Cathy Lyn Shackelford
Date Found: April 1, 1976
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Investigating Agency: Oklahoma City Police Department
(405) 297-1180
On April 1, 1976, three workers in Oklahoma City on break decided to explore an abandoned house at 325 NE 6th st., where they were met with the overwhelming smell of death. Inside the dilapidated home they found a popcorn bucket, and when tipped over, a severed head that was barely recognizable as human, with the mouth cut from ear-to-ear rolled out. When police arrived, they found arms and legs littered throughout the house, and a torso with its sexual organs removed.
It would take 17 years for police to identify the body of 18-year-old Cathy Lyn Shackelford, of the Sac and Fox tribe. It was the fantastic memory of the investigator Sgt. Norma Adams, who was tasked with looking into an odd missing person’s report that began the process of identifying Cathy. She remembered seeing a photo of the facial reconstruction completed by Betty Pat Gatliff, a Norman forensic sculptor, from 1976 of the then unknown victim. This lead to the University of California in Berkeley making a match with familial DNA, confirming Sgt. Adam’s suspicions. Cathy’s last known sighting was about 2 months before her remains were found. What happened in those 2 months remains a mystery.
Three years later, on April 19th, 1979, children playing on the 300 block of NE 10th st., witnessed a dog running down the street carrying a human head. A hand, a pelvis with its sexual organs removed, and circular portions of flesh, all of which had been meticulously cleaned, were found littered throughout the neighborhood in brown paper sacks or hidden under news paper in the following weeks. The remains were identified through fingerprinting as Arley Bell Killian, 22, a Native American woman who had been a victim of sex trafficking, and who was last seen by her family only hours before the first of her remains were discovered.
On April 6th, 1986, over a decade after the first gruesome discovery, a man walking down an alley behind his home on the 400 block of NE 1st, came upon a torso with its sexual organs removed, and a leg. Almost a week later, the matching head was found six blocks away in a garbage bin, where most of her face had been burned down to the skull. Two tattoos on the woman’s shoulder, a Playboy bunny and the words, “Lady Aries” lead to the remains being identified as 23-year-old Tina Sanders, and like the other two, she was a Native American woman. She was last seen alive on March 5.
Due to unmistakable similarities investigators are certain that the horrific and brutal killings of Cathy Lynn Shackelford, Arley Killian, and Tina Sanders is at the hand of an unknown killer roaming the streets: The Oklahoma City Butcher.
If you have any information regarding the murders of Cathy Shakelford, Arley Killian, and/or Tina Sanders, you are encouraged to contact the Oklahoma City Police Department at 405-297-1180.
