Still feeling awkward, I leave his office and walk through the sprawling academy, saying a friendly “hello” to any other witches Hunter and I pass by. I open the door and step out, making it a few steps before my phone gets enough service to start dinging, letting me know I have a text. I stop, and the sounds of the forest surround me.
There’s something so relaxing and calming in nature. I tip my head up, looking at the green leaves that are finally coming back to all the trees.
“It’s Julia,” I tell Hunter. We had asked her to use her hacking skills to see if she could get any info on the murders from any police records that are still on file.
Julia: Just to clarify, you said the tongues were cut out and crosses were marked on the victims’ forehead with their own blood, right?
Me: Yeah. Gruesome, I know.
Julia: And you’re sure these murders happened in the 80s?
Me: 1988 to be exact.
Julia: And the murderer is dead?
Me: Yep
Julia starts typing but then the little bubble disappears and a second later, my phone rings.
“Hey, you got a minute?” she says as soon as I answer.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Okay, so records from that far back are a little difficult to access, but murders that could be based off of religious or occult reasons are tracked by the Order. The crosses were recorded as upside down.”
I get a chill and think back to poor Allison, being frozen and forced to watch Stuart stand over Marissa.
“You’re right. Allison was looking at Marissa from the top of her head down.”
“So, the first time a body was found strangled with the cross on the forehead was 1986. The tongue wasn’t removed, but killers often improve the more they kill.”
“Lovely.”
“Right? They get more cocky as well. Sometimes that’s good and causes a slip-up, sometimes it gives them time to perfect their craft. Anyway, ten years later, two more girls were killed in Arizona. Same thing. Strangled, tongues removed and crosses drawn on the foreheads. The FBI got involved and asked the public for info, but they never disclosed the details in fear of a copycat since the crimes were so spread apart.”
Bernice said Stuart died three years after he killed Marissa and Allison. The woman is in her late eighties, but her mind is perfectly sound. She told me the only reason she’s in the nursing home was because she’s diabetic and has wounds on her feet that just won’t heal.
“Almost exactly a year after that, another girl was killed. It happened on a Native American reservation, which means it didn’t get the media coverage or police work that it should have.”
“Four years later there was a string of killings in Colorado. The media named the serial killer the Denver Strangler.”
“Fuck, I’ve watched a documentary series on that. The tongues weren’t cut out, though.”
“No, and the bodies were burned this time. This isn’t on any official report since there’s no credibility, but supposedly a psychic reported that a, and I quote, “large man with dark hair and beady eyes watched each girl for several weeks before breaking into their homes and killing them. He marked them with the sign of the cross before dousing them in gasoline”. Fast forward to 2007 and I was able to track down three murders that are similar in nature. A woman was found burned to death in her car and her tongue was cut out. Another was strangled and her tongue was bitten in half. There were post mortem wounds on her chin and forehead that make it look like the killer pulled her tongue out and clamped her own jaw shut on it.”
“Oh my god.”
“I know. The crime scene photos are brutal to look at for that one. And then there was another, a sixteen year old boy who was strangled and marked with an upside down cross. Not a woman this time so the connection wasn’t made right away, but Ethan told me about your witch theory and this kid, Shawn Cypress, had a blog about Satan worshiping. There’s another big time gap, and in 2018 we have the classic strangulation and cross murder again in Canada. That was the only record I was able to pull since my contact in the Order only has access to US files. But there was media coverage on it that detailed the murder. It was the first time all the details were publicly aired, and it’s almost as if that scared the killer. There hadn’t been a murder until recently.”
“How recent?”
“Two weeks ago. A forty-two year old woman who had a big following on TikTok.”
“Let me guess: she posted about witchcraft.”
“Yep. The investigation is still open and was ruled an accident at first. I only tagged this one based on the whole witch hunter angle, and the fact that the accelerant they found at the scene was the same as the 2007 car fire murder. It was turpentine.”
“You’re good. Like, damn, Julia. I’m impressed.”