True Crime Confidential Volume 5: True Crime Confidential, #5

By Robert Keller

18 Truly Horrific Murder Cases, including;

 

Dinner is Served: Katherine had been a slaughterhouse worker since the age of 17. Now she's putting her butchering skills to a more sinister purpose.

 

Written in Blood: Two teenaged girls are murdered in an English village. The police have no clue who killed them. Perhaps a recent scientic breakthrough can help. It's called DNA fingerprinting.

 

I Don't Like Mondays: A teenager with a bad attitude and a rifle, living right across the street from an elementary school. This doesn't end well.

 

High Road to Hell: Two brothers embark on an unprecedented killing spree. Their mission? To prepare the world for Christ's triumphant return.

 

The Man Who Killed Halloween: A little boy dies in agony after eating poisoned Halloween candy. But who killed him? Surely it couldn't be his own father?

 

Lesbian Vampire Killers: Four young women crusing the streets after dark, offering rides to random strangers. Don't get into their car. They want your blood.

˃˃˃

˃˃˃

˃˃˃

Plus 12 more riveting true crime cases. Scroll up to get your copy now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Walker
• Release date: Dec 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393347682

Robert Keller

Bestselling true crime author Robert Keller first developed an interest in the subject when, as a teenager, he accidentally checked out a book from the library thinking it was a vampire novel. It was, in fact, the true story of British "vampire killer” John Haigh. Thus a lifelong fascination with true crime was born, launching a writing career than has produced more than fifty books over forty years. Mr. Keller’s works include the acclaimed Monsters series, an exploration into the lives and crimes of the world’s most deadly psychopaths.       Find out more at www.robertkellerauthor.com  

Book preview

High Road to Hell

The Mokelumne River is a scenic waterway that winds its way through the deep granite canyons and dense pine forests of Northern California, emptying eventually into the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. It is a popular destination for water sports enthusiasts and sightseers alike, especially during the hot summer months, when kayakers, jet skiers and birdwatchers abound.

Saturday, August 5, 2000, was just about the perfect day to be down by the water. Around mid-morning a man was powering his jet ski along the river when he spotted a black duffle bag washed up on the bank. Curious, he guided his vehicle over and retrieved the bag. Whatever was inside was quite heavy, but he managed to haul the bag up onto his jet ski and slide back the zipper. The gush of foul air that escaped the bag caused the man to pull back slightly. Recovering his composure, he peered inside. Instantly he recoiled, causing the bag to drop back into the water. Leaving it there, he powered up his jet ski and raced towards a nearby jetty to summon help. The bag had contained a lump of pale flesh, a severed human torso.

And that was just the first of the day’s macabre discoveries. A few hours later, a marina employee found another duffel bag bobbing in the water under a dock a half-mile away. This one contained a head. A third bag was later discovered washed up on an island in the river. By then, police forensic units were racing towards the scene. They would eventually pull nine bags from the water, containing the intermingled body parts of three people, later identified as Ivan and Annette Stineman, 85 and 78 years old respectively, and Selina Bishop, the 22-year-old daughter of legendary blues guitarist Elvin Bishop. All three (as well as Bishop’s mother Jennifer Villarin and her companion James Gamble) had been murdered by brothers Glenn and Justin Helzer. The motive? The brothers wanted to speed Christ’s return to earth, in order to spread joy, peace and love.

Glenn and Justin Helzer were born into a devout Mormon family and raised in Martinez, California, a small town about a 50-mile drive from downtown San Francisco. The boys had by all accounts a happy childhood and were active in school sports and in their church. After graduating high school, each of them fulfilled the Mormon requirement of two years mission work. Glenn (known to family and friends by his middle name Taylor) went to Brazil. Justin accepted a posting to Texas. Thereafter they returned to California, where Justin found work as a cable installer and Taylor became a stockbroker at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.

The Helzer boys appeared to be living the American dream, especially Taylor, who married in 1993 and fathered two daughters. But behind the façade of suburban normality, a storm was brewing. Taylor was soon seduced by the trappings and fringe benefits of his stockbroking career. He began staying out late, drinking and drugging and having sex with other women. Within three years his wife had filed for divorce and the Mormon Church had excommunicated him.

Despite his decidedly un-Christian behavior, the excommunication hurt Taylor more than he liked to admit. He reacted angrily, criticizing the church at any opportunity. He also began formulating his own belief system, based on the philosophy that good and evil do not exist. According to Taylor, these concepts had been invented by religious leaders as a means of controlling the masses. He began to believe that he was a prophet, tasked by God to lay the groundwork for Christ’s return to earth. 

Justin Helzer had always been in awe of his older brother and was an easy convert to his bizarre beliefs. And there was soon a third member of the fellowship, Justin’s girlfriend, Dawn Godman. A high school dropout, Dawn was married at 18 and divorced at 21. She had birthed two sons, one of whom had died in infancy. The other was placed in the custody of his father after the divorce (a wise move by the court, since Dawn had a history of suicide attempts). 

But Dawn Godman and Justin Helzer were the passive members of this ill-matched alliance. The driving force was Taylor and he was leading the group in ever-more extreme directions. He now believed that God was talking to him directly, instructing him to assassinate the leaders of the Mormon Church and place himself at the head of that organization. In order to achieve this, Taylor planned to recruit and train Brazilian orphans to be his soldiers. But such a scheme would take money, he told his followers, money they didn’t have and would somehow have to raise.

Taylor’s first fundraising scheme involved recruiting young women to work as prostitutes and drug dealers. He even began handing out fliers at raves and nightclubs, in an attempt to recruit call girls. When this met with limited success, he started plotting to bring in underage girls from Brazil and offer them to wealthy businessmen. He and his followers would then raise money by blackmailing the men. This scheme too, came to nothing.

Finally, Taylor settled on a more practical plan, extorting money from his former clients. As a stockbroker, he had managed the financial affairs of a number of wealthy clients and he still had a database of their details. What he was looking for was an elderly person with whom he had developed a solid relationship. Someone who trusted him enough to allow him into his home; someone who could be easily overpowered and intimidated. He settled eventually on 85-year-old Ivan Stineman. 

But before making his move, there was one key detail that needed to be ironed out. Taylor was savvy enough to know that he might become a suspect if Stineman suddenly disappeared. If the cops then checked his bank accounts and found an influx of unexplained cash, he’d be in deep trouble. What he needed was a third party to channel the money through. Enter, Selina Bishop.

Selina was the perfect mark. The pretty 22-year-old had met Taylor at a rave in the spring of 2000 and had been instantly smitten. Little did she know that her new boyfriend had been lying to her from day one. He told her his name was  Jordan and set about separating her from her friends and family. He encouraged her to move out of her mother’s home and into a studio apartment. He refused to be introduced to anyone she knew. Selina’s mother, Jennifer Villarin, became so curious about her daughter’s new beau that she made an excuse to arrive at Selina’s apartment while Taylor was there so that she could be introduced to him. That would prove to be a fatal mistake. 

With Selina now firmly under his thumb, Taylor began to sow the seeds for the next part of his plan. He told her that he was due to inherit a substantial sum of money from his grandmother and that he needed to hide it from his ex-wife. Would she be prepared to open four bank accounts in her name as a place for him to park the funds? Selina agreed, of course, and in doing so sealed her fate. In the days that followed Taylor made several purchases, including the reciprocating saw he'd use to cut up his girlfriend's body and the duffel bags that would hold her remains.

On July 30, Taylor and Justin Helzer, along with Dawn Godman, drove to the home of Ivan and Annette Stineman. Taylor had a good relationship with the Stinemans from his time managing their stock portfolio. They liked and trusted him. When he knocked on their door that day, they readily invited him in. Taylor and Justin, wearing suits and carrying briefcases, entered. Once inside however, things quickly turned nasty. The elderly couple was overpowered and handcuffed. Annette was then forced to call the manager at the local branch of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. She told him that she wanted to liquidate her investments and although the request was unusual, he agreed to carry it out. The manager would later recall that Annette Stineman had sounded nervous.

Once Annette hung up the phone, she and her husband were forced to write two checks – one for $33,000, the other for $67,000 – both in favor of Selina Bishop. They were then given several Rohypnol pills, a sedative that has gained infamy as a date rape drug. 

Taylor had expected that the Stinemans would die from the overdose of Rohypnol, but they didn't. They merely slipped into a deep sleep. The brothers then decided to move things along. They dragged the elderly couple to the bathroom, where Justin bashed Ivan Stineman’s head against the tile floor and Taylor slit Annette's throat with a hunting knife. Then they left, returning the following day to hack the bodies apart with a power saw. When this macabre task was done, Taylor stood over the dismembered corpses and thanked the Stinemans for being willing to sacrifice their lives for a greater cause. The following day, Dawn Godman rolled into a Walnut Creek bank in a wheelchair and deposited the two checks into Selina Bishop's account. It was now imperative to the plan that Selina be eliminated.

On August 2, 2000, two days after killing the Stinemans, Taylor