Saturday, June 13th, 1987, at approximately 2:30pm, the body of Sarah L. Saganitso, 40, was found in a rocky crevis about 100 yards away from the Flagstaff Medical Center, the hospital in which she had been working for as a housekeeper for 15 years. She was found naked, lifeless, and virtually unrecognizable due to the outstanding bruises on her face. "The only way i could recognize her was by her hair," said her friend and fellow coworker, Helen Jaramillo. Although her body implied that she had been stabbed and, possibly, bitten in her breast; an autopsy showed that she had died from suffocation.
She had last been seen alive Friday night at 10:55pm by a custodian, 5 minutes before her shift ended. Mother of a 4 year old, at the time, she was reported missing at 11:33am on Saturday only to be found dead hours later.
Her former boyfriend was brought in for questioning but was released, shortly thereafter, on grounds that he had been hot tubing in Tuba City, at the time of the murder.
On the 1st of September 1987, the police arrested George Abney, age 36, a Northern Arizona University graduate who was teaching at the university and had plans to take his teachings across the world. The only evidence implicating Abney that has been mentioned is an alleged phone call that Abney supposedly made from his mother's house in South Carolina to Reverend Floyd Patterson confessing visions he had after the murder which left him unable to distinguish imagination from reality.
On these grounds, he was trialed on the first degree of murder of Sarah L. Saganitso. The prosecution attempted to link the bite mark on Sarah to George Abney but it was dismissed by the defense as they claimed the bite mark was actually made by a knife or an unidentified object. George Abney's defense also pointed at Navajo witches/"Skinwalkers" to be responsible for the death of the Flagstaff housekeeper. Despite the prosecution's best efforts, George was acquitted on July of 1988. Flagstaff Sergeant Pascual Macias was extremely disappointed as he was sure that Abney was guilty, despite the fact that Sarah's sister, Rosemarie Williams, believed otherwise. Rosemarie pushed for the case to be reopened but Pascual and the Flagstaff Police Department refused unless any new information was discovered.
This case remains unsolved to this day and therefore it will be updated as new details come to light.
Questions left unanswered:
Who committed the murder?
What visions did George Abney have?
Was Navajo Witchcraft involved in the murder?
Why was there a bite mark on Sarah's breast?
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