On the morning of March 22nd, 1991, a crew of loggers cutting down pine trees near Highway 191 south of Eureka, South Carolina happened upon a set of skeletal remains not far from the banks of Shaw Creek, the very same location where the body of the unidentified Aiken County Jane Doe had been discovered back in November of 1987.
Like that former victim, this one also appeared to be an African-American woman in her mid-to-late twenties who had been dead for several years and had been dumped at the site with no clothing or belongings, and no other clues as to her identity or that of her killer. Cause of death was likewise unable to be determined.
For several years, the body of this particular victim was unidentified, but in 1997, a pathologist concluded that the remains most likely belonged to thirty-year-old Jacquelyn “Jackie” Council, who had vanished on November 10th, 1986 after dropping her five-year-old off at school. In 1999, DNA evidence confirmed the identification.
In the years following the finding of Jackie Council’s and Aiken County Jane Doe’s bodies, at least one more victim would be discovered in the same area of South Carolina, in 1993, and one other nearby case, that of Risteen Durden in 1992, may also be tangentially related. These three—or possibly four—women might very well have been casualties of an as-yet-unknown serial killer, one that has been dubbed the Shaw Creek Killer.
Crime Immemorial 