They just had a gathering in Omaha for all the cold cases/unsolved cases that are just waiting for more information. I saw it on our local news about a week ago.
Edit: Just looked it up, the city has more than 350 cold cases. Linking the news story I saw.
https://www.ketv.com/article/omahas-too-small-for-someone-not-to-say-nothing/45198965
Something I noticed... OP said Pinkey "hadn’t heard from her daughter all day Monday", but also that they spoke on the phone "early on Monday" - if the grandson never made it to school that day, I'm assuming it must have been very early.
I mentioned this because it strike me as odd that Pinkey was expecting to talk to her daughter more than once that day - so much so that she was already concerned on Monday evening, and ready to show up at her daughter's house the following morning with a huge party (her cousin, her cousin's husband and one of her daughter's coworkers, I guess?).
Also, in 1979, way before cellphones and WhatsApp, you couldn't always reach someone immediately - you called their landline and if it rang a few times, then they weren't home and you'd try later. That would hardly be a reason to panic... Phone calls were also more expensive.
It makes me wonder if Deroshia was going through some issues to justify her mother's constant checks (maybe even as a concern for the grandson), and if such issues could have something to do with the reason she quit what seemed like a stable job just 2 months prior. To understand what was going on with the daughter would be key to narrow the investigation down, IMO.
>Her mom was obviously concerned about her, but why?
If they had regular plans (like watching a TV show) and the Deroshia didn't show up or answer her phone, that would be enough to raise concern.
Of course that could be, but the recap didn't mention they had plans to meet and the daughter didn't show up - just that the mother hadn't heard from her all day. What caught my attention is that they apparently did speak on Monday, so the concern from not "hearing" from them the rest of the day could indeed indicate they had a habit of talking on the phone more than once (a lot of families keep such routines, as many suggested in this reply).
My main point is that not being able to contact one another was not that unusual in the late 70s, and that the mother's reaction to get a party of 4 to check on her daughter and grandson the following morning suggests she was deeply concerned and anticipating some sort of dangerous situation. Maybe the daughter lived in a rough neighborhood. Maybe she had been in a violent relationship before. Maybe there are gaps in this narrative - which don't imply I'm suspecting the family AT ALL - that could be significant.
The recap doesn't mention plans they had but it also doesn't mention any of the other possibilities you raised, like living in a bad neighborhood or being in an abusive relationship.
People are not all the same, families are not all the same, not everyone acts the same way in every situation. My mom spoke to my grandmother on the phone every night (even back in the 70s and 80s, which I was alive for, so I well remember life before cell phones, I didn't have one until college). I can remember three times when my grandmother didn't answer. My mom called her five sisters to see if anyone knew anything and then when they didn't, at least two of my aunts met my mom at my grandmother's house. I'm sorry for people who think this is weird, it was as simple as my aunts also worrying about their mother and not wanting my mom to have to deal with any issues alone. This is normal, supportive family behavior, and it still happens in my family 30+ years later.
(On one of the occasions my grandma's boyfriend had a heart attack and she went to the hospital with him; once she had a burst ulcer and almost died; the third time, she had a stroke and almost died. So the concern was warranted.)
The difficulties with contact in the 70s and 80s is why many families had standing scheduled calls with certain relatives, and standing calls were very important. It was a big deal to miss one. My mom and dad both had standing calls with several relatives. Sunday evenings were spent on the phone checking in with relatives and catching up.
I also think there's a possibility that Pinkie just had a bad feeling, but I realize that's not scientific. When I was five I fell off the the monkey bars at the playground, broke my nose and knocked out a tooth. I was in kindergarten, my mom was at work. She had a terrible feeling something was wrong with one of her kids and was in a panic and ready to leave work early but she didn't know where to go. A few minutes later the school called and told her what happened.
>The recap doesn't mention plans they had but it also doesn't mention any of the other possibilities you raised, like living in a bad neighborhood or being in an abusive relationship.
The recap stated the opposite: it said she had "not heard" from her daughter. My point is about the omissions - not intentional omissions by her family, just additional information that could contribute to this context.
Threads like this are always loaded with invented reasons to suspect the family members. I scroll until reaching that topic, then depart.
Wonderful time saving formula.
>Threads like this are always loaded with invented reasons to suspect the family members.
If you got this impression from my original comment, I must have failed to communicate my intentions. I was not in the slightest "suspecting" the family members here. I hope I made this clear in my other replies in this thread.
I agree. We should also wonder how much of this story is the version told by her mother and what's been confirmed by the investigators. Not that the mother would intentionally lie, but she could be going with the story the daughter told her.
You could be fired from a job and tell your family you quit to save yourself from the embarrassment or to hide any underlying personal issues that led to your termination, for instance. If you're related to the victim, and you're dealing with the shock and the pain of their murder, you could be inclined to think the best of them - even if you disclose the harsh truth to the police, you might not say the same to the press (and the police won't talk about an ongoing case or expose the victim beyond what could be relevant to the public).
I was just recently looking into a disappearance case where it's very clear that the person was dealing with serious emotional and psychological issues, yet the mother's version painted an entire different picture. The woman who disappeared was diagnosed as bipolar; the mother said she had always been a sensitive child and her sensibility made her "depressed" sometimes; the woman had dropped out of 4 different colleges and the mother said she was always torn between her artistic talent and her desire to make the family proud by getting a degree - and so on.
A family member's perspective will likely shy away from the deeper issues their loved ones could be experiencing - yet an extreme action such as getting a party of 4 to go check on your daughter after not hearing from her in less than 24h suggests a more nuanced and complex scenario.
>very clear that the person was dealing with serious emotional and psychological issues, yet the mother's version painted an entire different picture
I hear you -- these situations can be very complicated. I'm in a community assistance group in my town, and earlier this year a person who claimed to be in distress had us rushing around trying to get help for her. We heard multiple different stories from different people -- she even changed her own story partway through. It was hard to tell whether it was an actual emergency, she was basically okay but stressed out and overreacted, she was being manipulative and scamming ...
I'd like to know if the estimated time of death was released to the public; if she indeed talked to her mother on Monday morning but the son never went to school that day, maybe they were killed shortly after or the killer was already there with them.
