A 76-year-old man arrested for the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl nearly four decades ago was suspected of involvement in the disappearance at the time. Bender’s body has not been found.
Court documents concerning the arrest of Raymond Lewis Stafford in Texas earlier this month say he allegedly confessed to an employee that he had killed a woman not long after Susan Bender’s disappearance, KCRA reports.
Stafford reportedly said he strangled the victim with a cord or wire for 30 or 45 minutes and then buried the body near Yosemite National Park.
Bender was last seen on April 25, 1986, in Modesto at a bus stop, where her mother said she was supposed to be heading to Carmel. She was seen getting into a green van which was a rental that was traced back to Stafford.
The former employee told detectives that Stafford was concerned that the van be thoroughly cleaned before it was returned to the rental agency.
Court documents say that investigators analyzed the route Stafford told them he took in the van, traveling to visit several friends in the Central Valley. But the detectives were unable to match the mileage Stafford said he drove when they followed the route he said he took.
The documents also say that Stafford and others orchestrated a fake kidnapping after detectives spoke with him about Bender’s disappearance. Someone reported seeing him being put into the back of a pickup truck and taken away, but detectives determined that didn’t actually happen and charged him with filing a fake report.
According to the documents, Stafford had previously filed for a new driver’s license under a different name and had planned on starting a new life.
Despite their suspicions, detectives did not arrest Stafford at the time.
The investigation was reopened in 2020, and detectives questioned Stafford again. Then they uncovered Google searches made by Stafford after investigators questioned him that included “murder conviction without a body,” and “what evidence is needed to convict someone of murder in California.”
The Modesto Bee asked the Stanislaus District Attorney’s Office why Stafford wasn’t arrested earlier and got back a statement explaining that DA Jeff Laugero was not in office until January 2023 and therefore not involved in the investigation until then.
“After taking office, the Stafford investigation was presented to him by Modesto Police Department detectives and reviewing prosecutors,” the statement says. “After a lengthy analysis of the case with investigators, detectives, and senior prosecutors, DA Laugero agreed there was sufficient evidence to meet our burden of proof and authorized the filing of murder charges related to the disappearance of Susan Bender in 1986.”
Stafford is being held in Texas, where he was arrested, and is expected to be extradited next month.
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[Featured image: Raymond Stafford/Van Zandt County Sheriff’s Office and Susan Bender/Modesto Police Department]
