I've long been fascinated by the unsolved murder of Lisa Pruett, who was stabbed to death behind a mansion in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 1990. For years, most people from Shaker believed Kevin Young was responsible for the crime, even though he was acquitted in 1993. No evidence linked Kevin to the scene and his only crime appears to have been being the weird kid in school. He died in 2017. The case is technically open but Shaker Heights police consider it "inactive."
Five years earlier, in 1985, retired Plain Dealer exec editor Philip Porter, and his wife, Dorothy, were murdered in their home between 7 and 9 p.m. on a Friday evening. They lived just eight doors north of where Lisa's body was found. However, police consider that case closed, since a man named Donald Soke (pronounced Soh-key) confessed to the crime.
Soke has since recanted his confession several times, as recently as this year. He claims a police detective gave him reports that allowed him to concoct a false confession in exchange for better conditions in prison. An appeals panel agreed but Soke remains in prison to this day.
A new look at the case reveals a connection to Lisa's murder - a young man named David Branagan was the only witness in both cases. And former girlfriends tell horrific tales of what it was like to know Branagan and his secrets, which include rape and home invasions. Branagan also passed away, recently, not long after he began stockpiling guns.
The grandson of Philip and Dorothy Porter is calling on police to test the evidence in the murders for DNA.
Who really killed Philip and Dorothy Porter?
Was there a serial killer in Shaker Heights?
Links:
Suffice to say, so many questions, so few answers...
Page 744 (Kindle):
”At 2:00 P.M., [Ramsey’s] attorney said he had to leave but suggested that the writer finish his meal, which he did. Moments later, a woman approached his table and sat in the booth where the writer’s guest had been seated. She was well dressed and spoke in a soft voice.
WOMAN: I hope you don’t mind. You see I’m a friend of a grand juror. This case is so complicated. I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk to you or if my friend should have been talking to me.
WRITER: I’m sure she knows the law better than I. Someone must have explained it to her.
WOMAN: I don’t know. It’s so confusing that she has had to go to her astrologer for help.
WRITER: Is that so?
WOMAN: Do you know about that secret room the Ramseys built for $150,000? I don’t know what they did in that room, the one on the ground floor.
WRITER: I didn’t know.
WOMAN: And you must know about the dumbwaiter on the second floor. That’s where they found some of her blond hair. Caught in the door. And you know they used chloroform on her? They think she was taken that way.
WRITER: I didn’t know about the dumbwaiter.
WOMAN: I didn’t know either until I was told.
With that, the woman got up and went back to her table.”
— Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: The Uncensored Story of the JonBenet Murder and the Grand Jury's Search for the Truth, by Lawrence Schiller
I’m not sure such a conversation actually took place at all. Maybe it did. But if this supposed information wasn’t wholly fabricated, I suspect that Schiller simply took creative license to communicate it to us, and that a few (or all) of the things mentioned are either embellished, euphemisms for something else (“secret room”: likely the wine cellar or floor safe; “dumbwaiter”: likely the laundry chute; “chloroform”: ???), or were outright fabricated.
In any case, it is bizarre. And the biggest sticking point: chloroform? What?! While I’m very skeptical, it is also hard for me to believe that Schiller just completely fabricated something like it or included it as totally baseless gossip, for entertainment, simply because of how absolutely insane it is to insert the idea of chloroforming or otherwise placing a child under the influence, in this kind of book. To be clear, if something was administered, I find it far likelier that
... keep reading on reddit ➡Series of unsolved gruesome murders that took place near New Castle, PA, between the 1920’s-until possibly 1940’s?
