Chilling Tales: Scary Monster, #4

CHILLING TALES

Ten Most Chilling True Crime Cases Worldwide

TONY SALE

Copyright © 2024 Antonello Sale

All Rights Reserved.

Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.  

- H. G. Wells

CONTENT

1.1 - The Mysterious Death of Annie McCann

1.2 - What happened to Jim Beaumont's three children?

1.3 - Beverly McGowan, identity violated

1.4 - Marybeth, when a mother becomes a monster

1.5 - Las Cruces, New Mexico - The bowling massacre

1.6 - Erin Caffey - Terror comes at night

1.7 - Karlie and Khandalyce have the same tragic fate

1.8 - The Burger Chef Massacre

1.9 - Who killed Carina Saunders?

1.10 - The Short family - A hot blood-colored August

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF ANNIE MCCANN

CASE 1.1

It was 6am on Halloween 2008 when Dan McCann knocked on his daughter Annie's bedroom door to say goodbye before leaving for work.

"It was dark. But I saw that she was still sleeping under the covers." McCann tells ABC News: "I said, 'Hi Annie, I love you," and I closed the door. "

That was the last time he saw his daughter alive. Annie, was a sixteen year old high school student, passionate about art. Her paintings grace the walls of the family home in Alexandra, Virginia. Raised in a devout Catholic family, Annie enjoys drawing and painting, but her obsession is playing with her beloved dog, Breezy Max. She is a good student who plays basketball and often jokes with her mother Mary Jane. At 16, she still collects cartoon DVDs and storybooks. Annie is always smiling and upbeat. Her parents say she acts as if she's younger than her years. she is a shrewd girl who spends most of her time at home and when she goes out she keeps a small circle of friends. Annie has just gotten her driving license and her parents insist that she use the family white Volvo, which she uses to get to and from school.

On Halloween night she is busy preparing the bags to be distributed for the party soon to come. On October 31, 2008, Dan McCann leaves home to go to his managerial job at the TSA in Washington, D.C., while Mary Jane, a former White House employee and now a full-time housewife and mom, is on her way to upstate New York to visit the couple's son Sam in college. For Mary Jane, the first sign that something is wrong is when she doesn't hear from her daughter that afternoon. Concerned parents start a round of phone calls and learn that she never arrived at school that day. On the unmade bed they find a note, where it is written: "This morning I thought about killing myself, but I realized that instead I can start all over again ... if you really love me, let me go. In the note, Annie reassures her parents that she would be careful. I almost passed out," says Dan McCann. Her parents immediately contact the Fairfax County Police Department. They discover that the girl took her $1,000 savings and jewelry with her and drove away in the family's white Volvo. Everyone is dismayed. Annie's parents and friends had no idea that the model student and family devotee was somehow dissatisfied with her life.

The search continues unabated until November 2, 2008, when Annie's body is found behind a dumpster in a suburb of Baltimore. Homicide detective Sergeant Sean Jones of the Baltimore Police Department suspects a homicide and begins an investigation. Rummaging through his backpack, he discovers that Annie Mccann drove more than 50 miles from her home in Alexandra, Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore police find Annie McCann's white Volvo abandoned at a gas station not far from where her body was found.

November 18, 2008. The inspection of Annie's car by forensics brings to light a footprint that turns out to belong to a young man from Baltimore. Despite finding her car, detectives have few answers. The police discover that Annie was not beaten, strangled or stabbed. At this point, only the autopsy report can clarify. How did Annie Mccann die? It is unclear why she had decided to go to Baltimore, a place she had only occasionally visited with her family. The Baltimore police begin to believe that Annie committed suicide, but her parents are not at all convinced. And they continue to press for the truth to come out. Thus new information emerges from the analyses.

The result of the autopsy arrives: and it is shocking. The report does not reveal any significant plot, in Annie's body were found modest traces of alcohol and a large amount of Lidocaine, an active ingredient widely used as a local anesthetic and antiarrhythmic in many medicines, including Bactine, an antiseptic that Annie used to disinfect the piercing done a few days before the disappearance. Her parents are upset. "We found a bottle of Bactine with the lid off near the car," says Sergeant Jones. And on the rim of the bottle, Annie's DNA is found. "The dispenser on top of the bottle has been completely removed, which requires some force."