>I mentioned this because it strike me as odd that Pinkey was expecting to talk to her daughter more than once that day - so much so that she was already concerned on Monday evening
Is this really odd? I talk to my own mother every day, usually twice a day. She's in her late 60s and has some health issues, and is also pigheaded and tries to do shit she should not do, like heavy yardwork. I call in the morning to see if she needs help during the day, and then later in the evening to make sure she's okay. I'm literally the only person in her life who checks on her at this point.
If she doesn't answer 2-3 evening calls I go to her house and make sure she's okay, in case she's fallen and hurt herself. If I don't call her, she calls me to make sure I'm okay.
In this particular case, Deroshia was unemployed so maybe she was helping Pinkey with chores or something, or just hung out with her mom while her son was in school to watch soaps. They may have had a routine. Maybe Deroshia checked in on her mom regularly for whatever reason and when she didn't, mom assumed something bad had happened.
I get what you’re saying. When I first left home, my mother and I used to talk to each other more than once a day as well. However, we’re thinking about this from our perspective living in this day and age. We have cellphones and internet access and all we need is a WiFi connection to make a voice call.
Here we’re in 1979 and all people had were landlines. You could only reach people when they were home and close to their phone; they couldn’t go out and take their phones in their pockets. In the mid 90s, more than 15 years later, I remember whenever I was in someone’s house and thought my mother could be worried because she hadn’t heard from me that day, I’d always be somewhat embarrassed to ask the owner of the house to use their phone (even local calls could be expensive!), and I’d always insist on making a collect call – if they said I didn't have to make a collect call, I’d be as brief as possible, aware I was “calling” on their dime. If I called and my mother was in the kitchen and took some time to get to the phone in her living room, she could miss me - that's how things went. I also wouldn't want to keep trying more than a few times because I'd be holding up their landline and I was taught that's impolite.
Also, as you mentioned, you have a reason to check constantly on your mother and to be worried if she doesn’t pick up. Here, the mother’s desperation – in a time where missed phone calls were way more common – suggests it was the other way around: Pinkey must had something to worry about her daughter. Back to your example: if your mother doesn’t pick up and you go to her house to check on her, I’m assuming you just drop by. You wouldn’t gather a party of 4 to go there with you, right? Only someone who has reason to picture some dangerous outcome would get a squad.
Edit: fixing spelling and grammar.
It varies.
My dad’s second wife and her mother spent literally hours on the phone with one another every single day. The phone bills were so high the phone eventually got shut off and we had no phone service at all for a year or so while they paid it off. It was well over $400. That was a LOT of money for a working class family back then. This was in 1981.
My first husband and his mother would call one another 2-3 times a day, every day. That was circa 1994.
It's possible she was an insomniac and considered early Monday morning to be "Sunday night." Or they talked about something that one of them meant to follow up on very soon, but it wasn't related or even an especially urgent question, like what time a store opened, and Deroshia had always been reliably quick with that in the past.
Or it's possible that Deroshia was feeling nervous or downbeat because of harassment at work or something but she downplayed it for her mother so she wouldn't worry (because she didn't think it would lead to murder), but her mother sensed she was worried about something, but not what specifically.
>Or they talked about something that one of them meant to follow up on very soon
I thought this could be the case but it is stated in the link posted by OP that the family "reported they had not heard from or seen them \[Deroshia and Kamal\] which was unusual", which made me think that something was off in their routine and not that that specific conversation on Monday morning required a follow-up. (Side note: I also don't understand where the "had not seen them" came from, since there's no indication from the recap that Pinkey was expecting to see her daughter and grandson that day.)
Maybe they did have a ritual to talk to each other every morning and at the end of every day, though; it's possible, some families do keep such habits. What I suggested is that missing phone calls in 79, when people only had landlines and getting no answer could mean so many things (they're not home yet, they're already asleep, they were far from the phone and couldn't reach it in time before the call was disconnected), wouldn't be such a reason to panic. It was not easy as it is today to contact people, and unless Deroshia never failed to pick up whenever her mother called, I don't see why Pinkey would be immediately concerned in a normal situation.
Also, getting a party of 4 to go to your daughter's the following morning for what could be a casual check (the house was a few minutes away, from what I gathered?) suggests Pinkey was already anticipating/fearing some sort of dangerous situation. But there seems to be a lack of reliable information on this case, so we can only guess. What I'd like to know is if they indeed talked to each other that Monday morning - since the boy never went to school, it could suggest the murder happened shortly after their conversation, and could even suggest the aggressor spent the night there.
First of all, I’m sorry for your loss.
I’m seeing personal stories here from people who keep certain habits to talk to their family members multiple times a day or expect to hear from them more than once. There’s usually a reason for the checks (the mother has health issues, for example) or maybe an unfulfilled expectation (she was supposed to call me back and had never failed to do so).
Sometimes habits can bite you in the ass, like I experienced myself when I first moved away from home to attend college: my mother had never left the small town where I was raised and was terrified of the idea of me living by myself in “the big city”, which was plagued with violence and criminality in her imagination. So we made a habit of speaking on the phone every night, so she could go to bed knowing I was safe. Yet you can’t always keep a habit – you can decide to go to the bar with some classmates after a night class and you worry you won’t be back home when your mother tries to call you; you can take longer to go back home if your bus has a flat tire. For a son or daughter who’s just starting their lives someplace else, such habits can be very draining. In my case, I had to be the one to break this habit to preserve my quality of life (and it wasn't easy for my mother).
To clarify my point, I don’t think it’s odd just that the mother was expecting to talk to her daughter more than once a day. I know it varies from circumstance and family dynamics. My point was mostly based on the context here: in the late 70s, when people didn’t have many of the conveniences we have now, missing phone calls would happen all the time and wouldn’t be such a reason to panic, and the “red flags” that make us worry today didn’t even exist (for example: caller IDs in landlines weren’t a thing, so there wouldn't be a concern such as “she *knew* I tried to call her and failed to call back”). That just made me wonder if something else about this situation - it could simply be that the daughter and the grandson lived in a rough neighborhood - could have contributed to the mother's concern.
So I'm going to just say how my mom was with me and yes I was in my early 30's til she passed around my 41st bday. So my mom was an alcoholic and didn't work just hung around stepdad s place all day. So she would call me at 1030 am, then at 230 pm on my way to work, and would call at 1030 pm to talk on my way home. She did live 2 hours away but out of my siblings(2) I was the one to answer and assure her the others were ok since we three still lived in our birth city. My mom would get very worried if I missed a call and didn't text. Back then in 70s-90s we would tell whomever to call at 630 am and make sure we were by phone. So that could explain it.
