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June 24th, 1983. 2639 Park Avenue East, Kansas City, Missouri.

At about 5:45 p.m., 16-year-old Terri Allen leaves her house to run an errand. When she doesn’t return home, her worried mother starts calling her friends. The next morning, her lifeless body is found in a brushy area a few blocks from her home. She has been strangled.

Source Citation
“U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012”; School Name: East High School; Year: 1982

Source Information

Ancestry.com. U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-1999 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.

Listeners, this is a cold case: 

Circumstances of the crime: Last seen at 5:45 p.m. June 24, 1983, leaving her home in the 2600 block of Park Avenue in Kansas City. Her strangled body was found at 9 a.m. the next morning in a bushy area near 22nd Street and Woodland Avenue.

Suspect information: No identified suspect.

Anyone with information is asked to call: The Kansas City Police Cold Case Squad at 816-234-5136.

Sources:

Tom Jackman Kansas City Star (April 8, 1990) “Serial Patterns Appear in 42 Unsolved Slayings” 

https://www.kansascity.com/

https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article160154974.html

Rick Montgomery “Despite modern technologies, too many crimes remain unsolved”

https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article160039484.html

Joe Robertson “Standout student found strangled a day after she stepped out to run an errand”

https://www.findagrave.com

https://www.genealogybank.com

https://www.murderpedia.org 

https://newspaperarchive.com/

https://www.ancestry.com/

https://www.newspapers.com/search/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rabbit%20hole

https://www.Wikipedia.org

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November 2nd, 1870. North of Abilene, Kansas.

Respected lawman T J Smith, nicknamed “Bear River Smith,” is brutally murdered while serving an arrest warrant for murder. The desperados responsible, Andrew McConnell and Moses Miles, flee on horseback. 

image from Kansas Memory site — Kansas State Historical Society https://www.kansasmemory.org/

This is a wonderful site with hundreds of images related to Kansas history. Great pictures of the Old West.

Sources

The links to the sources used for this case are listed below.

There’s a very good book called Abilene Lawmen, by Larry Underwood (available on Amazon). I really like the way it paints a picture frontier life in Kansas cow towns like Abilene. There’s also an episode of American Lawmen called “The Two Fisted Marshal of Abilene” on PBS, that reenacts the events of this case. There’s a version on youtube – (if you don’t mind constant ads)

If you google “Thomas Smith Abilene,” there are a number of websites about his life and death. There were a couple that I really www.truewestmagazine.com and www.legendsofamerica.com. The primary newspapers that had relevant articles were the Abilene Chronicle (now the Reflector-Chronicle) and the Topeka Commonwealth (which was bought out by the current Topeka paper, the Capitol-Journal.)

Finally, as always, I googled and wiki’d and went through genealogy sites.

https://www.amazon.com/Abilene-Lawmen-Smith-Hickok-1870-71-Missouri/dp/1886225400

American Lawmen (Ep7 of 8) The Two Fisted Marshal of Abilene | PBS America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwKL-CySGGY

https://www.truewestmagazine.com

https://www.legendsofamerica.com

Gunsmoke Podcasts (I found a couple on Stitcher – search for “Gunsmoke”)

TV Show: https://www.cbs.com/shows/gunsmoke/

Radio: http://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/Gunsmoke.php

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4356/thomas-james-smith

https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/228477/page/1

http://www.kancoll.org/articles/tomsmith.htm

http://www.abilenecityhall.com/index.aspx?NID=605

http://www.abilene-rc.com

https://www.cjonline.com

https://newspaperarchive.com/

https://www.ancestry.com/

https://www.newspapers.com/search/

https://www.genealogybank.com/

https://wikipedia.org

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June 15th, 1929. Fort Riley, Kansas.

Mrs. Zenana Shepard, wife of Army doctor Major Charles A. Shepard, lies severely ill at the Army Hospital. Her life cannot be saved. Unsure of the cause of death, doctors at the hospital ask for Dr. Shepard’s consent to do an autopsy. He refuses, saying that his wife would not want to be mutilated. The commanding general at Fort Riley intervenes. Zenana’s organs and fluids are preserved for analysis.

Sources:

https://denverpost.newsbank.com/

https://www.star-telegram.comhttps://newspaperarchive.com/

https://www.ancestry.com/

https://www.newspapers.com/search/

https://www.genealogybank.com/

https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/rccm.201501-0135OE

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/290/96/

https://livebrooks.com/about-us/history/

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2017/10/22/mercury-was-considered-a-cure-until-it-killed-you.html

https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/coffins-in-a-bottle

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/flappers

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/290/96.html

Thank you for listening. Until next week, please don’t murder anybody. I don’t think you can listen to podcasts behind bars.

You can comment or ask questions below or email me at prisoncitymurders@gmail.com.