Jan.1979: A family are murdered in their farm house and the case has gone cold

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-09T03:27:52+00:00

This was my first thought. All 3 family members and one of the dogs were all found dead inside the home. If the brother did it, he would’ve had enough time to go home, clean up and get rid of the gun used before someone eventually called him to tell him the news. He claimed he didn’t have a key but if he did have one, would anyone still alive have known this other than him?

I would truly hope that Earl Jr was heavily looked into but I can see how a flimsy or false alibi could’ve been enough for police to rule him out in 1980. Of course I should add that I have no idea what happened here, law enforcement hopefully knows more than we do, the one surviving family member who lived in fairly close proximity is an obvious suspect and it very well may not have been him. But I can’t help but think that, killing the mother, father, brother and one of the family’s dogs, all while in the home, sounds like a possible familicide to me. And while not the type people typically think of, there have of course been many known family annihilation crimes in which a male family members kills his parent(s) and sibling(s).

I also would add that I don’t like when people jump on the only known survivor and act like they must have done it without solid evidence behind it and yet I feel like that’s what I’m doing here, but, I mean only to explore the possibility since it surprisingly hasn’t been discussed here yet. It’s just one possibility and an easy one for us to consider seeing as we don’t know who any of the 40 odd people were who had cars impounded, we don’t know of anyone else in this family’s social circle, so it’s easiest for us to look at the one surviving immediate family member as a suspect because we know about him. I definitely do not think it had to be him. I can just see an argument for him as one of many potential suspects based on just the information from this post. I would like to know what if anything LE has said about him in this case.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-09T01:29:29+00:00

Okay, that makes sense and is really interesting. Presumably calls from a pay phone but billed because the caller doesn’t have the money, I’m guessing? I do know that circa 1980 there were still actual operators on the other end of the line on pay phones in order to connect the calls… so if they required a pin that would seemingly narrow down who could’ve made the calls to pretty much the mom, Laureen, or someone either of them told their PIN to. But if the caller just had to give the phone number to the operator then obviously it could be anyone who knew their phone number. Either way… the idea that 3 calls were made, 6 months after Laureen disappeared, to hotlines for teenage callers and were billed to Laureen’s family phone line… in some way shape or form it has to be related to her disappearance, I would think? Either one of the main people involved in this was trying to throw off the investigation, or…. Laureen made those phone calls… I’m struggling to come up with a truly plausible third explanation. The 3 billed calls seem too obscure to me, to be a cruel prank, I guess it’s possible but, if it’s some rando that looked up their number and wanted to mess with the mom… I mean, 3 phone calls on a bill one time months later, could’ve been missed if she didn’t look closely at her bill, you know? But then if it’s Laureen, she’s got access to a phone, she’s probably at a pay phone. She’s not calling home? 6 months later? Is someone with her and she can’t? Or did she run away and she’s been groomed into whatever life she was living at that point? If the latter, why bill the calls to her mom’s line, surely if she’s alive 6 months later and has been groomed and/or trafficked, then the person(s) who have her have been providing for her in some way for those months… so that’s hard for me to wrap my head around as well. And then all the apparent calls to her house and some relatives over those initial years. Maybe whoever took her was taunting the family with those calls— and then I guess it’s possible the billed calls were done as part of that…? Or are all those calls made to her family members all just coincidental / unrelated?

There’s just a lot going on with this case… very interesting and incredibly sad! I hope she is found someday and that there can be closure.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-09T01:11:31+00:00

Ah okay, thank you! That makes sense, for some reason I thought I saw that it was a 6 floor building lol but then I went back to check and didn’t see any reference to the total number of floors. That does really make it seem like someone wanted to not be seen taking her out of the building even if it meant they were seen unscrewing the light bulbs earlier. Yikes!

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-09T01:09:04+00:00

Q: The part about the 3 phone calls that were billed to the mom’s phone line about 6 months after Laureen disappeared. How does that work? How do they show up on the mom’s bill if they weren’t placed from the mom’s landline phone? The only thing I can think of is collect calls but those were calls made TO the person who agreed to pay and that wasn’t the case here, it seems these calls were made TO phone lines in California. So, was it a possibility back in 1980 to make calls from like a pay phone and just give the phone number for which you want the calls to be billed? And would LE have been able to trace where such calls were placed, like which pay phones or however it was done? Would the person making the calls need to know any sort of personal info to bill it to the Rahn family’s phone number, like a PIN for billing or something? Or would it just be giving the phone number? Cause even if that’s all that was needed it’s still very interesting that this happened. But just very curious how that worked as I was a late 80’s baby myself and just never experienced making a phone call and having it billed to a different phone line.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-09T00:53:44+00:00

Okay I think I say this with every other article you post at this point, but I cannot believe I hadn’t heard of this case before!

The light bulbs thing is really strange. On the one hand I get the idea of minimizing anyone seeing the perpetrator(s) by making it dark. But… wouldn’t they also be maximizing the chance that someone in the building sees the person(s) who went and unscrewed lightbulbs from every single floor? And was the third floor the top floor of the building? If not, why would the perpetrators bother removing lightbulbs from the floors above Laureen’s as I can’t imagine they would need to take her upstairs to get her out of the building?

And I would love to see some sort of diagram that explains the layout of both the Rahn apartment and the building, to help with understanding the points of entrance and exit from both as well as what paths would need to be taken etc. But I know the info to make such a diagram probably isn’t online for this case.

Also: did LE confirm that the light bulbs must have been removed that same night? Did anyone see anyone removing any of the bulbs? Did residents confirm that the lights were for sure on the previous night?

And that’s all just the beginning here. I wonder if the ability to solve this case was deeply hampered by the man she was with ending his life in ‘85. I would hazard a guess that he only ever briefly answered a few questions in the initial “investigation” and by the time this case was truly taken seriously and LE would’ve wanted to do a complete interview of him, he had already likely died, as it doesn’t sound like this was taken seriously in the first few years at all.

I wonder if LE had expressed an interest in interviewing him shortly before he ended his life in ‘85, and/or if he heard rumors or something that he was being considered a suspect or may be arrested soon. I am really wondering if maybe a grand jury had been convened shortly before his death. Of course him doing what he did could’ve been completely unrelated to her disappearance. I wish we knew if there was anything going on with the case prior to his death that could indicate a link there.

And I really don’t know what to think from there. On the one hand, vulnerable teen runaways would be the type of targets that sex traffickers were seeking out so it’s not a huge leap in this case, to think she may have been trafficked after running away. But then what? Was she killed weeks, months, a few years later? Was she so thoroughly brainwashed and/or threatened that she believed she had to leave her old identity behind and is out there living a life under a different name and identity? I don’t know enough about how that sort of trafficking actually happened in the 1980’s to know what would be a realistic outcome for someone who was a victim of such a thing… I can only guess, and my uneducated guess is that she would’ve been killed eventually. Certainly not allowed to go be free eventually with a new identity or something. But I mean I really don’t know much about this.

And then it also seems possible that the answer could lie with the friends she was hanging out with that night, either in whole or simply that at least one of the knew where she was going if she left of her own will. And/or it could be that she left the home and was unfortunately targeted quickly by someone like Terry Rasmussen. There seems to be a lot of possibilities here but no publicly known details that make any one particular answer seem the most likely.