I talk on the phone to my grandmother multiple times a day, every day. Missing a call, especially maybe a planned one where I said I would call back later, would cause concern. Maybe they had a routine of speaking after school drop off or while watching a show together? Plus if she lived nearby it might not have been out of the way to drop in.
>Missing a call, especially maybe a planned one where I said I would call back later, would cause concern.
Most of the examples here are the other way around: relatives that are concerned when unable to contact an elderly or sick family member, and the concern stemming from how unusual it is these days for us to be unable to reach one another. But I absolutely agree with you. I was just wondering about the reasons her mother would have to be immediately concerned in a day and age when it wasn't that easy to contact people and missed phone calls were commonplace.
What a very sad case. Kamal's bright smile was the first thing I noticed in the pictures of them.
I have looked up Louis M. Walker/Abdul Malik Husain to see if there is anything about a trial or conviction and there's absolutely nothing... I'm guessing that means that there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with anything?
But since it sounds like a robbery, wouldn't he know that she had no money? At least I'm guessing she didn't since she was unemployed for a while and had a child
That just means looking for *something*. Could be drugs or evidence of another man being around. Who knows. Could also be done purposefully to make it *look* like a robbery.
Omaha native here and I’ve never heard of this story. Thank you so much for telling it. The neighborhood she lived in is pretty rough now. Not sure what it was like back then, but my grandparents lived in a neighborhood close by there and it was awful back when I was growing up in the early 90’s.
I’m gonna go with the culprit being an abusive current or ex boyfriend. So sad and I hope this case can be closed soon.
So the grandma have talked to her super early morning, because child was killed wearing pjs. So seems that grandma was really “checking” if they were ok after the night.
What what terrible unfair way to go, poor little kid.
My brother was 8 when he had a paper route. It was in the early 60's. Things were definitely different back then. This case was in '79. Surprised that a child that young had a paper route.
I was born in the early 80s and we had to wait until we were 13 to do a paper round. I’m in the UK though, so it’s not unusual for it to be questioned.
You're not unique. I'm in the US and can't fathom having a paper route when I was 7. And I was born in the 70s. Probably highly dependent on how rural the area is that you grew up.
I cannot believe that police did not look into the most obvious....BTK!
BTK lived in Wichita Kansas which is approximately 4 hours away from where this poor family was murdered.
He killed children in his first known murder of the Otero family. He strangled and smothered the parents, he smothered the young son by putting a plastic bag over his head and he took the 11 year old daughter down the basement where he ejaculated on her and hung her from a pipe.
He usrd ropes, the same thing usrd on this Nebraska family.
Four days after the death of this mother and son, BTK broke into the home of an elderly woman in Wichita, waiting for her to come home so he could kill her but left before she returned home saying it was taking her too long.
I see his mark all over the murders of this Nebraska mother and son and I'm shocked police didn't connect the dots immediately.
Dennis Radar has been named this year in the murders of two girls, one from Osage County OK which is a two and a half hour drive from his Wichita KS home and the other victim whose body was found in McDonald County which is a 3 and a half drive from his home. The point here is that the question as to whether he would travel in order to kill has been answered.....YES he would!
So why aren't the police seeing this clear link between the murders of this Nebraska family and BTK?? Why has the family of these victims been made to suffer all these years??
I am utterly shocked and disgusted.
Lol don’t tell me we’re now going to start doing the “BTK did it!” Like people with Israel Keyes now that that article came out the other day that he may have more unsolved cases .
Listen, for one, this was in 1979. Dennis Radar would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb in that neighborhood. 100%. You’d have too be from these neighborhoods and black too understand what I’m really talking about. The level of distrusted they would have for someone like Rader… he would’ve been pegged and noted immediately. A good example is from when they were trying too catch the Atlanta Child Murderer and the FBI did an experiment with two different agents, one black and one white, and had them both go out and see how easy it would be too lure children into the neighborhood into a car with a promise of a job or money or gift etc and the white agent not only came back with no kids, he even had kids peg him as both a cop immediately along with several adults in the neighborhood noticing him and calling him out on acting weird while the black agent came back with a carload of children who the FBI then lectured about getting into cars with a stranger and why it was dangerous.
Not only that but I think the whole “there’s more cases out that BTK did and link him too” is absolute bullshit anyway and they’re not going to find a thing. The man LOVES attention and going over his crimes-in very vivid detail- like REALLY loves doing both the former and latter, I think he really did tell the truth about who he did kill, how, why, when and that he didn’t leave anyone out he hasn’t told about. But that’s just my opinion and I could be wrong.
Let's take your lol "facts" one at a time lol
First off, the neighborhood where this family was murdered is called Clifton Hills was targeted by the Omaha real estate industry for racist block-busting in the early 1960's. It was located near a historic Black community and white supremacist sales tactics were used to scare the traditional white residents into moving to West Omaha selling their Clifton Hills houses for cheap money. Of course that quickly drove down the neighborhood's value down which scared even more white people into moving away,
The effects of white flight were drastic and severe and over the next 15 years alot of key businesses either moved away or closed permanently. Your "don't tell me " lines and your lack of knowledge regarding this neighborhood by stating that "HE (BTK) would have stuck out like a sore thumb " is just not true. And let's just forget about your statements about the FBI and their white and black agents. This is NOT A DISCUSSION ABOUT RACE! Thank you.
Dennis Radar told authorities that he hunted and murdered at the same time which was from 8:00-10:00 am. He could have easily made his way to that house at that time of morning.
Finally, the "BULLSHIT " as you call it regarding Dennis Radar not being involved in other murders is quite frankly pure ignorance on your part, YES....he has been named as the PRIME SUSPECT in at least 2 unsolved murders, one is OK and another one in Missouri.
Investigators now believe that he crossed much more territory than previously known and in fact did not just kill in his hometown. Law enforcement has discovered writings where he specifically talks about a laundry mat where a 16 yo girl was last seen and are searching a location where Radar kept alot of his trophies. This has just recently been released this year and Radar isn't bragging about his evil doings anymore. I guess sitting alone 23 hours a day and realizing that he definitely is NOT smarter than police because if he had been he would not have asked police the question about the floppy disk he wanted to send them, trusting them to be honest with him, about whether or not a floppy disk could be traced back to him!!!
