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Bizarre clues, anonymous tips spur hunt for stripper's killerEleventh in a 12-part seriesBy TOM CONNERDaily News City EditorA teenage boy swung open an unlocked door at the back of a trailer at Victoria Mobile Home Park, Florosa. A cat slipped between his legs and scurried inside. An awful stench filled the air.The boy followed the cat into a darkened bedroom, groped among a pile of sheets and clothing on adisheveled bed and stopped short when his left hand gripped the leg of a dead woman.“I wasn’t going to spend anymore time in there,” he said later.He ran outside and told his stepfather, the manager of the trailer court, what he had found. The manager called the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Department.Since that evening on Oct. 18, 1982, three men on the force have sought the person who plunged a knife five times into the chest of Anne Renee Johnson, a 26-year-old stripper.The investigation has been frustrating for Sgt. George French and investigators Chuck Keeler and Don Vinson. Sometimes eventhe simplest bits of informationOF OKALOOSA COUNTYcannot be nailed down.For example, Johnson’s trailer was a mess when the three menwalked into it that Monday. They wondered if the killer had ransacked the place or if Johnson simply had kept a sloppy house.They don’t know. A friend of Johnson says she was a “finicky” housekeeper; a man she dated says she was a “nasty” one. French and Keeler see another explanation.“There’s a high probability of a second crime - burglary,” French says. Someone could have broken into the trailer hours or days after the murder. If that happened, Keeler says, “then we’ve got a contaminated murder scene.”French has run up against other unknowns in his search for the killer. Among them:• No motive has been agreed upon.• The murder weapon hasn’t turned up.• The date of Johnson’s death isuncertain.• There are no suspects.• And although sex probably figured in the slaying, no oneknows to what extent. One official says Johnson could have been killed while having sex with a man, but it also is possible she was killedby a lesbian.The three men have filled folder upon folder with interviews and reports. They have put seven possible suspects through lie-detector tests (all were cleared), heard “kooks” confess to a murder they didn’t commit and examined twoknives to see if either was the murder weapon.Still, the three lawmen wonder what happened between 3:30 a.m.Oct. 12 and 6:22 p.m. Oct. 18.Johnson, a 5-foot-7, 140-poundbrunette, was a striptease dancer at Carmicheal’s Surfside 7. To some she was known as “Devil’s Delight,” and apparently she was enthralling. Claude Jenkins, editor of Status magazine, watched one of(See killer — page 2A)
Newspaper Details
Fort Walton Beach Playground Daily News
Fort Walton Beach, Florida, US
Thu, Apr 28, 1983
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
IA, USA 20 May 2020
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