Mirror, Mirror

Two Families With Similar, Perilous Fates.

February 6, 2000. Skip Tillman, 55, and Joni Tillman,51, returned home around 10 PM after having dinner with friends at the now closed JJ Steakhouse in Pasadena. A neighbor, Michael Miller had heard their vehicle enter their garage of their home at  5649 Bramblewood Drive, La Canada Flintridge, Ca.

“My dogs barked,” said Miller. “They pulled into their garage and I saw the car come in [to the garage]. I never saw them again.”

February 7. A gamesman hunting for birds in a remote, rural wash near the intersection of Oak Glen Blvd and 5th St.  in Yucaipa, Ca, found a deceased dog. The dog had a collar and a tag with a phone number engraved. The man called the number and left a message that he had found the dog. *I have since learned from a credible source that this person only found the dog’s collar. There’s also conflicting reports that the man was simply jogging with his dog, not hunting birds.

“I found your dog, and I’m sorry to say he’s dead.”

February 9. Skip and Joni Tillman’s friends and neighbors were growing weary due to not seeing or hearing from them and missed appointments. Phone and house calls were met unanswered. One of those friends, Karol Eller, contacted the real estate agent who rented the couple’s home to them, convinced the agent to let him into home to do a welfare check. Eller found neither of the Tillman’s nor anything out of place. It was as if they just up and left.

“That’s not like them at all. They never go anywhere without telling their friends,” said Eller.

 

Once inside the home, Eller checked the messages left on the couple’s answering machine. There were 30 messages, one of them from a man who claimed he found their beloved Maltese “Teddy” dead. Karol Eller immediately called the man back.

“I said, ‘We’ve got a problem, then, because (Teddy’s) mom and dad are missing.’ So I called the sheriff and I said, ‘We have a real problem here because if that dog is dead something’s seriously wrong with my friends.’ “

The gamesman also put a call into police about finding the dog. What happened next is unclear, but either the gamesman returned to the site or LE investigated and found a peculiar arrangement of tumbleweeds near the deceased dog. Beneath that was a shallow grave that held Skip and Joni Tillman, 77 miles from their home.

Investigators exhumed the remains and the coroner determined that both had been strangled, with Skip Tillman having a knife wound to the neck. That was classified as being a secondary cause of death. The same man who found the dog returned a day or two later and found a pool or pools of blood and drag marks. Again, he notified police. There was DNA testing done in 2008 but from what has not been disclosed. There is also no report if the blood found was from the Tillmans.

Within the grave (3-4 feet deep) were to be found was a bed sheet, green paper towels, a green hand towel matching those in the their home. The green paper towels is a peculiar item and I wonder if this misnomer for something else, like shop towels maybe? Mrs. Tillman was in her bathrobe. For Mr. Tillman there no description of clothing or just how he was found. Some reports are that his clothing he wore the previous night on the dinner date was found at the home in the dryer. So the couple was at home for some time before being abducted.

Of all the people interviewed and provided accounts, there is no mention of who the Tillman’s had dinner with the night of their disappearance other than it being “friends”.

Upon examination, the Tillmans were embroiled in at least 3 lawsuits. One being regarding a promissory note of $100k. It seems that was about wrapped up legally by both parties before the disappearance. Then Joni Tillman was in a bitter dispute with her half-brother Craig Elliot. Elliot accused Tillman of cheating him out her father’s will. According to Tillman and court records, Elliot had long been since estranged from their father and only showed up to collect once his father was deceased. In the end, there was only $8,000 to collect from the estate.

The other lawsuit was from a clothing designer named David Hayes, whom Skip Tillman worked for as his accountant. Hayes sued Tillman over claims that he wrote checks to himself out of Hayes’ account in excess of 1.7 million dollars over 10 years. Elsewhere the claimed amount is $370k.

Still yet another account is that Skip Tillman duped an investor for $350k over a Georgia land deal, however that claim seems to be unrealized. There are rumors of Florida real estate deals but those accusations seem to be bogus as well. According to those close to Tillman, he never left California, or at least didn’t like to.

It’s all so murky but in the end, all these people were pretty much excluded by LE from having anything to do with the murders. It should be noted that the Tillman’s attorney stated he believed none of the people involved with lawsuits against the Tillmans had anything to gain by their deaths.

The Tillman’s Dodge Durango was found 2 days after the bodies were found in Van Nuys. Prints were lifted and since then they do not match any in LE’s database.

It is not certain if there were two separate graves or one, as reports indicate both.

