Sonja McCaskie

Sonja McCaskie skied the giant slalom for Great Britain at the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics. After the Olympics she remained in the United States, working as a ski instructor at the Slide Mountain ski resort near Reno, Nevada.

In the early morning hours of 5 April 1963, McCaskie was in her apartment in Reno when Thomas Lee Bean, an 18-year-old high school student broke into the apartment. He then proceeded to strangle, rape, murder, and decapitate McCaskie. The police chief on the scene noted, “It is certainly the most brutal murder I have ever seen.”

Bean was caught shortly after the crime when he tried to pawn a camera he had stolen from McCaskie’s house. He was tried, found guilty, and given the death penalty, but that was commuted in 1972 when the US Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional.