For 35 years, the skull and bones rested in a box at the Georgia state crime lab. Some referred to the remains as simply “unidentified victim No. 5,” a teenage girl thought to have been murdered by serial killer Paul John Knowles.
This month, those bones were finally identified, thanks to a still-searching family, a computerized DNA database and the recorded boasts of a long-dead killer who once said he wanted to be “the most notorious outlaw since John Dillinger.” Authorities last week announced the remains, which were found in 1976 in a wooded area near Warner Robins, were that of Ima Jean Sanders, a 13-year-old who went missing around Aug. 1, 1974.
“It was hard to know what happened, but it was good to know,” said her mother, Betty Wisecup, who now lives in Texas. “I always had a feeling she’d eventually come home.”
In January, Wisecup gave DNA samples after hearing that Texas authorities were trying to identify remains of a young woman found in the 1970s. Those remains were not Ima Jean’s, but the DNA later matched up with the bones in Georgia.
Authorities were then able to determine Knowles killed the girl because they found a transcript of an “audio diary” he made of his spree. Knowles wanted to be famous, so he sent cassette tapes of his crimes to his lawyer while on the run. One tape he made talked about raping and strangling a young female hitchhiker named “Alma” in August 1974 and then ditching her bones somewhere near Macon.
Ima Jean was a headstrong 13-year-old who had hitchhiked from her dad’s home in Texas to live with her mother in Georgia. She kept hitching rides while living in Middle Georgia.
But authorities never determined that Ima Jean was unidentified victim No. 5 until this month because no investigative report of her 1974 disappearance could be found, nor was she in the federal database of missing people and unidentified remains until this year. In essence, she was forgotten.
“I can’t say they considered (that Ima Jean might be victim No. 5) back then,” said GBI agent Gary Rothwell. “There was no way to match it up.”
James Josey, a retired Milledgeville detective and a lead investigator in the case, said Knowles’ words helped identify the girl.
“He solved this case himself,” Josey said. “He had an ego trip, so he made those tapes. Without those, she’d just be another unidentified victim.”
Last week’s announcement of the identification prompted a flood of stories on Knowles, a seemingly pleasant 28-year-old drifter who cut a murderous path throughout the country, killing at least 18 people and possibly as many as 35.
Not only did Knowles send tapes to an attorney, hoping he would be movie material, but he also hit it off with a British newspaper reporter that he met at an Atlanta Holiday Inn bar in 1974. That encounter kicked off a short affair. The woman, who didn’t know at the time he was a killer, survived to later publish a book, writing she was struck by Knowles’ elegant suit, sensitive nature and “gaunt good looks.”
Knowles had tortured and killed a man and his daughter just two days before meeting the reporter and was wearing the dead man’s clothing at the hotel bar.
The killer had started his spree just months earlier and at the time was being fiercely hunted by police. On Nov. 17, he kidnapped a Florida trooper and another man, tied them to a tree and executed them. He was soon captured after running into a roadblock on I-75 near McDonough.
A month later, while accompanying law enforcement officials to the scene of one of his crimes to retrieve a gun, Knowles was shot to death by then-GBI agent Ronnie Angel. Angel said Knowles used a paperclip to pick his handcuffs and then lunged for Douglas County Sheriff Earl Lee’s gun, getting off one shot.
“I did what I had to do; I just did my job,” said Angel, who got to know the killer through repeated jailhouse interrogations.
“I’d place him as the worst I’ve seen. There’s bad and there’s mean, but I’d put him in the category of evil.”
Ima Jean’s sister, Sharon Chessher, said she has read up on the Knowles case in the past week and was happy to hear how he died. Chessher was 4 when her sister disappeared and is now 41. She said the family is struggling to get together money to bring her back home to Texas.
“We just want her home,” she said.
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