Welcome back to another week of Unsolved! This week we’ll be talking about the Frankford Slasher, a serial killer active in this very state in the late 1900s.
The Frankford Slasher was active in the Frankford region of Philadelphia from what is guessed to be 1985 to 1990. This case unfortunately progressed very gradually as more bodies were discovered, eventually leading to 9 deaths in total. The first victim was found on August 26th 1985. Helen Patent, a 52-year-old woman, was found in a Philadelphia train yard half naked and laid out in a pose. She had been stabbed 47 times, exposing her organs. Next, Anna Carroll was found on January 3rd 1986 on the floor of her bedroom. She was nude and also laid out in a pose intentionally with her organs exposed, but this time stabbed 6 times.
It took a third victim, Suzanne Olszef, for authorities to make more solid connections between the cases. It was discovered that all three victims were regular attendees of Goldie’s Bar, which was in an area well-known for drug use and its night life. The fourth victim was what made it clear that a serial killer was responsible. Jeanne Durkin was also viciously stabbed many times, 74 in this case, and was discovered partially nude and posed.
The police lied to the media, saying that the murders were not related and not crediting a serial killer, and then killings stopped for a year. If these two events are related it is likely that the killer wanted to get attention for their crimes and when they were denied credit it made them angry enough to stop for some time and start again later. The next victim was a very important one, as a witness was found who could describe a suspect who had been seen drinking with the woman the night of her death. The police used a sketch of this suspect in an attempt to identify the killer, but no one was able to help. Over a year passed, leaving another new victim, but no “progress” was made until 1990 when Carol Dowd was found.
Most of the cases I’ve written about in the past have not had any convictions related to them, but this one did. Leonard Christopher, a black man who worked in a fish market in the area, knew this last victim. He did not have an alibi, but there was only circumstantial evidence against him, he did not fit any description given by witnesses for the previous killings, and he had no link to any of the other murders even though the police knew it was a serial case. Despite these holes in logic, he was sentenced to life in prison and has since died of cancer. To add insult to injury, more bodies were found even after Christopher was in custody and he was still not cleared. He was likely held responsible for Dowd’s murder because of racial prejudices, and at the very least because the media had already caught on to his role as a suspect and had gotten carried away with the story, making the public lean more heavily toward convicting him to get it over with.
No new information has been uncovered regarding these cases, but no new victims have appeared either. While the Frankford Slasher may have never been caught, we can hope that he is no longer active.