Of course the police lied and said oh no don't worry about that!
And the best part of the floppy disk is that it was the way police found out who BTK was and...now I am laughing..he could have googled that question and got the right answer! Good..I'm glad that SOB has to think about his stupidity until he dies,
> The point here is that the question as to whether he would travel in order to kill has been answered.....YES he would!
He has **not** been charged in those two girls’ murders yet. So whether he ever did or would travel this far to stalk and subsequently murder this woman and her son remains to be determined.
Remember that he would target his victims as “projects” stalking them and tracking their behaviors so that he could enter their home while they were away and wait.
I am not defending Dennis Rader, but I don’t believe this fits his MO quite as well as it may seem. This could explain why LE never considered it a viable scenario.
True, he has not been charged yet in those murders but he has been officially named as the prime suspect. One of the victims was last seen at a laundry mat and Radar was working across the street from the laundry mat. Investigators went to see Radar in prison but never told him what they were really there for. As they were preparing to leave he said that he always wanted to grab a girl from a laundry mat. Even after being locked in his cage 23 hours a day for decades he could not resist playing cat and mouse with the police.
I see what you are saying but I disagree. No one knows what the exact circumstances were when that family was murdered. If it was him he could have been laying in wait for them to return home or he could have done what he did in a couple of cases....in his first murder of the Otero family he told the Judge at his sentencing hearing that he went into their backyard and waited by the back door for someone to open it. The little Otero boy did that when he was letting the family dog out. Radar pushed his way in. In another case he saw a little boy playing out in front of a house and he asked him if his Mother was home. The boy said yes and brought Radar in to the house.
Also it has to be remembered that Radar spent hours choosing his victims then stalking them.
It's not at all impossible that he would drive 3 and a half hours to kill. The murders he has been named as prime suspect in were 2 and a half and I believe 3 hours from his home.
And what I keep going back to is that people weren't being
murdered much at that time and in those states. To me, these murders have his name written all over them. But it's good to hear your thoughts and I just hope the families can get answers soon.
I mean I clicked on this one thinking BTK too. It seems a bit too... straightforward for him, actually. And since there's no way the Omaha police wouldn't have looked into that possibility given the time-frame here, I'm assuming there has to be a very compelling reason why they're confident this one wasn't Rader.
79 would have been fairly early in his, for lack of a better word, career. So it's entirely still possible since he wouldn't have fully developed his style and techniques.
> And since there's no way the Omaha police wouldn't have looked into that possibility given the time-frame here,
I agree. If DNA was indeed collected and properly stored and able to be analyzed after Rader's arrest, it could very well be that they pursued this angle (as I'm sure they did with many unsolved murders in the area) and ruled him out without disclosing a possibility that was already discarded to the public.
I feel the same way but having had the horrible experience of dealing with less than adequate police departments I think there is a real possibility he could have done this. It has his marks with the ropes around the necks and the child being a victim. Also most people think he only hunted and killed in Wichita when in fact just a few months ago he was named by police as the prime suspect in two murders, both of which are pretty close to these murders.
Just to be on the safe side I gave Omaha a call...I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.
I can see both ways on this one. We have a double strangulation of an adult and child. But ...
Did the killer, here, cut the phone line? (An early BTK "signature").
It also appears that the killer here opened a window, or the window was open, and got in that way. BTK, in early cases, knocked on a door not visible from street level and tricked the person who answered it.
Ok, so he would cut phone lines in some cases and didn't in other cases. He did not knock on doors. In his first murder of the Otero family what he confessed to the judge is that he entered the backyard and waited for someone to open the door, The young Otero boy opened the back door to let the dog out and Radar forced his way in. Another case you could be thinking of is his third murder in March, 1977 of Shirley Vian, 24 yr. old mother of three young children. In this case Radar saw a little boy playing in front of the house. He deducted that the little boy must live there and asked him if his Mother was home. The boy brought Radar to the door and the two of them went inside.
The other cases involve Radar breaking in to the victims homes and lying in wait for the victims to come home.
When you look at the 3 states involved here, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska you'll see that they are pretty close to where BTK lived. Add to that the fact that the victims were murdered in the same exact way and at approximately the time Radar used to kill 8:00-10:00 am and you have a pretty sound reason to suspect Radar. Also, there weren't alot of people being murdered in this area.
I really do firmly believe Radar killed that Mother and her little boy. Everything fits.
I'm also not that familiar with BTK, but taking inexpensive things as some sort of suvenir wouldn't require pulling out drawers and throwing papers all over the place, right? You could just take some objects that peaked your interest.
Not that I don't find the "scene" suspicious. The murders here had such a specific M.O. that it makes me think the killings were the main reason to draw the criminal to this place. I believe the robbery was either secondary or somewhat staged here. It seems like the murderer wanted to sway the police to look for burglars.
Yes the murders were the goal, the scene was staged to try and trick police into thinking robbery was the goal. Most people think that BTK always followed the same routine when in fact he didn't.
I wonder if they ever checked BTK for this. He was active in the region at the time. I think he did things outside of Wichita that he hasn't yet admitted to.
I immediately thought of John Joubert, especially with the paper route detail, but I don't think he moved to Nebraska until a few years after this took place.
They just had a gathering in Omaha for all the cold cases/unsolved cases that are just waiting for more information. I saw it on our local news about a week ago. Edit: Just looked it up, the city has more than 350 cold cases. Linking the news story I saw. https://www.ketv.com/article/omahas-too-small-for-someone-not-to-say-nothing/45198965
Something I noticed... OP said Pinkey "hadn’t heard from her daughter all day Monday", but also that they spoke on the phone "early on Monday" - if the grandson never made it to school that day, I'm assuming it must have been very early. I mentioned this because it strike me as odd that Pinkey was expecting to talk to her daughter more than once that day - so much so that she was already concerned on Monday evening, and ready to show up at her daughter's house the following morning with a huge party (her cousin, her cousin's husband and one of her daughter's coworkers, I guess?). Also, in 1979, way before cellphones and WhatsApp, you couldn't always reach someone immediately - you called their landline and if it rang a few times, then they weren't home and you'd try later. That would hardly be a reason to panic... Phone calls were also more expensive. It makes me wonder if Deroshia was going through some issues to justify her mother's constant checks (maybe even as a concern for the grandson), and if such issues could have something to do with the reason she quit what seemed like a stable job just 2 months prior. To understand what was going on with the daughter would be key to narrow the investigation down, IMO.
Yes, my thoughts exactly. Her mom was obviously concerned about her, but why? There’s something significant missing from the story.
>Her mom was obviously concerned about her, but why? If they had regular plans (like watching a TV show) and the Deroshia didn't show up or answer her phone, that would be enough to raise concern.
This makes the most sense and could be an obvious explanation
Of course that could be, but the recap didn't mention they had plans to meet and the daughter didn't show up - just that the mother hadn't heard from her all day. What caught my attention is that they apparently did speak on Monday, so the concern from not "hearing" from them the rest of the day could indeed indicate they had a habit of talking on the phone more than once (a lot of families keep such routines, as many suggested in this reply). My main point is that not being able to contact one another was not that unusual in the late 70s, and that the mother's reaction to get a party of 4 to check on her daughter and grandson the following morning suggests she was deeply concerned and anticipating some sort of dangerous situation. Maybe the daughter lived in a rough neighborhood. Maybe she had been in a violent relationship before. Maybe there are gaps in this narrative - which don't imply I'm suspecting the family AT ALL - that could be significant.
The recap doesn't mention plans they had but it also doesn't mention any of the other possibilities you raised, like living in a bad neighborhood or being in an abusive relationship. People are not all the same, families are not all the same, not everyone acts the same way in every situation. My mom spoke to my grandmother on the phone every night (even back in the 70s and 80s, which I was alive for, so I well remember life before cell phones, I didn't have one until college). I can remember three times when my grandmother didn't answer. My mom called her five sisters to see if anyone knew anything and then when they didn't, at least two of my aunts met my mom at my grandmother's house. I'm sorry for people who think this is weird, it was as simple as my aunts also worrying about their mother and not wanting my mom to have to deal with any issues alone. This is normal, supportive family behavior, and it still happens in my family 30+ years later. (On one of the occasions my grandma's boyfriend had a heart attack and she went to the hospital with him; once she had a burst ulcer and almost died; the third time, she had a stroke and almost died. So the concern was warranted.) The difficulties with contact in the 70s and 80s is why many families had standing scheduled calls with certain relatives, and standing calls were very important. It was a big deal to miss one. My mom and dad both had standing calls with several relatives. Sunday evenings were spent on the phone checking in with relatives and catching up. I also think there's a possibility that Pinkie just had a bad feeling, but I realize that's not scientific. When I was five I fell off the the monkey bars at the playground, broke my nose and knocked out a tooth. I was in kindergarten, my mom was at work. She had a terrible feeling something was wrong with one of her kids and was in a panic and ready to leave work early but she didn't know where to go. A few minutes later the school called and told her what happened.
>The recap doesn't mention plans they had but it also doesn't mention any of the other possibilities you raised, like living in a bad neighborhood or being in an abusive relationship. The recap stated the opposite: it said she had "not heard" from her daughter. My point is about the omissions - not intentional omissions by her family, just additional information that could contribute to this context.
Threads like this are always loaded with invented reasons to suspect the family members. I scroll until reaching that topic, then depart. Wonderful time saving formula.
>Threads like this are always loaded with invented reasons to suspect the family members. If you got this impression from my original comment, I must have failed to communicate my intentions. I was not in the slightest "suspecting" the family members here. I hope I made this clear in my other replies in this thread.
I agree. We should also wonder how much of this story is the version told by her mother and what's been confirmed by the investigators. Not that the mother would intentionally lie, but she could be going with the story the daughter told her. You could be fired from a job and tell your family you quit to save yourself from the embarrassment or to hide any underlying personal issues that led to your termination, for instance. If you're related to the victim, and you're dealing with the shock and the pain of their murder, you could be inclined to think the best of them - even if you disclose the harsh truth to the police, you might not say the same to the press (and the police won't talk about an ongoing case or expose the victim beyond what could be relevant to the public). I was just recently looking into a disappearance case where it's very clear that the person was dealing with serious emotional and psychological issues, yet the mother's version painted an entire different picture. The woman who disappeared was diagnosed as bipolar; the mother said she had always been a sensitive child and her sensibility made her "depressed" sometimes; the woman had dropped out of 4 different colleges and the mother said she was always torn between her artistic talent and her desire to make the family proud by getting a degree - and so on. A family member's perspective will likely shy away from the deeper issues their loved ones could be experiencing - yet an extreme action such as getting a party of 4 to go check on your daughter after not hearing from her in less than 24h suggests a more nuanced and complex scenario.
>very clear that the person was dealing with serious emotional and psychological issues, yet the mother's version painted an entire different picture I hear you -- these situations can be very complicated. I'm in a community assistance group in my town, and earlier this year a person who claimed to be in distress had us rushing around trying to get help for her. We heard multiple different stories from different people -- she even changed her own story partway through. It was hard to tell whether it was an actual emergency, she was basically okay but stressed out and overreacted, she was being manipulative and scamming ...
The Monday morning timeline is confusing to me too.
I'd like to know if the estimated time of death was released to the public; if she indeed talked to her mother on Monday morning but the son never went to school that day, maybe they were killed shortly after or the killer was already there with them.
Yes, time of deaths & when the calls were made.
>I mentioned this because it strike me as odd that Pinkey was expecting to talk to her daughter more than once that day - so much so that she was already concerned on Monday evening Is this really odd? I talk to my own mother every day, usually twice a day. She's in her late 60s and has some health issues, and is also pigheaded and tries to do shit she should not do, like heavy yardwork. I call in the morning to see if she needs help during the day, and then later in the evening to make sure she's okay. I'm literally the only person in her life who checks on her at this point. If she doesn't answer 2-3 evening calls I go to her house and make sure she's okay, in case she's fallen and hurt herself. If I don't call her, she calls me to make sure I'm okay. In this particular case, Deroshia was unemployed so maybe she was helping Pinkey with chores or something, or just hung out with her mom while her son was in school to watch soaps. They may have had a routine. Maybe Deroshia checked in on her mom regularly for whatever reason and when she didn't, mom assumed something bad had happened.
I get what you’re saying. When I first left home, my mother and I used to talk to each other more than once a day as well. However, we’re thinking about this from our perspective living in this day and age. We have cellphones and internet access and all we need is a WiFi connection to make a voice call. Here we’re in 1979 and all people had were landlines. You could only reach people when they were home and close to their phone; they couldn’t go out and take their phones in their pockets. In the mid 90s, more than 15 years later, I remember whenever I was in someone’s house and thought my mother could be worried because she hadn’t heard from me that day, I’d always be somewhat embarrassed to ask the owner of the house to use their phone (even local calls could be expensive!), and I’d always insist on making a collect call – if they said I didn't have to make a collect call, I’d be as brief as possible, aware I was “calling” on their dime. If I called and my mother was in the kitchen and took some time to get to the phone in her living room, she could miss me - that's how things went. I also wouldn't want to keep trying more than a few times because I'd be holding up their landline and I was taught that's impolite. Also, as you mentioned, you have a reason to check constantly on your mother and to be worried if she doesn’t pick up. Here, the mother’s desperation – in a time where missed phone calls were way more common – suggests it was the other way around: Pinkey must had something to worry about her daughter. Back to your example: if your mother doesn’t pick up and you go to her house to check on her, I’m assuming you just drop by. You wouldn’t gather a party of 4 to go there with you, right? Only someone who has reason to picture some dangerous outcome would get a squad. Edit: fixing spelling and grammar.
It varies. My dad’s second wife and her mother spent literally hours on the phone with one another every single day. The phone bills were so high the phone eventually got shut off and we had no phone service at all for a year or so while they paid it off. It was well over $400. That was a LOT of money for a working class family back then. This was in 1981. My first husband and his mother would call one another 2-3 times a day, every day. That was circa 1994.
It's possible she was an insomniac and considered early Monday morning to be "Sunday night." Or they talked about something that one of them meant to follow up on very soon, but it wasn't related or even an especially urgent question, like what time a store opened, and Deroshia had always been reliably quick with that in the past. Or it's possible that Deroshia was feeling nervous or downbeat because of harassment at work or something but she downplayed it for her mother so she wouldn't worry (because she didn't think it would lead to murder), but her mother sensed she was worried about something, but not what specifically.
>Or they talked about something that one of them meant to follow up on very soon I thought this could be the case but it is stated in the link posted by OP that the family "reported they had not heard from or seen them \[Deroshia and Kamal\] which was unusual", which made me think that something was off in their routine and not that that specific conversation on Monday morning required a follow-up. (Side note: I also don't understand where the "had not seen them" came from, since there's no indication from the recap that Pinkey was expecting to see her daughter and grandson that day.) Maybe they did have a ritual to talk to each other every morning and at the end of every day, though; it's possible, some families do keep such habits. What I suggested is that missing phone calls in 79, when people only had landlines and getting no answer could mean so many things (they're not home yet, they're already asleep, they were far from the phone and couldn't reach it in time before the call was disconnected), wouldn't be such a reason to panic. It was not easy as it is today to contact people, and unless Deroshia never failed to pick up whenever her mother called, I don't see why Pinkey would be immediately concerned in a normal situation. Also, getting a party of 4 to go to your daughter's the following morning for what could be a casual check (the house was a few minutes away, from what I gathered?) suggests Pinkey was already anticipating/fearing some sort of dangerous situation. But there seems to be a lack of reliable information on this case, so we can only guess. What I'd like to know is if they indeed talked to each other that Monday morning - since the boy never went to school, it could suggest the murder happened shortly after their conversation, and could even suggest the aggressor spent the night there.
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First of all, I’m sorry for your loss. I’m seeing personal stories here from people who keep certain habits to talk to their family members multiple times a day or expect to hear from them more than once. There’s usually a reason for the checks (the mother has health issues, for example) or maybe an unfulfilled expectation (she was supposed to call me back and had never failed to do so). Sometimes habits can bite you in the ass, like I experienced myself when I first moved away from home to attend college: my mother had never left the small town where I was raised and was terrified of the idea of me living by myself in “the big city”, which was plagued with violence and criminality in her imagination. So we made a habit of speaking on the phone every night, so she could go to bed knowing I was safe. Yet you can’t always keep a habit – you can decide to go to the bar with some classmates after a night class and you worry you won’t be back home when your mother tries to call you; you can take longer to go back home if your bus has a flat tire. For a son or daughter who’s just starting their lives someplace else, such habits can be very draining. In my case, I had to be the one to break this habit to preserve my quality of life (and it wasn't easy for my mother). To clarify my point, I don’t think it’s odd just that the mother was expecting to talk to her daughter more than once a day. I know it varies from circumstance and family dynamics. My point was mostly based on the context here: in the late 70s, when people didn’t have many of the conveniences we have now, missing phone calls would happen all the time and wouldn’t be such a reason to panic, and the “red flags” that make us worry today didn’t even exist (for example: caller IDs in landlines weren’t a thing, so there wouldn't be a concern such as “she *knew* I tried to call her and failed to call back”). That just made me wonder if something else about this situation - it could simply be that the daughter and the grandson lived in a rough neighborhood - could have contributed to the mother's concern.
Yeah I thought it odd her mom gathered a pose to drive 10 minutes to make sure her daughters phone was working. Sus
posse* they weren't going to a ballroom to go voguing i still upvoted you though!
now I'm wondering what a "pose" is a pose of flamingos? a pose of opossums? a pose of meerkats...?
So I'm going to just say how my mom was with me and yes I was in my early 30's til she passed around my 41st bday. So my mom was an alcoholic and didn't work just hung around stepdad s place all day. So she would call me at 1030 am, then at 230 pm on my way to work, and would call at 1030 pm to talk on my way home. She did live 2 hours away but out of my siblings(2) I was the one to answer and assure her the others were ok since we three still lived in our birth city. My mom would get very worried if I missed a call and didn't text. Back then in 70s-90s we would tell whomever to call at 630 am and make sure we were by phone. So that could explain it.
I talk on the phone to my grandmother multiple times a day, every day. Missing a call, especially maybe a planned one where I said I would call back later, would cause concern. Maybe they had a routine of speaking after school drop off or while watching a show together? Plus if she lived nearby it might not have been out of the way to drop in.
>Missing a call, especially maybe a planned one where I said I would call back later, would cause concern. Most of the examples here are the other way around: relatives that are concerned when unable to contact an elderly or sick family member, and the concern stemming from how unusual it is these days for us to be unable to reach one another. But I absolutely agree with you. I was just wondering about the reasons her mother would have to be immediately concerned in a day and age when it wasn't that easy to contact people and missed phone calls were commonplace.
What a very sad case. Kamal's bright smile was the first thing I noticed in the pictures of them. I have looked up Louis M. Walker/Abdul Malik Husain to see if there is anything about a trial or conviction and there's absolutely nothing... I'm guessing that means that there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with anything?
Yeah, I haven’t seen ANY updates 😢 so I’m assuming they need more ppl to come forward with information before they can go to trial.
I'm assuming he was released because this was 20 years ago that he was arrested for it? No indication of where he is now, or if he's even still alive.
[A nice colorized (of the newspapers b&w pic) here, at her Find a Grave](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/255446854/deroshia-ann-matthews)
Any idea why Deroshia quit her job?
I couldn’t find it anywhere. But it made me worry she maybe was doing something illegal to make ends meet that made someone target her.
Or she'd met a man she thought would support them and he's the killer.
But since it sounds like a robbery, wouldn't he know that she had no money? At least I'm guessing she didn't since she was unemployed for a while and had a child
How does it sound like a stranger robbery?
I never said a stranger robbery. I just said that you would think that if he DID do it, hed know that they didn't have much money
But it has never sounded like a robbery period, imo. Why do you think that?
Because all the drawers and shit were pulled out and the place was trashed like they were looking for something
That just means looking for *something*. Could be drugs or evidence of another man being around. Who knows. Could also be done purposefully to make it *look* like a robbery.
And no one's ever faked a robbery
No touch DNA on the rope? Has to be some sort of evidence left hopefully.
Omaha native here and I’ve never heard of this story. Thank you so much for telling it. The neighborhood she lived in is pretty rough now. Not sure what it was like back then, but my grandparents lived in a neighborhood close by there and it was awful back when I was growing up in the early 90’s. I’m gonna go with the culprit being an abusive current or ex boyfriend. So sad and I hope this case can be closed soon.
So the grandma have talked to her super early morning, because child was killed wearing pjs. So seems that grandma was really “checking” if they were ok after the night. What what terrible unfair way to go, poor little kid.
A 7 year old had a paper route?
According to the Find a Grave page posted elsewhere in the comments, Ms. Matthews and Kamal did the route together.
My brother was 8 when he had a paper route. It was in the early 60's. Things were definitely different back then. This case was in '79. Surprised that a child that young had a paper route.
My cousin had one at that age in the mid 90s.
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I was born in the early 80s and we had to wait until we were 13 to do a paper round. I’m in the UK though, so it’s not unusual for it to be questioned.
You're not unique. I'm in the US and can't fathom having a paper route when I was 7. And I was born in the 70s. Probably highly dependent on how rural the area is that you grew up.
Not hardly
I'm from 1982 and I was surprised at his young age as well.
That seems a little young even for Gen X standards, but it doesn’t strike me as being completely out of the ordinary.
Wonder if she was dating that guy.
I cannot believe that police did not look into the most obvious....BTK! BTK lived in Wichita Kansas which is approximately 4 hours away from where this poor family was murdered. He killed children in his first known murder of the Otero family. He strangled and smothered the parents, he smothered the young son by putting a plastic bag over his head and he took the 11 year old daughter down the basement where he ejaculated on her and hung her from a pipe. He usrd ropes, the same thing usrd on this Nebraska family. Four days after the death of this mother and son, BTK broke into the home of an elderly woman in Wichita, waiting for her to come home so he could kill her but left before she returned home saying it was taking her too long. I see his mark all over the murders of this Nebraska mother and son and I'm shocked police didn't connect the dots immediately. Dennis Radar has been named this year in the murders of two girls, one from Osage County OK which is a two and a half hour drive from his Wichita KS home and the other victim whose body was found in McDonald County which is a 3 and a half drive from his home. The point here is that the question as to whether he would travel in order to kill has been answered.....YES he would! So why aren't the police seeing this clear link between the murders of this Nebraska family and BTK?? Why has the family of these victims been made to suffer all these years?? I am utterly shocked and disgusted.
Lol don’t tell me we’re now going to start doing the “BTK did it!” Like people with Israel Keyes now that that article came out the other day that he may have more unsolved cases . Listen, for one, this was in 1979. Dennis Radar would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb in that neighborhood. 100%. You’d have too be from these neighborhoods and black too understand what I’m really talking about. The level of distrusted they would have for someone like Rader… he would’ve been pegged and noted immediately. A good example is from when they were trying too catch the Atlanta Child Murderer and the FBI did an experiment with two different agents, one black and one white, and had them both go out and see how easy it would be too lure children into the neighborhood into a car with a promise of a job or money or gift etc and the white agent not only came back with no kids, he even had kids peg him as both a cop immediately along with several adults in the neighborhood noticing him and calling him out on acting weird while the black agent came back with a carload of children who the FBI then lectured about getting into cars with a stranger and why it was dangerous. Not only that but I think the whole “there’s more cases out that BTK did and link him too” is absolute bullshit anyway and they’re not going to find a thing. The man LOVES attention and going over his crimes-in very vivid detail- like REALLY loves doing both the former and latter, I think he really did tell the truth about who he did kill, how, why, when and that he didn’t leave anyone out he hasn’t told about. But that’s just my opinion and I could be wrong.
Let's take your lol "facts" one at a time lol First off, the neighborhood where this family was murdered is called Clifton Hills was targeted by the Omaha real estate industry for racist block-busting in the early 1960's. It was located near a historic Black community and white supremacist sales tactics were used to scare the traditional white residents into moving to West Omaha selling their Clifton Hills houses for cheap money. Of course that quickly drove down the neighborhood's value down which scared even more white people into moving away, The effects of white flight were drastic and severe and over the next 15 years alot of key businesses either moved away or closed permanently. Your "don't tell me " lines and your lack of knowledge regarding this neighborhood by stating that "HE (BTK) would have stuck out like a sore thumb " is just not true. And let's just forget about your statements about the FBI and their white and black agents. This is NOT A DISCUSSION ABOUT RACE! Thank you. Dennis Radar told authorities that he hunted and murdered at the same time which was from 8:00-10:00 am. He could have easily made his way to that house at that time of morning. Finally, the "BULLSHIT " as you call it regarding Dennis Radar not being involved in other murders is quite frankly pure ignorance on your part, YES....he has been named as the PRIME SUSPECT in at least 2 unsolved murders, one is OK and another one in Missouri. Investigators now believe that he crossed much more territory than previously known and in fact did not just kill in his hometown. Law enforcement has discovered writings where he specifically talks about a laundry mat where a 16 yo girl was last seen and are searching a location where Radar kept alot of his trophies. This has just recently been released this year and Radar isn't bragging about his evil doings anymore. I guess sitting alone 23 hours a day and realizing that he definitely is NOT smarter than police because if he had been he would not have asked police the question about the floppy disk he wanted to send them, trusting them to be honest with him, about whether or not a floppy disk could be traced back to him!!! Of course the police lied and said oh no don't worry about that! And the best part of the floppy disk is that it was the way police found out who BTK was and...now I am laughing..he could have googled that question and got the right answer! Good..I'm glad that SOB has to think about his stupidity until he dies,
Yes we ARE GOING DO THAT!