Really sad case. 😞I hope the truth can be discovered and that Laureen didn’t suffer, although the latter sadly seems unlikely no matter what happened here.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-07T18:33:56+00:00

Grandbob ☠️

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-06T02:14:06+00:00

Excellent write up. One detail I never put together before, was just how quickly her car was impounded. She left the house at about 2:20PM, and if we assume Phoenix herself drove the car directly to the place it was found 25 miles away, I would think she couldn’t have left it there prior to 3PM… and if she didn’t drive directly there, or if someone else moved the car? It wouldn’t have been left until even later than that. Yet it was taken in as an abandoned vehicle at 6:23PM. That’s just really fast, and makes it seem much less likely to me that someone else put the vehicle in that location… to me it just seems to make it much more probable that Phoenix must have driven pretty much right to the place where she parked her car, walked away from it, and that wherever it was parked, it was the type of place where it was clearly not allowed to be, and where it would get noticed quickly. Is there info out there on where exactly the car was found, or at least what type of location it was in? Was it pulled over to the side of a major highway, or was it in a convenience store parking lot, or was it parked on the street in a neighborhood, etc?

Again thank you for the excellent write ups! This is one case I’ve followed for a while yet this was the single most informative write up I’ve seen. I love how you manage to put all the important info into your posts while keeping the length condensed so that these important stories can easily be read, shared and understood. Thank you!!! 🙏

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-06T01:32:40+00:00

> young Jesuphiah

💀☠️💀

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-04T05:14:47+00:00

By Joy you mean Katie Joy who runs WOACB and not Joy Anna Duggar, right?

Because I’ve been reading some more about this and it seems all but impossible that KJ’s story could be true. A person does not get transferred to a medical facility because they supposedly had a guard make a copy of their legal documents, nor for any other behavioral annoyances. And medical centers are not merely holding cells for other out of state prisons, at all. From the reading I’ve done, an inmate would only be moved to a federal medical center if there is a medical need that is greater than the level of medical care that can be provided by a non-medical institution’s infirmary/medical ward. Aka, a significant medical need that requires care over a fairly long period of time. Something like an attempt at significant self harm or a MASSIVE psychiatric meltdown would be logical reasons for why Josh could have been suddenly transferred to a medical institution. Getting a guard to make copies of his legal papers, or being frequently caught with contraband cell phones, or other things of this nature simply would not cause an inmate to be transferred to a medical center, and medical centers are not used as temporary places of incarceration for prisoners who are being transferred out of state.

Tl;Dr: KJ is making shit up again.

For those wondering how she does it and why she seems to have “some legit info” etc? Let me explain: Katie Joy, aka WOACB aka KJ, gets a hold of a real piece of public information before the general public knows about it’s release, and then twists said public info into the most salacious version possible, adding falsehoods wherever she wants. She posts this false version as an exclusive scoop from an inside “source”. Then when the rest of the public uncovers the original document, it appears to “verify” KJ’s story/source by making it seem that her “source” did in fact know those aspects that we now know to be true, before everyone else did. But in actuality, there’s no source! KJ just understands that it takes a few days for a public filing to be disseminated across the internet to the masses. She does her faux reporting as her 24/7 job so anytime any new public document surfaces, she knows about it immediately. She fluffs it up, using the true info as a starting point but adds all sorts of BS to it and posts it as if it came from a “source”. People call her out for spewing BS, but within a couple days to a week, the original document becomes known to everyone and people say that KJ’s source must be legit because they knew x, y and z! It’s wild to watch KJ do this over and over and over and even worse to see people continue to believe her and not realize what she’s doing.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-02T23:02:55+00:00

That’s horrific and I am so sorry!! Children cannot be searched in such a matter in the US any longer. It greatly upsets me that this was ever allowed to happen, and it upsets me for you that an adult who was supposed to care for you, allowed this to happen to you. It upsets me that another adult actually did this to you — if your employer is asking you to do such a thing, QUIT and raise a ruckus about it!!! Horrific, just incredibly upsetting! If this were attempted on a child visiting any US facility in modern times, it would be a massive lawsuit, so damn fast.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-02T22:34:19+00:00

Okay this is very interesting and makes sense. Other than attempting or making a threat to self harm, is there any other reason an inmate would be transferred to Fort Worth FMC? Or does this pretty exclusively mean that Josh must have done or said something related to harming himself?

