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Greg Smith

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OT: Crime on the golf course
« on: February 06, 2019, 08:13:59 PM »
So, my wife is one of these folks who love to read "true crime" stories/blogs, stuff like that.  One of the crime investigators she's been reading is saying that golf courses are becoming a more and more popular place to dump bodies!


That sounded a little dubious to me.  Seems like a golf course at night would be a good place to complete the deed unseen, but would be a terrible place to HIDE a body... it would be found instantly the next morning by the grounds crew, right?


Y'all super-types who are out there, have any of you actually had this happen?  If so, is your facility in a highly populated area where your golf course might be the biggest piece of open land around?  Just trying to build up a few stats and determine what the real story is.  I guess we must be talking USA only -- I just can't imagine this happening across the water.
O fools!  who drudge from morn til night
And dream your way of life is wise,
Come hither!  prove a happier plight,
The golfer lives in Paradise!                      

John Somerville, The Ballade of the Links at Rye (1898)

Sean_A

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Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2019, 10:02:19 PM »
Well, it wasn't a body, but I know a guy who left a car in a bunker after one drink too many and a joy ride around a golf course.  He thought he may have a few days before the car was discovered!  Lets call that two drinks too many.

Ciao
« Last Edit: February 06, 2019, 10:05:13 PM by Sean_A »
New plays planned for 2025: Ludlow, Machrihanish Dunes, Dunaverty and Carradale

Pete_Pittock

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Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2019, 11:23:34 PM »

Greg,

Wait until Chicagoans weigh in. Last year  Celia Barquin Arozamena, on the Iowa State collegiate team, was murdered by a homeless man on a golf course in Ames.
 In Oregon years ago the Green River Killer disposed of bodies in the woods across from Tualatin CC.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2019, 07:05:00 PM by Pete_Pittock »

Jon Cavalier

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Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2019, 11:49:09 PM »
Just last fall, some nutcase killed his father over an argument about a pizza and dumped the body at Philadelphia Country Club.


Several bodies have turned up in recent years at Juniata Golf Course in the northeast and at FDR in south Philly. They never stay hidden for long, it seems.
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Scott Warren

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Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #4 on: February 07, 2019, 12:00:54 AM »
When I saw the thread title my thinking was more along the lines of when Mark Chaplin walks onto the first tee, suggests a match for reasonable stakes and then mentions casually that he’s off 12 at the moment...

Mark Chaplin

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Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #5 on: February 07, 2019, 03:34:37 AM »
Wick google search in the UK one murder victim found burnt on a course in 2010, many non suspicious deaths I expect hangings and one Lithuanian who wasn’t found for 4 years on a course in Bournemouth.


Scott mine are victims of robbery......
Cave Nil Vino

Duncan Cheslett

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Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #6 on: February 07, 2019, 04:33:51 AM »
Walking a dog at dawn on a golf course appears to be a sure-fire way of discovering a dead body!

Rich Goodale

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #7 on: February 07, 2019, 04:39:59 AM »
Walking a dog at dawn on a golf course appears to be a sure-fire way of discovering a dead body!


....or in the case of discovering 3 naked golfers walking up the 1st at Dornoch at daybreak (4am) c. 1985.....
Life is good.

Any afterlife is unlikely and/or dodgy.

Jean-Paul Parodi

Peter Ferlicca

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #8 on: February 07, 2019, 08:41:57 AM »
When I was working at Tumble Creek back in 2010, they only had the front 9 holes finished on the Rope Rider course at Suncadia but the back nine was graded and cleared a couple years prior.  When they finished the grading on the back nine they found a dead body that was buried.  Probably was buried back when the economy took a downturn and figured there was no chance anything was going to happen there to dig it up. 

Brian Ross

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Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

http://www.rossgolfarchitects.com

Kalen Braley

  • Total Karma: 1
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2019, 10:41:07 AM »
I was thinking it would be a great place to hide a body if one of the grounds crew was in on it and compensated for thier part....

John Kavanaugh

  • Total Karma: 9
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #11 on: February 07, 2019, 10:47:46 AM »
Kalen,


If you want to get away with a crime don't include the grounds crew. They'll flip for a free lunch.


Greatest golf crime off all. Shawshank. I grew up with that guy.

Kalen Braley

  • Total Karma: 1
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #12 on: February 07, 2019, 11:06:59 AM »
Only Golf related thing from Shawshank was the pro sleeping with Andy's wife.

Sure he was out of line, (even if Andy was a bad husband), but not a crime that i'm aware of....

P.S.  Agreed on your first point, but only if he gets caught.  Seem that a grounds crew guy digging up the ground and putting down new sod wouldn't attract any undue attention thou..

John Kavanaugh

  • Total Karma: 9
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #13 on: February 07, 2019, 11:28:20 AM »
It's a crime if he left the pin in.

Jeff_Brauer

  • Total Karma: 3
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #14 on: February 07, 2019, 11:43:46 AM »

A chance to trot out my all time favorite personal golf story.....


Working for Ken Killian, we were doing a master plan for a south side Chicago golf course, and making our initial site tour.  Upon coming to the 8th tee, I noticed bullet holes in the tee sign and recalled this was reported in the Tribune as the site of a mob hit, where a gunman jumped out of the bushes on a vacant lot adjacent to the tee with a machine gun.


The superintendent filled in some details for us.  Suspicion fell quickly on his playing partners, as they casually played in before reporting the crime, shrugging their shoulders that he was already dead.  One of the group eventually turned states witness and was testifying in court.  The attorney, a non golfer, asked if they were worried about standing so close to the proposed victim, any mix ups, etc.


The witness responds that the shooter was instructed to shoot the first player to tee up his ball.  The attorney asked how they were sure it would be the "mark," asking if they tee off by age, mob rank, etc.  The witness explains the honor system, prompting the attorney to assume the mark was clearly the best golfer.


"Oh, no," said the witness, "We were all about equal.  So, when the victim topped his tee shot on 7, I had to duck hook a shot out of bounds, another muffed a few of his own and the third five putted to assure the proper honor."


According to the superintendent, court records show the victim's last words were, "I can't believe I won that hole with a 9." :)
« Last Edit: February 07, 2019, 11:54:25 AM by Jeff_Brauer »
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

David_Tepper

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #15 on: February 07, 2019, 12:13:27 PM »
Episodes of Poirot and The Avengers have used golf courses as crime scenes.


Poirot, Murder on the Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO8x9S5fe6Y

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murder_on_the_Links

Mrs. Peel in a bunker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNrvQcKVyss
« Last Edit: February 07, 2019, 12:20:33 PM by David_Tepper »

Kevin Neary

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #16 on: February 07, 2019, 01:39:51 PM »
This story may not live up to finding a body on the golf course, but it is certainly one that is etched into my memory forever.


I was playing with my father on a Saturday afternoon in August at Rock Spring (which we affectionately called "The Rock"). Our course had recently started to suffer from a coyote population that would encroach upon the course, and I had noticed one on the seventh fairway from the tenth green. My father and I said a few things, and then got back to our game. I kept watching the coyote however, because I was so intrigued by an animal that I only remember feasting on a deer carcass when I was a child. Just as I was about to look away, I noticed a man sprinting across the first fairway, onto the second and down the seventh (where the coyote was, nonetheless). I called to my father to look at the man running, and it dawned on me that he had no shirt on, and was clearly running with a purpose.


We start hearing sirens, and next thing we know, there's four cop cars barreling through the side entrance to the course. Everything was happening so fast, but we were incredibly intrigued by the whole situation.


We later learned that one member was ordered to the ground, and another tried to take the law into his own hands and attempted to chase the fugitive. The police officers commandeered golf carts, but it was to no avail. I'm fairly sure the guy slipped off the course on the fifteenth hole, and then went into South Mountain Reservation where he was never to found. Ironically, it was only a year or two earlier where bodies started to turn up. We later found out that he was involved in a hit and run, and must've had a warrant or was not allowed to drive. It all made sense once that piece of the puzzle was added in.


It may not be a crime like finding a body, but it certainly was one thing I never thought would happen on a course.

Tim Gavrich

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #17 on: February 07, 2019, 02:52:07 PM »
Cast a cerebral Jordan Spieth and a surly Patrick Reed as partners in True Detective Season 4 and TAKE MY MONEY, HBO!
Senior Writer, GolfPass

Anthony Butler

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #18 on: February 07, 2019, 03:10:48 PM »
My art director had the wheels stolen off his car while in the parking lot of Gleneagles GC in San Francisco.  Unlike the other stories in this thread, this happened in broad daylight and I'm pretty sure there were witnesses... but, according to the officer who turned up to make out the report, no-one saw anything.

He was nice enough to give us a ride (with our clubs) to the Balboa Park BART Station.
Next!

Matthew Petersen

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #19 on: February 07, 2019, 03:57:13 PM »
Not "true crime" but the most recent Michael Connelly book includes a scene where the LAPD sets up a confrontation (and inevitable shootout) with gang members in the parking lot of the Hansen Dam Golf Course, reasoning that there are few places as deserted as a golf course after dark.

George Myers

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #20 on: February 07, 2019, 03:58:10 PM »
got a chuckle from the one above.


This happened at White Pines Golf Course in Bensenville, IL, near O'Hare airport.

https://abc7chicago.com/news/womans-body-found-at-bensenville-golf-course-death-ruled-homicide/1532737/

Not the murder "per se" happened at the golf course, but the victim's body was left there, and quickly found the next morning.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2019, 04:00:31 PM by George Myers »

Jeff_Brauer

  • Total Karma: 3
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #21 on: February 07, 2019, 06:54:41 PM »

Years after we finished Eagle Bend for the City of Lawrence, KS, the FBI called my office and wondered if we had seen any bodies there.  Apparently, they got a new lead on an old murder that said someone had put the body there.  During construction, another lady wanted to move her dogs bones before we dug up the clubhouse area where she had buried it, but she never found them.


In the 1980's, while on site, someone found a deceased hobo in a bathroom on a site visit.  I didn't look, and there was no real evidence of anything other than natural death.


We worked with a surveyor who had found several bodies while doing preliminary survey work for site development over the years.  The police advised him that if he reported another one, he might become a suspect.


West of Ft. Worth, it took years to figure out, but a do it yourself owner had buried some construction equipment in a hole, and then claimed it as stolen on his insurance policy.


There are probably any number of environmental crimes (or at least violations, but there can be jail sentences) by contractors or owners willingly destroying habitat, wetlands, etc., directed to be preserved.  Probably some toxic waste buried around in violation of clean up rules, too.


And, some designs are so bad, many of you would call those crimes as well!
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Terry Lavin

  • Total Karma: -2
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #22 on: February 07, 2019, 07:21:36 PM »
A hit attempt here in Chicagoland an an old time south suburban club.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-06-08-8502060081-story,amp.html
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.  H.L. Mencken

Jeff_Brauer

  • Total Karma: 3
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #23 on: February 07, 2019, 07:27:27 PM »

Terry,


That sounds like the one I was talking about, with the superintendent on site obviously exaggerating the story for good effect....However, I do recall bullet holes in the tee sign, hard to believe a gunman could do that with a handgun. :-\
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Ian Mackenzie

  • Total Karma: 0
Re: OT: Crime on the golf course
« Reply #24 on: February 08, 2019, 11:23:33 AM »
Gleneagles In SF does sit right next to a public housing project....


Back in Chicago, where I play today, I wish I had the skills required to post photos here...🧐 ;)
The west branch of the north fork of the Chicago River flows through our back 9. (Or is it the north fork of the west branch...I always forget...)


Since the US Am and US Open have been played there in 1904, the course has had flooding issues.
Two years ago, there was a heavy storm that flooded the course as the river left its banks yet again. The river can run over the entrance driveway. A guest, apparently well lubricated, left The club one evening and encountered the torrent that he thought he could manage in his new Range Rover sport.


The car stalled in the water and the guest abandoned it, returned to the club to seek help.
Upon returning 30 minutes later, the car was gone and he thought it had been stolen. Nope. It was found two days later right off the second tee completely submerged in the river and stuck under a fallen tree.


The photo is hilarious.