Nuke's

The following event had been long forgotten, awakened now because of the murderous Jodi Arias.

The year was 1973, it was the dry season and in Angeles City it was warm, dry and dusty.

A call came in to the desk sergeant about a welfare concern for a dependent wife of an enlisted USAF serviceman. The airman had tried calling her from his new assignment for three days, where she was to be joining him soon, and he couldn’t get in contact with her. The young woman was Filipino and lived in a small apartment in an area of town that G.I.’s seldom ventured into or resided in.

The SYM was the junior partner on the unit that got called to investigate. Arriving at the small apartment building, the two burly USAF Security Policemen drew a lot of attention and a small crowd quickly formed as they inquired where the apartment was. One or two people in the crowd said they knew her, knew she was leaving for the “States” and that they hadn’t seen her in a few days, thinking she had left. Another person stated they had noticed a foul smell coming from her apartment.

As the SYM and his partner approached the apartment, there was a foul aroma, an aroma that is unmistakable, it was the smell of a dead and decaying human body. The partners noticed an insect trail going in and out of the apartment under the door.

The SYM‘s partner quickly radioed in that the local police needed to be called before anyone attempted entry, while the SYM tried to make contact with the owner/manager of the apartments.

When all necessary personnel were in place, and a glob of Mentholatum applied to each nostril, they entered the apartment and were exposed to a fresh Hell they couldn’t have ever prepared themselves for.

The apartment windows and door had been closed, there was no air conditioning, no fans and no ventilation. Insects were everywhere. As they entered the bedroom the source of the smell, as they had expected, was grotesquely on display on the bed. Signs of a struggle were all around. The murdered woman was on her back, stabbed twenty four times with a large kitchen knife, with the final stab burying the knife to the handle in the middle of her chest. What little blood that didn’t drain from her tiny body provided sustenance for many of the insects, she was covered in maggots and the blood that had drained out onto the floor had separated. Her arms and hands, also cut, were reaching upward in a cruel display of her desperate attempt to live.

While this brutal murder was now the jurisdiction of the Angeles City PD, the USAF was involved in providing investigative assistance so the murderer could be found.
This included the involvement of the OSI(Office of Special Investigations), basically FBI trained USAF personnel. The young agent sent to the murder scene was there to acquire fingerprints from the crime scene, and as it was soon revealed, was completely unprepared for the task.

As he began applying ink to the murdered woman’s fingers, he asked for assistance in bringing her hands down to roll onto the finger print boxes. The SYM and his partner, having never taken finger prints, looked at each other in shock and then asked the agent if he should just bring the paper up to her fingers? After all, the rigor in her tiny body was obvious. The agent then became angry and demanded we help him do it his way…they refused. At this point, the agent angrily attempted to bring her hand down by holding her fingers, at which time a few of her fingers snapped off in his hand. The look of horror on his face was both justified and hysterically funny. As he ran out of the room to vomit, everyone else found some much needed release from the gruesome scene, with all of us laughing loudly.

A few days later the desk received a phone call from the Angeles City PD, that the murder suspect had been identified, located and arrested. The very young man, approximately eighteen years old, had worked for the murder victim as a house boy, performing cleaning tasks and helping get her belongings packed for her new life in the U.S. In his statement, the victim had discovered her most valuable jewelry was missing and confronted the young man. Although he had stolen the items, his honor was questioned and in a fit of rage attacked her with the kitchen knife.

Even without the murderer’s confession, having seen the brutality of the attack on this young woman, the SYM now knew what murderous rage looked like.

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