The Baltimore medical examiner conducting Annie's autopsy determines that lidocaine poisoning caused her death. But how such a large amount of Lidocaine got into Annie's body is still a mystery. After analyzing the autopsy results, the police conclude that it was a suicide. The mystery of how 16-year-old Annie McCann ended up in Baltimore and ingested a fatal amount of lidocaine has still not been solved, more than twelve years after her body was discovered behind a dumpster in a run-down neighborhood in one of the world's most violence of America.

Her parents still desperate for her are in constant search of the truth. According to the police, since there is no evidence of violence, it is suicide. Case closed? No one among relatives and acquaintances believes that that girl full of life, always smiling could have taken her life. Maryland's chief medical examiner David R. Fowler says the test results were checked several times. He says he also questioned the possibility that it was a Bactine overdose. But, according to the toxicology report, there was a high enough dose of lidocaine to cause the death of an adult person. Police say they have consulted Bayer, the manufacturer of the antiseptic, and they too confirm that the amount of lidocaine in a bottle can be fatal.

Annie's parents, Daniel and Mary Jane McCann, do not rule out a priori that their seemingly happy daughter killed herself. But they focus on the myriad factors that seem to contradict this assumption. Seeking clarity, the McCanns hire private investigator Jim Kontsis, a retired detective with the Baltimore Police Department. Kontsis is just one of many experts the McCanns hire. They also consult with renowned American forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow.

Pathologist Michael Baden says in an interview a year after Annie's death, that he carefully analyzed the autopsy and tests performed by the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office. According to Baden, to ingest the amount of lidocaine found in her body, Annie would have had to drink five or six bottles of Bactine. Baden's authoritative opinion completely changes the investigative framework.

According to Baden, the amount of lidocaine in a single bottle is not enough to kill a person. While, according to the autopsy, there was a massive dose of the substance in the girl's body. Such as to suggest the consecutive ingestion of several bottles of the antiseptic. In short, there was a need for other evidence to support the thesis of suicide. The police, according to the pathologist, should not have come to such a hasty conclusion.

For Annie's parents, it means that the death of her daughter remains a mystery yet to be solved. Meanwhile, the police link a group of Baltimore teenagers to the theft of Annie's car. One of the boys, Darnell Kinlaw, admits to stealing the girl's Volvo and taking her for a spin, but claims he found her body in her backseat, and according to him Annie was already dead. He also claims that he dumped her body and took the car. He denies any involvement in Annie's death.

Sometime later Darnell Kinlaw himself, killed a 26-year-old girl named Lakeisha Player at her Northeast Baltimore home after a violent domestic dispute and stole her car. He was charged with first degree murder. At this point nearly five years have passed since Annie's death, and clues are few, the case is assigned to the Baltimore Police Department's Cold Case Squad. The team confirms that Annie killed herself by ingesting Bactine, highlighting the large amount of lidocaine found in her body. Sergeant Jones stated in an interview that he "has no other evidence to point to any conclusion other than suicide".

The family, however, does not believe this to be the case and continues to search for answers. The McCanns enlist the help of Senator Charles Grassley, head of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, to get answers to her daughter's case. They publicly invite people to write letters to the Senator asking him to look into Annie's case. Also, Diane Downey, from the funeral home that took care of the girl's burial, wrote a letter to Senator Grassley, saying that she absolutely did not believe in the hypothesis of suicide as she was able to personally verify the presence of trauma on her body, Downey also confirms this thesis in various television broadcasts. Also according to the owner of the funeral home, there is a swelling on Annie's forehead, and what Downey considers a cigarette burn. She also notes an incision in the shape of J on the top of her left foot Downey believes the teenager was raped and beaten.

Senator Grassley sends letters to the Baltimore Police Department, the FBI, and Bayer, the manufacturer of Bactine, requesting answers. The Baltimore Police Department and the FBI continue to support the original thesis, holding suicide as the only option. Bayer, the maker of the drug, however, says it's unlikely that the modest amount of lidocaine in a 5-ounce bottle of Bactine could have caused the death. The confirmation that Annie's parents have been waiting for. The thesis supported by the police and the FBI begins to falter. According to the Mcanns, investigators were hasty and approximate in filing the case as a suicide. There are still many dark sides to the Annie McCann case; The skin fragments found under Annie's fingernails, which are often a clue to the identity of an attacker in cases of physical violence, have never been analyzed. Objects with possible traces of DNA were found in and around the girl's car, also never analysed. "Why wasn't it done? Annie's parents wonder. And is it possible to do it now?"

Autopsy results indicate that Annie has at least 20 or more abrasions all over