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#Post#: 3472--------------------------------------------------
Re: BITTER CREEK BETTY: HF, 24-32, found in Sweetwater, WY - 1
March 1992
By: Akoya Date: March 9, 2020, 4:21 pm
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Rawlins, Wyoming to Bitter Creek, Wyoming rest area Interstate
80
HTML https://i.imgur.com/k74SP5C.jpg
Interstate 80 between Rock Springs and Green River continues to
follow the Bitter Creek as the creek flows toward the Green
River.
HTML https://i.imgur.com/LPQ0t4h.jpg
#Post#: 3473--------------------------------------------------
Re: BITTER CREEK BETTY: HF, 24-32, found in Sweetwater, WY - 1
March 1992
By: Akoya Date: March 9, 2020, 4:22 pm
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The victim has a rose tattoo on her right breast. Investigation
has determined the tattoo was "inked" in Tucson, Arizona, at a
tattoo shop near the Triple T Truck Stop.
TTT. Tucson Truck Terminal
HTML https://i.imgur.com/9Hwqmst.jpg
"Triple T.T.T. Truck Stop. ...Interstate 10 & U. S. 80 at
Craycroft Road, Tucson, Arizona.
HTML https://i.imgur.com/lI3U8Wc.jpg
#Post#: 3474--------------------------------------------------
Re: BITTER CREEK BETTY: HF, 24-32, found in Sweetwater, WY - 1
March 1992
By: Akoya Date: March 9, 2020, 4:23 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/MKCrgsF.gif
#Post#: 4888--------------------------------------------------
Re: BITTER CREEK BETTY: HF, 24-32, found in Sweetwater, WY - 1
March 1992
By: Scorpio Date: May 7, 2020, 1:17 am
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An arrest has been made in Bitter Creek Betty's case.
HTML https://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/crime-and-courts/authorities-arrest-iowa-man-in-connection-to-wyoming-cold-case-murders/article_454199a1-d42b-548b-8008-043fe0e2e477.html
Former truck driver from Iowa charged with Wyoming cold case
murders
SHANE SANDERSON Casper Star-Tribune May 6, 2020
Law enforcement used DNA taken from a Walmart in Iowa to
identify a former truck driver suspected of killing two women
and abandoning their bodies near Wyoming highways decades ago,
according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.
Authorities on Wednesday morning arrested the former trucker,
Clark Perry Baldwin, 59, at his home in Waterloo, Iowa. He faces
two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths
of "I-90 Jane Doe" and "Bitter Creek Betty." Although the
women's bodies were found in 1992, they have never been
identified.
In addition to the Wyoming prosecutions — which will be held in
Sheridan and Sweetwater counties — Baldwin faces another two
murder charges in Tennessee that allege he killed a pregnant
woman in 1991. He will be tried there before answering to the
allegations in Wyoming.
"I don't know what the Webster's Dictionary definition of a
serial killer is," Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation
Commander Matt Waldock said by phone Wednesday. "But that's what
I'd call him."
The death of the woman now known as Bitter Creek Betty has been
public since her body was found by another trucker on March 1,
1992, when she stopped at the Bitter Creek truck turnout on
Interstate 80 in Sweetwater County. The female trucker informed
law enforcement of the corpse, and an autopsy determined that
the woman was strangled before being killed by a puncture wound
in the face consistent with an ice-pick attack. Snow was found
packed under her body, which authorities have said could have
been left at the side of the highway for months before it was
discovered.
Authorities recovered fingerprints from the scene, but they
couldn’t find a match. An Arizona tattoo artist said he thought
she was a Hispanic woman who had hitchhiked around the country,
but couldn’t otherwise identify her.
In April of the same year, state transportation workers workers
found a body in Sheridan County. That victim was also not
identified, and investigators called her "I-90 Jane Doe."
The investigation
Court documents filed earlier this year in Sheridan County
Circuit Court and made public following Baldwin's arrest lay out
details of the investigations conducted by Wyoming DCI and the
Tennessee 22nd District Attorney General's Office that led to
investigators' arrest of Baldwin in the cold cases. Shortly
after the discovery of I-90 Jane Doe, an autopsy determined that
the victim was a white woman who was about 2-˝ months pregnant
when she was killed, the documents state.
The forensic pathologist found that she had likely sustained a
blow to the head but did not determine a cause or manner of
death. Semen was found on her genitals, the documents state.
That yielded a partial DNA profile.
