Police and paramedics were soon on the scene although, for the latter, there was nothing to be done. Theresa Burns was dead, shot six times in the head and neck with a weapon that ballistics identified as a .22. Her body was transported to the medical examiner’s office in South Bend, Indiana, where it was determined that the teenager had also been raped. That should have yielded a wealth of biological material but oddly the pathologist found no traces of seminal fluid, no skin cells, no stray hairs, on Theresa’s body or on her clothes. Investigators were having somewhat better luck back at the crime scene where they retrieved an important piece of evidence, the ejector rod of a .22-caliber pistol.

  Two weeks later, a man walked into a Mishawaka police station and handed in a .22-caliber pistol that he said he’d found in his stepson’s bedroom. The gun was missing an ejector rod. This might have provided a break in the case but for some reason, no connection was made to the unsolved homicide. The case went cold and remained so until 2010 when it came up for review. Theresa Burns’ clothes were re-examined at that time. The hope was that modern forensics would find traces of DNA that had been missed 22 years earlier.

  But the results were disappointing. Nothing was detected and it would be three more years before St. Joseph County’s Homicide Unit decided to take another crack at the case. This was always going to be a long shot. Twenty-five years had now lapsed and with no forensics to go on, detectives would have to rely on the imperfect memories of Theresa’s former friends and peers. Could anyone recall anything from that traumatic time? Had they seen or heard anything that might be of interest to the police? It turns out that several of them had. As detectives questioned potential witnesses, one name came up time and again – Phillip Geans.

  Everyone knew that Phillip was obsessed with Theresa Burns back then and that he’d responded angrily when she started dating Shawn Matthews. Now, it emerged that Geans had made actual threats. He’d told several friends that he was going to kill Theresa. He’d also boasted about committing the murder. Two weeks after Theresa’s death, he’d showed up drunk at a party and waved a .22 around, saying that it was the gun he’d used to kill her.

  The source of the weapon also came to light during this round of questioning. Geans had stolen it from the grandmother of a classmate named Tom Wood. Wood had known this all along but had said nothing until now. Also in confessional mood was James Lewis, who’d known Geans since the third grade. It turns out that Geans had confessed the murder to Lewis, years after the event. “Yeah, I killed her,” he’d told his friend. “What the f**k does it matter?”

  Phillip Geans does not seem like the kind of person you’d ever want to trust with a secret. He was a blabbermouth who could not even keep his mouth shut about a terrible crime that could potentially send him to death row. The next person he confided in was a woman named Corinne Hartwig, who he dated between 2002 and 2008. According to Hartwig, Geans remained obsessed with Theresa Burns and would mention her in conversation at least two to three times a week. These confessionals extended to an admission of murder although Corinne kept the secret to herself until 2010, when her current boyfriend convinced her to talk to the police.

  The other individuals who had been let in on Phillip Geans’ deadly secret did not go to the authorities of their own accord. They only spoke up when detectives came knocking at their door. Now, with the testimony of several witnesses, and the connection finally made between Geans and the murder weapon, it was time to act. Phillip Geans was arrested on December 13, 2013. He was charged with the murder of Theresa Burns and checked into the St. Joseph County Jail in South Bend, where he was held without bond.

  Any lawyer assigned to a defendant in a criminal matter will offer a commonsense piece of advice – don’t say anything that might incriminate you. We must assume that this counsel was offered to Phillip Geans. If so, Geans chose to ignore it. His behavior behind bars revealed a highly unstable personality. At times, he seemed almost upbeat. On other occasions, he was angry and agitated. Quite often, he appeared remorseful and could be heard crying in his cell. “Theresa, I love you. I’m sorry Theresa, I love you. Please forgive me, Jesus.” This understandably alarmed the prison authorities, who placed him on suicide watch.

  But Geans also had calmer moments. He once told a guard that his life had been derailed by the murder of “his girl” many years ago and that he’d struggled to cope with her death ever since. His other confidants were two of his fellow inmates. To these men, Geans did not portray Theresa as the love of his life. He called her a cheat and a tramp and said that he’d paid her back for being unfaithful to him. He’d followed her from school that day, forced his way into her house, and raped her at gunpoint. Then he’d pointed the .22 at her and pulled the trigger six times, ensuring that she’d never hurt him again.

  This was the narrative that the prosecution put before the court. The defense proclaimed Geans’s innocence and offered an alternative suspect – James Lewis. Lewis had once threatened a girlfriend that he’d do to her what he’d done to Theresa Burns. That was an ill-advised threat. There was no evidence to suggest that it was any more than that.

  All of the evidence pointed to Phillip Geans. He was the one with motive, the one who’d had the murder weapon in his possession, the one who’d shot his mouth off time and again about killing Theresa Burns. In doing so, he’d talked himself right into trouble. But for his inability to keep his mouth shut, Geans would never have faced justice for his crime. As it was, he was convicted of Theresa Burns’ murder in September 2015. Three months later, on December 4, he was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

  Phillip Geans was 17 years old on the day he gunned down Theresa Burns. He was 42 years old when he entered the prison term. With good behavior, he will be eligible for release in 2044, at age 71. As for Theresa, she had but 16 years on this earth, her life and future stolen by a psychopath.

