A chilling murder just days after Christmas.
In December 1978, just three days after Christmas, Bob Young and his girlfriend, Elizabeth Andes, were preparing to move out of their apartment. They had been living there with another couple, Sue Parmelee and her boyfriend John, though their fathers believed the arrangement was simply for financial reasons, unaware that their daughters were sharing the apartment with their partners.
On the evening of December 28, Bob returned to the apartment with a bag of clothes and a vacuum cleaner, intending to help Elizabeth clean up and ensure they would get their deposit back. However, when he arrived in the parking lot, he found the apartment dark and silent.
Expecting a note explaining Elizabeth’s absence, Bob was met with a horrifying scene instead: a blood-spattered bedroom, a toppled dresser, and Elizabeth’s lifeless body, strangled and stabbed.
Elizabeth’s boyfriend discovers her lifeless body in their apartment
The apartment lacked a phone, forcing him to brave the freezing December night to find someone who could call the police. Oxford, Ohio—where both had attended Miami University—was a small college town that hadn’t experienced a murder in decades, let alone one as horrific as this.
When the police arrived, they discovered Elizabeth Andes lying on the floor of her bedroom. Her hands and feet were bound, and a cloth had been forced into her mouth, likely to muffle her cries. As a fashion student, Elizabeth had been stabbed with a pair of her own sewing shears, which were found wrapped in a sweater on the floor.
Elizabeth was found nude except for a single knee-high blue sock, and by the time the police arrived, Young had covered her body with a sheet. A robe sash was tied around her neck, one of her earrings had been ripped from her ear, and her torso was covered in blood from multiple stab wounds.
Is Bob Young to blame?
Within 15 hours of finding the body, police were confident they had their suspect. Bob Young, a soft-spoken football player who had been in a three-year relationship with Elizabeth Andes, was quickly identified as the prime suspect. Despite the couple’s seemingly enviable relationship, authorities swiftly focused on him. Young was taken to another town for a polygraph test, which he was told he failed, and he was pressured into signing a confession he would later retract.
Young’s change of story wasn’t the only sign that the case might not be as straightforward as the authorities claimed. His attorney pointed out that the confession contained discrepancies with the crime scene facts. “There were four or five inconsistencies,” he told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “You start to wonder if he lied about the physical evidence or if he was misled and included incorrect details in his statement.”
Despite these issues, the police remained convinced of Young’s guilt, leading to his arrest and trial, where he was acquitted. With the case officially closed and authorities maintaining that Young was the perpetrator, Elizabeth’s family pursued justice through a wrongful death suit in civil court. Despite the lower burden of proof in civil trials, the jury again ruled in Young’s favor.
Countless potential suspects
Decades later, reporters Amber Hunt and Amanda Rossman brought renewed attention to the case in the first season of their popular podcast Accused. Their investigation highlighted how the police’s singular focus on Bob Young had hampered a thorough investigation. Without a conviction, the case was left stagnant.
The police not only concentrated solely on Young, ignoring other potential leads, but also closed the case prematurely. This closure meant it was not entered into unsolved murder databases, and the crime details were never cross-referenced with other similar cases. To make matters worse, evidence was misplaced after Young’s trial, further complicating the chances of finding the true perpetrator—assuming Young was indeed innocent.
Their reporting revealed that the police’s narrow focus was not due to a lack of other suspects. Elizabeth’s boss, Robert “Buzz” Caul, had contacted the police shortly after the murder, suggesting they might want to speak with him. He claimed that Elizabeth had invited him to her apartment the night before her death—a behavior that was out of character for her. According to Caul, they had smoked weed, drunk wine, and watched a movie together.
However, Elizabeth’s friends were skeptical of Caul. They described him as having an intense, unreciprocated crush on Elizabeth and noted his “creepy” behavior. One coworker mentioned that she and Elizabeth always walked home together when Caul was around.
Caul wasn’t the only person of interest. There had also been a dispute with the apartment’s maintenance man, who Elizabeth alleged had left her door unlocked—an incident she had reported to the apartment management on the day she was murdered. Additionally, there was an old high school acquaintance with a crush on Elizabeth, and another potential suspect, Boyd Glascock.
Did unrequited love lead to homicide?
Days after Young’s arrest and while he was out on bail, Boyd Glascock visited his house—something he had never done before. Although Young and Glascock had worked together as house painters during the summer, Young described their relationship as distant. During the visit, Glascock confessed that he had been in love with Young for years and claimed that Young reciprocated his feelings. He insinuated that Elizabeth had been an obstacle. When Young asked him to leave, Glascock handed him a wrapped gift: a pincushion stained with a red substance that might have been blood.
Unfortunately, none of these leads, or any others, were investigated at the time due to the police’s singular focus on Young. Despite his continued claims of innocence, Young feels responsible for the lack of resolution in Elizabeth’s case. He believes that if he hadn’t been coerced into signing a false confession, the authorities might have pursued other leads and potentially identified the real killer.
As it stands, the question that Elizabeth Andes’ father reportedly asked when Young was acquitted—”Then who killed my daughter?”—remains unanswered.
src: the-line-up.com
