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in: California, 1983, Murder,
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Angela Bugay

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Angela bugay1

Angela Bugay

Real Name: Angela Jane Bugay
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Location: Antioch, California
Date: November 19, 1983

Case[]

Details: Five-year-old Angela Bugay lived with her twenty-three-year-old mother, Susan, and three-year-old brother, Chris, in the Delta View Apartment complex on Delta Fair Boulevard in Antioch, California. On the afternoon of November 19, 1983, they went to a neighbor’s apartment two doors down to have dinner. At 5pm, as they were about to eat, Chris said he needed his rain boots. Angela agreed to accompany him back to their apartment.
Five minutes later, Chris returned to the neighbor’s apartment, but Angela was not with him. He was unable to say what had happened to her. Susan searched for her for about an hour before calling the police. An extensive search of the apartment complex and surrounding area turned up no trace of her.
A week later, on November 26, Angela’s nude body was found partially buried in a shallow grave in a ditch near the Contra Loma Reservoir, about three miles from her home. She was lying on her side, and her clothes were piled on top of her. She had been raped and asphyxiated.
Police theorized that Angela’s killer might have known her family and was familiar with the apartment complex. However, with no witnesses and little physical evidence, the case grew cold. Then, five years later, on June 3, 1988, seven-year-old Amber Swartz vanished while playing in her front yard in Pinole, California. The police noted many similarities between the two cases, including that both girls were similar in appearance and age, lived in the suburbs of San Francisco, and disappeared in the late afternoon from well-traveled, public places.
The police also discovered that a man named Tim Bindner, who helped in the search for Amber, seemed to have an “attraction” to Angela’s gravesite, located in Oakmont Cemetery. The FBI put him under surveillance and discovered that he visited the grave up to ninety times in one year. Eleven days after Amber vanished, bloodhounds tracked her scent to Angela’s grave and Bindner’s van.
Five months later, nine-year-old Michaela Garecht was abducted from a Hayward market. Two months after that, thirteen-year-old Ilene Misheloff vanished while walking home from her school in Dublin. Then, two years later, four-year-old Nikki Campbell disappeared while playing in her yard in Fairfield. Bloodhounds later traced her scent to Angela’s grave. In all of these cases, Bindner helped search for the missing child.
Authorities suspect that Angela’s murder is related to these disappearances.
Suspects: Tim Binder has been considered a “person of interest” in this case, but he maintains his innocence. After Angela’s murder, he visited her grave up to ninety times a year. Amber and Nikki's scents were traced to it.
Fifteen potential suspects that lived at the apartment complex were given polygraphs. Each of them passed. Police theorized that the killer knew Angela’s family and was familiar with the complex. The fact that the abduction occurred during a busy weekend afternoon suggested that the killer was known and recognized at the complex. This theory was bolstered by the fact that no one heard her scream or scuffle.
Several residents at the apartment complex reported seeing a suspicious unidentified man there in the weeks before Angela’s murder. Although he is not a suspect, police would like to locate and question him. He has blond shoulder-length hair and a scraggly beard, and is between twenty and thirty (in 1983), 5’7” to 5’10”, with a medium build.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the June 13, 2002 episode.
  • An arrest had already been made when this case aired. However, a conviction had not yet occurred.
  • Tragically, Susan’s father was also murdered.
  • Some sources say Angela’s body was found in a field either fourteen or two miles from home and that she had been strangled.
Larry graham

Larry Graham

Results: Solved - On April 24, 1996, forty-four-year-old auto repair shop manager and former airline pilot Larry Christopher Graham was arrested and charged with Angela’s kidnapping, rape, and murder. DNA testing linked him to semen found on her clothing and body. According to the police, he had been a suspect from the beginning and had been questioned just two days after her disappearance. However, prior to the DNA test, they could not link him to the crime. His DNA was collected via court order in October 1995 after tests excluded Bindner as a suspect.
Graham lived in the same apartment complex as the Bugay’s. He and Susan had met at a swimming pool in the summer of 1983. The two were dating at the time of the murder. He asked Susan to marry him a few weeks later, but she declined. She told police that Angela did not trust any men except for Graham. She said that he was the only man Angela was comfortable enough to go with willingly. It is believed that that is why no one heard her scream or struggle with her killer.
Graham’s ex-wife told the police that he had a picture of Angela in his apartment, had a master key, and had an alibi she knew “did not fit.” Graham had told the police that he had been drinking with his brother and sister-in-law most of the day. However, he told his ex-wife that he had gone out of town to “sober up.” His brother later told police that the two had parted ways shortly before Angela disappeared. According to a relative, Graham left the area after Angela vanished and returned after her body was found. He told the relative that he had gone camping.
Graham’s ex-wife and friends told the police that he had a “perverse” interest in young girls. He made sexual comments about them and cut pictures of them out of magazines. He and his ex-wife were married when she was just fifteen. He admitted that his drinking affected his “sexual interests.” In 1980, he exposed himself to a young girl and was convicted of disorderly conduct. In 1984, he was arrested for molesting another girl three years earlier, but the charges were later dropped.
In August 2002, Graham was convicted of Angela’s murder. In October, he was sentenced to death. After sentencing, the jurors asked for directions to Angela’s grave to pay their respects. On June 16, 2009, Graham committed suicide in his prison cell. He was fifty-eight.
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