When it comes to solving crimes, every now and then the police aren’t enough to bring the right people to justice. Sometimes, they need the help of civilians who put themselves in harm’s way (unwittingly or not) to learn the truth. That’s the exact situation that Redditor BlueTarpHorror‘s father found himself in back in 2014.
The story begins back in the spring of 2014.
iStock
BlueTarpHorror’s father, Bill, ran an auto shop at the top of a hill overlooking a stream and running trail. It was near the end of a shift and things were slow so he went out for a quick walk. About halfway down the hill, Bill spotted it, a big blue tarp with something wrapped in it. He was about to grab it when a customer pulled in and he had to get back to work. It wasn’t until the next day that he learned what was inside that tarp.
The next day several police officers stopped into the shop and started asking questions about whether anyone had seen anything suspicious lately.
Bill decided to turn on the charm and figure out what was going on. Eventually, he got the police to tell him that they’d found a body wrapped in a blue tarp down by the stream. They asked Bill some more questions, then headed back to the crime scene to wrap up their investigation. The photo above was taken by Bill out of the window of his shop while the police were finishing up.
A few days later, the officers returned to ask for Bill’s security camera footage from that night.
iStock
While the data was being transferred, Bill continued to pump the officers for more information. Apparently, a middle-aged man had been stabbed to death. Then Bill had a breakthrough. “Hey you know there are a couple of meth heads that live in this shack behind our shop, it’s connected to that bar?” Bill told the officer. “Yeah we have a lot of problems with them. Stealing scrap metal from the back, letting their dogs run wild, even had him threaten to shoot me once when I was spraying their dogs with water to quit the barking. You should check them out.”
Unfortunately the police didn’t seem to want Bill’s help, so he set off to check it out himself.
Bill and a coworker decided to head down to the stream to look for clues. They followed the water for a while, and eventually got to the point where it was deeper and fast-moving. That’s when Bill spotted a Lowe’s cart sticking out of the water. “I’m taking that for the shop,” he thought as he ran over to pull it out of the stream. However, after he and the coworker hauled the cart out of the stream, they stopped dead in their tracks. There was dried blood all over the cart.
You can see the blood a little clearer here on the cart’s handle. There were also traces of human hair.
Bill called the cops and they came and took the new piece of evidence to test it and see if the blood on the cart matched the victim’s. This time Bill again urged the police to check out the house full of sketchy neighbors next door, but they continued to shrug it off.
A few days later, Bill was driving past the neighbors’ house and noticed something sketchy.
iStock
As he drove by their house, he could see a woman in a parked car on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. Looking closer, Bill saw she was surrounded by bottles of harsh chemicals, like bleach, Comet, Oxiclean, etc. He pulled up closer and drove by slowly, recording what she was doing.
Bill called the cops again and told them what he saw and that he thought they were trying to cover something up.
The next day, the police arrived to question the neighbors and found a huge blood stain on the floor of the house. That’s when the residents broke down and confessed to everything. Apparently, the victim, named Rich, had gone to their house to get high. However, a dispute broke out and someone stabbed him. Donald Decker, pictured above, and his girlfriend used the Lowe’s cart to haul the body down the hill and ditched the cart in the river. Decker was arrested and convicted for the murder. He’s currently serving a sentence of 45 years in prison.
(source Reddit)
Now that’s one heck of a story. Most of the time when people decide to investigate crimes on their own, they become victims. At least this time it seemed to work out alright.