On the morning of January 25th, 1993, another set of skeletal remains would turn up around the area of Shaw Creek in South Carolina, the same location which had earlier seen the discovery of two very similar bodies: that of Jackie Council, who had disappeared in 1986 and was found dead in 1991; and Aiken County Jane Doe, found dead in 1987 and still unidentified. This third, likely related, murder victim was later dubbed Aiken County Jane Doe Two.
Just as in the previous cases, this Jane Doe was an African-American woman who was left nude near the banks of Shaw Creek, with no items at the site that would help to confirm her identity. According to forensic examination, her death had occurred at some time between 1990 and 1992.
The victim was thought to be between twenty-five and thirty-two years old, standing around five-foot-four to five-foot-seven, with a slim to medium build. Her hair and eye color were unable to be determined, due to the extent of the decomposition.
Cause of death appeared to be a stab wound in the back of the neck, and the remains had also been burned, though whether the killer had attempted to burn the body or there had simply been a brush fire in the area that had singed the bones at some point was not clear.
Thus far, the main person of interest in the interconnected Shaw Creek cases seems to be serial killer Henry Louis Wallace, also known as the “Taco Bell Strangler,” who admitted to murdering ten women in Charlotte, North Carolina in the 1990s. Though he claimed to have killed one woman in South Carolina, at this stage it does not appear that he has confessed to any of the Shaw Creek killings, and he has not been charged with any of them. As of this writing, he is on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Other serial killers whose names have been mentioned in relation to the Shaw Creek crimes include Joseph Patrick Washington of Augusta, Georgia, who in 1995 received multiple life sentences for several rapes, kidnappings, and murders perpetrated between 1991 and 1993. Washington died in prison in 1999, reportedly from complications stemming from AIDS.
John Wayne Boyer, also from Augusta and better known as the “Long Haul Territory Killer,” has also been considered, though his victim profile does not closely resemble that seen in the Shaw Creek cases. Boyer was imprisoned in 2007 for killing a woman named Scarlett Wood, but police soon discovered that the trucker was likely responsible for many more murders, including those of Michelle Haggadone in 2000 and Jennifer Smith in 2005.
The deaths of the three women near Shaw Creek, as well as the death of Risteen Durden, are all unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 