7. Reet Jurvetson
For decades, Reet Jurvetson was known simply as Jane Doe No. 59. Her body had first been discovered in Los Angeles in 1969. During that summer, the entire world was transfixed on the horrible crimes of the Manson Family, a quasi-hippie cult of murderers directed by the criminal guru Charles Manson. The Montreal native had been stabbed 150 times.
The “free-spirited” and “happy” Jurvetson had been born in Sweden as the daughter of Finnish immigrants. By age nineteen, Jurvetson was seeking fame and fortune in Los Angeles. Given that her body was found so close to other Manson Family crimes, Los Angeles investigators cannot rule out that Jurvetson was murdered by either a family member or an associate.
8. Marina Elizabeth Habe
On New Years Day 1969, the body of Marina Elizabeth Habe was found in the dense underbrush of Los Angeles’ Mulholland Drive. The seventeen-year-old University of Hawaii student was back in Los Angeles in order to visit her family, including her screenwriter father Hans Habe.
Days earlier, on December 28, 1968, Habe had been abducted from her mother’s house located at 89621 Cynthia Avenue. Habe had a date that night with a twenty-year-old named John Hornburg. Hornburg was well known to the Habe family. Eloise Hardt, Habe’s mother, reported that she heard someone say “go” or “blow” at 3:15 am — the exact time when Hornburg claims that he dropped Habe off at her mother’s house.
When police found Habe’s corpse, they found that she had been raped, stabbed, and had her heart and throat slashed. At that time, a number of rapes had been reported in West Hollywood. Later, one of the members of the Manson Family admitted that the group had known Habe.
9. JoAnn Tate
An innocent man may be languishing away in a Missouri jail because of the actions of a serial killer. In 1985, Rodney Lincoln was convicted of murdering thirty-five-year-old mother JoAnn Tate and sexually assaulting her two daughters. All throughout the trial, Lincoln maintained his innocence. Thirty years later, Melissa DeBoer, one of the assaulted girls who provided eyewitness testimony against Lincoln, now believes that he is innocent.
Instead of Lincoln, DeBoer believes that her mother was the victim of serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells. Known as the “Cross Country Killer,” Sells was a drifter who attacked women all across America between 1985 and 1999.Sells himself admitted to killing as many as seventy people but was convicted only of the murder of Kaylene Jo “Katy” Harris of Texas.
The murder of Tate fits the profile of Sells’ other crimes, including his attack on a thirteen-year-old girl (he stabbed her sixteen times) and a home invasion assault of a ten-year-old.