Famous killers who struck on Halloween
Jim Bates stood on a sidewalk in Pasadena, Texas, on Halloween night in 1974, waiting while his friend Ronald O’Bryan walked four children up to the doors. Bates would later tell police how that evening went, door by door.
Halloween has covered other crimes too. In 1957, a masked visitor rang a doorbell in Los Angeles near midnight. In 1979, two men offered a ride to a teenager walking home from a party. In 1984, two bodyguards waited at a garden gate in New Delhi.
Five cases follow, from 1957 to 1984. Four happened in the U.S. and one in India. We stick to who did it, when, and how the case was solved, and leave out the victims’ details.
The doorbell rang at 11:30
Peter Fabiano, a 35-year-old beauty shop owner in Sun Valley, a Los Angeles neighborhood, had just gotten into bed on October 31, 1957. When the bell rang, he figured it was a late trick-or-treater.
It wasn’t. Goldyne Pizer, a 43-year-old widow, had come in costume, and she shot him at the door. When police asked Betty Fabiano whether her husband had enemies, she gave them one name: Joan Rabel, a family acquaintance who had borrowed a friend’s car that night.
Within weeks, Pizer confessed and said Rabel had talked her into it. On March 11, 1958, both women pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received five years to life.
A $20,000 policy on each child
On October 31, 1974, Ronald O’Bryan took his two children and the Bates children trick-or-treating in Pasadena, Texas. His eight-year-old son Timothy died that night after eating a Pixy Stix. O’Bryan said a neighbor handed out the candy, and he gave poisoned candy to other children, matching his story.
Parents across Houston brought their children’s candy to police. Then, on November 4, an insurance agent called the Pasadena department about two $20,000 life policies O’Bryan had paid for in cash a month earlier. Investigators also found a pocketknife in his home with candy residue on it.
He was arrested on November 5. He owed more than $100,000. Texas executed him by lethal injection on March 31, 1984.
Mischief Night in Greenwich
Martha Moxley, 15, left her Belle Haven, Connecticut, home on the night of October 30, 1975, the evening many local kids called Mischief Night. Her body was found the next morning, Halloween, by a family friend.
The case went cold for more than two decades. Then former detective Mark Fuhrman published “Murder in Greenwich” in 1998 and named Michael Skakel, a Kennedy relative who was 15 at the time. A jury convicted Skakel on June 7, 2002.
It didn’t hold. The conviction was vacated, and on October 30, 2020, Connecticut said it would not retry him. The case is officially unsolved.
Norris couldn’t keep quiet
Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris spent the summer of 1979 abducting teenage girls in Southern California. Their last victim was taken on Halloween night, October 31, per the California Supreme Court.
Norris’s boasting ended it. He told Jimmy Dalton, a friend from prison, about the crimes, and Dalton went to authorities. On November 20, police arrested Norris for marijuana possession and a parole violation, and held Bittaker over a September assault. A recording of the Halloween attack was found in Bittaker’s van.
Norris pleaded guilty and got 45 years to life. Bittaker was sentenced to death in 1981 and died at San Quentin on December 13, 2019.
9:20 a.m., a garden in New Delhi
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi, India’s prime minister, walked through the garden of her residence at 1 Safdarjung Road toward an interview with British actor Peter Ustinov. Two of her bodyguards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, opened fire as she passed a gate, per EBSCO. It was revenge for Operation Blue Star, the army’s June 1984 assault on the Golden Temple.
Within about six minutes, Indo-Tibetan Border Police officers Tarsem Singh Jamwal and Ram Saran captured and killed Beant Singh. Satwant was arrested. He and Kehar Singh, charged with conspiracy, were hanged at Tihar Jail on January 6, 1989.
The bottom line
A confession, an insurance agent’s phone call, and a prison friend’s tip closed three of these cases. Martha Moxley’s case still has no verdict.
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