Award Winning Best Selling Florida Author Yvonne Mason

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Funny How Fiction Becomes Fact Simply Because It Is Carried by Word of Mouth

I know you all are scratching your head wondering where in the world I am going with this. Let me give you a bit of a backstory. This morning I was going through my email and saw where I had received a friend request on facebook. So I checked out the person who sent the request and the first thing I saw was a posting from another page. The posting had to do with a Park in Port St Lucie called Oak Hammock Park. The park in the early 1970’s and 1980’s did not exist, it was just a canal known as C-24 canal. This canal sits on the Martin Co. St Lucie Co line and was the scene of a torture and execution of two of Florida’s first serial killer’s victims. These were the last two victims, but they were not found for several years after the crimes were committed. In fact only parts of them were found due to decomposition and the scatterings of their body parts from animals feeding off of them. The serial killer was Gerard Schaefer, the victims were Paulette Goodenough and Barbara Ann Wilcox.
Now, here is what caught me ire- yes I said ire. My husband and several of his investigators worked this crime. One of them Rick McIlwain worked the C-24 canal crime as it was called back then. They all knew Schaefer had killed these two girls but they didn’t know where the bodies were until the bones were found by some local fishermen.
Now fast forward to today’s post. There is a page about supporting ST Lucie Co and the things that one can do here, it includes what is now OAk Hammock Park. Which by the way is a beautiful park. In this park is a huge Oak tree that now has the urban legend attached to it. IT is known as The Devils Tree. No the victims were not killed at that tree but legends being as they are… well you know the rest.
There were several comments about the tree, the park and what really blew me away was a guy who said he was a paranormal investigator said that no one was killed in that area. That is was made up and that he knew it because he could not find any stories. Really?! Apparently he didn’t look hard enough. My book Silent Scream is all over the place. I have been on Investigation Discovery’s Show Most Evil the segment Sexual Deviants , the local newspaper not only did an article they did a video, my blog talks about the victims all the time.
There were some other comments that were made by others who did not really understand that yes a crime was committed there- I very bad crime and two young lives were stolen.
for updated cover front2

They were just two of the nine to thirty five young girls and young women who were killed by Schaefer. As I researched this book, I grew very close to the victims- I am very protective of their memory. I tend to get a bit protective of them even after all these years. You see there was no one to give them a voice. They were forgotten until the book was written. The investigators who worked the two crimes scenes here in ST Lucie Co were forever changed. The investigators who worked the other six cases were forever changed –
So knowing all of this first hand and having the research in my possession- maybe some of you can get an understanding how personal this became. And they remain close to me and how it is so disrespectful of them as victims to make comments about something that one knows nothing about.
I understand that everyone loves a good ghost story and everyone loves to be scared. However, that being said, one must remember that behind every “ghost” was once a person.
Please respect their memory. Please understand that at one time they were loved by family and friends, they had a future, they lived and then their lives were stolen by pure evil.
http://www.tcpalm.com/video/the-devil-tree-in-port-st-lucie

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/local-lawman-who-investigated-some-of-the-most

April 4, 2015 Posted by | True Crime | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

   

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