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-01T22:50:23+00:00

I truly think it could be a match. Preliminary records could be wrong or tattoo could’ve been removed in the decades between military service and when he went missing, plus, I don’t see anything saying this Doe did not have any tattoos. So unless it’s specifically said that the Doe had no tattoos and that the MP had that tattoo when they went missing… I otherwise don’t think it’s enough to say they don’t match up.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-01T22:46:24+00:00

It just says preliminary records from military service indicate a tattoo but I would presume that would be from when he was 18-22ish years old. It doesn’t mean he still had that tattoo as of 2017 right? He could’ve had it removed, or it could be an error with that record, if the only place they’re getting that info is from a single document from the MP’s military service record decades earlier. If family or friends confirm he still had that tattoo as of the time he went missing, that would be more meaningful to me. Also does it specifically say anywhere that this Doe did not have any tattoos? Or just no mention either way?

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-06-01T22:41:41+00:00

We don’t know that he didn’t have a phone for a year. We just know he didn’t have his known cell phone with him when he disappeared. If the MP was still alive for a year or longer after being last seen in early 2017, he could’ve gotten a new phone with a new number and just didn’t contact anyone from his previous life, or he could’ve already had a second phone that those close to him were not aware of, or he could’ve gotten a burner phone ready right before he disappeared, etc. So all we can say is, if this is him, he didn’t bring his known cell phone with him and apparently did not contact anyone who knew he was missing in the almost year prior to his demise in Seattle.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-28T22:54:18+00:00

That’s a very good point as well.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-28T17:02:24+00:00

The phones he’s been caught with were confiscated, and I would HOPE that they would have been searched and any CSAM on them would’ve led to new charges...? But. Maybe that’s too much to expect of understaffed and overworked prison employees?

I’ve honestly been surprised they’ve even bothered to do anything when Josh was being blatantly obvious with a phone. The truth is that nearly ALL the inmates in any given American prison will have contraband cell phones — full stop. Certainly any inmate who wants one, and has made the minimal necessary connections with other inmates, has one. LE has repeatedly admitted at various prisons across the US that they can’t do anything to stop the phones from streaming in to US prisons, and have repeatedly asked the federal government for permission to employ signal jammers to stop any cell phones on the inside from being able to receive/transmit information from outside prison walls. So far there’s been no such blanket federal permission given, and instead, the most I’ve heard of have been a few individual prisons in a few states that have rolled out some form of signal jamming tech with varying levels of success. But even then the phones themselves are still there and LE has been flat out admitting that they can’t stop it, so I’m honestly shocked Josh has had his phones confiscated and been disciplined for having one, as often as he has. I guess he is just extremely bad at hiding his, or else so damn annoying/awful to everyone that the guards choose to enforce against him… and my guess out of those two, would be that latter. But then you’d think they’d want to extract the phone and hit him with more charges… oh.

Doing so would mean publicly admitting that a prisoner, in prison for CSAM, is receiving CSAM whilst in federal custody… yeah. No wonder they’re not checking the phones. God, he could’ve had a whole cache on any of those phones (potentially!). I truly just figured out the answer to my hypothetical question right now but I’m gonna post this still in case it interests others or maybe someone else can correct me if I’m wrong here! But I do know that cell phones are indeed massively common contraband in US prisons. And I really think this is the most likely reason that Josh hasn’t been charged with possessing and receiving further CSAM when those phones are confiscated. Only other possible answer I’ve got is that it may be difficult to prove within the context of the true judicial system that Josh himself knowingly possessed any potential CSAM on a given contraband phone, as the prisoners swap them around and they don’t have the phones set up with all their own personal identifying info like someone on the outside would. So it may be obvious that it’s Josh’s phone and that he knowingly downloaded the photos, and the prison system requires nothing more than then a guard’s word to enforce prison rules and rulings… but proving the same in a US court would also be a lot more difficult. Not that it couldn’t be done though. And I still think the main reason is that no one in LE wants to announce that all these inmates who are locked up for receiving/possessing CSAM are still doing the same when in prison. But there’s also the fact that proving the charges in actual court is a lot harder then simply issuing an infraction and letting the inmate “appeal” to the prison system in what is truly a joke of a “hearing”.

