In your heart, you know you’ve identified the suspect, but you’ve gotten to a point where you know it is cold.” “This was the only one that wasn’t solved. Emilio Paerels, who was called to assist at the murder scene with the lead investigator, Gary Hilton. “I personally worked nine homicides as the lead or co-lead,” said retired Torrance police Capt. Bradford claimed to be sailing at 10:30 that night and having to paddle in to the shore when the wind died. One night he burst into the apartment and angrily threw a lamp at Knight because she was entertaining another man.Īlthough police had the garrote, and suspected Bradford committed the crime, detectives could not build enough evidence to prosecute him. But the relationship ended when he wanted to be exclusive and she didn’t.ĭuring his trial in July and August, witnesses recalled Bradford stalking her apartment, driving past it in his orange 240Z. She rented an apartment in a converted garage.īradford, an engineering student at Cal State Long Beach, met her while skiing. She moved to California to take a job at Little Company of Mary Hospital, working in the neonatal unit. The 28-year-old Canadian nurse hadn’t been in Torrance long. Somebody put several hours effort into it, knowing they were going to use this weapon.” You’ve got to cut the dowels, drill the holes, sand them down, carefully put the wire through, double it. “What occurs to you immediately - there is a lot of work that goes into it. “I’m holding it right now in my hands,” Morrison said, finishing up the production. Morrison said “Dateline” built its own garrote for the show. Her killer extinguished her pig-like sounds for help by stabbing her in the leg, rupturing her femoral artery and ending her life. The device was built so strongly that it failed during the crime, slicing a gash so deep into Knight’s neck that she could breathe through it. 29, 1979, when someone slipped into Knight’s Anza Avenue home and mutilated her.Ī homemade garrote built with wooden mop handles and picture-hanging wire lay hidden under her body. In August, a jury convicted Knight’s former boyfriend, Douglas Bradford, of first-degree murder, despite his years of claiming he was sailing in the Alamitos Bay on Aug. The quest by a cold-case prosecutor and Torrance police detectives to solve the three-decades-old killing will be recounted tonightin a two-hour “Dateline” segment at 9 p.m. It drifted along for all those many years.” “Never have I encountered a garrote in a domestic crime, in a local crime that was committed in this way,” Morrison said in an interview Thursday. Lead “Dateline” correspondent Keith Morrison has told dozens of tales of murder, but even he hadn’t encountered grisly details like those of the brutal slaying of Torrance nurse Lynne Knight in 1979.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |