It had been an emotionally brutal couple years for my eldest son. Amy Caroline Frink's death in 1992 was followed a year later by the death of another friend from Charlotte Latin School, Anna Kennedy. Her August, 1993 death occurred in a head-on collision while traveling to the North Carolina beach.
Both teenagers died in coastal region of North Carolina. A third, Crystal Todd, had died not long before in another horror story in South Carolina. In online Frink accounts, with no suspects and more than 160 questioned, (and an obviously brutal killer on the loose) noted Horry County, S.C. investigator Lt. Bill Knowles had advised there was no reason for travelers to be frightened while traveling through the area. Knowles had investigated both girl's murders.
A memorial garden is dedicated to Anna Kennedy at Charlotte Latin School. It's where my eldest son who had also known Amy Frink during summer vacations, graduated, 1993. He remained in Charlotte to attend college and the family moved on, our second son, Gerard J. Sniffen, III, remaining in Camden Military Academy, Camden SC.
Gerard J. Sniffen, III.
He would die shortly after I contacted Brunswick Authorities offering information to help solve Amy's murder, 1998. His bloody Alabama death had similar characteristics as Amy's, both last known calling from a phone booth, both crossing state lines, and without maternal body identification. Within months after my tips to the District Attorney, Rex Gore, Sheriff Ron Hewett's office, and the Brunswick Beacon Newspaper, Brunswick authorities found the killers, although not matching the information given.
Had I not become involved in Amy's case, and kept quiet, my own son may still be alive. It's shocking to realize silence is sometimes the best choice for witnesses to crimes. With all respect, I wish I could turn back time, and never involved myself or risked my family.There is a connection between the murders because of the similarities of the deaths. Perhaps North Carolina was paying me back for being involved as a cartoonist. I had also been involved in the Union County community in North Carolina regarding crime, local and state political cartoons, P.T.A., and even chatted with the local sheriff about the possibility of putting drug dogs in the schools. The Democratic party was surely not happy with the newspaper editor or my cartoons when Republicans won the local elections.
Knowing now
There are online accounts of Amy's death which recall many of the details I'd read in the Brunswick Beacon years before. Finding a similar story from Horry County sensationalized by True Crime TV, I found similarities in the Frink and Crystal Todd murders startling.
I learned of Amy's tragic death in the Brunswick Beacon Newspaper, one I'd contributed a "jet ski" cartoon. We'd owned land there on a natural canal planning to build someday, and received the weekly publication by mail.
Wilmington, NC Morning Star News, Staff Writer Scott Gold wrote the account of the brutality Amy suffered, and how more than 160 interviews produced absolutely no information leading to a suspect. Acting Horry County, SC police Chief, Gerald Whitley was one of the investigators.
The suffering Amy's family experienced was and is surely beyond anything most parents could imagine.
Her investigation had involved a locally and nationally famous Horry County Police Chief, Lt. Bill Knowles, who was also active in the TruTV sensationalized
I had recalled that Amy had phoned her sister, and that she had died in S.C., questioning how a trial could have occurred in N.C. It was explained that her body had been moved after the murder, which explained the Brunswick trial, and South Carolina investigators.
In another online account Frank Maley, staff writer for the Wilmington Morning Star writes from Bolivia. Mentioning Lt. Bill Knowles, he explained invesitgators were tight-lipped and that some of the evidence was conflicting.
Amy had been chatting with her mother at nearly 3 a.m. before she left to go visit her sister in South Carolina and met the horrible fate.
When my son disappeared from Georgia, December 1998, he also made a call from a phone booth and spoke with his father. At that time his father was having an affair with a woman who had Raleigh, NC connections. Like Amy's murder, there were conflicting stories in Baldwin County, Alabama regarding my son's death. It's sad to see so many good families suffer.
Two years ago seven South Carolina college teens died in a
While in today's sensationalized, televised, computerized world it's a task for people to find the truth in any given situation, there isn't a Good Mom out there who wouldn't want this little card for a Mother's Day gift.
The age-old words so many of us grew to know so well hold true 2000 years later, with so many things, including "unjust" judges, and even the credibility of lawyers and....
"The Truth Shall Set You Free."
The $Million questions are these:
Will good Democrats and Republicans, regardless of wealth, political status, and/or fame, investigate & prosecute shady members of their own political parties?
6 comments:
The really extravagant nature of the mutilations ought to attract the attention of the FBI, but apparently hasn't. There are some of the hallmarks of a serial killer in there.
It might be worth looking elsewhere, for similar things. There have been a lot of (unsolved) serial killings of young women in Northern Mexico, for example. If there was a serial killer, too precious to someone powerful to go to jail, they might have to move the killer around to prevent the pressure for his capture becoming irresistible.
The other possibility is that the mutilation is to disguise the removal of saleable parts of the anatomy.
There are believable stories (especially from India and Egypt) about people being robbed of kidneys, but a surgically-extracted ovary from a young woman of good social background might be chemically stimulated to yield an awful lot more profit, at around $10,000 per ovum in some clinics -and you might be able to harvest hundreds of those!