  Psycho for Love

  To Douglas, Lynne was the one, the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. To Lynne, Doug was just a guy. She was fond of him but no more. He wanted them to be exclusive. She wanted to date other men. When he started calling her the love of his life and dropping hints that he was getting ready to propose, she ended things. Doug did not take it well.

  In fact, the Cal State engineering student started stalking his ex, who worked as a neonatal nurse at the Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Torrance, California. He’d sit across the street from her apartment in his distinctive orange Datsun 280Z, watching her every move. Then, one night, when Lynne brought home a male visitor, he burst in, threw a lamp at her, and called her a “whore.” If this was his way of trying to win back her affection, it was a flawed strategy.

  Lynne Knight was a newcomer to California. The 28-year-old had recently moved from her native Canada to take up a job offer. It was in the winter of 1979 that she met Doug Bradford on a weekend skiing trip. The attraction was mutual, and the pair started dating. For Lynne, Doug should have been quite a catch. He was handsome and attentive, and he had good prospects as a future engineer. But Doug could also be overbearing, his shows of affection bordering on creepy. Often, he’d let himself into Lynne’s apartment when she was at work and do household chores for her. Four months in, and it all became too much. The pair had been due to attend the wedding of Lynne’s sister back in Canada, where Lynne was to be maid of honor. It was a trip that neither of them would make.

  At around 3:00 a.m. on the morning of August 30, 1979, a neighbor of Lynne Knight was awakened by screams coming from her apartment. He went to the window and peered out into the dark just in time to see a man emerge from the unit. The man had his back to the neighbor, and he was moving fast, exiting through a sliding door, and then running in the direction of the street. The neighbor did not get a good look at him but knew he was up to no good. He went immediately to call the police.

  And the neighbor’s instincts about this shadowy figure turned out to be tragically, horrifically accurate. Officers who responded to his call, walked in on a scene of absolute carnage. Lynne Knight was sprawled naked across her bed, her eyes sightlessly focused on the ceiling, blood pooled around her from a terrible neck wound. The instrument of her destruction, a homemade garrote, lay nearby. This had been constructed of a length of picture wire and a couple of dowels. The young woman had also been stabbed several times, with a 10-inch knife from her kitchen. Most of these injuries were centered around her chest but one thrust had penetrated her thigh, severing the femoral artery, causing her to bleed to death. Even that had not sated the killer’s blood lust. He’d used the knife to mutilate the young woman’s breasts. He’d then fled the scene, taking nothing with him but a gold necklace that Lynne Knight had been known to wear.

  This was not a sex crime, and it wasn’t a burglary gone wrong. The extreme overkill and the lewd way that the body was posed, suggested a personal motive. Looking into the dead woman’s background, investigators found that she had dated several men in the weeks leading up to her death. That was where they would start their inquiries. All these men had to be tracked down and questioned. All were cooperative and seemed genuinely saddened by Lynne’s death, all but one.

  Questioned by detectives, Douglas Bradford appeared reluctant to talk about his ex. He told the investigators that he was “done with Lynne” and wanted to “put her out of his mind.” He then slipped up by referring to Lynne in the past tense, even though the cops had not yet told him that she was dead, saying only that she was missing. Bradford further incriminated himself by referencing the missing necklace. Initially, he said that he had bought the gold chain for Lynne. He was then pressed on the issue and changed his story, saying that he had helped her pick it out.

  These inconsistent answers, along with his apparent knowledge of the crime scene, had swiftly elevated Douglas Bradford into the prime suspect slot. However, none of it counted as evidence. What did the police have that connected Bradford to the murder? Nothing. Not a fingerprint, not a hair, not a fiber. To rectify that situation, detectives asked if they could search his car. Bradford said yes but the CSIs came up empty. The car reeked of chemicals and had obviously undergone a thorough cleaning.

  As for Bradford’s whereabouts on the night of the murder, he said that he’d been out on the water, piloting a two-man sailboat along the coast, all by himself and with no running lights. According to Bradford, the wind had dropped during his late-night cruise, and he’d had to row the vessel back to shore, docking after 3:00 a.m. With no one to back up the alibi, it was far from solid. Still, it was difficult to break. With insufficient evidence to support an arrest warrant, the police were forced to let the matter drop. The investigation was shelved in August 1982. The case went cold.

  Douglas Bradford would go on to graduate from Cal State, to work in his chosen field, to marry, and settle down. Meanwhile, the murder of Lynne Knight remained unsolved and, apparently, unsolvable. The evidence was scant, and there was no biological material that might be submitted for DNA testing. This was not a prime candidate for review.

  However, in 2000, Torrance PD’s cold case unit decided to take another look. They started by reinterviewing witnesses and came away with the same impression that the original investigators had formed. Douglas Bradford was the main person of interest. Bradford had been obsessed with Lynne Knight; he had been angry over their breakup and had been stalking her; he’d had access to her apartment; he alone had motive and opportunity.

