Murder of Linda Childers

Linda Sue Childers was born September 4, 1946, and died on or around December 31, 1970. At the time of her death she was involved with Gustavous Lee Carmichael, a convicted bank robber who had escaped federal custody in October 1970 while being transported from Massachusetts to Connecticut for sentencing. Carmichael later robbed a bank in New Jersey shortly before Christmas Day 1970. Because of their criminal activity, the couple used false identities: Childers went by Lorraine Stahl and Carmichael by Dirk Stahl, using illegally obtained identification documents. Under these aliases they rented a house in Noank, Connecticut, and opened a checking account.

The couple hid from police at the Ledyard, Connecticut home of Richard DeFreitas, a bank robber who worked with an associate named Donald Brant. After Childers told DeFreitas' common-law wife, Joanne Rainello, that she feared the group could be arrested, DeFreitas and Brant killed both Childers and Carmichael, bringing them to the back of the house where the shootings occurred. An autopsy later determined that both victims died from gunshot wounds to the head.

The bodies were not discovered until May 30, 1974, when Connecticut state police, acting on a tip from DeFreitas' common-law wife, found two graves at the burial site containing the skeletal remains of Childers and Carmichael. Childers was found wearing a leather vest, a sweater, and boots. Investigators recovered two rings among her remains, one inscribed with the letters "J.H.S.N.," the year 1917, and the letters "I.L.N.," and another identified as a fake emerald.

Dental records allowed authorities to identify Carmichael relatively soon after the discovery, but Childers remained unidentified for fifty years. Police described her at the time as a white woman between 18 and 30 years old, approximately 5'2" tall. Because her body had decomposed, investigators could not determine her eye or hair color, and a composite sketch was created based on available information. She had been known to drive a green 1964 Oldsmobile, later found abandoned in Hartford, Connecticut. Investigators also traced her stolen alias to a real woman named Lorraine Stahl, confirming that her identity had been used without consent.

Richard DeFreitas and Donald Brant were arrested and convicted of the two murders. Childers' case, however, went cold for decades. Her dental information was eventually entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and the Combined DNA Index System. In 2022, investigators partnered with Othram, a Texas-based forensic genealogy company, to reexamine DNA evidence, which was uploaded to the GEDMatch Pro database. In January 2024, this analysis identified matches to Childers' sister, Angela Kortz-Funke, and to the victim's daughter, leading to her formal identification in February 2024. Her family said they had known she was somewhere in the northeastern United States before she disappeared.