Police made horrific discovery after boy, 6, sounded car horn for hours on end
Neighbours called the police after becoming concerned about the boy, and noises they had heard from his family’s house
The youngster was found in the driver’s seat of the car (stock image).(Image: Getty Images)
Police discovered a horrific scene in the basement of a house after a young child sounded the horn of a car parked outside for several hours.
Concerned locals in the town of Vinton, Iowa, had called emergency services after hearing other unusual noises from the property, including “popping” and hammering.
The boy, aged six, told officers and a social worker when they arrived at 9pm that his mother had gone inside a few hours before, but had not returned.
His grandparents were called, and waited with him at a neighbour’s house while police investigated. Such incidents were rare in the quiet farming community.
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The house was cordoned off, and neighbours told to go inside and turn off their lights, out of fear there may have been an active gunman in the area, the Mirror reports.
However, a search of the house revealed nobody, until they accessed the basement and uncovered a horrific scene that would haunt the chief of police for the rest of his life.
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A woman’s body lay on a punctured water bed, with a bullet hole in her skull. After lying there for several hours, her blood mixed with the water had bloated her body so badly officers struggled to lift it.
This was the boy’s mother, 28-year-old Crystal Hawkins. At her feet was the body of a Doberman pinscher, which had also been shot.
Inside a cupboard, officers found the body of Crystal’s ex-partner, 27-year-old Scott Johnson, who had a single bullet wound to his head, with a note which read: “Give my cat to my dad.”
The harrowing murder-suicide case in May 1993 sent shockwaves through the small town. However, for author and journalist Rachel Corbett, it is more personal, as she knew Johnson when she was a child.
In her new book, The Monsters We Make: Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling, she recalled how Johnson had dated her mother after her marriage broke up.
Rachel Corbett’s book is released next month.
13 years after the murder, upon looking at a picture of her and Johnson, Corbett said: “Scott looked in the picture exactly as I remembered him. Quiet, melancholic. He was in his mid-20s, much younger than my father, which had made him seem like a cool older brother.
“It was the early ’90s, and he wore a single hoop earring and rode a skateboard. He played Altered Beast with my brother and me on his Sega. He was six feet tall, and in my memory, he’s slouched, hands jammed in jeans, wearing a thinned-out T-shirt.”
As the relationship strengthened, Johnson spent most days with Corbett’s family along with his dog Astro – who he would tragically later kill. He claimed to be against violence, and she and her brother “felt safe” around him.
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Corbett later carried out her own research into the case, interviewing witnesses, examining police records, and even returning to the scene with Crystal’s son.
She spoke to forensic psychologists and sociologists, trying to understand why the man she knew could have committed such a horrific crime.
She added: Still, however shocked I was by Scott’s fate, he fit the profile of his crime precisely: More than 90 per cent of murder-suicides are committed by men, and about two-thirds of the victims are current or former female partners, according to a 2008 report.
“Recent separation is one of the biggest risk factors, along with unemployment. Guns are almost always the murder weapon [in the US]. Rural areas have higher incidences of murder-suicide than cities; in Iowa between 1995 and 2005, they made up nearly a quarter of all homicides. And at least one study showed that the men tended not to have prior abuse records.
“What did all this information tell me? The man in the photo still looked like the same Scott Johnson I always knew; I still couldn’t ‘see’ the murderer.”
For confidential support, call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Freephone Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit womensaid.co.uk.
Pennsylvania mother arrested after police make horrifying discovery in closet
Bodies were found wrapped in towels and plastic bags in closet and attic of Ford City area home
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A Pennsylvania woman has been charged after police discovered the remains of her four infants in the closet and attic of a home she had been evicted from last month.
Jessica Marie Mauthe, 39, was arrested after her former landlord called police to the home she had lived in outside Ford City, about 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
The landlord, Brent Flanigan, told WTAE-TV that he had law enforcement evict Mauthe for nonpayment on Aug. 14.
After he began cleaning the home, he came across a trash bag in a closet that had a foul odor and something wrapped in towels that was decomposing, according to the arrest affidavit issued Thursday.
The exterior of a house is shown in the Freeport area of Pa., Friday, Sept. 19, 2025 where Jessica Marie Mauthe, the woman facing a charge of homicide and multiple counts of abuse of a corpse, lived. (Massoud Hossaini/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review via AP)
Investigators searched the home and found the bodies of three other infants in the attic in tote bags, wrapped in towels and inside plastic bags, police said.
“Shocked. No one believed it. It’s just evil,” neighbor Carmen Felix told WTAE-TV. “How can you plop babies in the toilet? The girl across from here is a nurse, and she’s sick. She almost didn’t go to work today because she can’t get this off her mind.”
Mauthe’s former landlord said he discovered the corpse of one infant in a closet while cleaning out the home earlier this month. (Massoud Hossaini/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review via AP)
About a year ago, Mauthe told investigators, she gave birth to a child who made several noises before she held the child “against her, where it remained until it stopped making noises and stopped breathing,” police wrote.
Mauthe told troopers that one newborn had whimpered after she gave birth to it about six years ago, after which she passed out on the floor, according to the affidavit. When she awakened, the baby was beneath her and was not breathing, she told them.
Pennsylvania State Police have investigated the incident. (AP Photo/Aimee Dilger)
Mauthe was charged with criminal homicide, involuntary manslaughter and multiple counts of abuse of a corpse. She is being held in the Armstrong County Jail without bail.
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A preliminary hearing is scheduled for next week.
