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The Lowcountry Murder of Gwendolyn Elaine Fogle: A Cold Case Solved
For decades, evidence of the 1978 murder of Gwendolyn Elaine Fogle lay in the evidence room at the Walterboro Police Department. Investigators periodically revisited the case over the years, but it remained the department's top cold case for thirty-seven years. Special Agent Lieutenant Rita Shuler worked on the case shortly after she joined the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), and she couldn't let it go, not even after her retirement in 2001. In May 2015, Lieutenant Shuler teamed up with new investigator Corporal Gean Johnson, and together they uncovered key evidence that had been overlooked. With new advancements in DNA and fingerprint technology, they brought the case to its end in just four months. Join Shuler as she details the gruesome history of this finally solved case.
- GenresTrue CrimeNonfiction
128 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 6, 2023
A crime committed in a time warp....
I bought the Kindle edition of this book because it was on sale and because I love South Carolina's Lowcountry region and because I thought it was about a crime committed in the distant past. I'm a sucker for good cover art and this charming picture cover shows a old style southern house with the screened porch on the front.
Screened porches (if you're lucky enough to have one) are placed on the back of houses now. But in the pre-air conditioned South, the front porch was the place to sit and sometimes to sleep. People were less interested in privacy than in being front and center where they could see their neighbors.
So the house looks circa 1920's and the small inset shows a quiet looking young woman whose clothes and hairstyle could be 1920's to 1950's. I was surprised to read that the murder of Elaine Fogle happened in 1978. Of course, that IS the distant past for many readers, but like most people I think anything I can remember personally is "not that long ago." I was a young woman (a contemporary of the unfortunate victim) in 1978 and it seems like I lived in a different world.
The pictures of her and her family look 20 years behind the hairstyles and clothes I remember from the late 1970's. I think the answer is that in small towns things change less rapidly than in larger ones.
Elaine herself was an old-fashioned girl. Raised in Orangeburg, SC and trained as a medical techician, she moved to the tiny town of Walterboro, living with a friend and working for a local doctor. At 26, she seems to have had little or no social life and was probably a virgin when she was raped and murdered. It's as if the Swinging Sixties and the Sexual Revolution happened on a different planet than the one she inhabited. Her murder shocked the town, but no one was arrested and it became a "cold case."
The cold case was reheated because of the interest of crime technician Rita Shular and an arrest was made at long last. To be honest, this is not a book that will have you on the edge of your seat. Nor does the author have the skill to give a vivid picture of the times and the people involved and how they converged in a shocking crime against an innocent young woman. We learn nothing about the killer's early life or what may have motivated him. It's an incomplete picture and normally I'd rate it two stars.
I moved up to three stars because it's an excellent portrayal of how a small town crime is investigated (badly, in this case) and how even the help of state crime experts failed to bring all the pieces together. And yet, this was a crime that everyone involved desperately wanted to solve. Imagine if the victim had been less appealing.
Ms. Shular isn't a journalist or an investigator. However, her years at SLED (South Carolina's state criminal lab) gave her insight into how crimes are investigated and how evidence is handled (and sometimes mishandled.) The creation of SLED was to put cutting-edge forensic techniques at the disposal of small town police forces which can't afford the equipment or the specialized personnel. I'm sure it works that way much of the time.
It also creates another layer for evidence to pass through, increasing the possibility of misunderstandings, human error, and human carelessness. It's fascinating to see what was done right and what wasn't in this investigation. Even more fascinating is to see how participants at different levels can do their jobs perfectly, but their efforts go to waste.
The doctor who perfomed the autopsy on Elaine Fogel was not a forensic specialist, but he took and carefully preserved oral, rectal, and vaginal swabs. Such samples became of vital importance after DNA technology turned traditional forensics on its head, but where are they?
The author does an excellent job of showing that the best protocols and equipment and specialists don't always equate to a perfect investigation. The human factor is always present. Police officers have preconceived biases and those biases may waste time and manpower. Commands change and new commanders follow their own interests. Trends affect criminology just as they do all working environments and changing agendas may mean that works-in-progress are dropped abruptly. Natural disasters affect police and criminologists as much as they do schools and donut shops.
As a southerner myself, I half expected the "rush to judgement" that stalled the initial investigation to center suspicion on a black man, especially in a small town where blacks and whites lived in close proximity. Ironically, the initial suspect was a white ne'er-do-well and the police focused their energies on him to the exclusion of other suspects. After that man's death, the local police chief tried to have the case marked "solved," arguing that only bad luck had prevented them from gathering enough evidence to arrest the suspect. The DA refused and the murder case remained open.
