The skeletal remains of a teenage girl discovered tied to a Florida mangrove with wire in 1974 have been identified as another victim of renowned cop serial killer Gerard Schaefer.
Susan Poole, a 15-year-old high school dropout, was reported missing by her family shortly before Christmas in 1972.
Skeletal remains were discovered bound to a tree with wire two years later, but they remained unidentified for 48 years.
Police believe they are Poole’s now, according to genetic ancestry research, and that she was another of Schaefer’s victims.
After being convicted of the murders of two young children, Schaefer died in jail in 1995.
Prosecutors regarded him as one of the most ruthless serial killers they had ever encountered, suspecting him in the deaths of up to 26 young girls.
‘[He was] the most sexually deviant person I had ever seen. He made Ted Bundy look like a Boy Scout,’ Robert Stone, who prosecuted Schaefer, once said.
At the time of her disappearance, Poole had been living between the family’s home in a trailer park near Fort Lauderdale and with a friend in a nearby apartment.
‘Nobody knew where she went,’ Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Detective William Springer said of her disappearance, noting that her clothes and pocketbook were left at the friend’s apartment.
Two years later, in June 1974, deputies from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to a distant spot in Palm Beach County where human remains were discovered.
‘She was tied up in the mangroves with wire to a tree,’ Springer said. ‘She was skeletal remains, totally nothing left of her except bones.’
Detectives back then didn’t have the DNA capabilities that we have now, so the case rapidly went cold, he added.
Officers even released a computer composite of Poole from today’s perspective in the hopes that she might still be alive.
Investigators submitted DNA to a national missing people database in 2015, but no matches were found.
Then, in December, Othram, a Texas-based forensics company that uses genealogy to create DNA profiles, contacted the sheriff’s office and claimed they might be able to assist in solving cold cases.
The victim’s mother and siblings were identified by the firm in March. Springer stated that they produced a DNA sample from Poole’s mother, which was confirmed to be a match.
Springer is now looking for information linking Poole to Gerard Schaefer, a serial killer who was stabbed to death in 1995 by a fellow inmate at the Florida State Prison.
Springer claimed Schaffer was a police officer in Wilton Manors, a Fort Lauderdale suburb, and a deputy with the Martin County Sheriff’s Office at the time Poole went missing.
Schaefer was convicted of the murders of two more girls, ages 16 and 17, who lived in the Fort Lauderdale area.
Their mangled and beheaded remains were discovered in Martin County in April 1973.
Because Florida did not have the death penalty in the early 1970s due to a US Supreme Court judgment, Schaefer was sentenced to life in prison. In 1995, he was stabbed to death in prison by another inmate.
Instead of using his insignia to entice victims, Schaefer told them he was from another state and went by a different name.
He informed court-appointed psychologists after his arrest that he grew up in a violent family with an alcoholic father.
He claimed that tying himself to trees and masturbating before self-harming was his favorite pastime.
He started infatuated with ladies and sex around the age of 12, he told them.
Springer believes Schaefer was involved in Poole’s death because of the identical manner in which those teens were slain.
Schaefer is suspected of being involved in up to 30 deaths, according to authorities.
Investigators hope to contact with numerous acquaintances who lived close Poole at the time of her disappearance and who might be able to fill in any gaps about her actions at the time.
Springer wants to know if she hitchhiked frequently or if she had ever told them about her relationship with Schaeffer.
The announcement has offered some closure to Poole’s mother, who is in her 90s, and siblings, according to Springer.
‘The family was happy to know what happened,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time waiting to see what happened to their sister.’
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