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If you pay attention to our newsfeed here at The Gorko, you will know that there is no lack of strange goings-on in the larger Peoria area, and the world, and all about the penchant of our own editors for amateur sleuthing. What you may or may not have realized are how heavily local and national professional crimefighters actually depend on The Gorko for important leads! Here are some of the most bizarre true crime cases that we have personally put to rest over the years.

THE PEORIA DAHLIA

On the morning of June 15th, 1947, a woman strolling her dog through Smoeger Park in central Peoria stumbled upon the gruesome remains of a woman. Her body had been carefully severed in two pieces at the waist, with the intestines neatly arranged between the abdomen and waist, mouth carved in a Glasgow smile, and arms posed in a jazz hands posture. The dog walker, whose name was Karla Burlitz Sampson, reported that initially she was overjoyed, thinking she had found a cast-off mannequin, but when she attempted to arrange the body in her Peoria living room came to the conclusion that it was the corpse of an actual woman.

HOW THE GORKO CRACKED THE CASE

The murderer was Karla Burlitz Sampson herself, and the grisly corpse the body of her estranged housekeeper, Marta Guadalupe Herrera Sanchez Garcia Martinez Martinez. Marta had had a falling-out with her employer, harsh words were exchanged, and in the heat of the moment a large candlestick was applied to the back of Marta’s head. To conceal the crime, Karla used a medical dictionary to stage the bizarre death scene, reasoning that the Peoria police would attribute the murder to her ex-husband Chaz, a local dentist, but later changed her mind and tried to decorate her apartment with the fallen maid. When interviewed by The Gorko in 1993 our sleuths were immediately suspicious of the mannequin detail, and when pressed about the whereabouts of Chaz on the night of June 14th, 1947, Karla gave contradictory information that eventually led to her full confession, in Kudos Grand View Healthcare Facility on Glen Elm Rd.

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