The Skeleton Key Chronicles

19 hours ago

Investigators are preparing to return to the house at 417 W. Chew Avenue connected to at least seven missing women, and potentially dozens more.

Philadelphia police are planning another, more extensive search of the Olney property, possibly as early as this coming week. Detectives have already searched the house and surrounding property, but as they continue working through everything recovered from inside, they apparently have reason to go back and take another look.

So far, police have connected at least seven missing women to the property, including five women investigators have been particularly focused on as they work to determine what happened to them. None of those five women have been located.

And now two women who actually spent time inside the house with photographer Raymond “R.C.” Horsch are speaking publicly about what they remember. Cassandra Barone began working with Horsch in 2013 and posed for photographs at the Chew Avenue property. She remembers an unpleasant smell inside the house and told NBC10 that Horsch specifically instructed her not to go into the basement.

Another woman, identified only as Christy, also remembered the smell and condition of the property after going there for a photo shoot years earlier.

Those accounts come as investigators continue sorting through an enormous collection of photographs and videos recovered from the house. As of mid-September, they had identified 58 women in the material and had made contact with 44 who are alive. Even more remarkable, investigators were only about 30 percent of the way through the digital material at that point. There is also a lot of forensic testing connected to material previously recovered from the property that should be yielding results soon.

Much of the digital evidence still has to be examined, and potentially more women could be identified as investigators work their way through it.

Now attention is turning back to Chew Avenue, where police are preparing for what officials are calling a deeper examination of the property. Neighbors are already being warned about street closures and parking restrictions while the work is underway.

Investigators have said they want to take another look at portions of the property that may have been overlooked before. And considering how much has surfaced since their earlier searches, it will be interesting to see what another, more extensive examination of this house might uncover.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

James Dean was just beginning the stretch that would turn him into one of the most recognizable faces in American film when he returned home to Fairmount, Indiana, in early 1955. Photographer Dennis Stock went with him, documenting Dean back in the small town where he had grown up.

During that visit, the two stopped inside Hunt’s Furniture Store. Dean wandered into an area where coffins were displayed, climbed into one and stretched out while Stock took the photographs. Stock later remembered being unsettled by the whole thing, but Dean apparently climbed inside one of them without any prompting, almost making a joke out of something that genuinely made him uncomfortable.

Seven months after Dean climbed into that coffin in his hometown, he was brought back to Fairmount in one after losing his life in a car accident in California on September 30th, 1955. He was driving his Porsche 550 Spyder when it collided with another car at an intersection. He was just 24 years old.

Knowing what happened afterward gives those photos a whole different feeling. Stock later described them as more of a “nostalgic farewell” than a premonition, but it’s hard not to look at them now and think about what was coming.

And maybe that’s part of why Fairmount has remained such an important piece of the James Dean story. It was the place he came home to during that whirlwind year, and ultimately, the place he came home to for good.

Fairmount still celebrates its hometown boy more than 70 years later. The annual James Dean Festival took place there this weekend, bringing people from all over back to the little Indiana town where Dean grew up. His connection to Fairmount is everywhere, right down to pieces from his childhood that have been preserved, including his baby bed and high chair.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

Six months after Oakland coffee shop owner and mom of two Amy Hillyard disappeared, another search is getting underway today. But this one is a little different. Searchers now have five specific trails to focus on, and the reason those trails suddenly matter was found on Amy’s computer.

Amy was last seen around 2 p.m. on March 25th on Radnor Road in Oakland’s Cleveland Heights area. She was out for an afternoon walk and did not have her cell phone with her. Amy co-owns Farley’s East on Grand Avenue with her husband, Chris, and the couple also runs the original Farley’s location in San Francisco.

There have been organized searches since then, including a pretty extensive effort in August that covered dozens of routes around Oakland. But a more recent look at Amy’s computer turned up something investigators hadn’t been working with before. The morning before she disappeared, Amy spent about 33 minutes on AllTrails looking at eight hiking routes in Oakland and Berkeley.

Three of those trails had already been searched. The other five had not been part of the search, and that’s where attention is turning today. Amy had hiked most of them before, so finding them in her browsing history doesn’t establish that she went to any of them on March 25th. It does, however, give searchers five very specific places to take a closer look.

A team of volunteers and private investigators is beginning that work today, with additional searching expected during the week. Drones will also be used to check areas farther away from the trails that are difficult to reach on foot.

Chris marked six months without Amy this week with a new video, while the family continues sharing information through the Bring Amy Home website. Six months later, what happened after Amy was seen on Radnor Road that Wednesday afternoon remains unanswered.

Anyone with information about Amy Hillyard’s disappearance is asked to contact the Oakland Police Department.

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