Episode 11: Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies, I’m your host Julie Mattson. Today I want to continue this series on Halloween Homicides, but I also want to talk a little bit about how it all started. We all know it’s customary for kids to go trick or treating and go from house to house in their costumes, they get treats, like candy and sometimes money, and of course the costumes were modeled after figures like vampires, ghosts, skeletons and witches and all those scary stuff. But then over time, the selection kind of grew a little bit and it became ninjas and princesses and things that the kids saw on TV. And even though the truth is that the last day of October was actually once a religious celebration, it has now become a fun evening where the kids get to dress up as their favorite character and wander around the neighborhood, until… It isn’t fun anymore. Listen in as I share more stories of horrifying homicides on Halloween.
Ready? Let’s go…
SHOWNOTES:
• I ran across a couple other really interesting Halloween deaths that probably most of us have never even heard of. So we all know that all over the world, but there’s a huge gang population in California, so in Northwest Pasadena and Los Angeles County, back on October 31st in 1993, there were actually three gang members who gunned down a group of boys who were trick or treating. It turns out the kids were ages; one was 13 and two were 14. There were actually three who died and three who were wounded, there were a total of 10. They were returning home from a Halloween party, and three of them were killed, and one of them, a 14-year-old was actually shot in the leg, and then another 13-year-old were shot in the hand. But these kids were all ranges in age, from 13 to 14. So, they were just in a innocently walking, and one of the men involved in the shooting was Herbert McClain, he was a Junior and he was 26 years old. (03:56)
• In 1984, Greene became pregnant, she had miscarried a couple of times, she had a baby due in November, she was about eight months pregnant. So, this is Halloween 1984, Doreen took Deana, who was her son with her current husband, Charles, and they went trick-or treating, Charles stayed home, handed out candy at the residence. This sounds like a typical Halloween evening for a big majority of the couples, husbands don’t want to go walking around and so they stay home and hand out candy. Well, when they returned home, Charles went to get more candy because he had run out and he was going to go to the liquor store as well. He was gone for about 15 minutes and Doreen was home by herself at that time with Deana. Around 9 o’clock, there was a loud knock on the door, and Doreen answered the door and there was a man in a wolf mask. (14:25)
• She was behind a sofa and reportedly did not see this happen, thank God, I know that she probably heard way more than she should have, but she was hiding and didn’t actually visualize this occurring. And whenever William Dennis left the residents, he left the wolf mask by the door. Now, Doreen actually was only 31 at the time this happened, and she died on the way to the hospital in the ambulance. When the police went to check Mike’s house, they saw blood on the steering well inside his truck. (17:23)
• Halloween is one of the most common times of the year for crime, and statistics show that the number of car accident fatalities on Halloween night, 40% of them are due to drinking and driving. There are on average, about 17% more crime related claims on Halloween. According to some insurance companies, property crime is the most common crime committed on Halloween, and that’s about 60% of property crimes that involve theft. Violent crimes can increase by as much as 50%, which is two times the daily average. And a lot of people wonder why crime on and around Halloween, why there’s an increase? And they say that some of the contributions would be at that time of year, it gets dark earlier. (21:50)
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