Long-ago Bad Route rest stop murder still puzzles Dawson County
law enforcement
In 2006, DCI asked a research scientist at the University of
Wyoming to examine evidence from the Interstate 90 crime scene.
The body of I-90 Jane Doe, the researcher determined, was placed
at the crime scene about two months before the transportation
workers' discovery.
A year later, DNA swabs taken from Bitter Creek Betty's genitals
and an ice sample from the crime scene brought back a complete
DNA profile, the documents state. That did not, however, match
any information in state and federal DNA databases, according to
the documents.
In 2012, the Wyoming State Crime Lab found that the DNA taken
from Bitter Creek Betty's body matched the DNA found on I-90
Jane Doe's body, the documents state.
The role of DNA
Then, in May of last year, DCI agents spoke with a Tennessee
investigator who had reopened the 1991 investigation, the
documents state. The DNA in that case — when uploaded to a
national database — matched the DNA in the Wyoming cases. The
victim in that case — who is referred to as Pamela McCall in
Wyoming documents but as Rose McCall in a Tennessee press
release — was 20 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. She,
like the two women in Wyoming, was found near the side of a
road. According to the court documents, near her corpse were
skid marks left by a tractor trailer. She had been strangled to
death.
45-year-old Billings Heights double-homicide solved, sheriff
says
In June of last year, DCI agents met with investigators for the
Tennessee prosecutor's office. Those investigators turned over
clothing taken from the body of McCall, according to the
documents. When Wyoming lab workers examined the clothing, DNA
found there matched the DNA taken from the Wyoming crime scenes,
confirming the database result. That DNA sample was submitted to
a private lab and, when compared with a "publicly accessible DNA
database," brought back a list of people potentially related to
the suspect.
The nature of the database is not fully made clear in the
documents, and Waldock said early Wednesday evening that he
couldn't immediately describe the DNA matching process.
The description of the investigation in the court documents,
though, is similar to the process that was used in the arrest of
a California man two years ago on suspicion of being the Golden
State Killer, whom authorities think killed a dozen people in
California over the course of more than a decade.
Baldwin, according to the court document filed in Sheridan
County, is linked to other cases: In 1991 he had been
investigated in Texas on suspicion of sexually assaulting a
woman there. He admitted to the crime and was released the same
day. It is not clear if the alleged assault in Texas was ever
prosecuted. As part of an Iowa homicide investigation dating to
1992, Baldwin's ex-wife told law enforcement that he had bragged
about "killing a girl out west by strangulation and throwing her
out of his truck," according to the documents.
In April of this year, investigators on an FBI task force took
trash that they saw Baldwin throw in a dumpster, the documents
state. They collected the trash.
The FBI investigators also — after watching Baldwin handle
merchandise while shopping at Walmart — then took the items and
swabbed for DNA the handles of a shopping cart he used, the
documents state. The Wyoming State Crime Lab found the DNA taken
from the trash and the Walmart trip matched the DNA found at the
cold case crime scenes.
On Wednesday morning, FBI agents and Tennessee investigators
arrested Baldwin in Iowa, according to the DCI statement. He
will be transported first to Tennessee to face two counts of
first-degree murder. In that state, authorities can charge a
person for murder of an unborn child, in addition to the charge
alleging he murdered the expectant mother.
It is only after those charges have been resolved that Baldwin
will come to Wyoming to face the cases here, Waldock, the DCI
commander, said. Waldock added that because the woman in
Tennessee had been identified by name, law enforcement thought
it better for surviving family members to charge the case there
first.
Waldock declined to say whether law enforcement thought that
Baldwin could be linked to other homicides. He said, though,
that he hopes the arrest will lead other agencies to examine
their unsolved cases.
#Post#: 4889--------------------------------------------------
Re: BITTER CREEK BETTY: HF, 24-32, found in Sweetwater, WY - 1
March 1992
By: Scorpio Date: May 7, 2020, 1:23 am
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HTML https://wcfcourier.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/authorities-arrest-waterloo-man-in-connection-to-wyoming-cold-case-murders/article_3a0049bc-677e-54bf-b7a3-a07b1248a400.html
UPDATE: Waterloo trucker charged in 1990s slayings of 3 women,
fetus
RYAN J. FOLEY Associated Press
HTML https://i.imgur.com/4Hd7dmKl.jpg
SUSPECT: Clark Perry Baldwin
ATERLOO — Investigators Wednesday arrested a long-haul
trucker from Waterloo who they say is linked by DNA evidence to
the killings of three women whose bodies were dumped in Wyoming
and Tennessee in the early 1990s.
Police arrested Clark Perry Baldwin, 58, at his home in Waterloo
on murder charges filed in Wyoming and Tennessee in the deaths
of the women, including two who were pregnant. Investigators
said they were looking into whether Baldwin could be responsible
for other unsolved slayings.
Baldwin was arrested after investigators used semen and other
material recovered from the victims to develop DNA profiles of
their perpetrators, according to court documents in Wyoming.
Last year, they learned the same profile matched all three
cases.
Investigators zeroed in on Baldwin after finding DNA in
commercial genealogy databases of someone related to the
suspect’s profile, court documents say. Last month in
Waterloo, the FBI secretly collected DNA from Baldwin’s
trash and a shopping cart he used at Walmart and it matched the
profile.
In Wyoming, Baldwin is charged in the deaths of two unidentified
women whose bodies were found in 1992 roughly 400 miles apart.
A female trucker discovered the **** body of the first victim in
March 1992 near the Bitter Creek Truck turnout on Interstate 80
in southwestern Wyoming. An autopsy determined the woman
suffered head trauma consistent with strangulation and her body
had likely been in the snow for weeks.
A month later, Wyoming Department of Transportation workers
found the partially mummified body of a pregnant woman in a
ditch off of Interstate 90, near Sheridan in northern Wyoming.
An autopsy didn’t determine the cause of death but found
the victim had an injury potentially consistent with suffering a
blow to the head.
Investigators never identified the women and referred to them as
“Bitter Creek Betty” and “I-90 Jane
Doe.” Both were believed to be in their late teens or
early 20s, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Cmdr. Matt
Waldock said.
In Tennessee, Baldwin is charged with two counts of murder in
the 1991 killing of a 32-year-old pregnant woman from Virginia,
Pamela McCall, and her fetus.
McCall was found in woods off Interstate 65 in Spring Hill,
Tennessee, in March 1991. An autopsy determined McCall had neck
injuries and died of strangulation. Sperm was recovered from
pantyhose worn by McCall, who was last seen at a Tennessee truck
stop days earlier.
Court documents say Baldwin allegedly raped a female hitchhiker
in Wheeler County, Texas, at gunpoint in his truck in 1991. The
21-year-old woman told police Baldwin struck her on the head,
bound her hands and mouth and tried to choke her to death. He
allegedly admitted to the assault but was released after the
victim refused to return to Texas to testify.
Baldwin, who has previously lived in Nashua, Iowa, and
Springfield, Missouri, was a cross-country truck driver for
Marten Transport at the time.
Baldwin’s name also surfaced during a 1992 homicide
investigation in Iowa. His ex-wife told police then that Baldwin
once bragged about “killing a girl out west by
strangulation and throwing her out of his truck,” court
documents say.
Waldock said investigators were “hopeful” to solve
other cases with Baldwin’s arrest.
One case of interest is the 1992 death of Tammy Jo Zywicki, 21,
an Iowa college student who was last seen after her car broke
down on an Illinois highway. A white man who was driving a
semi-trailer was seen near her vehicle. Zywicki’s body was
found in rural Missouri, stabbed to death.
Another is the 1992 killing of Rhonda Knutson, 22, a truck stop
convenience store clerk in northern Iowa who was bludgeoned to
death during an overnight shift. Investigators have released
sketches of two men who were in the store, including one
trucker. Baldwin lived in nearby Nashua then.
In 1997, Secret Service agents raided Baldwin’s apartment
in Springfield, Missouri, after learning he was making
counterfeit U.S. currency on a personal computer. He and two
female associates were indicted on counterfeiting charges.
Baldwin was sentenced to 18 months in prison and released in
1999.
In 2008, a fire destroyed a Nashua building where Baldwin
operated a candle business and damaged two adjacent buildings,
including one that housed the town’s newspaper. The cause
of the fire was never determined.
Baldwin is being held at the Black Hawk County jail pending
extradition proceedings to Tennessee.
The charges stunned Jazz Baldwin, 32, of New Hampton, who said
she learned two years ago that Baldwin was her father after he
purchased a DNA test kit. The two had been in contact over
Facebook since then, she said.
“I heard rumors about his ‘possible crimes’
but always thought they were bogus,” she wrote in a
Facebook message. “Murder was NOT on the list of things we
thought he had done and gotten away with.”
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