More than eighteen years after nude bodies of women began turning up in or around shallow creek beds in our area, investigators are taking a new route in trying to find what would seem to be a serial killer or killers.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is featuring the cases on playing cards, and the Department of Corrections is selling the decks to inmates, hoping someone there will have information to solve the cold case homicides.
Jane Chafton’s nude body was found in August, 1999 in a pond in rural Stephens County.
In March, 2000, Cassandra Ramsey’s nude body was found in water close to a bridge in rural Jefferson County.
Mandy Raite’s nude body was found in water close to a bridge in rural Comanche County in June, 2000.
In February, 2002, Janice Buono’s nude body was found in water close to the bridge in rural Comanche County near where Raite’s body was found.
In June, 2003, farm workers found 34 year old Pamela Woodring’s nude body in a creek by a bridge two miles north of the intersection at Highways 54 and 49 in Kiowa County.
All of these women were known by police to be prostitutes from the Cache Road area of Lawton.
In August, 2003, Tanja Hook’s body was found in a bar ditch in McClain County.
She’d been living with a boyfriend in that Cache Road district in Lawton where the prostitutes disappeared, and her card says it’s possible she fell into the same category with the other females.
It was about this time in 2003 that women believed to be truck stop prostitutes started turning up dead all across the country, including a 23 year old woman from Wichita Falls.
Patsy Leonard’s nude body was found off I-40 in a Pottawatomie County creek bed near Shawnee.
She was last seen at what was The Kings Inn in Wichita Falls on December 21, 2003, by her boyfriend, but investigators say she was seen again at an Oklahoma City truck stop just a few days before her body was found on New Years Day, 2004.
In 2006, a Pottawatomie County investigator said a big rig truck could not have gone down the rural area where Leonard’s body was found.
Jessica Brown, with the OSBI, said on Tuesday the Leonard case remains open.
Unlike the truck stop prostitute slayings, it was believed the person or persons responsible for the creek bed prostitute killings in southern Oklahoma was familiar with the area, and may have even lived here at one time.
If you have any information that could help solve these probable serial killings, contact authorities with the information below.
800-522-8017
tips@osbi.ok.gov
