Juan Corona Machete Murderer An anthology of True Crime

It was on May 19th, 1971, just under a year after the attack on Raya, that a Japanese fruit farmer, Goro Kagehiro, with land in the Sacramento Valley, made an odd discovery on the outer reaches of his farm. Between two trees in his peach orchard, a hole had been dug. Shallow, but broadly in the shape of a grave. The farmer thought the hole odd but had a number of staff hired in at that time, and assumed it was something to do with one of them. Perhaps a hole dug to bury some waste? Nearby, one of those workers was busy, and Kagehiro approached him.The temporary employee, though, knew little of this unexpected feature in the landscape. Nor was he interested. Like most of his colleagues, he was only focussed on earning enough money to keep him going onto his next job. Hand to mouth. No roots. No ties. 'Of Mice and Men'. Some life.The farmer attempted to dismiss his discovery from his mind, but it would not go away. He made his way out to the distant corner of his land later that night, only to discover that the hole was no longer there. The space where it had been was now filled roughly in. If anything, the shape suggested a grave even more now than it had before.The matter continued to gnaw at the farmer's mind, and he contacted the police. They came out to look, began to dig and soon discovered a body. It was that of a local itinerant, a homeless alcoholic called Kenneth Whiteacre. Had Kagehiro not felt an overwhelming need to scratch the itch that mysterious hole had caused, then Kenneth Whiteacre would not have been missed. Just another Californian bum who was not longer about. Had anybody cared enough to wonder, they would have assumed he had moved off to somewhere new, as was his wont. He would be back, maybe in a few weeks. Or months. Or years. And if he didn't ever come back, nobody would know because he would have been long forgotten. Had anybody cared enough to wonder. Which, of course, nobody did.The shallow grave did not just hold the body of Kenneth Whiteacre, his head torn to shreds by a machete or some other sort of cleaver. Also in the hole was some gay porn. Sex crime, assumed the police. Some liaison gone wrong? Or was he the victim of the "Machete Murderer"?