Fifty-three-year-old Lottie Watson Snead was a respected and well-liked member of her community in Chincoteague, Virginia; she was very active in her church and had worked as a clerk at a local grocery store for many years.
On the evening of Monday, June 8th, 1964, Lottie had been to services at the Union Baptist Church and returned home at about nine-thirty p.m. It’s believed that while she was gone, someone had broken into her home and was lying in wait for her.
The following day, her manager and co-workers became concerned when Lottie didn’t show up for her shift, and an employee of the store, Eugene Merritt, was sent to her home to check on her. He knocked several times, but no one answered, and he returned to the store to report this fact. The manager of the market was still worried, though, and sent Eugene back to the house. This time, Eugene climbed in through a window, saw that the woman’s bedroom was in an alarming state of disarray, and contacted the police.
Authorities found Lottie’s body in her residence. She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned in the head, and strangled by hand. The killer had then tightened a silk stocking around the woman’s throat to finish her off. It wasn’t clear whether robbery had been the initial motive; Lottie had been paid on Monday, but it was never determined whether anything was missing from her home.
Almost immediately after the murder, two men—one a local from Chincoteague and the other from upstate New York—were taken into custody and held for questioning but were eventually released. Over the course of the investigation, about seventy-five people were fingerprinted, and more than twenty individuals were questioned intently as persons of interest. Several of these people were also given polygraph tests. All, however, were subsequently cleared of suspicion.
The identity of the assailant responsible for the brutal rape and murder of the widow and mother of one remains unknown.
Crime Immemorial 