All reports from the beginning seem to lean towards there being more than one assailant.  A possible eyewitness was interviewed who claimed to have seen two men 20-30 in a green Bronco with a lot of primer drive around a Road Closed sign and head in the direction of where the remains were located. For reasons unknown the sketch of one of the suspects wasn’t released until 2008.

Some early reports also state that detectives did not feel the perpetrators knew the area. However cold case detective Casey Jiles in a 2008 interview with the La Canada Valley Sun had this to say, “Somebody had pre-dug [the graves the couple were found in]. They were three- to four- feet deep,” Jiles said. “Someone knew the area.”

 

 

The above is the Oak Glen and 5th street intersection. You can see the wash. Today there are a lot of homes in the vicinity. Obviously, the houses and terrain might have been very different in 2000, before the housing boom. Reviewing satellite imagery of the area indicate grading for the homes near the wash hadn’t begun until around 2002. So one could assume whomever disposed and or killed the Tillmans there felt confident they not be easily seen.

The gravesite was near an abandoned dump.

A family member had later learned that detectives believed Mr. Tillman was made to watch his wife being strangled and could be why he had a knife wound on his neck.

Closing thoughts

What does this have to do with the McStays? Maybe nothing. It’s an interesting look into another Southern California case that has a lot of the very same elements. I think a lot can be learned from the McStay case and may help to solve other murders or abductions.

There are some synchronicities of sorts:

• Both the homes appeared undisturbed.
• Both families had moved into their homes within a few months of disappearing.
• Both families were found buried in washes.
• Both may have been murdered over money.
• Both the Tillman’s and Joseph McStay were last seen out to lunch or dinner.
• Both homes were recently painted.
• Both families were rumored to have a large amount of cash in their homes.
• Both families disappeared in February almost to the day, ten years apart.
• Both are suspected of being buried February 6th, during a weekend of heavy rain.
• Both families were buried in a wash, within sight of a landfill.
• Both women were found in a bathrobe.
• Both graves had bath towels identical to those in the home.

In the McStay’s case, Law Enforcement believed the family left the country. For the Tillman’s, detectives believed their killer(s) wanted to make it look like they left the country.

A couple more things. I’ve recently noticed some – well not just some but a lot of – connections to Mcstays and water. The Tillman’s were buried in Yucaipa. Yucaipa translates to “Wet Lands”. The McStay’s neighborhood back up to what was once a lake and could be considered a ‘Wet Land’.

The Tillmans lived in La Canada. Chase Merritt would make some seemingly random trip 210 freeway on February 5th to Santa Clarita, the day after the McStays vanished on . The 210 cuts right through the heart of La Canada.

The Tillman’s Dodge Durango was located in Van Nuys, circled here in yellow. Check out the next cross street.

Google Maps

“Nothing was disturbed in the home. Whoever got them lured them out of the house. They wouldn’t have gone off on their own. They were taken out by someone they knew.” – Detective Jiles

What’s so ominus to me about this statement is it is almost word for word what Michael McStay would say about his brother’s family ten years later when they disappeared.

Are the Tillman Murders connected to Chase Merritt or the McStay family? Highly unlikely. But there are some stark similarities.

As I’ve speculated, this appears to have been a well orchestrated hit job. The couple was whisked away in the night. Word is that authorities also believe the killer(s) were hired hitmen and possibly not from this country.

One thing that does cast some shade on the the Tillman’s (at least Skip Tillman) is that he did seem to not be involved in some sketchy land deals in Ohio and Florida. There also appears to be some credibility to the embezzlement accusations by his former client, David Hayes. There are reports that neither of the Tillman’s had bank accounts, they paid for everything in cash. There are other rumors of shady dealings but I’m still working to verify those. These people were cash rich, but their business income does not appear to match their expenditures.

Curiously, there was a person associated with the Tillman’s – a former state parole officer – who appointed themselves as executor of the Tillman’s estate. When others became aware of this, they discovered the estate was in serious financial straits and forced her out. She had total access to the house and everything in it.

Of course, no large amounts of cash was found in the Tillman home, despite them paying for everything in cash.

http://articles.burbankleader.com/2000-02-19/news/export17997_1_bodies-burbank-couple-lawsuits/2

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/NEIGHBORS+STUNNED+BY+KILLINGS.-a083421496

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/feb/19/local/me-430

http://articles.glendalenewspress.com/2000-03-10/news/export50011_1_investigators-detectives-half-brother

http://abc7.com/archive/6398238/

http://articles.lacanadaonline.com/2008-08-21/news/lnws-tillman0821_1_tillmans-cold-case-Yucaipa