Unsolved Mysteries
(2017-2018)
Unsolved Mysteries opening segment
1990s
The original iteration Unsolved Mysteries was as a weekly television anthology of stories ranging from true crime, to missing persons, unexplained paranormal phenomena.
As a kid, I found the melodramatic and moody atmosphere of the segments terrifying yet oddly moving. The beautiful cinematography of the often real sites of the stories all across America's Heartland had an almost romantic quality to it, even though many segments ended in tragedy.
The show dealt with their stories lack of a conclusion in a very poetic way. Missing persons walk off into the dark void of night, never to be seen again. Witnesses try to recall a hazy memory that might solve the crime. Investigators strain to draw conclusions. The stories had gaps, and much artistic license was taken to fill them in. It reminded me of commissioned portraiture. Artists hired to paint portraits of everyday people they only know through a photograph or through encountering in a studio. These portraits are meant to memorialize... idealize. Frame their subjects in the best possible light. Not to make an artistic statement, but rather depict a life well lived.
Unsolved Mysteries captures its subjects in the same style of commissioned portraiture, but from a different angle... not the best best or idealized moment of their life, rather their final or most infamous. A woman leaving work not knowing that she is minutes away from meeting her fate. A portrait of a killer that was never caught. The final self portrait of a woman never seen or heard from again.
Gretchen Buford
2017
Oil on canvas
18x24 inches
On Friday evening, February 26, 1988, Gretchen Burford left her law office and prepared to go home. At 6:37pm, she deposited a check for $449 at a branch bank that was four blocks away. Authorities believe that while she was at the ATM, an unknown assailant entered her unlocked car and hid in the back seat. When she got back in, he accosted her and threatened her with a knife. It is unknown what exactly happened in the next twenty minutes, but it is believed that she may have tried talking him out of the crime, telling him about how he would face prison time otherwise.
At 7:02pm, Gretchen attempted to withdraw money from another ATM three miles away. This transaction was aborted when she tried to withdraw more money than she was allowed. Authorities believe she may have done this to try and discourage the assailant. She then drove quickly away from the bank and straight into a parked car. He exited her car, screaming "He stabbed me!" At the same time, two young men arrived at the scene to help her; they watched as the assailant fled the scene.
Authorities believe that Gretchen deliberately caused the accident in order to escape the assailant. Tragically, she was unsuccessful; he stabbed her once in the chest. Her car came to rest just 150 yards from the ATM. Gretchen was taken to the emergency room; tragically, she passed away shortly after. THe identity of her killer remains unknown to this day.
Father Reynaldo Rivera
2017
Oil on canvas
18x24 inches
On the evening of Thursday, August 5, 1982, a call was placed to the rectory of St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The caller claimed he was with his grandfather, who was about to die, and needed a priest to give him the "last rites", also known as the Anointing of the Sick. Fifty-seven-year-old Father Reynaldo Rivera received the call. The caller wanted him to administer last rites for his dying grandfather at a rest stop near Waldo. Father Rivera agreed since the rest stop was twenty miles away. He reported the situation to the abbot and then left in his car at approximately 8:45PM. When Father Rivera did not return the next day, he was reported missing.
Hundreds of citizens from Santa Fe volunteered to search for Father Rivera. Three days later on Saturday, August 7, his body was found in a remote field, three miles from the rest stop; he had been shot. Evidence also suggested that he had been tied up. His 1974 Chevrolet Malibu was found abandoned about 110 miles from the crime scene at a rest area on Interstate 40 near Grants, New Mexico, suspecting that the killer stole the car and used it to escape until the car's gas tank was exhausted. Father Rivera’s murder remains unsolved.
Tina Resch
2017
Oil on canvas
18x24 inches
Tina Resch was the adopted daughter of Joan and John Resch. The Resche’s resided in Columus, Ohio. When she was 14, Tina watched the movie Poltergeist, and shortly afterward the family reported seeing objects fly around their house. The Columbus Dispatch interviewed Tina, and later published several photos purporting to show a telephone flying through the air.
Parapsychologist William Roll stayed in the Resch house to investigate the case and claimed that there had been genuine "spontaneous psychokinesis". Roll, however, never observed any object move by itself. James Randi, an investigator for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was refused access to the household, but investigated the case and suspected Tina had faked the alleged poltergeist occurrences.
The Resch poltergeist turned out to be so elusive that no one ever actually saw a single object even start to move of its own accord. This included the newspaper photographer, who found that if he watched an object, it stubbornly refused to budge. So he would hold up his camera and look away... One of the photos obtained in this way was distributed by the Associated Press and touted widely as proof of the reality of the phenomenon. Examined closely, the photographic evidence in this case strongly suggested that Tina was faking the occurrences by simply throwing the phone and other "flying" objects when no one was looking. Randi's careful analysis of the other photos, many unpublished, of Tina and her flying phone strengthen the conclusion that she was faking. The editor of The Columbus Dispatch, Luke Feck, embarrassed by the revelation that he and his paper were taken in by so obvious a fake, refused Randi permission to print the photos he had given him earlier, in an apparent attempt to suppress the evidence of Tina's trickery and the newspaper's credulity."
Randi reported his finding in Skeptical Inquirer: “The evidence for the validity of poltergeist claims in this case is anecdotal and thin, at best. The evidence against them is, in my estimation, strong and convincing.”
Johnny Lee Wilson
2017
Oil on canvas
18x24 inches
On April 13, 1986, seventy-nine-year-old Pauline Martz was found dead in her home in Aurora, Missouri. She was beaten, bound and gagged, and left for dead in her house, which had been set ablaze. An autopsy would reveal that Martz died of carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of the fire. Several days later, the police brought in Johnny Lee Wilson, a mentally challenged twenty-year-old, for interrogation. He was interrogated for over four hours, before confessing to the murder.Wilson was charged with first-degree murder and, in order to avoid the death penalty, pleaded guilty. He received a life sentence without parole.
In 1993, Wilson requested a pardon from then governor of Missouri Mel Carnahan, and was granted in September 1995, after a one-year investigation of the case. It concluded that there was no physical evidence tying Wilson to the crime, and that the authorities took advantage of Wilson's mental defect to coerce a confession. However, Brownfield has not been prosecuted for the crime, nor anyone else, and the murder of Martz remains unsolved.
Killer of Dick Hansen
2017
Oil on canvas
11x14 inches
On the night of April 29, 1991, Dick Hansen and several friends went out to a bar for drinks. At 1am, he and his friend, Jean, left in her car. At 1:30am, they arrived at the restaurant where he had left his pickup truck. While they were sitting in her car, another vehicle pulled up behind them.
When Dick and Jean each left in their separate vehicles, so did the other car. When they arrived at the traffic light, he followed them as they made their left turns. Along another road, Jean changed lanes and he followed her exactly. At the next traffic light, Dick signaled to her to follow him onto the freeway. The man continued to follow them for over ten miles. Jean changed lanes a number of times thinking she could outwit him but to no avail. She even slammed on the brakes, but he did so too.
Dick signaled Jean to follow him off the next exit. She reported that the man followed them both off the freeway, even though she nearly missed the exit When they pulled over, Dick went back to confront the man. Jean saw him gesture toward her car when Dick asked him what he wanted. Dick then stepped back and shouted at him. It was then that he shot Dick twice. Jean frantically rushed back to see if she could help, then froze in fear, staring at the man who stared back at her for a few seconds before taking off into the night. Unfortunately, Dick was dead by the time paramedics arrived. His killer has never been identified and the case remains unsolved.
Patricia Meehan
2018
Oil on canvas
16x20 inches
Carol Heitz was travelling along a remote Montana highway on the evening of April 20th, 1989 when she was hit head-on by a car driving on the wrong side of the road. Heitz emerged from her car unharmed. The other driver, a blonde woman, appeared to be unharmed as well. The woman approached Heitz with a blank expression as though she were "looking right through me." Without saying a word the woman walked into a nearby empty field and vanished into the night. The woman was later identified as 38 year old Patricia Meehan.
In their search investigtors followed a trail of footprints thought to be Meehan's until they disappeared in a wooded area. Authoritiries theorized that she may have hitchhiked out of the area. Meehan's parents arrived from Pittsurgh soon after to aid authorities in searching for their daughter. No one had an explanation for why she was on that stretch of highway at that hour, some 400 miles from her home in Bozeman.
Patricia's parents searched her belongings looking anything that could provide a clue as to her whereabouts. In a camera they found a roll of undeveloped film and had it processed. One of the photographs was a self-portrait of Patricia, with the same vacant stare Carol Heitz reported seeing the night of the accident.
Over the ensuing months there were reported sighitngs of Patricia Meehan along highways and at truck stops from Montana to Washington state. She remains missing.
Tommy Burkett
2018
Oil on canvas
16x20 inches
On November 30, 1991, 21-year-old Thomas Burkett left his parents' home in Fairfax County, Virgina to visit old high school pals. Around midnight on December 1st, Tommy left his friend's house and stopped by an ATM. The ATM camera recorded Tommy making a withdrawal and being approached by three white males. Soon after, Tommy called his parents to let them know that he was staying over at his friend's and would be home the next day.
The next evening, Tommy's parents returned home and observed his Mustang parked in front of the house. Upon entering the home, Tommy's father found his son's beaten body sitting upright on his bedroom sofa and facing the room's door. His feet were crossed at the ankles and his hands lay in his lap. Tommy's jaw had been savagely broken, and his right ear was a bloody mess of tissue. His father observed his son's torn clothing, as well as multiple cuts and bruises. A gun lay positioned in Tommy's limp hand and he had a gunshot wound to the head. On Tommy’s desk lay a bank statement with the message "I want to be cremated" written on it.
The Burketts found the ensuing crime scene investigation to be grossly inadequate. The scene was not photographed nor dusted for prints. No blood samples were taken, even though the pattern of the blood spatter was inconsistent with the position of the body. The bullet from the wall behind Tommy's head was not removed for ballistics, nor was the gun examined.
Tommy Burkett was a junior at Marymount College in the fall of 1991. During fall semester, he was repeatedly harassed by several students. The harassment ranged from theft to vicious assaults.
An informant claimed that Tommy was murdered because he was an undercover DEA agent and was going to expose their drug activities on campus. No charges have ever been filed and Tommy Burkett’s murder remains unsolved.