Whatever Happened to Sara

Gwen Beaudean Thoma EdD

Description

In 1953 life in Farrar, Missouri, was simple and quiet. The town of less than one hundred was composed of German immigrants who were mostly farmers. The town was centered around their Lutheran church and school. Sara Turner was a twenty-three-year-old elementary teacher at the Salem Lutheran Grade School in Farrar. She was beautiful, and she was loved by this community. She had close friends but was not lucky in romance. The heartache from her first broken romance at the age of twenty-one made Sara cynical and distrustful of men.

In July of 1953, Sara Turner was brutally murdered on a deserted county road near Farrar. The small town was shocked to learn that their sweet and dear Sara was killed in such a way. Nothing like this had ever happened before in Farrar. Everyone knew everyone else in the community. The murderer couldn’t possibly be anyone living in Farrar.

John Barnes was the sheriff in Perry County, Missouri. He wanted to solve this case desperately. As he learned more about Sara and put the clues together, he became obsessed with the need to find justice for the young woman whose life had ended so brutally. Whatever Happened to Sara is a book that reveals not only the life of Sara Turner but also the evidences as they compiled until the case was finally solved. I hope you enjoy this book until its dramatic end.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Science Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 31 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669837671
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SARA
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Gwen Beaudean Thoma, EdD
 
Copyright © 2022 by Gwen Beaudean Thoma, EdD.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916096
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-3769-5

Softcover
978-1-6698-3768-8

eBook
978-1-6698-3767-1
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 07/12/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
763995
CONTENTS
Chapter 1       The Event
Chapter 2       Finding Sara
Chapter 3       Telling Sara’s Parents
Chapter 4       About Farrar
Chapter 5       The Morning of the First Day
Chapter 6       The Questioning
Chapter 7       July 21, 1953
Chapter 8       Saying Goodbye to Sara
Chapter 9       Sara’s Diary
Chapter 10     Never Again
Chapter 11     The Heartache Interview
Chapter 12     Exploring Other Leads
Chapter 13     Going Cold
Chapter 14     A Simple Twist of Fate
Chapter 15     Gathering Proof
Chapter 16     Closure
 