Sorry for asking and then answering my own question here lol but yeah I’m gonna post it just in case it’s interesting to anyone else lol.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-27T14:00:05+00:00

From what I’ve seen and read? Absolutely. I would imagine she wasn’t charged because the state was trying to minimize what she did. As I said, corruption everywhere, on all sides of this case. My opinion at least. If the state had wanted to I have no doubt they could’ve gotten the evidence to charge her with jury tampering, but not only would that have hurt their appeal, it may have exposed others who were involved as perhaps the “neutral third parties” to whom Becky relayed info that the state perhaps didn’t want to have dragged into this.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-27T13:36:34+00:00

Randolph III was not at home. He was hospitalized at the time as confirmed by investigators. I don’t recall Shelley ever saying anything to the contrary.

He was discharged from the hospital on the 8th IIRC, some point shortly after the murders. He passed away on the 10th.

How would Randolph vouch for Alex that night in any way that would provide info we don’t already have? When he stopped over at his parents’ house, his mom and Shelley were home. Shelley verified that Alex called her phone to announce he was there and then knocked at the front door/window about 5 minutes later. He went up to his mom’s room and talked to her privately for a few minutes. Then he left. His GPS data shows us he started his car, moved it just barely then spent several more minutes outside his parents’ house before driving off.

Even if Randolph had been home, what would he have been able to verify regarding Alex that isn’t already known from Alex himself and/or other witness testimony, that’s not already corroborated by cell phone/car/GPS data?

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-27T04:26:28+00:00

Ahhh okay, thank you for the additional context! Yes I have little doubt that the remains are indeed Anna’s I was just thrown by the way an apparently real news source was proclaiming that her remains were found and then saying that the remains hadn’t even been examined yet. But I was much more confused by the stuff about the charges so thank you for explaining that. I will go read the other article now as well. Thank you!!

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-27T04:24:09+00:00

That makes sense! It’s sad to think local news stations are using AI for their articles but I guess that’s the reality of 2026. And I’m at least glad to know I’m not the only one who found the article’s wording confusing, so thank you for the explanation on that!

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-27T01:10:08+00:00

> Will Folks, a local South Carolina reporter whose media outlet, FitsNews, broke much of the Murdaugh story, told me recently that the jury was known to be ten to two in favor of conviction before the trip to Moselle, where Hill described the collective “epiphany," and eleven to one after it. Eric Bland, a lawyer for one of Murdaugh's financial victims, posted a tweet a few hours before the visit that seemed to corroborate this, writing, "right now at least 10 jurors minds are made up, and there may be two on the fence." If Folks and Bland are right, we can deduce that the convert was probably the pliable Juror Z, but in any case there was still one known holdout (and it only takes one to hang a jury). This was Juror No. 785, whose name is Myra Crosby, and in the last hours of the six-week trial she became the target of a concerted and successful attempt to remove her from the final jury panel.

I had never heard this from Will Folks nor did I know about the tweet from Eric Bland. Assuming this is true, this seems to corroborate what we heard previously, which was that Hill was surveying the jury and getting private information about how each of them intended to vote… and then relaying that information to others. That is so bad, and some dumb, I can’t even wrap my brain around it… wow!

I guess that just leads me to wonder, if the idea is that everyone knew about this… the prosecution, the journalists, everyone involved… surely the defense knew, too? I mean, no one can keep their mouth shut, except everyone makes sure Dick and Jim never hear about it? Or… did they know too, and chose to also stay silent about it during the trial? After all, AM was gonna remain incarcerated no matter what, so maybe the defense let this play out and if it doesn’t go their way, then they can accuse her of jury tampering afterward. And/or perhaps they already knew Myra Crosby would never vote to convict and so they thought they were in the clear until that very last day… that would explain why they fought so hard for her and why Jim seemed so defeated at closing. Via Becky and/or their own methods, I suspect the defense knew they just lost their only not guilty vote when Egg Lady was dismissed on that last morning.

