WARNING!: Description below may be disturbing to some readers.

The simple headstone plaque of Sonja McCaskie (19 February 1939 – 5 April 1963) is located here at Trails End Cemetery in Tahoe City, California.  McCaskie was a British alpine skier from Elgin, Scotland who participated in the 1960 Winter Olympics & lived in Reno, Nevada, working part-time as a ski instructor at Slide Mountain Ski Resort.

On April 5, 1963, Sonja was due to pick up her 10-month old son from a child-minder however she never showed up.  Police would later be summoned to do a checkup at her apartment.  When they entered, they found her body as she was viciously murdered.  I will not describe her condition however it is comparable to a Jack the Ripper victim, beyond words.  Her murder was sensationalized & one media outlet went as far as to display her mutilated body on the front page w/ a grotesque caption.

Police linked a stolen camera belonging to Sonja at a pawn shop to an 18-year old named Thomas Lee Bean who would be arrested & convicted of the murder.  He was sentenced to death in the Nevada gas chamber but was taken off death row in 1970.  As of this posting date, he is still alive & remains as Nevada's longest-serving inmate.