  But what was true in 1979 was still true in 2000. Probable cause remained elusive. It would be several years before the Torrance Police Department was ready to escalate things. In 2007, they executed search warrants at Bradford’s home and at his mother’s house, where he’d been living back in 1979. Two important pieces of evidence would emerge from these searches. The first was several lengths of picture wire. Bradford’s mother was an artist and used a particular type of eight-strand wire to hang her paintings. The same wire had been found at the crime scene, twisted into a garotte.

  The second piece of evidence was a name found in Doug Bradford’s address book. Jerilyn Seacat turned out to be Bradford’s long-term girlfriend. He’d been dating her for 13 years, never telling her that he was married. He had, however, told him about the “love of his life,” a nurse he’d dated back in the 1970s, who he’d planned to marry but who had died of a terminal illness.

  Jerilyn Seacat ended her relationship with Bradford after she found that he’d lied to her, that Lynne Knight had been murdered, and that he was a suspect. Then, Jerilyn would see another side of the charming, attentive Doug. In a chilling echo of the Knight case, he started stalking her, following her in his car, showing up at her house in the middle of the night, telling her that he was watching her and that he knew about her new boyfriend. Fortunately for Jerilyn, Bradford would be arrested before things could escalate further.

  This was a far from solid case, the evidence circumstantial at best. Prosecutors were taking a big risk bringing it to trial. A jury might easily acquit and then Bradford would be out of reach of further prosecution, thanks to the double jeopardy rule. Still, Bradford had escaped justice for 30 years and would continue to do so unless they did something. It was now or never.

  The case that prosecutors presented at the 2014 trial was this. Douglas Bradford had been in love with Lynne Knight and had been incensed when she ended their relationship. He’d started stalking her, following her around, watching her home. During this time, he saw Lynne with several other men, which only fueled his anger. Eventually, he decided to murder her, constructing a homemade garotte for that purpose. In the early morning hours of August 30, 1979, he entered her apartment via a sliding door and attacked her as she slept.

  Bradford’s original plan was to strangle Lynne with the garotte. However, it was poorly conceived. Rather than cutting off her air supply, the wire sliced into her throat, allowing her to breathe through the hole in her windpipe. Bradford then broke off the attack, fetched a knife from the kitchen, and returned to stab the semi-conscious woman to death. Then, after mutilating her breasts with the knife, he slipped away into the night, to wash the blood from his hands and construct his alibi. It wasn’t the cleverest murder ever imagined but Bradford had luck on his side and would escape prosecution.

  This was a compelling story, although one that was open to attack by the defense. The only evidence supporting the narrative was a length of wire, some questionable statements made by the defendant, and his unfortunate habit of stalking any woman who jilted him. The defense could have ripped those arguments to shreds but chose instead to attack the character of the murder victim. Lynne Knight was depicted as a promiscuous young woman who had slept with at least four men in the week that she was killed. “Any of these men might have murdered her,” the defense attorney told the court. No one was really in a position to disagree with him.

  However, the defense strategy did not play well with the jury. After deliberating for two days, it returned a guilty verdict against the defendant. Douglas Bradford was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison, his conviction and sentence upheld on appeal. Bradford was 65 years old when he entered the prison system. He will likely see out the rest of his days behind bars. Obsessive love comes at a cost.

  Child’s Play

  When Frank Lemberger married his wife, Nola, in the early 80s, he not only gained a wife but an instant family. Nola had been married before and had a daughter, a sweet 11-year-old named Rebecca. Such arrangements can sometimes be tricky but not in this case. Frank was fond of Becky and decided to adopt her. With the paperwork completed, the little girl slotted right into the Lemberger clan. Shy and sensitive by nature, she developed a rapport with her cousin, Denise. The little girls would spend hours together, playing with Barbies and sticker books, and riding their bikes around the neighborhood. It was a happy time. It would soon be tainted by evil.

  Wednesday, March 2, 1983, started as an ordinary day in the Lemberger household. Becky had breakfast as usual, kissed her mom goodbye as she always did, and set off on the short walk to Edison Elementary School at 935 E. 1050 North, in Ogden, Utah.

  That was at 8:00 a.m. No one noticed anything untoward until 4:30 p.m. when Becky still had not returned home. Nola then started calling her daughter’s friends before she and Frank hit the streets, searching for Becky. Then, they heard some disturbing news. Rebecca had not shown up at school that day. No one had seen her for hours. That was when the Lembergers decided to call in the police.

  A search was conducted that night, a search that continued well into the hours of darkness and turned up nothing. It would be resolved the next day, not by the authorities, but by a group of boys, playing in a field just west of 729 N. Mountain Road. A shed stood in the middle of the field, and the children made the ill-fated decision to enter it. There was a tarpaulin spread out on the floor, covering something bulky. One of the boys peeled back a corner of the tarp, then quickly dropped it back in place and set off running. His friends, not even certain what had happened, ran after him.

  The object that had caused this stampede was a body. Police officers, summoned to the scene, found the battered corpse of a little girl, her face badly swollen and covered in dried blood. Even without a formal identification, they knew who she was. A teary-eyed Frank Lemberger later made it official. The autopsy revealed that Becky had been sexually assaulted and then bludgeoned to death with a rock.

 

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