LEFT: A facial reconstruction of then-unidentified Suzanne Poole by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. RIGHT: Photo of Poole. Credit: Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office
Othram and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office have identified a 1974 teen homicide victim that investigators think could have been murdered by serial killer Gerard John Schaefer, also known as the “Killer Cop.”
The murder of now-identified 15-year-old Suzanne Gale Poole is shockingly similar to Schaefer’s modus operandi, including how and where the victim’s body was found.
Poole’s murder
In 1974, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office investigators were called to an area off Florida State Road A1A where they found skeletal remains of a young girl. Only heavily decomposed partials remains were found and her clothes were mostly deteriorated, but she was described as a white female between the ages of 14 and 25. At the time, investigators were unable to confirm her cause of death, but considered it suspicious as there was evidence she was tied to a tree with wire.
Her body was exhumed in April 2014, and in 2015, a DNA profile was developed but there was no match in CODIS. STR testing of the DNA did exclude several other missing women, though. In 2019, a new facial reconstruction of the girl was prepared by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, but her image was not recognized by anyone.
In December 2021, the skeletal remains were sent to Othram to develop a DNA profile that could be used to identify her. Othram built the profile and in March 2022, Othram’s in-house genealogy team returned investigative leads to the police, including the possible name of the mother and siblings of the then-unknown girl.
Additional investigation and DNA testing of family members confirmed the remains as 15-year-old Suzanne Gale Poole, who had been reported missing in December 1972.
“Susan’s mother is still alive and all we need is a lead,” said Detectible Bill Springer.
During a press conference on Thursday, Springer said he has spoken to family members and some friends, but would like to talk to three specific friends who lived in the same trailer park as Poole. Springer identified them as: Julie Hunt, Michelle Williamson and Greg Anderson.
“These three could help us find the missing piece and give her family closure,” Springer said.
The police identified one suspect in Poole’s murder in 1974 but Springer said now that they know she was actually murdered in 1972, he is no longer a suspect.
The location of Poole’s body in the woods along Florida State Road A1A and evidence that she was tied by wire to a tree now lead Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office to suspect she may have been a victim of Schaefer, who lived near Poole at the time of her death.
Schaefer, who was a police officer at the time of his arrest, is known to have tied at least four women to trees with the intention to rape and murder them. He is suspected of murdering at least 22 other women.
Earlier victims
In June 1972, less than one month after he became a deputy with the Martin County Police Department (Stuart, Florida), an on-duty Schaefer abducted two teenage hitchhikers—18-year-old Nancy Ellen Trotter and 17-year-old Paula Sue Wells.
He brought them deep inside a remote forest alongside Florida State Road A1A. There, he used wire to tie both women’s legs to a tree, before binding a noose around their necks. The women had to stand on exposed tree roots so as to not suffocate. Schaefer told them he was going to rape and murder them, but before he could, the on-duty police officer received an urgent police radio dispatch requesting his presence at the station. So, he left the women tied to a tree with a sinister promise to return.
In the two hours Schaefer was gone, the women managed to free themselves from the tree and run. Schafer’s sheriff, Robert Crowder, found Trotter in the woods, while a trucker found Wells near the highway. Although Schafer claimed he was just trying to teach the women a lesson about the dangers of hitchhiking, Crowder charged him with two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of false imprisonment.
In September 1972, however, Schaefer posted a $15,000 bail and returned home until his trial two months later. Just days after his release, Schaefer found his next two victims—teenage friends Susan Carol Place, 17, and Georgia Marie Jessup, 16. Under the guise of being friends, Schaefer—who told them his name was Jerry Shepard—left with the girls in his car to go on “a trip.”
That was the last time the girls were seen alive, and the teenagers’ disappearance was considered a cold case by early 1973—despite Place’s mom recording the license plate of the stolen car Schaefer used and identifying his physical features.
On April 1, decomposed remains of two individuals were found scattered within and around a hole dug among trees in a Florida park. The location was approximately six miles from where Trotter and Wells had been bound, suspended and threatened prior to their escape the previous summer.
The bodies were quickly identified as Place and Jessup. Both had been bound, with their spinal cords severed and several bones completely severed. Their bodies had been decapitated after death and their jawbones had sustained numerous fractures. Place had also sustained a gunshot wound to her jaw.
Furthermore, wearing on a nearby oak tree indicated the victims has been suspended from the tree. The initials “G.J.” were carved into the tree’s truck.
Search warrants issued in the days after Place and Jessup’s bodies were identified revealed disturbing details about Schaefer, leading a prosecutor to call him "the most sexually deviant person" he had ever encountered.
At Schaefer’s mother’s house investigators found 37 Polaroid photographs depicting women being hung and/or mutilated, although the images were too blurry to permit identification of the subjects. Jewelry from presumed victims was also found, including a bracelet belonging to a woman named Leigh Hainline Bonadies, who had gone missing in September 1969. She was a neighbor of Schaefer's when they were teenagers. Also recovered was a license belonging to Barbara Ann Wilcox and a passport belonging to Collette Marie Goodenough—both of whom had been reported missing in January 1973. Teeth and sections of bone later identified as belonging to at least eight young women and girls were also recovered.
Place’s purse was found at Schaefer’s family home that he shared with his wife.
By May, investigators had gathered enough physical and circumstantial evidence to link Schaefer to 28 individuals either murdered or listed as missing. In September 1973, he was found guilty of first-degree murder of Place and Jessup after a trial in which Trotter and Wells not only testified about their abduction and escape, but also reenacted on video how Schaefer bound them.
On Dec. 3, 1995, Schaefer was found stabbed to death on the floor of his cell in a Florida prison. At the time of his death, Broward County homicide detectives were preparing to bring further charges against Schaefer for three unsolved murders.