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KNOPPA Anthony Michael

*1948

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LANHAM Harry

1971

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Verdict/Urteil:

On November 3, 1971, the body of 16-year-old Adele Crabtree was found outside Conroe, Texas. Last seen alive at a "hippy" commune in Houston, she was fully clothed when found, her death attributed to close-range shotgun blasts. The same day, Linda Sutherlin was reported missing in Houston, when she failed to come home after work. Police retrieved her blood-stained car, but five more days would pass before her corpse was found near Pearland, in Brazoria County. A pair of nylon pantyhose was tied around her neck, but death was the result of shotgun blasts. Investigators learned that Sutherlin had stopped in a neighborhood bar after work, on the night she disappeared. Witnesses recalled her talking to one Harry Lanham, a tow-truck driver once convicted of rape , more recently charged with beating his girlfriend and her five-year-old daughter. Picked up for questioning on December 8, Lanham refused to cooperate with police, but he was careless with his cellmate, making reference to "his own private graveyard." The pressure of surveillance and interrogation finally got to Lanham, during April 1972, and he fingered an acquaintance, 24-year-old Tony Knoppa, in the Sutherlin murder. Previously charged with rape, Knoppa had been sentenced to seven months even after the victim changed her story. Back in jail on suspicion of murder, he was outraged by Lanham's fancy footwork, informing detectives that Harry was the triggerman in both the Sutherlin and Crabtree slayings. In the wake of his prior rape conviction, Knoppa said, Lanham had vowed to silence his future victims, insuring against further jail time. "He said I should stick with him," Knoppa testified, "then I'd see a lot of women killed." Their typical M.0. involved picking up hitchhikers, women in bars, or stranded motorists, transporting them to a vacant house for multiple rapes, after which they were driven into the countryside and shot. In custody, Lanham was also linked with the murder of 13-year-old Collette Wilson, from Alvin, Texas, whose bones were found with those of Houston victim Gloria Gonzales, missing since October 1971. Convicted on all counts, Lanham and Knoppa were sentenced to life imprisonment.

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