Post by Scumhunter on Oct 23, 2022 8:18:41 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: nbcnews.com)
From nbcnews.com:
“I was 11. I was in the 5th grade -- I was in class,” Julie Stroble told Dateline, tearfully. “My dad was there to pick me up and I was excited because I was leaving school.”
But Julie quickly realized there was nothing to be excited about. “We were walking home, and he had told me that Gail and Tamara had been in an accident.” Gail Matthews, 23, was Julie’s older sister. Tamara Berkheiser was Gail’s 5-year-old daughter.
It was September 2, 1994.
Julie’s father warned her that when they arrived home, the house would be full of people, and she was to go straight to her room. “I remember going into my room and a detective came up and he had talked to me about it,” Julie told Dateline. “My dad was with him and so was my mom.”
Julie’s sister Gail and niece Tamara had been found dead in their home in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Gail grew up in Williamsport, the middle of seven siblings. Her older brother David told Dateline Gail was a waitress at a local restaurant called Tailwinds Café. “They just loved her,” David said. “She just got along with everybody.”
When she was 19, Gail gave birth to a baby girl she named Tamara, who “was everything to her mom,” David said.
Julie, Gail and David’s youngest sister, loved her niece Tamara. “I was more close to Tamara than I was Gail,” Julie said. The two girls were only six years apart, so closer to sisters than aunt and niece. Gail and Julie’s mother, Lois, would often watch Julie and Tamara while Gail went to work.
“Tamara was your typical 5-year-old,” Julie recalled, with a laugh. “Very loud, very demanding,” she said. “I did a lot with her.”
All that changed on September 2, 1994.
“I was at work, actually,” David Matthews said about that day. “All of the brothers, we all worked at the same place,” David said, a scrapyard recycling company. “They had called the business and said there was a problem at my sister’s house -- that there was a natural gas leak.”
The brothers rushed to their sister’s house. It was not a gas leak.
David said when they arrived at the house, the place was swarming with police cars and ambulances. “Then we met up with my mom and then that’s when we found out,” David recalled. “My mom’s the one that found her.”
David told Dateline that their mother, Lois, went into Gail’s house earlier that day looking for her. “She was yelling for her and couldn’t find her,” David said. “Then she went upstairs and [Gail and Tamara] was in the bed wrapped up, hugging each other.” They had been murdered.
David said other than the scene on the bed, the home appeared to be spotless. “They cleaned up the whole place when it was done,” David said.
Julie told Dateline she’ll never forget the look of grief that overcame their mother that day. “I don’t wish anyone to ever see that look on their mother’s face,” she said. “It was just pain in her eyes. It was horrible.”
No one in the family knew who would want to kill Gail and Tamara, but over the years there have been several suspects named, according to a retired detective who took an interest in the case. Kenneth Mains joined the Williamsport Bureau of Police in 2003. Dateline exchanged emails with him about the case. He said that working cold cases has “always been my passion” and that when he learned no detective from Williamsport was investigating Gail and Tamara’s murders, he asked to work their case to “bring a resolution to the family and the community.”
He said that request was denied, so he quit and was hired shortly afterwards by the Lycoming County District Attorney’s Office to investigate the case. “I investigated the case for a decade,” he said.
Dateline spoke with the current district attorney, Ryan Gardner, who confirmed that “[Detective] Mains was a detective employed under the District Attorney,” from 2008 to 2018. “He had an independent interest in pursuing or reopening the case.”
Mains told Dateline that Gail and Tamara’s bodies had been found in Tamara’s bedroom. “Gail was on the outside and Tamara inside laying in Gail’s left arm.” The cause of death for both was “manual strangulation and stab wounds.” The former detective also noted that semen had been found inside Gail and on her underwear that belonged to her boyfriend at the time. According to Mains, Gail’s boyfriend “was dismissed rather easily” as a suspect in 1994 despite having said “he hadn’t had sex with [Gail] for over a week,” during the initial investigation.
David Matthews told Dateline that Tamara’s father had been considered a suspect at one time. “He was in the picture but just, like, for visitation and stuff,” David said. D.A. Gardner confirmed that both Tamara’s father and Gail’s boyfriend at the time have all been considered suspects. “There’s numerous suspects,” Gardner added. Dateline reached out to both men but has not heard back.
David Matthews said that one man, Earl “Skip” Kramer III, was arrested in the case in both 1998 and 2002 but the charges were dismissed both times.
“They found him in his car parked around the corner from where everything happened,” David told Dateline. Kramer, he said, was the boyfriend of Gail’s neighbor. “He had glitter on his shoes and blood from my sister’s house.”
Kenneth Mains told Dateline there was evidence to consider Earl R. “Skip” Kramer a suspect. “A fiber from a stuffed animal from Tamara’s bedroom was found on his clothing,” Mains said. He also confirmed that “glitter from Tamara’s bedroom was found in his car.” Mains also stated that Kramer “allegedly confessed” the murders to a cousin. “I believe [the cousin] called the police and they interviewed her,” he said.
Lycoming County District Attorney Ryan Gardner confirmed that Earl “Skip” Kramer was arrested twice and released twice for the murders. “It was ultimately kicked due to hearsay,” Gardner said of the first arrest. The second time, he said, it was due to the glitter found in Kramer’s car. “It’s to my understanding that that was actually withdrawn by the district attorney at the time because additional glitter was found in the common area of the house,” Gardner said. “So presumably he could have been on the porch and never entered the residence.” Dateline reached out to Earl Kramer for comment but has not received a response.
Kenneth Mains retired in 2018. To this day, it’s still unclear to the former detective who Gail and Tamara’s killer is. “This is probably the only case I worked where I wasn’t one hundred percent sure,” Mains said, although he believes there’s still hope for a resolution.
The Lycoming County District Attorney’s Office is again investigating Gail and Tamara’s murders.
District Attorney Ryan Gardner said that after 2018, the case had been inactive, until he assumed office in January 2020. “I formally reopened the investigation at that time,” Gardner said, adding that all suspects are still being investigated.
“There’s been new technology, including the way the labs look at DNA,” Gardner said. “I think that someday there stands a likelihood that there could be developments that ultimately lead to an arrest.”
The Matthews family is hoping for that day, and hoping that when it comes they can find peace and justice for Gail and Tamara.
Lois, the Matthews family matriarch, died of cancer three years ago, still holding on to hope that justice would be served for her daughter and granddaughter. “She wanted to know who did it, or whatever, before she passed -- and why it happened,” David Matthews said. “And it never got done.”
“Every year, on September 2, I light a candle for them,” Julie Stroble told Dateline, noting it had been a tradition for the town of Williamsport since the murders but has fizzled out in recent years. “It just becomes like it’s not real anymore. It becomes like a scary story,” Julie said. “It’s not that way to my family. It really happened.”
Anyone with information about the murders of Gail Matthews and Tamara Berkheiser is asked to call the Lycoming County District Attorney’s Office at (570) 327-2456.
www.nbcnews.com/dateline/28-years-later-pennsylvania-family-still-fighting-justice-murders-gail-n1298767
Thoughts? I am placing Gail and Tamara's case in the Unsolved on TV section due to the above coverage on Dateline NBC's "Cold Case Spotlight" digital series.
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