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Funeral services held for serial killer victims

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GAFFNEY, S.C.-- Hundreds of friends packed the First Baptist Church in downtown Gaffney Sunday to remember two women who touched their students’ lives through at least a combined six decades of teaching.

Hazel Linder, 83, and her daughter, Gena Linder Parker, 50, were found shot to death Wednesday at Linder’s home, in what would be the second and third murders in a serial killer’s string of five.

Mildred Mahaffey grew up with Parker in the same neighborhood and the same church, and knew Linder all her life.  Linder taught Sunday school at Cherokee Creek Baptist Church, where the Mahaffeys are members.   Mildred’s husband Roger said the two families often vacationed together.

“She always wrote poems and stories of everything we did each day on vacation,” said Roger.  “Then she’d bring them back and read them to us, and we didn’t know she was writing them until we got back home,” he added, with a laugh.

Mildred remembered Parker’s outgoing personality.  "Gena was such a bubbly, active teacher, and all of her students loved her," she said.

Despite the somber occasion, the women’s joint funeral was often marked with laughter.  Linder’s pastor remarked how Linder’s trips to the beach often coincided with his.  Once, when someone mentioned that they saw the pastor, Linder hid a deck of cards she brought with her.  “I told her it was okay to play solitaire,” her pastor said during the eulogy.

Charlotte Observer

Funeral service for Hazel Linder and Gena Parker

Gena Parker’s principal at Calhoun Academy of the Arts, where Parker taught third grade, said Parker quickly earned the name “Mrs. Sunshine” when she started teaching at the school ten years ago.  Ann Self said Parker’s room was full of toys – like a dancing pig -- and colorful learning tools.  Because Parker was so full of life, said Self, “it’s like she wrote her own eulogy every day.”

After the one-hour funeral, the women’s families followed their two caskets down the front steps of the church into two waiting hearses.  Parker’s husband, Scott, a well-known local football coach, was accompanied by his two teenaged sons.

Shedrick Harris played football for Scott Parker at Gardner-Webb University, and said Gena relished the role of “team mom.”

"A lot of guys felt like this was their mom just as well as… her son, her biological kids," said Harris.  “When you’re away at college it’s important for you to feel a part of a family, and she was always that way.”

Harris joined several other former football players at the church.  "When I found out about this I was just heartbroken,” he said.  “I mean, they’re just too nice of people for something like this to happen.”

The serial killer’s first victim, Kline Cash, was laid to rest last Wednesday – the same day Linder and Parker were discovered murdered.  Funeral arrangements for the last two victims, Stephen Tyler and daughter Abby, 15, aren’t yet complete.

Remembering the Tylers

While more than 100 investigators continued the search for a suspected serial killer linked to the murders of five people, parishioners gathered for Sunday morning worship services remembered the victims.

“This is hard on all of us,” said Doris McMillan as she arrived at Cherokee Avenue Baptist Church. “This town is scared. I’m scared for my two children.”

McMillan, like other members of the church, knew the most recent victims of a gunman who has launched three attacks in a little more than a week.

Abby Tyler, 15, died Saturday morning from injuries she sustained in a shooting Thursday evening.

Her father, Stephen Tyler, was also shot inside the family’s furniture and appliance store. He died at the scene.

Dr. Clyde Thomas, head pastor of the Tyler’s church, said the congregation is struggling to comprehend the slayings.

For a slideshow of the serial killers victimsClick Here

“They keep saying ‘we don’t know what to say’ and I keep saying ‘you don’t have to say anything,’” he told NewsChannel 36.

Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton said investigators believe the killings are linked to three other murders in recent days. An 83-year-old mother and her daughter were shot to death Wednesday, and a 63-year-old peach farmer was found dead at his home a week ago.

Blanton said all the victims were shot, but he would not say how the deaths were linked. The shootings all occurred within about 10 miles of each other in Cherokee County, a rural community of 54,000 people set amid peach orchards and farms some 50 miles west of Charlotte, N.C.

The spree had alarmed residents canceling Independence Day holiday plans and arming themselves. The sheriff has warned door-to-door salesmen to stop knocking and anyone who breaks down on the county's rural roads to wait instead of walking to a house for help because he worries "people are going to start shooting at shadows."

The killings began a week ago Saturday when the wife of 63-year-old peach farmer Kline Cash found him dead in their home. Then last Wednesday, relatives found 83-year-old Hazel Linder and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, bound and shot to death in a separate shooting at Linder's home.

Dozens of local, state and federal investigators were assigned to the case when the killings were linked. But a day later, the killer struck again, less than a half-mile from the sheriff's office serving as the headquarters for the investigation, killing 48-year-old Stephen Tyler and his daughter.

"We're knee-deep in the investigation," Blanton said Sunday. "There's fear and concern here and there should be concern."

Investigators have released a sketch of the suspect, saying he is in his 40s, with salt and pepper hair, about 6-foot-2, and roughly 200 pounds. They think he is driving a silver 1991-1994 Ford Explorer.

(NewsChannel 36 reporters Diana Rugg and Mark Boone contributed to this article along with the Associated Press)