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Who Killed Karen Swift: Her Husband Or a Clever Serial Predator?

By John Kays

The back-story to the discovery of Karen Swift's body Saturday, is that her killer hides Karen in some undergrowth near Bledsoe Cemetery, right on Halloween Eve. Not that we should necessarily attach any investigative significance to this odd twist, but the Hallows Eve conjunction is difficult to discard entirely. Karen herself had dropped by a costume party that night (Oct 29th), as had her daughter.

One wishes they might be capable of extracting this macabre angle, but what with our news services flashing images of tombstones from Bledsoe Cemetery across my HD TV, my impartiality is out the window and has to say bye bye! Can't help but think the killer wanted to plant this nefarious nexus in our barmy teeny brains. *(The cinematic association is not coincidental!)

Some news sources are suggesting that the villain hastily abandoned the body in this peculiar location, but I rather choose to believe there was a good bit of planning and forethought, if not downright effulgent connivance. Bill Warner, an astute private investigator from Florida, has pointed out there are all kinds of country roads where poor Karen could have been deposited. The choice of a proxy spot to a graveyard was deliberate!

It appears as if more suspicion is being directed towards the husband right now, David Swift. Study the timeline once again. Examine the geographical locations of the Swift house, the jettisoned 2004 Nissan Murano, the Bledsoe Cemetery, and even the location of the Halloween party (Dyersburg Country Club-The Farms). Calculate the distance between each of these locales. (But be careful in appropriating excessive pertinence in this regard.)

Did David actually see Karen leave the stately mansion on Johnson Road that confusion-fueled Sunday morning? What time might this be? Why would Karen leave suddenly when she'd just returned from picking up her daughter? Was there any type of disturbance in the household, such as an argument or some kind of violent row? Only the daughters would be aware of a blemish of this nature, that tends to undermine David's shrouded version of events.

Another new piece of evidence, which was revealed on Nancy Grace on Monday night, is that the abandoned Nissan Murano's tires were slashed with a knife, most likely by Karen's killer. Okay, so maybe only one tire was slashed. *(Slashing a tire with a knife is a clumsy way to stage a crime scene? It reeks of artifice!) Furthermore, we know that some of Karen's clothes were found in the brush, close to the vacated vehicle.

This has the earmarks of a staged crime scene. Parking the car in a not too obvious location. Tossing some clothes in the undergrowth, near the car. Then the final phony abomination, taking her lifeless body over three miles to a gloomy graveyard, and tossing it right by a cross of the crucifix (CROSS BLUFF), no less! If David did all these creepy deeds, then he was trying to make it look like a serial predator was responsible.

If on the other hand, it really was a serial killer (with an MO very similar to the notorious Henry Lee Lucas), then he perhaps was attempting to make it look like the husband was staging the entire gossamer charade, who in turn was trying to give the crime scene an appearance of a phantom predator prowling a quad state area (Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky), in search of his next victim.

Too fantastic to believe, but it's happened before. This clever criminal commits a double staging, a double cover-up to make it seem as if the husband, with a great amount of haphazard desperation, stages the entire unspeakable episode (murder of his estranged wife), in order to plant a seed in the heads of the cops (and to the public at large) that the most obvious perpetrator is a random roaming stranger. As unlikely as this theory may appear to you, I favor it, since I'm convinced that Karen Swift's killer is also the camouflage man of Holly Bobo infamy!

John Kays identifies timeless remnants from our past that will endure, or be admired by future generations.