Medawar is just thinking the unthinkable, with regard to where the young women were mutilated. A serial killer is more likely, but perhaps a smash and grab raid for ovaries shouldn't be ruled out. Especially as the girls attending the same school, or coming from the same area, mean that anyone who got at the medical records for one, probably had access to medical records for the others, too.
Sometimes, considering an alternative theory for a bit can help you past the blind spots in your original theory, or perhaps the alternative theory can even be right.
I dated Gerry in high school, and always remember him as a sweet, funny, beautiful boy. I was shocked and saddened to find your post as I googled his name, wondering if I could see what he'd been up to.
I am so sorry for your loss. He was loved by so many people. Sending my best thoughts not only as someone who loved Gerry, but also as a mother.
devon o'dell
Thank you for your comments, Medawar. Perhaps Hollywood will solve it for us someday. Families who realize police are incompetent, corrupt, even dishonest sometimes turn to "Unsolved Mysteries" and "America's Most Wanted," for help.
I've always wondered who gets "movie rights" for all of the personal and family materials shared. One friend has waited months and months and like the police, gets the same stonewalls with the tv "investigative" producers.
Gordon Bennett wisdom: When I asked him a particular question about it, this was his reply, "How do you think they get the ideas for all those movies?"
My question was, "What do they do? Stage these horror situations and then steal the script and make a Hollywood movie out of the story after the victim's dead?"
Devon,
Thank you so much for those condolences, and the reminder of what a wonderful person my son was.
You are the first to come forward to his mother to offer sympathy in more than ten years.
His father, father's mistress and the opposing divorce attorney were busy keeping me from my son's funeral, body identification and burial.
I have never been able to find any closure in his mysterious disappearance nor make sense of the reported conflicting suicide details.
I will never believe their stories because of documentation proving they are untrue.
I am glad to know Gerry had good friends, who recognized and remember his talent, kindness, humor and goodness.
Thank you so much for adding these very special flowers to his memory.
Michelle
The various "Law and Order" series on TV are notorious for basing their stories on real-life happenings, and claiming it's all fiction.
The Thames Television detective series "The Sweeney" (about an armed robbery squad) was eventually pulled for the opposite reason: criminals started emulating the fictional villains and planning their raids properly, making them very hard for the real flying squad to catch.
It's difficult territory, because sometimes the drama allows an idea to be put across that wouldn't get past the lawyers in a documentary.
"The Silence of the Lambs" is widely believed to be based on the exploits of Robert Maudsley, who has never actually been convicted because he's too dangerous to have in court. He is on a psychiatric detention order, but in the care of H.M. Prison service because he's so dangerous. He is in a special custody suite at Wakefield Prison, built by British Nuclear Fuels with robot handling arms so that any necessary care can be applied without the need for physical contact. He used to have haircuts from a volunteer barber and four prison officers, but the prison governor eventually decided that it was wrong to expose even a volunteer to the risk.
Hollywood often changes the country when they do this.
TV producers are natural magpies: they steal ideas from "rejected" scripts the whole time. The idea of the "Perception Filter" used by Russell T. Davies in both "Dr Who" and "Torchwood" came from a synopsis for a Dr Who Story called "The Singers" which he rejected and subsequently claimed not to have read. It is possible that the agent involved in submitting "The Singers" lifted the idea himself and incorporated it into something that he submitted on his own account, but under a false name. Medawar believes that more than one Dr Who and Torchwood storyline came from that agent's clients, without their actual story being used or paid for. There is an open investigation, by Devon and Cornwall Police, so no names at present!
It is usually the arrogance of particular producers, rather than corporate policy, at work here.
"Law and Order" often steals stories from real-life murder cases in the UK and France and sets them in America. It is possible that the scriptwriters do this without their employer's approval, simply because the bosses are too insular to know about the real-life cases. But any corporate lawyer denying that this ever happens, really needs to check their facts first!
Medawar, thanks for the insight.
It would make sense for the stories to originate in another country. I doubt laws would be as effective if there were any types of copyrights issues.
Conspiracy writers can't create conspiracy or espionage type stories without some form of inside experience or knowledge with real, live cases.
Visual artists are aware that the formation of ideas often originates from what is borrowed, even innocently, from the work of others. The mind is a storage facility.
American heroes are created in Hollywood and by corporations, while real, live heroes are often trashed or ignored by our media––or worse.
Americans worship and adore idols and actors, sports stars and musicians, and TV personalities - happy, glittery things! (Even mafias with the Sopranos were glorified in Hollywood.)
Not one of these illusions would exist without a production company.
The question is, if American heroes aren't real, and are carefully created, scripted, produced illusions, then what do you teach the children?
And if a murder occurs and it's delivered to the public as fiction, it alters the severity of the crime - if even within a human mind.
There is nothing I've enjoyed more in my life than little league games. The kids played and although tolerating parents was sometimes uncomfortable, those were the sports to watch.
It would be great here if communities would strongly focus on local talent including music, theatre and art, and support it. It would give more children chances at success with their talents, and strengthen communities.
Besides that, it's real.
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