Volume 10 · Chapter 8
The Bushy-Haired Stranger
Frank Jarvis Atwood
Victim: Vicki Lynne Hoskinson
Case at a glance
- When
- September 1984
- Where
- Tucson, Arizona
- Perpetrator
- Frank Jarvis Atwood
- Victim
- Vicki Lynne Hoskinson
- Outcome
- Convicted of first-degree murder in 1987 and sentenced to death; executed by lethal injection on June 8, 2022
The case
On September 17, 1984, eight-year-old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson rode her bicycle a short way from her home in Tucson, Arizona, to mail a birthday card. She never came home. Her bike was found lying in the road a few blocks away, about a block from an elementary school.
That same day, a school coach named Sam Hall had watched a sports car behaving oddly near the school and memorized its license plate. The plate led to Frank Jarvis Atwood, 28, who was on parole in California for sexually abusing a child. FBI agents caught up with him in Kerrville, Texas, on September 20. Experts matched pink paint on his front bumper to Vicki’s bicycle. In April 1985, her remains were found in the desert about 20 miles from where the bike had been left.
Heavy local publicity led the court to move the trial to Phoenix. Jurors found Atwood guilty of first-degree murder in March 1987, and he was sentenced to death that May. He insisted he was innocent through 35 years of failed appeals. Arizona executed him by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence on June 8, 2022. Vicki’s mother, Debbie Carlson, went on to campaign for crime victims’ rights in Arizona.
Read the full story
This case is told in full in True Crime Case Histories, Volume 10 by Jason Neal.
Get Volume 10 on AmazonCase photographs
27 photos
Where it happened
Why this case
“People often remember this case for the coach who wrote down a license plate. He noticed something wrong and made the effort to remember it, and that is why the case was solved so quickly. Vicki’s mother then spent years fighting for other families. Their response matters at least as much as the man who took Vicki.”
— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories
