Case Summary
The case involves the gruesome 1984 murder of Terri Brooks, a night manager in Falls Township, Pennsylvania. She was attacked at her place of employment, a Roy Rogers restaurant (Davies, 2010). The very horrific assault, in which her head was shrouded in cellophane and her neck was slashed with a knife, astonished the local cops.
Key Aspects of the Initial Investigation
As the restaurant’s safe had been tampered with, detectives believed the death was the consequence of a botched robbery. The case remained unresolved for fourteen years until it was brought up at a Vidocq Society conference. Richard Walter, a founder, stepped up after listening to Falls Township detectives discuss the crime and informed them that Brooks had been selected and killed by an individual familiar to her.
Details of the Further Investigation
When the police examined the corpse and the crime scene, it was clear that it was not a robbery, Walters explained. No robbery suspect would attack a victim so severely that the blade penetrates the tile floor and then wraps the victim’s head in cellophane. It is not something a thief would do; it is inefficient, and this type of action is without merit (Davies, 2010). Thus, one had to determine how he spent his time and what interested him based on what was and was not present.
Representatives of the Vidocq Society inquired of Brooks’ parents about potential partners. They recalled one individual, a guy they believed to be named O’Keefe. The police searched arrest records and news stories for any mention of O’Keefe but did not find anything until they examined Terri Brooks’s guestbook (Davies, 2010).
Indeed, a guy called Alfred Scott Keefe had checked in at the funeral registry for Brooks. The police secured a warrant to retrieve Keefe’s DNA from the smoke he discarded at the curb. That matched the murder scene’s DNA; after being questioned, he confessed. He was condemned to life imprisonment without parole 16 months later.
Reference
Davies, D. (2010). The Vidocq Society: Solving murders over lunch. NPR. Web.