas Thabane for a long time, but they had never divorced. Lipolelo had been killed two days prior to her estranged husband’s inauguration for his second term as Prime Minister.
This is Lipolelo Thabane, the original wife and first lady.
Thomas Thabane was in a relationship with Maesaiah at the time of his wifes death and with Lipopelo out of the way, Maesaiah could be the true first lady. Just shy of three months later, the couple were married and Maesaiah became the true first lady she always desired to be.
This is a picture taken from the wedding of Thomas Thebane and Maesaiah Thebane.
Thomas Thebane is thirty-two years older than Maesaiah, and because of this, she has brought some youthful presence to the Prime Ministers’ responsibilities. Their people have been impressed with Maesaiah because of this. However, Maesaiah has been in more than her fair shares of scandals as the first lady. She fought with a man that she had a car wreck with when visiting him at the hospital. She also had a man steal from her charitable trust and then that man escaped from prison never to be seen again.
It was likely that the murder allegations against Maesaiah were never going to be revealed until the Prime Minister made a disastrous mistake. Lesotho’s Police Chief, Holomo Molibeli, was the lead investigator on the death of the Prime Minister’s former wife. For some reason, the Prime Minister decided to force Holomo Molibeli to resign. Molibeli, deciding he wasn’t going without a fight, went to court and revealed a secret exposing letter that he wrote to the Prime Minister. The letter describes how the Prime Minister’s phone was used to call a person at the crime scene at the time of the assassination.
After this big reveal, everything went downhill for the Prime Minister and his wife. The Prime Minister has not yet been charged with anything in the case. On January 10th, the police issued an arrest warrant for Maesaiah but she had already fled the country around that point. She arrived back in the country last Tuesday after hiding in South Africa and turned herself in to the police. She hasn’t pleaded to the charges against her yet and she has been granted bail. Eight other suspects will be charged over their links to the case.
It is genuinely shocking how power and lust for it and a better life can turn people into monsters. This whole story sounds like a play Shakespeare would have written. Who knows what this will do for the kingdom. It has brought about interest and fame but for all of the wrong reasons. I’m sure the Lesotho people are outraged and confused. Let’s all hope that better times will soon fall upon the Lesothonians and that we will quickly know who murdered the former first lady.
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Katie's Murders and Mysteries 