A Progression Of Awful Things

In 1976, in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a young woman named Bev Servio was sitting in a car with her nine-month-old daughter when a man got in, stripped from the waist down, produced a knife and made her drive. She believed he was taking her somewhere to kill her and the baby. Instead she drove the car off the road, grabbed her daughter from the back seat and ran into the woods. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

In November 1978 he ran. He was hitchhiking through Nevada when a young man named Boyd Tarwater picked him up. Tarwater was absent without leave from the Navy, driving a pickup truck he had stolen in Guadalupe, California, and heading east with no particular destination. The two recognised each other as fellow travellers. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

The man was Richard Talbot, who lived in Kiowa with his wife Nancy and their four children. Whatever the truth about the debt, Talbot gave both of them jobs at his landscaping business and let them share a basement room with his twelve-year-old son. They kept the stolen truck, complete with its out-of-state plates, parked at the house for nearly a month.

On Friday 15 December 1978 the two men spent the evening drinking in several bars, including the Stagecoach in Franktown, where the truck had to be jump-started by another customer. this part of the story is covered for now Talbot said they would talk about it in the morning and went inside for pizza night with his children. The two drove off again.

Later that night they decided to leave Colorado for Kansas, where Tarwater said he had relatives. details of the account remain covered until revealed Tarwater waited in the truck with the engine running, and after five or ten minutes he fell asleep. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

Shortly after four o'clock on the morning of Saturday 16 December, Nancy Talbot woke to use the bathroom and noticed that the upstairs closet door was open. The guns that her husband kept there, a shotgun and a couple of rifles, were gone. She went down to the basement, where her son was asleep but the two men were not, and then into the living room, where she found blood on a pillow on the couch. Her eight-year-old daughter Michelle had been sleeping there because her sister was having a slumber party and another girl was using her bed. Michelle had been stabbed repeatedly.

this part of the story is covered for now They drove to the sheriff's house and banged on the door. Deputies found blood on the knob of the upstairs closet, on a piece of paper, on a wall plaque and on the upstairs telephone. Three guns, $283 in cash from the upstairs bathroom, two piggy banks, a penny jar, a green rug, a quilt, a blanket and a single boot were missing.

At about half past four that morning the two men stopped at the Husky truck stop in Lyman, Colorado, with a blown-out tyre. details of the account remain covered until revealed They drove on into Kansas, stopped at a rest area just over the border, where he threw away his blood-soaked blue corduroy trousers and put on a pair of Tarwater's fatigue trousers, and carried on until about half past ten, when a Kansas Highway Patrol officer stopped them. In the truck were two rifles and a shotgun from the Talbot house and a German shepherd dog they had apparently picked up on the way. They offered no resistance and waived extradition to Colorado. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

Dr Ben Galloway, the deputy coroner for the city and county of Denver, performed the autopsy. Michelle had eight knife wounds. One puncture had gone in near the right ear and into the brain, another through the chest into the lungs, and her throat had been cut through the carotid artery, jugular vein and windpipe, with evidence of repeated sawing while she was still alive. Any one of the wounds could have caused death. There were minor wounds on her thumb, and the coroner thought the attack began while she was asleep.

this part of the story is covered for now Asked whether he remembered cutting the little girl's throat, he put his face in his hands, was silent, and said: 'I may have done it, I don't remember, I could have done it.' His white shirt, his jacket and the blue trousers recovered from the rest area were soaked in blood that was consistent with the victim's and inconsistent with his own and Tarwater's. There was no DNA testing in 1978.

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it There, on 9 July, selection began again with ninety-eight candidates. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed The defence called no one. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

The episode closes with an older case. On Labor Day 1974 in St. Cloud, twelve-year-old Suzanne Recker and fifteen-year-old Mary Recker went to a local shop to buy school supplies and never came home. Twenty-six days later their bodies were found at Quarry Park and Nature Reserve in the neighbouring town. Suzanne was at the bottom of a rock quarry under a bush; Mary was in a water-filled quarry about thirty feet below the surface. Both had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and neck. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it