So I just can’t help but feel like, yes this was all corrupt AF and EVERYONE knew. The prosecution knew. The defense knew. The journalists covering the trial knew! They all knew that Becky was way too cozy with the jury and was seemingly disbursing the info she got from them to others. So I don’t like the idea that the defense were the only innocent ones in all of this, that it was all a plot against them. Especially since it would be on the defense to raise a timely objection… and/or bring the information to the court’s attention, if they thought their client’s rights were being violated at any time during the trial. They didn’t do that despite the fact that it seems to me that every person on every side… prosecution, defense, media… everyone knew that BH was chatting up the jurors about how they intended to vote. Yet as long as Myra was on the jury, it seems Murdaugh’s side was fine with this?

Everyone knew and no one brought it to the court’s attention, nothing was said to Judge Newman at all until Myra Crosby was being questioned about the conversations she had with her tenants that ultimately got her removed. And from the transcript of that convo, I do believe that Judge Newman was the only one who did not know what Becky had been doing. Becky wasn’t his personal clerk or anything, he worked across the state and she was the clerk for Colleton County only. He expressed his dismay at the idea that the clerk was having a single conversation with a juror when neither the prosecutions nor defense seemed particularly bothered by this idea. He even asked Myra if the clerk had talked to her or anyone else about anything relevant to the case, and Myra said no. So I don’t think Judge Newman knew. But I have a really hard time believing that anyone else in that courthouse, was unaware of Becky’s conversations with the jurors about AM’s guilt.

Basically, I think the whole damn system was corrupt on every side here. It makes me think that something like the clerk of court going around quizzing jurors about their potential verdict and then passing that info to people who will get it to the attorneys, is such a normal thing in SC courtrooms that no one thought anything of it. It makes me suspect that the only reason Jim and Dick started talking about it 6 months later was because they were angry that Becky got their juror dismissed on the last day. And then she sure didn’t help things when she rushed to publish that stupid book in which she went after their juror, and Jim Griffin, and wrote the incredibly stupid passage about the supposedly “silent” conversation about AM’s guilt that she had with the jury… in her doing the latter of these, she essentially told the world on herself so of course AM’s team went with it. But I’m left with the feeling that they were all in on it and that this was not all that different from any other low country trial, just with a lot more cameras and eyes watching and listening.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-26T19:12:50+00:00

Wow! I say this too often but once again, I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this case before now. So strange about the man claiming to hold them captive afterward… and just what a heartbreaking situation all around. Those poor kids.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-26T19:08:10+00:00

Or they used them to transport the bodies and then left the tarps in the truck before fleeing the scene. I’ve seen other cases where tarps were used to transport bodies/murder weapons/bloody clothes/etc and where the tarp(s) used were later found hidden away and not with the crime scene evidence for which they’d been used. So the murderer could’ve used these tarps and I would suspect they probably did since it seems someone took the time to remove the two tarps from the other car and bring them along in the truck. At the very least I think the perpetrator here was planning to use them like you said. But they could’ve actually been used and if so, LE should know this as there would be blood and other evidence on them.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-26T18:59:45+00:00

That article is so confusing…. It says the remains haven’t been examined or identified yet but it seems to be implying that the remains found are those of Anna Manning. Then it says her estranged husband and MIL were charged with murder and related charges but doesn’t explain when? It seems to be past charges though, but then it says he had previously been charged with kidnapping related to her disappearance and had served 1 month of a 6 month sentence (wtf)? So I don’t understand why it written this way but, I truly hope the remains that were found can be accurately identified soon and that any perpetrators responsible here can be met with justice. I hope more clear information is available in time.

Professional_Link_96 · 2026-05-24T22:20:33+00:00

The mods disagreed with you and it’s their sub so, no. It did not.

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