The ending is unsatisfactory. Would it have made a difference if the real killer had been arrested and convicted at the time of the murder? Would subsequent crimes have been prevented? Hard to say, since we are told so little about the killer and his activities. Revenge may be better eaten cold, but justice is best served when it's swift and sure. At least Elaine's surviving sister and her family had the satisfaction of seeing her murderer arrested for her death.
It's an interesting story and the gaps and inconsistencies are of interest, too. I'm not sorry I read it.
I bought the Kindle edition of this book because it was on sale and because I love South Carolina's Lowcountry region and because I thought it was about a crime committed in the distant past. I'm a sucker for good cover art and this charming picture cover shows a old style southern house with the screened porch on the front.
Screened porches (if you're lucky enough to have one) are placed on the back of houses now. But in the pre-air conditioned South, the front porch was the place to sit and sometimes to sleep. People were less interested in privacy than in being front and center where they could see their neighbors.
So the house looks circa 1920's and the small inset shows a quiet looking young woman whose clothes and hairstyle could be 1920's to 1950's. I was surprised to read that the murder of Elaine Fogle happened in 1978. Of course, that IS the distant past for many readers, but like most people I think anything I can remember personally is "not that long ago." I was a young woman (a contemporary of the unfortunate victim) in 1978 and it seems like I lived in a different world.
The pictures of her and her family look 20 years behind the hairstyles and clothes I remember from the late 1970's. I think the answer is that in small towns things change less rapidly than in larger ones.
Elaine herself was an old-fashioned girl. Raised in Orangeburg, SC and trained as a medical techician, she moved to the tiny town of Walterboro, living with a friend and working for a local doctor. At 26, she seems to have had little or no social life and was probably a virgin when she was raped and murdered. It's as if the Swinging Sixties and the Sexual Revolution happened on a different planet than the one she inhabited. Her murder shocked the town, but no one was arrested and it became a "cold case."
The cold case was reheated because of the interest of crime technician Rita Shular and an arrest was made at long last. To be honest, this is not a book that will have you on the edge of your seat. Nor does the author have the skill to give a vivid picture of the times and the people involved and how they converged in a shocking crime against an innocent young woman. We learn nothing about the killer's early life or what may have motivated him. It's an incomplete picture and normally I'd rate it two stars.
I moved up to three stars because it's an excellent portrayal of how a small town crime is investigated (badly, in this case) and how even the help of state crime experts failed to bring all the pieces together. And yet, this was a crime that everyone involved desperately wanted to solve. Imagine if the victim had been less appealing.
Ms. Shular isn't a journalist or an investigator. However, her years at SLED (South Carolina's state criminal lab) gave her insight into how crimes are investigated and how evidence is handled (and sometimes mishandled.) The creation of SLED was to put cutting-edge forensic techniques at the disposal of small town police forces which can't afford the equipment or the specialized personnel. I'm sure it works that way much of the time.
It also creates another layer for evidence to pass through, increasing the possibility of misunderstandings, human error, and human carelessness. It's fascinating to see what was done right and what wasn't in this investigation. Even more fascinating is to see how participants at different levels can do their jobs perfectly, but their efforts go to waste.
The doctor who perfomed the autopsy on Elaine Fogel was not a forensic specialist, but he took and carefully preserved oral, rectal, and vaginal swabs. Such samples became of vital importance after DNA technology turned traditional forensics on its head, but where are they?
The author does an excellent job of showing that the best protocols and equipment and specialists don't always equate to a perfect investigation. The human factor is always present. Police officers have preconceived biases and those biases may waste time and manpower. Commands change and new commanders follow their own interests. Trends affect criminology just as they do all working environments and changing agendas may mean that works-in-progress are dropped abruptly. Natural disasters affect police and criminologists as much as they do schools and donut shops.
As a southerner myself, I half expected the "rush to judgement" that stalled the initial investigation to center suspicion on a black man, especially in a small town where blacks and whites lived in close proximity. Ironically, the initial suspect was a white ne'er-do-well and the police focused their energies on him to the exclusion of other suspects. After that man's death, the local police chief tried to have the case marked "solved," arguing that only bad luck had prevented them from gathering enough evidence to arrest the suspect. The DA refused and the murder case remained open.
The ending is unsatisfactory. Would it have made a difference if the real killer had been arrested and convicted at the time of the murder? Would subsequent crimes have been prevented? Hard to say, since we are told so little about the killer and his activities. Revenge may be better eaten cold, but justice is best served when it's swift and sure. At least Elaine's surviving sister and her family had the satisfaction of seeing her murderer arrested for her death.
It's an interesting story and the gaps and inconsistencies are of interest, too. I'm not sorry I read it.
April 11, 2021
Very unsettling in the end.
January 30, 2024
read this only because it was a familiar case but the writing could have been better.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews