Our Beautiful Rat King

Further reading for the Lake Bodom Blood Murders:

The Lake Bodom Blood Murders: The Reaper’s Calling To Bring You Home

Book suggestion by Georgia:

Strange Piece of Paradise: A Return to the American West To Investigate My Attempted Murder – and Solve the Riddle of Myself

Oct, 1984. 20 year old Angela Samota was enrolled at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas studying computer science and electrical engineering.

On the night of Oct 12 Angela and two friends (one male, one female), went out for a night at the State Fair of Texas. Angela’s boyfriend did not go with them because he worked in the construction field and had to be up early the next day for work.

The group of three went to a dance club, called the Rio Room and stayed there until after midnight. Angela was very vivacious and outgoing and was going from table to table making friends and talking like she new everyone.

When they left the bar, Angela drove her two friends home proceeded to drop by her boyfriends house to say goodnight and then went home to go to bed. Her boyfriend reported to police that at 1:45 am he got a call from Angela who told him there was a man in her condo who had asked to use the bathroom, she did not make it clear if the man was already in her house when she got home or if he had asked to come in. Angie asked her boyfriend to continue to talk to her and then told him “I will call you right back” and hung up.

When she doesn’t call him back he tries calling her, with no answer. He frantically drives over to her condo and knocks on her locked door. Because of his job in construction, he had a cell phone (one of the early versions that took up half the car) so he was able to call the police who came, broke into the condo and found Angela’s body, naked and bloody on the bed. She had been raped and repeatedly stabbed dying from wounds inflicted in her heart.

The case went on to remain unsolved until 2008, when evidence they had collected was used for DNA testing. The results pointed to Donald Bess who at the time of the murder was on parole while serving a 25 year sentence.

Bess was given (for Angela’s case) a death sentence. However, many other women came forward to testify that they had been raped by Bess and his ex-wife testified that he had abused her and their child during their marriage.

At this time, Donald Bess is on death row with no execution date set.

Finland’s most famous unsolved trip homicide

Summer of 1960, four teenagers went to Sweetheart’s retreat in Finland for a camping trip. By the morning, three of the teens would be dead and the last brutally injured. Nils Gustafsson, the only survivor told the story hundreds of times and would become a suspect in the murder of his friends, its a wild story with the link for the book above.

Episode 127

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