Post by Scumhunter on Oct 18, 2022 11:54:12 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: nbcnews.com)
From nbcnews.com:
On September 6th, 1996, Linda Bissell was shot multiple times in her home in Findlay, Ohio. This month marked the 26th anniversary of the mother-of-four’s killing, and still the family’s question remains: Who killed their beloved mother?
Linda’s daughters, Amy Crist and Emily Wrobleski, said that their mother was all about family life. “Our house was the house to go to. We had a big farm-style house with a big front porch with a porch swing. My mom always had the snacks in the pantry,” Emily, Linda’s eldest daughter, told Dateline. “She went out every night with our brother JT, who would pitch to her. She was out there, getting bruised up every night so that JT could be a pitcher.”
Emily, who was only 15 years old at the time, told Dateline she remembers that in the time before the murder, her mother had been acting a bit different than usual. Emily said that her mother seemed afraid because the week before she was murdered, she said the side door window of her van had been shot out as she was driving to see her boyfriend. The family never learned why that happened or who did it. Authorities reportedly told Linda that the window had been struck by a rock, but family and friends insist otherwise.
Police reports provided to Dateline reveal that in the days before her murder, Linda had been debating purchasing a gun. She had visited a pawn shop earlier that week and put a deposit down on a .25 caliber gun and later returned to finalize her payment and obtain the gun. Later that week, on Friday, September 6, 1996, Linda was murdered. “That’s the same gun she was killed with,” Emily said.
Records provided to Dateline by both the family and the county records office show that Emily told officers that the gun had been kept in the nightstand in her mother’s room, underneath some of her personal paperwork. In the documents, it was noted that when the responding officer arrived at the scene the nightstand drawer was found open with half the contents spilled out on the floor. The same officer reported that he found Linda’s eldest son, Bryan, at the house on his knees, crying, saying “My mom's dead,” and “She’s gone.”
Records provided to Dateline by both the family and the county records office show that Emily told officers that the gun had been kept in the nightstand in her mother’s room, underneath some of her personal paperwork. In the documents, it was noted that when the responding officer arrived at the scene the nightstand drawer was found open with half the contents spilled out on the floor. The same officer reported that he found Linda’s eldest son, Bryan, at the house on his knees, crying, saying “My mom's dead,” and “She’s gone.”
In the police records, the officer’s written statement reads, “I grabbed Linda Bissell’s right wrist to check for a pulse. I then noticed a hole on the right side of Bissell’s neck, and another type of wound behind her left ear. There was no pulse and Linda was cold to the touch.” According to the officer’s statement, the police captain at the time, Thomas Lee Renninger, “soon arrived on the scene, looked at the wounds -- which appeared to be gunshot wounds -- and noticed some spent rounds on the floor near Linda’s body.”
The Findlay Police Department immediately began investigating Linda’s death as a homicide.
Linda's daughters were distraught. They could not imagine who would have wanted to harm their mother – whom they described as "everyone's mom."
Amy Crist told Dateline in a message that their father, Linda’s ex-husband, Thom Bissell, had been at work the day of the murder. She said her parents had a friendly relationship. According to the police reports shared with Dateline, Thom Bissell agreed to take a polygraph and his answers were recorded as truthful.
The police also spoke with two other men as noted in the reports: Linda’s boyfriend, Frederick Michael Hutchinson, known as “Mike,” and Linda’s eldest son, Bryan Bissell. In a statement by Officer William Lishawa, on September 6, 1996, the same day as his mother's murder, "Bryan was polygraphed with the results coming back inconclusive." Again according to the reports, after rescheduling his first test, Mike came to the patrol station on September 19, 1996 and a polygraph was administered. According to the records shared with Dateline, “the charts indicated that Mike was being deceptive,” although the records shared with Dateline did not show what question or questions indicated deception. Polygraph tests are often criticized for their reliability and are generally not admissible in court. During a separate police interview, Mike Hutchinson stated he did not kill Linda Bissell. Dateline attempted to contact Mike Hutchinson but was not successful.
Linda’s daughters told Dateline that their brother Bryan had just recently returned to the family home. According to the police report, Bryan had previously spent time at the Western Ohio Regional Treatment & Rehabilitation Center and had returned from the treatment center two days prior to his mother's death. Dateline reached out to Bryan for comment but has not heard back.
Emily told Dateline that both her brother and Mike Hutchinson “had been in the house within days of this happening” and that DNA from the family was “all over the place.” According to the statements provided to officers during the investigation, Bryan confirmed his presence at the house the night before the murder. Reports stated that Mike Hutchinson’s fingerprints were found on the shell casings found near Linda’s body. He told officers that this was because he had recently taken Linda out to the woods to show her how to fire her gun.
Dateline spoke with Lieutenant Justin Hendren of the Findlay, Ohio Police Department who said that there are no officers available to speak about the details of this case at this time and it is considered inactive. He was uncertain if anyone was ever officially named a suspect in Linda’s murder.
In a 2016 interview with a local news station, while calling for police to reopen his mother’s case, Bryan Bissell said, "20 years with no closure, that's a big burden.”
Amy and Emily have children of their own now, but are still focused on solving their mother’s murder. Emily has created and maintained a scrapbook that details the happenings in Linda’s 1996 murder. From newspaper clippings to family photographs, she keeps her mother’s memory alive as she and her siblings continue the search for justice.
“We’re learning to accept that this is probably never going to be solved. That we’re never going to have closure,” Emily told Dateline. “I think that it’s just irritating that we know there’s someone out there that did it and we know they’re gonna walk free for it. And she deserved better. So much better than that.”
The one thing Emily doesn’t need to put into a scrapbook to remember? “She never dropped us off without saying ‘I love you,’” she said. In fact, added Amy, “that’s the last thing she said.”
26 years later after that last ‘I love you,’ Amy and Emily hope that additional attention on their mother’s case will help them find answers.
“The next step is having somebody brand new come in and look at her case and see if there’s anything else,” Emily said. “Anything we overlooked, because it’s been 26 years.”
If you have any information about Linda’s murder, please contact Hancock County Crimestoppers at 419-425-8477 or the Findlay Police Department at 419-424-7150.
www.nbcnews.com/dateline/26-years-later-daughters-still-searching-answers-mother-linda-bissell-n1299054
Thoughts? I am placing Linda's case in the Unsolved on TV section because of the above coverage on Dateline NBC's "Cold Case Spotlight" digital series.
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