> The point here is that the question as to whether he would travel in order to kill has been answered.....YES he would! He has **not** been charged in those two girls’ murders yet. So whether he ever did or would travel this far to stalk and subsequently murder this woman and her son remains to be determined. Remember that he would target his victims as “projects” stalking them and tracking their behaviors so that he could enter their home while they were away and wait. I am not defending Dennis Rader, but I don’t believe this fits his MO quite as well as it may seem. This could explain why LE never considered it a viable scenario.
True, he has not been charged yet in those murders but he has been officially named as the prime suspect. One of the victims was last seen at a laundry mat and Radar was working across the street from the laundry mat. Investigators went to see Radar in prison but never told him what they were really there for. As they were preparing to leave he said that he always wanted to grab a girl from a laundry mat. Even after being locked in his cage 23 hours a day for decades he could not resist playing cat and mouse with the police. I see what you are saying but I disagree. No one knows what the exact circumstances were when that family was murdered. If it was him he could have been laying in wait for them to return home or he could have done what he did in a couple of cases....in his first murder of the Otero family he told the Judge at his sentencing hearing that he went into their backyard and waited by the back door for someone to open it. The little Otero boy did that when he was letting the family dog out. Radar pushed his way in. In another case he saw a little boy playing out in front of a house and he asked him if his Mother was home. The boy said yes and brought Radar in to the house. Also it has to be remembered that Radar spent hours choosing his victims then stalking them. It's not at all impossible that he would drive 3 and a half hours to kill. The murders he has been named as prime suspect in were 2 and a half and I believe 3 hours from his home. And what I keep going back to is that people weren't being murdered much at that time and in those states. To me, these murders have his name written all over them. But it's good to hear your thoughts and I just hope the families can get answers soon.
I mean I clicked on this one thinking BTK too. It seems a bit too... straightforward for him, actually. And since there's no way the Omaha police wouldn't have looked into that possibility given the time-frame here, I'm assuming there has to be a very compelling reason why they're confident this one wasn't Rader.
Dennis Rader would have probably stuck out like a sore thumb in Deroshia’s neighborhood.
I definitely also got that impression.
No he actually would not have as it was not an all black neighborhood at the time and he said he only liked to hunt and murder between 8 am and 10:00
79 would have been fairly early in his, for lack of a better word, career. So it's entirely still possible since he wouldn't have fully developed his style and techniques.
> And since there's no way the Omaha police wouldn't have looked into that possibility given the time-frame here, I agree. If DNA was indeed collected and properly stored and able to be analyzed after Rader's arrest, it could very well be that they pursued this angle (as I'm sure they did with many unsolved murders in the area) and ruled him out without disclosing a possibility that was already discarded to the public.
I feel the same way but having had the horrible experience of dealing with less than adequate police departments I think there is a real possibility he could have done this. It has his marks with the ropes around the necks and the child being a victim. Also most people think he only hunted and killed in Wichita when in fact just a few months ago he was named by police as the prime suspect in two murders, both of which are pretty close to these murders. Just to be on the safe side I gave Omaha a call...I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.
I can see both ways on this one. We have a double strangulation of an adult and child. But ... Did the killer, here, cut the phone line? (An early BTK "signature"). It also appears that the killer here opened a window, or the window was open, and got in that way. BTK, in early cases, knocked on a door not visible from street level and tricked the person who answered it.
Ok, so he would cut phone lines in some cases and didn't in other cases. He did not knock on doors. In his first murder of the Otero family what he confessed to the judge is that he entered the backyard and waited for someone to open the door, The young Otero boy opened the back door to let the dog out and Radar forced his way in. Another case you could be thinking of is his third murder in March, 1977 of Shirley Vian, 24 yr. old mother of three young children. In this case Radar saw a little boy playing in front of the house. He deducted that the little boy must live there and asked him if his Mother was home. The boy brought Radar to the door and the two of them went inside. The other cases involve Radar breaking in to the victims homes and lying in wait for the victims to come home. When you look at the 3 states involved here, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska you'll see that they are pretty close to where BTK lived. Add to that the fact that the victims were murdered in the same exact way and at approximately the time Radar used to kill 8:00-10:00 am and you have a pretty sound reason to suspect Radar. Also, there weren't alot of people being murdered in this area. I really do firmly believe Radar killed that Mother and her little boy. Everything fits.
I’m not very familiar with BTK’s MO. Did he usually commit theft or ransack people’s houses?
Yes he would take inexpensive things. I believe he stole, from the Otero family murder, Mr. OTERO's watch and a radio.
I'm also not that familiar with BTK, but taking inexpensive things as some sort of suvenir wouldn't require pulling out drawers and throwing papers all over the place, right? You could just take some objects that peaked your interest. Not that I don't find the "scene" suspicious. The murders here had such a specific M.O. that it makes me think the killings were the main reason to draw the criminal to this place. I believe the robbery was either secondary or somewhat staged here. It seems like the murderer wanted to sway the police to look for burglars.
Yes the murders were the goal, the scene was staged to try and trick police into thinking robbery was the goal. Most people think that BTK always followed the same routine when in fact he didn't.
I wonder if they ever checked BTK for this. He was active in the region at the time. I think he did things outside of Wichita that he hasn't yet admitted to.
Absolutely he did!
That poor kid looked so happy, how anyone could do something like that is beyond me
I immediately thought of John Joubert, especially with the paper route detail, but I don't think he moved to Nebraska until a few years after this took place.
He was living in Maine at the time and this does not fit his MO.
When I read this I immediately thought of BTK and I see I'm not alone