Dedicated to the residents of Farrar, Missouri, where my grandparents, John and Bertha Sticht, had lived and raised their twelve children.
CHAPTER 1
The Event
It was a hot and humid night in July of 1953. Heat lightning kept the sky lit continuously. There was no breeze in the air. The only air that was moving was coming through the open window of Sara Turner’s 1940 Ford Coupe. Sara was driving home to Farrar from her night on the town with college friends she had met in Cape Girardeau. Sara had graduated three years ago from Southeast Missouri State Teachers College in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, with a teacher’s certificate. She taught elementary school.
Sara was humming to the music on the radio as she sped down the gravel road of County Road 414 toward her parents’ farm in Farrar, Missouri. She had promised her parents she would be home to go to church with them in the morning. She was thinking back over the events of the night and the fun she had with her old classmates. They had gone out to eat, went to the movies, and then went to a local dance club. Sara had done her usual amount of flirting with the men at the dance club, but she was determined to not let anyone get too close. She had vowed two years earlier that she would never let any man get too close again.
Sara was beautiful at the age of twenty-three, with flowing long blond hair and blue eyes. She had a gorgeous figure at five feet, two inches tall and 110 pounds. It was no wonder that she attracted men wherever she went. She smiled to herself about how she could tease men into thinking she liked them and could cool their desire at just the right moment. She would see just a glimpse of their anger as they stormed off. Sara would sometimes have a moment of regret at being the way she was, but the regret would pass quickly.
As Sara continued down the gravel road shortcut to Farrar, she continued to think about her past relationships. Suddenly she came over a hill and around a curve and slammed on her brakes. Her car skidded sideways on the gravel before coming to an abrupt stop. Sara said to herself, “What’s he doing here?”
The man was standing in the middle of the road, had his hands on his hips, and did not move as the car skidded toward him. It was his intent to stop Sara from getting home. This gravel road shortcut was isolated, with only two farms on the ten-mile stretch of road. Sara was frightened, and she had every reason to be. “Why are you here?” Sara shouted out the window.
The man smiled as he moved toward her car. “Why, Sara honey, you should know by now,” he said. He tore open the driver’s side door and said, “Get out, Sara, we need to talk.”
“We have nothing to talk about!” Sara shouted.
The man pulled Sara out of the car, and she started fighting him. She knew if she didn’t fight him, she wouldn’t stand a chance of getting away. She put her foot behind him and shoved him away. He stumbled and fell backward, giving Sara a chance to start running down the road. The man cursed at Sara, calling her a no-good bitch. He caught her, swung her around, and grabbed her in a lustful embrace. Sara screamed and fought for her life, but she knew she was doomed. She slapped him and spit on him, but that just made him even angrier.
He threw her down on the ground. He tore at her clothes. He said, “I’m going to teach you a lesson, bitch.” He then raped Sara. She tried to slap him and clawed at the flesh of this brutal man’s upper arms. But the man just put his hands around Sara’s neck and strangled the life out of her battered and bruised body. A single tear rolled from the corner of Sara’s eye as she took her last breath. The man stood up to rearrange his clothes and spit on her as he started to walk way. He turned around and walked back to Sara, bent down and tore the little gold cross necklace from her neck, then rolled her nude and limp body off the road and down into a ravine. He put the cross necklace into his pocket like a souvenir. This was his final act of hate and violence. He then proceeded to collect Sara’s clothing and took the clothes with him when he drove away as though nothing had happened. He would find a place to dispose of her clothing, away from the scene of the murder.
Sara’s car was left running in the middle of the road. Lights were left on, and the radio was still softly playing the hit tunes of the day. Her purse was still lying on the front seat. She would never reach home again. She was not going to be home to go with her parents to church in the morning or ever again. She would not be seeing her little children at school on Monday. She would never have fun with her friends again in Cape Girardeau. Sara was no more. Her young life was over.
The next morning, one of the farm families who lived on this country road was traveling to church when they came upon Sara’s car in the middle of the road. They could not get around the car. The farmer recognized this car as belonging to Sara Turner. He saw that the keys were still in the ignition, which was turned in the On position. The car was not running, but the headlights were on but dimly lit. He saw Sara’s purse still on the seat and could barely hear the radio playing. The farmer went back to the car and told his wife that they needed to go home and call the sheriff’s office. He did not believe Sara would have left the car in the middle of the road with the engine running and left without taking her purse.
“I do not like the looks of this,” he said to his wife.
CHAPTER 2
Finding Sara
The Perry County sheriff, John Barnes, arrived on the scene at about 10:00 a.m. The farmer had taken his family back home but came back to the scene to await the arrival of Sheriff Barnes and to make certain that everything was left the way he found it. He also didn’t want any other car to bust over the hill at a fast rate of speed and run into the car in the middle of the road.
John Barnes got out of his car and introduced himself to the farmer. The farmer shook the sheriff’s hand and said, “I’m Tom Hanners. I live about five miles up the road. My family and I were on our way to church in Farrar when we came upon this car in the middle of the road. Since we couldn’t get around the car, I took my wife and kids back home and called you. The headlights were barely burning when I came upon the car, and I could barely hear music coming from the radio. I left everything the way I found it.”
The sheriff asked as he walked toward the car, “Was the driver’s door standing open like this?”
“Yes,” said Tom Hanners. “I know the owner of this car. It belongs to Sara Turner of Farrar. Of course, everyone knows everyone else in this small community.”
“Does Sara Turner live alone?”
“No, she lives with her parents,” said Tom Hanners.
“Did you call her parents to see if she is at home?”
“No, they would be in church by now, and I didn’t want to alarm them. I also thought that Sara would have never left her car without her purse, left the motor running and her door left standing open.”
The sheriff turned after looking at the scene and started to walk back to his car. As he did so, he said, “I’m going to summon some more of my men so we can process this scene. We need to take pictures and dust for fingerprints. This is all going to take a while. When they arrive, I will need to talk to Sara’s parents. They should be home from church by then. The way this looks, I doubt that their daughter is at home. I don’t like the looks of this either. Once my men arrive, you can go on home.”
Sheriff Barnes’s men arrived about thirty minutes later, and Tom Hanners left to go back home. One of the deputies took Tom’s name and directions as to where he lived so they could question him further later.
Sheriff Barnes gave his deputies direction